Dr. Mark Hyman explains how gut health affects brain function and mood. He describes a young girl whose behavioral problems disappeared after treating her digestive system, and outlines a holistic approach using diet and supplements to fix both gut and mental health.
Hello, this is Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome back to my series of blogs on my new book, the UltraMind Solution. Remember, we are living in an epidemic that's robbing our children of their future, adults of their present, and the elderly of their past. And I'm going to show you in this vlog series how to take back the future, the present and the past through the seven keys to an ultra mind. Did you know that you have two brains? Well, there's the brain and then there's the gut brain. And if you want to have a happy brain, you have to have a happy gut. The gut brain has its own independent nervous system and it has more neurotransmitters and serotonin than your brain-brain. You all know that you can get butterflies in your stomach or lose your lunch or worse in stressful situations, but did you know what happens in your gut feeds right back into your brain? Do you know that studies show that an irritable bowel, which affects nearly 60 million Americans, can cause an irritable brain? It isn't being anxious or crazy that messes up your stomach. It's your stomach that makes you anxious and irritable. Did you know that a bloated belly can cause a bloated inflamed brain? Did you know that not only food can repeat on you, but your thoughts can repeat on you and have reflex of your thoughts? That's called OCD, making you obsessive and compulsive. Did you know that 60% of your immune system lies right under the lining of your gut and it has to let in only the good stuff, food in the forms of amino acids, sugars, fats, minerals, and vitamins, and it has to keep out all the bad stuff, the toxic bacteria and undigested food particles. In fact, if you laid out your gut flat, it would be the size of a tennis court. There are actually three pounds of bacteria comprising 500 species that cover the surface of your gut. And if it breaks down, look out. Your brain won't be happy. Your immune system will get activated, and it'll start reacting to foods and toxins and bugs in your gut. And this makes your brain inflamed and your mood inflamed. You can also absorb toxic molecules from your gut into your bloodstream that get to your brain and make you crazy, like those patients with liver failure who go crazy because they can't detoxify the poisons from their gut bacteria. So what's our treatment with those patients? Well, we sterilize their intestines with antibiotics. Doctors know that. The problem is that the way we live and all the drugs we take damage our whole gut ecosystem. Our sugar and junk food diet that's rich in processed food and low in fiber, our overuse of antibiotics, our anti-inflammatory and acid medications or acid blocking medications and our chronic stress all damage our gut. So what happens when things go awry? from depression to ADD, from autism to Alzheimer's, from OCD to anxiety, and just plain bad moods and brain fog. Now let me tell you a story of a gut gone bad and how fixing the gut fixes the brain. One spring afternoon, I saw a beautiful little six-year-old girl walk into my office with her mother and her sister. On the surface, she seemed quite normal. But then the story of this tragic little girl and this tragic little life unfolded. This first grade student was extraordinarily aggressive with her sister and her peers, kicking and pinching and hitting and biting, and she threatened to kill herself pretty regularly. She would cut her mother and her sister out of her family pictures. She was anxious and negative and hopeless. She had temper tantrums and mood swings and was always seeking attention. And she was diagnosed with OCD and perfectionism. Now, she didn't make friends, obviously, at school, and her mother was called every day about her disruptive behavior in class. Now going back to her story when she was younger, she was a very colicky baby. She had frequent diaper and vaginal yeast infections and she had a lot of rectal and vaginal itching which gives you a pretty good idea that yeast is hanging around there. And she had very sensitive skin and she loved sugar and refined pastries and carbs. But she had no digestive complaints other than the anal itching. But I've learned that even if a child or adult doesn't complain about their gut, mischief can still be brewing. You see, the bacteria and yeast in this girl's gut literally fermented the sugary starchy foods in her diet, producing auto-intoxication with alcohol, a byproduct of this fermentation process. The violent aggressive behavior so commonly seen in drunks can actually occur from alcohol produced by yeast in the gut. and I wondered if this little girl had a little auto brewery in her belly. So on my detective hunt, I found she was very low in magnesium, which can make you pretty irritable, and zinc deficient, which is so important to help your digestive enzymes break down your food. And she also had delayed allergies like wheat and rye and oats and all the gluten grains. And of course she had low levels of the omega-3 fats, and she had typical B vitamin deficiencies like B6, B12 and folate. And she had a lot of trouble making energy in her cells, which I'll tell you about in an upcoming vlog. These problems occur in patterns because they're all connected. You see, it's not usually one thing, it's almost always everything. But the gut is often at the center of the problem, even if there are no digestive symptoms. The most incredible finding in this young girl's case was the sky-high indicators of bacteria and yeast overgrowing in her gut. I had never seen levels this high in anyone. So what did I do? Well, I got her on a gluten and dairy free diet, on whole foods. I got her on some cod liver oil, some magnesium, some B vitamins, a multi and some probiotics, and she got a little better. But when I gave her an antibiotic, a special antibiotic that doesn't get absorbed to clear out the bad bugs in her gut, followed by an antifungal to get rid of the yeast, She transformed into a well-behaved little girl. Her aggressiveness and negativity and hopelessness were gone. Her mother said she used to be punished 10 times a day and got into trouble at school every day. And all that stopped when we cleared up the bad bugs in her gut and helped her get her gut flora back and her ecosystem in balance. Now, many studies have shown abnormal, toxin-producing bacterial flora in children with developmental problems like these. Normal kids have normal gut flora. Happy people have healthy flora. Dr. David Relman from Stanford is studying the DNA of the ecosystem of the bugs in your gut. And he has found that the bugs who live with you in your gut may be more important in determining your health than your own DNA fingerprint. A healthy gut is a healthy brain. So what do you do about it? Well, be kind to your gut. Get rid of common allergens like gluten and dairy. If you can, get off of antibiotics, steroids, anti-inflammatory and acid blocking medication which all damage the gut. Try some digestive enzymes. Try probiotics which are the healthy bacteria. Eat a whole foods diet with lots of fiber from plant foods like beans and nuts and seeds and veggies. And remember, if you want a happy brain, you have to have a happy gut. Now I want to remind you that you can get a free sneak preview of my book. the Ultramind Solution at www.ultramind.com. In my next blog I'm going to teach you about how to enhance your detoxification system. We will turn our attention to toxins, how they affect the brain and how they lead to systemic breakdown that contributes to almost every brain and mood related problem that we face today.
