-: Okay, so, diving into the enteric nervous system,
well, here's the information,
we're not actually gonna dive
into the enteric nervous system.
This is another term or name
for the intrinsic nervous system,
which is part of the autonomic nervous system.
It's found in the GI track
and it does impact, amongst other things,
motor function, blood flow, laminar blood flow,
immune function, and our endocrine functions.
So go ahead and raise your hand and take them down
if you don't think that one of these things
is important for our ability as coaches to get a result.
Motor function response,
blood flow,
what delivers the blood to the cell.
Immune function, hormones.
All right, so, (chuckles) there should be no hands.
This is everything we do.
It's everything we do.
And it requires optimal energy creation,
it requires decent immune function
and solid nerve conductivity,
but effectively, if we don't have this enteric system,
this section of the autonomic nervous system operating,
it can be a real bear and it can be very difficult
to evaluate and understand
because it gets into everything, okay?
And this is what, it can also interact with and destruct
the gut brain axis,
which is a bidirectional pathway
between our GI tract and our brain.
Now go back, our brain is part
of our central nervous system.
So what we're effectively saying here is that,
your central nervous system
is connected to your gastrointestinal system
by a section of the autonomic nervous system,
which is indicated by the vagus nerve,
which is a cranial nerve
coming from the central nervous system.
And we as coaches try to single out
ways in which things manifest,
because we're convinced as individuals
that if I see this thing, I know what it is.
This is an expressway.
It's an interstate system.
It's bidirectional,
meaning if you do something that disrupts one system,
it can disrupt another.
So your gastrointestinal system
can affect your neuro-transmitters
and your neuro-transmitters
can affect your gastrointestinal system, okay?
It's really important here, okay?
It can affect, in addition to those systems,
your HPA axis, the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal,
and then potentially gonadal axis as well, okay.
It's the big daddy, so here's a little picture.
So starting up top,
we have the hypothalamus pituitary, right?
We have the brain, we get that,
here's the vagus nerve coming down
and it's connecting to our immune system
to the intestinal track, right?
It's controlling our blood flow.
It's controlling the diameter of the vessel, right?
And then here's our little probiotics
and our neuro-transmitters.
So here's our gut bacteria and our neuro-transmitters
being made from that.
So our adrenals, our hormones, our blood flow,
our cognitive function, motor functions, digestive system,
our ability to effectively create energy
to power the entire system
and the immune function necessary to defend it
are all impacted by the system okay?
And this is effectively where we get the adage,
I've got a gut feeling about this person.
We've always known that the gut brain were connected,
and I think there's an international congress of physicians
who meets called the Gut Second Brain
or something of the like,
where they effectively present research
and discuss this connection, it's fascinating.
But when you start looking at your neuro-transmitters,
you go here's all these, you know, the GABA,
the dopamine, serotonin,
all the things that we've already talked about
in terms of our motivation,
in terms of our ability to sleep,
in terms of our abilities
to improve our clarity, mental clarity,
and cognitive function that are all produced
in the gut down there and affected
via the GBA, the gut brain axis.
This is also how we think that things that don't cross
the blood-brain barrier, like GABA,
can elevate via the intestinal tract
because of the connection.
And then I also have in here for you,
the mind body connection is the gut brain axis.
It's definitely a good way to describe it,
because everything about your body that we just discussed
is affected by and effects the gut brain axis.
So yeah, that statement of the mind body connection
is exemplified in the gut brain axis,
is a pretty good way for you to remember this, okay?
Now, a couple of steady type ideas for you,
the enteric nervous system is fascinating
with its role in the cognitive function,
in that it produces more than 30 neurotransmitters.
Okay, technically that's more than your spine.
Or, excuse me, it's got more neurons than your spine.
30 neurotransmitters, more neurons than your spine
and produces 80% of our serotonin,
which means it's responsible also for our melatonin.
But when we look at the way that the serotonin
has an impact on our digestive system
and our ability to create energy,
now we start looking at our ability to support
our ATP production, we're looking at our ability to support
our ability to sleep, our ability to be happy.
We start looking at our ability to produce
all of our neurotransmitters
that help with mental clarity and thought,
and we start to realize how important
this connection actually is, okay?
So when we look at the regulation
of what all those neurotransmitters are doing,
a lot of times what we're gonna think is,
oh, okay, yeah, it's my mental thought.
It's not actually, the neurotransmitters
have a really interesting role in that,
yes, we can look at something like dopamine and say, okay,
that's the desire hormone, right?
That's the drive hormone that gives you motivation.
The motivation molecule, you might hear it called.
But also, neurotransmitters are involved in everything
from your nutrient absorption
to the support of your innate immune system,
even maintaining microbial balances,
your neurotransmitters are fairly important.
And we don't, I suppose there's probably a way
to just focus on one at a time, but effectively,
if we're improving digestion, you're really improving
kind of all of them, which is the general idea.
So what we want to be able to do
is evaluate when we have something going wrong,
something disrupting
not only our production of our neurotransmitters,
but our digestion as a whole,
and be able to evaluate that in a way that can be impactful.
So looking at some of the things that can disrupt that axis,
without question we know before we even looked at the list
that chronic inflammatory conditions
is going to be one of those things,
it's going to mess us up.
Also, chronic and excessive stress.
Well, that should probably make sense to us as well, right?
Because if you get, if you overtrain
or you are overworked, under-slept, under-fed, okay,
starting to go in the direction of batshit crazy, okay,
you're going to be inflamed.
And those things can disrupt your digestive system,
which in turn affects the GBA and your enteric system,
nervous system,
and now our ability to respond to stimulus
that is intended to make us most stronger
is not zero,
but it's not 100.
It's not optimal.
We're leaving meat on the bone.
Antibiotics, diets in high sugar, environmental toxins,
these are all things that can be hiding in the shadows
and causing problems.
But in part, when we look at it,
the real breakdown to why this happens
is that those chronic inflamed conditions
are really gonna cause us some issues
in our intestinal integrity, which if you recall,
was our second pillar of the digestive work.
The digestive module.
So do we have optimal gastric acid?
We pass the bolus of food
that's digested into the duodenum,
into the intestinal track,
where we hope that we've maintained intestinal integrity
so that we keep our innate immune system
from reacting to our food.
If we have chronic inflammation conditions,
well, we've maybe compromised that integrity.
Chronic stress,
it doesn't matter if it's because Sherri at work
is constantly unloading her dramatic life on you,
or because you've decided to let your mascara run fast
and free on your face by shame cardioing.
Shame cardio is an interesting phenomenon to me.
I saw it first in my mid-20s at an all night,
it was an open 24 hour gym.
And I got up one night because I, truth be told,
I needed to use the internet.
And the internet was out at my apartment.
So I walked two blocks to this place and use the internet.
And it was two in the morning
and there were women that were in their going out clothes,
doing like a walk of shame on the stair climber
with just like mascara running down their face.
And it was like, wow, that was new to me.
If you haven't seen that,
I'll see if I can get a picture for you,
but, you know, it's funny and we can laugh about it,
but it's also a fairly, it is very sad,
and it doesn't have to be that extreme.
Psychological stress and stress that makes us feel as though
we have to get to the gym, that we have to spend hours
doing the cardio and that kind of thing,
that's something that we obviously
all are trying to steer clear off.
We want to do enough to get the job done, right.
Minimal effective dose.
But having that empathy
and being able to help people around that
can be rooted in balancing their neurotransmitters.
It's good to send people to psychotherapy,
very important, that teaches them how to use it,
but the raw material needs to be there as well.
And it doesn't mean that, you know,
somebody who doesn't have their digestion sorted
can never have their life together,
but it does mean that if you don't,
it might cause issues
and they might be (indistinct) type issues.
For example, that person who was doing the shame cardio
at two in the morning was increasing their stress
after they already increased their stress.
And now they're up,
which was having a negative impact on their HCL.
That whole asset base situation.
They were potentially down-regulating
that parietal cell from releasing that gastric acid.
And now we are not going to, as effectively,
break down our food,
which means we're not going to extrapolate and assimilate
as much information or energy from that food
that we could possibly have had.
And perhaps we have the energy deficit,
which makes it harder for us to drop that body fat.
Meanwhile, we've compromised the intestinal integrity
and our immune system goes after it.
And now we have these sensitivities.
Maybe we throw some antibiotics on board.
Now, the gut's a mess.
Now we're getting infections.
Now we're getting cold and sick and all that stuff.
And meanwhile, as the immune system's compromised,
it's harder and harder to lose fat, right.
Create an environment where CIBO can exist, who?
Yeah, absolutely, intestines like Swiss cheese
with loads of stress and bacterial imbalance.
You bet your bippy.
I don't know if you have a bippy, but if you did,
you might want to bet it because this is the playbook
for a lot of people when it comes to CIBO.
Cool.
Environmental toxins.
They suck, but I feel like environmental toxins
are kind of like the grab bag of,
they just are in everything.
Like, what do you got, a toxin?
Yeah. That's probably the problem.
We're all faced with them all the time.
The issue is, I suppose,
when you're either overexposed to them
and for long periods of time and/or can't get rid of them,
so support the liver detoxification
and that would be a way to deal with those.
But in large part,
what you look at beyond that is what,
gastrointestinal support and then a little bit of liver.
So going back,
a lot of the causes for this are going to be
insufficient gastric acid,
compromised intestinal integrity,
intestinal motility that's compromised,
which go back to our autonomic nervous system discussion.
The motor function of that lumen,
of that intestinal track is controlled
by vagus nerve, autonomic nervous system,
the gut brain axis.
And then not having proper bacterial balance.
So what does this look like in real life?
You already know 'cause we've already talked about it.
So brain fog, IBS symptoms, getting sick all the time.
Super anxious, that's a good one.
And we talked about in the sleep module as well,
getting anxious can be a lack of conversion
from glutamate into GABA, right?
So maybe it's also nutrient deficiencies.
B6 helps that conversion,
but B vitamin deficiencies are one of the first things
you're going to see in somebody who's A, underfed,
and B, sweating all the time,
training all the time, under-eating their calories,
and has gastrointestinal issues.
If they're also depressed and insomniacs,
we're just really trying to get the prize
at the bottom of the box
along with food sensitivities.
If you could throw in a mild energy drink addiction
in there, you'd win the big prize.
So that's what it looks like.
One of the things I do find interesting though,
beyond that, beyond the gastrointestinal stuff,
is that hormone regulation can be thrown by this as well.
Not necessarily saying things like, oh, your testosterone
and your estrogen are going to be thrown off,
but even looking at things like your appetite
and going back to what we talked about with spleen qi
and the ghrelin,
this is where allowing the blood flow
and crossing the blood-brain barrier
can affect and work synergistically
to optimize your hormone production,
especially when it comes to things like appetite, okay.
So you may have people
who either have higher levels of fluid accumulation,
things like (indistinct), progesterone that are off,
you may see changes in appetite here.
Again, this is another layer
and another reason to make sure
that you have your digestion sorted
because what may be driving some of that imbalance
is actually coming from their gut.
And you're probably not going to single it out
and be like, oh, well,
it's the peptides not being released
into the enteric nervous system
and that's causing the issue.
And so this hormone is low
and this is what we got to do to change it.
You're probably not going to do that.
Okay. This is different.
This is like changing the whole system.
It's checking out the weather in the environment.
Okay.
So as we're looking at this and saying, oh,
our gastrointestinal system is off,
don't reach for the hormone stuff first
until you've actually dealt with this first and foremost.
Same thing with the emotions.
Increasing vagal tone.
So vagal tone is reflected in HRV.
If your HRV is low, you might be anxious,
you might be depressed, you might be batshit crazy.
That's cool, but it's a bi-directional pathway,
which means that suppressions to vagal tone
can manifest in those types of depressive disorders.
Also, stimulating your vagal tone
can help get you out of it.
Low vagal tone, HRV can be a sign
that you're moving in depressive states,
but stimulating your vagal tone
can be things that help get you out of it.
That's why and how, in part,
things like acupuncture can be so helpful.
Now acupuncture is beyond the scope for most of you
and that's okay, but real quick, it's not ethereal,
it's not woo-woo stuff.
It's Einsteinian physics.
Think about this.
If you took two hydroelectric posts
and put them a distance away from one another, okay,
they'd shuttle electrons. (imitates electricity zapping)
That level of nerve conductivity
can improve things like vagal tone.
In fact, improvement of vagal tone
is one of the metrics by which acupuncture
or acupuncture as a whole is evaluated for efficacy.
So looking in the research to say,
oh, we're checking vagal tone via HRV
to see if acupuncture works.
Acupuncture, I've personally seen acupuncture
change somebody's HRV in a matter of minutes,
hold it there for days, it's fascinating.
You can also do that with your moxa stick,
maybe a little less effective, but they're pretty,
it's pretty effective stuff, okay.
Now where these points go
can also help you improve certain functions.
So if you're going to use the moxa stick
and you want pretty decent access to your vagus nerve,
things like your SCM and in this area,
we have barrier receptors can not only change blood flow,
but they can also affect your vagal nerve.
You don't want to get that close to it. Good idea.
Don't burn your neck, singing, neck massage.
It sounds like a lot of work, showers.
Like there's a number of different things we can do
to stimulate that vagal tone
and it can absolutely not just release
your quote unquote "endorphins"
like you get through exercise,
but it can actually improve your mental health.
Now, how do we know when to use this stuff?
Well, we need to talk about the assessments.
So let's take a quick break
and then we'll dive into the assessments
that we want to use for this chapter.