It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to have a healthy body and a healthy brain if your gastrointestinal (GI) tract isn’t working properly. Optimizing digestive health is one of the best places to start when searching for the cause of unresolved health conditions, especially conditions associated with your brain. The GI tract is truly the gateway to the rest of the body; if your GI health is compromised your overall health is compromised and that affects your mood and your ability to feel well and think clearly. GI health is highly influenced by your lifestyle choices such as diet, physical activity, sleep, and environmental toxin exposure. Over time, these lifestyle choices impair the basic functions of the GI tract and other key body systems, like your stress response and your detoxification pathways, that also influence your brain. When the gut lining is compromised, you become susceptible to gut infections, on-boarding of toxins, and an imbalance in the normal bacteria important for our health. With a compromised gut lining, even if you are eating healthy food, you no longer assimilate nutrients critical to healthy brain function. Depression, anxiety, lack of focus, brain fog, loss of memory, chronic fatigue, sleep problems can result. Stimulants like sugar, caffeine and other drugs are used to compensate but further damage the brain.

We are more bacteria than we are human.

It is estimated that for every 1 human cell there are 10 bacterial cells on the human body. The majority of these bugs live in the lining of our GI tract and the mass of these microbes in the gut (bacteria, protozoa, viruses) is estimated to be between 2-6 lbs. The bugs themselves are called the microbiota and together with their genes are referred to as the microbiome. These tiny microbes influence almost every aspect of human health, including but not limited to, our behavior, food choices, cognitive ability, skin, weight, energy, and mood. They help us digest food and produce important chemicals that can be both beneficial or detrimental to our health and our brains. In this way, those with compromised digestive health are at a higher risk of mood imbalances, anxiety, depression, and brain fog. 

We use functional medicine approach to test and correct your body’s stress response, gut health, and your detoxification system and empower you with simple and sustainable lifestyle tools to restore your brain health and the quality of your life.