Mostly, as practitioners focussed on the responsiveness of the innate and acquired immune system in the gastrointestinal tract, the circuitry of interest has been associated with the transmission of messages from the gut to the brain – so much so that the information in the other direction has been largely ignored or diminished in clinical relevance.
Yet the brain-gut dialogue offers numerous opportunities for synergistic management of disturbed immune and endocrine pathway. Your brain as you know is the major organ through which you experience the world, yourself and others. When it’s healthy your experience of life becomes magnified. But when it’s broken and imbalanced it can become a source of stress, fatigue and burnout. So how do you create a healthy brain? The answer lies in your physiology…
The health of your brain depends on the health of your cells. And the health of your brain cells relies on three key elements: fuel, activation and a nurturing environment. Your brain – just like your body – needs food, exercise and a healthy environment to survive. But when we say exercise here, we are not just talking about physical exercise like walking or running. We are also referring to all the different sensory experiences you have on a daily, moment by moment basis. All of this bioenergetic information feeds your brain and allows it to thrive. You see, sensory experience is one of the major drivers of the growth and maturation of your brain and nervous system. The sounds you hear, the food you taste, the aromas you smell – all of this energy gets transduced into tiny electrical signals that enter your nervous system by way of receptors and nerve pathways. These nerve pathways travel up your spinal cord or enter your brainstem to get to your brain – feeding it, fuelling it with the sensory food that your brain thrives on.
Just like you can go to the gym and train and build stronger muscles, you can also do things to build a stronger brain due to the revolutionary process known as neuroplasticity. Through specific, repeated sensory exercises coupled with awareness you can literally restructure and strengthen the areas of your brain that you would like to enhance. As an example, if you want to improve your focus and concentration you can train your frontal lobes through meditation. If you want to get better at music you can train your temporal lobe to be able to better distinguish between different notes and rhythms. If you want to get better at tasting different wines, you can train your orbitofrontal cortex to pick up subtleties in flavour. And if you want to get better at skateboarding or martial arts or figure skating you can train your cerebellum and vestibular system so you feel more solid and grounded and balanced.
Dr Titus Chiu a renowned expert in these processes, gave his first UK presentation on his remarkable interventions called SENSORIgenomics for us just recently, and the attendees were simply thrilled to hear what he had to say; sensible, practical tools to add value to your existing skill sets. Luckily, we have recorded his 90 minute webinar and are making it available for purchase – so if you have clients with anxiety, gut problems, poor concentration or are experiencing post trauma brain deficits, why not set aside some time and learn what simple techniques can be employed to help them recover. Using sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, vibration and proprioception– you can learn how to drive neural activation in a process known as SENSORIgenomics. To watch book here