Eagan Personal Trainer and nutritionist proves you can look better, feel better and think better by focusing on your brain, or should I say brains
You have a brain and a GUT-brain. And if you want a happy brain, you have to have a happy gut! And if you want a flat stomach, you need a happy gut.
A lot of people in Eagan are looking for ways to lose weight and tone up fast, but how about working with personal trainers that are going to maximize your health and make you look better on the insides as well as the outside.
The gut-brain has its own independent nervous system. And it has more neurotransmitters and serotonin than the brain in your head.
You all know that you can get butterflies in your stomach, or lose your lunch (or worse) in very stressful situations. But did you know that what happens in your gut feeds right back to your brain?
Did 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 and irritable that messes up your stomach, it is your stomach that makes you anxious and irritable. And forget about looking your very best.
Did you know that a bloated belly can cause a bloated and inflamed brain? At the Body Project because we are a holistic personal training studio, one of the first things we evaluate is the health of a persons digestion. Why? Losing weight becomes a lot harder with poor digestion.
Dr. Michael Gershon of Columbia University has called the gut the “second brain.” In fact, your gut has a mind of its own—literally. While it is connected to the brain through an extensive network of wiring and communication systems, it is also the only “organ” besides the brain that has its own nervous system.
We call it the ENS, or enteric (or gut) nervous system, as opposed to the CNS, or central nervous system. This gut-brain actually comes from the same embryonic tissue as the brain-brain. And it is still connected via your autonomic nervous system—your sympathetic (fight or flight system) and your parasympathetic system(Rest and digest)nerves.
Acting completely independently, the ENS has a number of important jobs. It keeps everything moving in the right direction, from the top down, by coordinating the contraction of muscle cells. It triggers the gut hormones and enzymes to be released from cells to promote digestion. It helps keep the blood flowing so when you absorb your food it can get to where it needs to go. And it controls the immune and inflammatory cells in the gut.
All that happens in the background and is communicated back up to your brain via the autonomic nervous system. Think of it as two independent but inter-dependent businesses. They must coordinate and communicate but can also act independently.
Literally everything that happens in your gut is communicated to your brain via the ENS. If your gut is stressed out, if it is inflamed, if it has too few good bacteria or if the protective barrier that lets food in and keeps toxins out has been breached, your gut tells your brain about it.
That makes your brain unhappy. So to have a happy brain, you have to have a happy gut.
And one of the best ways to do that is to heal your gut-immune system.
At the Body Project because we are a holistic personal training studio, we use applied kinesiology to check your digestion and then we can customize your health and weight loss program.
About 60 percent of your immune system lies right under the one-cell-layer-thick lining of your gut.
Its job is to let in ONLY the good stuff—food in the form of amino acids, sugars, fats, minerals and vitamins—and KEEP OUT all the bad stuff, like toxic bacteria and undigested food particles.
In fact, if you laid your gut flat, it would be the size of a tennis court. And there are 3 pounds of bacteria comprising 500 species covering that surface. When our personal training clients in Eagan start one of our programs, we always start with their digestion.
If this surface breaks down—look out. Your brain won’t be happy and it will become very difficult to lose weight and keep it off.
Your immune system will get activated, and start reacting to foods and toxins and bugs in your gut. This makes your brain and your mood inflamed!
You can also absorb toxic molecules into your bloodstream, which get to the brain and make you crazy. Take, for example, the people with liver failure who go crazy because they can’t detoxify the poisons from their gut bacteria.
And what treatment do most people get? They sterilize their intestines with antibiotics.
The problem is really with the way we live, and all the drugs we take, damage our whole gut ecosystem. This includes our sugar- and junk food-rich, low-fiber diet, our overuse of antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, and acid-blocking medications, and our chronic stress.
So what happens when our internal balance is all out of whack and our guts break down from the total load of stressors and toxins on our bodies?
We can develop everything from depression to ADD, from autism to Alzheimer’s, from OCD to anxiety—and just plain bad moods and brain fog.
These problems occur in patterns, because they are all connected. It is not usually one thing. It is almost always everything. But the gut is often at the center of the problem—even if there are no digestive symptoms.
The Top 5 things our personal trainers at the Body Project recommend to clean your gut.
1. Get rid of common allergens, like gluten and dairy.
2. If you can, get off of antibiotics, steroids, anti-inflammatories, and acid-blocking medication.
3. Try digestive enzymes. If you want to lose weight permanently than you need to make sure your digestion is working properly. This is one thing that is overlooked by many personal trainers in Eagan.
4. Try probiotics, which are the beneficial bacteria that normally live in your gut.
5. Eat a whole-foods diet with plenty of fiber like beans, nuts, veggies, fruits, seeds, and whole grains.
And remember, if you want a happy brain you have to have a happy gut. You want a flatter stomach then you might need to clean house.
Remember, the Body Project is Eagan’s only holistic personal training studio that focuses on your overall health and a by-product is you will look incredible. We use cutting edge science and methods such as hair tissue mineral analysis, Nutrition Response Testing, nutritional microscopy and functional interval training.
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