Editor’s note: With in-depth research, people have a new understanding of the intestinal tract: it is not only responsible for digestion, absorption, transportation and excretion, but is also equipped with a huge sensory and monitoring system, which operates all year round through nerve messages and hormones. It can be described as a super powerful information processor by transmitting a large amount of information to the brain and working together to regulate physical and mental health.
The brain relies heavily on gut messages
More than 90% of the sensory information collected by your gut does not become conscious perception. Most of us easily ignore the daily sensations in our stomachs, but the enteric nervous system monitors them very carefully. Many intestinal sensations are quietly sent to the small ventral brain in the intestine with the help of a complex sensory mechanism system, and provide it with important information to ensure that the digestive system maintains optimal operation 24 hours a day.
However, there is also a huge amount of sensory information from the gut that is sent up to the brain. Ninety percent of the messages transmitted through the vagus nerve are sent from the intestines to the brain, and only 10% are sent in the opposite direction.
In fact, the gut can handle most activities without intervention from the brain, but the brain appears to be extremely reliant on important messages from the gut.
What important information does your gut report? Much more than you think. The gut’s many sensors tell the enteric nervous system everything it needs to know to produce the most appropriate contraction pattern, the strength and direction of intestinal peristalsis, to speed up or slow down the transport of ingested food to the gastrointestinal tract. The speed and production of correct stomach acid and bile ensure normal digestion. It also collects information about the presence and amount of food in your stomach, the size and consistency of the food you swallow, the chemical composition of the meal you ingest, and even the presence and activity of intestinal flora.
In an emergency, these sensors can also detect parasites, viruses, pathogenic bacteria or their toxins, and intestinal inflammation. In fact, acute intestinal inflammation makes many sensors more sensitive to normal stimuli and events. Although this information is important for the normal functioning of the digestive tract, the enteric nervous system is not capable of producing conscious sensation.
Our gastrointestinal tract, enteric nervous system, and brain are in constant communication 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This communication network is more important to overall physical and mental health than you may imagine.
Brain and gut hotlines work together non-stop to regulate physical and mental functions
When you ingest food or drink, the gut’s information-gathering system provides a variety of important information to the ventral brain (enteric nervous system) and brain. Your belly and brain are both interested in getting information about what you eat and drink, but they are interested in different aspects of that information.
Your abdominal brain needs important information from your gut in order to respond to optimally digest food and, if necessary, clear it out through vomiting or diarrhea by expelling intestinal contents from both ends of the digestive tract. toxin. These reports include the portion size of the meal, the contents of what entered the intestines (including chemical information on fats, proteins, carbohydrates, their concentration, consistency, and particle size), as well as any malicious invaders such as bacteria, viruses, or food contaminants. Other toxin information.
The brain, on the other hand, is more concerned with your overall physical and mental health, so it monitors different cues from the gut and integrates information from other parts of the body and the environment.
It not only monitors what’s happening in your enteric nervous system, but also pays close attention to your intestinal reactions, the state of your gut that reflects your emotions, the spasms and contractions of your stomach and colon when you’re angry, and the lack of intestinal activity when you’re depressed. In other words, the brain watches its own drama play out on the gut stage. The brain must also receive information generated by trillions of intestinal flora. This part of the gut-brain communication has only become the focus of public attention in the past few years.
Although the brain constantly monitors all sensory information coming from the gut, it delegates day-to-day responsibility to a “local unit” known as the enteric nervous system. The brain will only be directly involved in the operation of the intestines when you have a certain need for action or when a situation poses a major threat that requires the brain to respond.
Regardless of whether you are sleeping or awake, your intestines tell your brain what is happening inside your body through various sensory mechanisms every minute of every day. The intestines are not the only organ that continuously provides feedback to the central nervous system. Your brain is constantly receiving sensory information from every cell and organ in your body. Your lungs and diaphragm transmit physical messages every time you breathe in and out; your heart produces mechanical messages every time your heart beats; your arterial walls transmit messages about blood pressure; and your muscles transmit messages about tension and contraction. information to the brain.
These ongoing reports on the state of the body are what scientists call “interoceptive information”—information that the brain uses to keep body systems balanced and functioning smoothly. Although intrinsic somatosensory information comes from every cell in the body, the amount, variety, and complexity of messages sent from the gut and its sensory machinery to the brain are unique.
First, your gut’s sensory network spans the entire surface area of your gut, an area two hundred times larger than the surface area of your skin—about the size of a basketball court. Now, imagine a basketball court with millions of tiny mechanical sensors collecting information about player movements, weight, acceleration and deceleration, every jump and landing. Since gut messages also include chemical, nutritional, and other information, the above metaphor can only be used to describe the amount of information encoded as gut perception.
Serotonin is the primary transmitter of gut-brain messages
Serotonin is the primary transmitter molecule for gut-brain messages.
Serotonin-containing cells are inseparable from the ventral brain in the intestines and our brains. The serotonin messaging system in the gut plays a key role in linking events in the gut related to food, gut bacteria, and certain medications to digestive system activity and how we feel.
On the other hand, the small amounts of serotonin present in the intestinal nerves and the brain also play an important role: the serotonin-containing nerves in the intestines have an important influence on the regulation of peristaltic reflexes, while the nerve cell plexuses in the brain transmit messages to the majority of the brain. area, affecting many important functions, including appetite, pain sensitivity, and mood.
The gut is a super processor that processes an astonishing amount of information
The most amazing thing is that the complex sensory system of the intestine begins to operate the second food enters our mouth – the taste receptors on the tongue and the enteric nerves in the esophagus continue to transmit information about what we are eating. ─Until the food finally reaches the colon. The intestines do all this without interfering at all with our daily activities.
Considering the density and vast area of the intestinal wall occupied by intestinal sensors, we can clearly see that the intestines are transmitting a large amount of information to the brain all the time – whether it is information about the complex digestive process or the hundreds of things in the digestive tract. Information fed by trillions of chattering microorganisms. In other words, when it comes to collecting, storing, analyzing, and responding to large amounts of information, the gut-brain axis is a true supercomputer—not at all the tedious digestive steam engine it was originally thought to be.
This realization is part of our modern understanding of gut function, a shift away from a focus on details like macronutrients vs. micronutrients, metabolism vs. calories, to an understanding that the gut, along with its nervous system and its microbial inhabitants, is actually astonishing. information processor. It involves far more cells than our brains, and some abilities can even rival those of the brain.
In the next chapter, we’ll learn more about the important role our gut flora plays in what we eat and how we feel.(Website article)
<本文摘自《腸道．大腦．腸道菌【新版】：飲食會改變你的情緒、直覺和大腦健康》，如果出版社提供>
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Editor in charge: Wang Xiaoming
2024-04-10 01:09:12
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