Eat Smarter, Think Better: Supporting Your Gut-Brain Connection

If you measure the text messages that go from head brain to gut brain, the more text message goes from your gut to your head. It's really health. Physical health, Mark, begins with good gut health Welcome to Health Breakthroughs with Dr.

Stengler. I'm Dr Mark Stegler and each episode we cut through the noise to bring you practical, science-backed insights for more energy, better health and a life that feels like yours again.

Hey everybody. I'm so excited to have Dr. Bill Sears with me. Really in my opinion, one of the most well-known health experts in the world, a very famous pediatrician, but he's taken his, his treatments of people far beyond pediatrics into general functional health, integrative medicine, super nutrition, I would call it.

And he has got quite the bio. So before I introduce you to him, to hear his bio, he is a father of eight kids. course are growing now. Medical practice for 52 years.

Wow. Also has been a voluntary professor at the University of Toronto, University Of Southern California, and UC Irvine. He's also the founder of the Dr.

Sears Wellness Institute. which has certified over 13,000 health coaches, coach Little League Sports for 20 years. And together with his wife, Martha, who I know very well, has written 47 books on family health and healthy aging.

Dr. Sears has made many contributions to health, including family Health. He was also featured on the cover of Time Magazine. Well, Bill, that's quite a bio.

I don't know if I would get to that point in my career, but that is very, very impressive. Well, thank you, Mark. And it's been, you know, every day I go to the office, I have what I call a high dose of the helper's high.

I got to bed that night, and I drift off to sleep feeling so good in the head brain and the gut brain because maybe one or two little babies or mothers or grandparents are healthier because of some advice I gave them.

And you share that too. We both share as integrative doctors at Helpers High. Oh, absolutely. I know talking with you and getting to know you over the years, I mean, you were like that from the beginning of your career.

There's some people who get into medicine because they love helping people. I mean, there's some people, let's just face it, are into it for the career and the money.

But I, you know, I think without a doubt, our motivation from the beginning until now is just we like to see people get better and we don't like the see, people suffering.

Yes, exactly. Well, we have an important topic and I know it's one you understand well, and you've written about in your books. And that is the topic of guide health and brain health.

First of all, tell the listeners about your, you know, one of the books, it's fairly recent on brain. Tell us a bit about that book. And then I want to talk about gut health, which you do get into into the book as well.

Yes. As I was writing the brain, health book about the head brain I kept learning more about a gut. and I realized that's why the gut is appropriately called the second brain So follow me closely.

Picture your head brain, brain smiling. And the headbrain sends biochemical text messages down the middle of your body, the vagus nerve, and the biggest nerve of the body.

Vagus means wondering. Those text message go to the gut, second brain. The head brain says, hey gut. How are things going down there? And we got brain checks back to head Everything's moving along fine, head brain.

I feel good down here as long as you feel up there. You eat good up here. So that's a head-brain, gut-brain connection mark that is so vitally important.

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And it's very interesting. It's what they call this bi-directional access. So there's communication from the brain to the gut and then the get to brain.

Tell us more how that works in terms of pediatrics up to teenagers, adults and seniors. I mean, why do people really need to get this connection to enhance their brain health where they're young and they need be able to focus, not have attention problems and learn in school and life, and the seniors are worried about their memory.

Well, a person will come in, say, for brain constant at all ages. I see seniors now. It's funny, the young people are bringing their mom and dad in. And they say dad, I'll sit still and listen to Dr.

Miller. That's kind of funny. So I open and say well, how are things going in your gut? And what's that got to do with my depression and anxiety? Tell me about your guts.

We talk about gut health and I tell them, your gut is where most of your happy hormones like serotonin are made. So if your got is okay, gut shifts the happy hormone up into your head brain and you feel better up here.

My gosh, Dr. Bill, I never heard that before. And for example, they, uh, right. I give them my rule of two. I say, I want you to eat twice as often, eat half as much and chew twice this long, take twice so long as long to die.

And then for the kids, the kid's like old party talk. I'd say now the better you chew, better, you poo because we are a constipated society, Mark. That's true.

Remember a teen coming in recently and I would give a consultation. She said, Dr. Bill until so much better. And every day I remember that one more thing you told me as I was leaving the office, the better you chew, better your food.

Thank you, Dr Bill. Well, it's interesting because You know, they have demonstrated the last decade or so how you can reabsorb toxins through the colon back into the bloodstream.

Obviously that blood flow is going to go through, you know to all their organs of the body, including the brain. So that makes a lot of logical sense.

What about the microbiome? You have these trillions of bacteria in the gut. We know that influences brain function too. Yes, Mark. You just mentioned one of magic terms in medicine right now, microbiol.

Microbiome simply means little community of bugs. The bacteria that normally reside in your colon mainly, and in return for free food and a warm place to live, these little bugs produce medicines for you, just like your own internal pharmacy in you gut.

It's called a microbiome. So our microbiome feeds on the leftovers from our food, the fiber. So as you digest the food in the upper intestines, leftovers come down to this big intestine, and the microbiomes says, yummy, here comes our foods.

We'll feed on your food and we'll make medicines for you. This is why a lot of medicine right now, Question might be, when I'm a patient, you would say, hey, how's your microbiome?

So the microbiomes, now we know why, head brain, gut brain connections, because that pharmacy down there of trillions of little gut bugs, I call them micro-pharmacists, as they're making this for you.

So now, whether it be your pediatric patients, your teenagers, the adults, again, for brain function, walk us through a bit what you do with patients in terms of diet and microbiome treatments and stuff to directly affect cognitive function brain functions.

Yes. And I'm glad you mentioned that because a lot of people don't realize connection between food and brain health. And tip number one is, grain is the organ most affected, for better or worse, by what you eat.

Put smart food in your mouth and your gut, you get smart thinking. So smart foods. But first of all, I actually give them my list of smart fruit. The first thing I do in my office, You know, in the healthy brain book, I give them my thank you.

I sent you a copy of one of the other chapters on them. Yes. So we're going to make that available to the guests. That's true. This is the smart food.

Give them the list. First of all, secondly, said I want you to become a grazer and not a gorger. And, uh, the wires for the mom sitting there, how did you know?

He was a gorger. Because I guessed. And you know, next time you're in a restaurant, Mark, or if you were in the restaurant. Watch the gorgers. I call them wolfers.

They're shoving food down. You know they chew five times. That's not interesting. This is not always a correlation. But fast eaters tend to be sat eatters.

Notice that picture. So that's the first thing. It's just slow down. Two. Eat twice as often, smaller meals. Like if your gut could talk, it doesn't, we don't listen to it.

The gut says, the smaller your meal, better I feel. Dr. Mark, The smaller the meal the better, I'd feel, so smaller meal. Once you chew twice, as much.

Now, why is that chewing so important? It's because the more we chew, saliva, life is full of digestive enzyme. So, digestion begins with chewing in your mouth.

And when you take a nice, like an egg, salmon or like that, or a bite of salad, chew and you chew. or saliva, and that mixes with food, we call it goop.

Nice mouth seal. And then the more you chew, the saliva you make, so the digestion occurs up here in the mouth, but then saliva helps the food slide down into the gut.

Stomach. The stomach is your body's blender. And the stomach says, thank you for chewing longer because I don't have to work so hard now. And then it slides down the intestines and all nutrients absorb into the lower gut.

Then the, the. Stomach catches the gut, you know, lower guts as a colon where food's coming down, prepared to evacuate all the gastrocolic reflex. So that's sort of how.

a normal meal should take place. You take a bite, you talk a little bit, chew a long time, take another bite. And that one little tip, it's amazing how much better you will feel in your gut.

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Excellent. And I know you are a big fan of fermented foods and foods which, you know, have the naturally occurring probiotics and who's have their prebiotics and the post box.

Tell us a little bit about that if you wouldn't. And of course how that's going to help get health and help, uh, brain health. Yes. There's my smoothie.

Five days a week and smoothie because it makes everything smoother down there. My smoothie, I make my own kefir. It's very easy to make, make your own Kefir, so see from that, you mentioned the magic term fermented soup, or simply your microbiome's favorite food.

Kefir. So, empty, full food, fermented food and that's because that happens to be probiotics at your or microbiome wipes. So one little tip, I call it the sipping solution.

Five days a week, make a big smoothie. And right now I have 13 ingredients in my smoothie, and I start with a handful of pumpkin seeds and then nuts and a whole bunch of spinach and kale and arugula and chard, pomegranates, Blueberries, blueberries are called the brain berry for a reason.

Kiwis, vitamin C, and a whole bunch of other ingredients. Ginger, cinnamon, MCT oil, chocolate protein powder. I like the sweet taste. Sometimes I'll put some honey in it, a little sweet.

And that's when I sip on it. My microbiome is saying, you know, like a smaller meal. So that's sort of that gut-brain connection again. Yeah, that is great.

Well, you know, we are going to have another segment for you and the listeners too that people can look for, and that�s gut health and senior health.

So we�re going talk more about specifically for seniors. But maybe just wrapping up, what are your summary statements, would you say, in terms of gut and health, the importance of connecting it to brain health?

Main connection is that when you're sitting down for a meal and you want to feel good, that's what we want now, you wanna feel the gut and the head brain.

All the things we're talking about are feel-good tips because again, your feelgood hormones are made in your gut. So the better you are to gut, head, brain, Because the gut brain makes about 90% of your serotonin, your happy hormone, and it shifts it up.

And actually, if you measure the text messages that go from head brain to gut-brain the more text message that goes from your gut to your head-grain, it's faster.

Really, health and physical health, Mark, begins with good gut health. That's a great summary. And if you want more information on Dr. Sears information, nutritional medicine, brain health, his book on brain, health go to his website, askdrsears.com, right?

Yes. Yes, that's drsear. com. Excellent. Well, again, thank you, Dr Sear and we look forward to our, uh, another segment that we're going to go over senior health with you and get health in an upcoming episode.

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