The Brain, the Gut, and Stress – Video Series

VIDEO TWO IN OUR BRAIN DEVELOPMENT VIDEO SERIES

Something that’s evident in our world right now, is stress! Unfortunately, whether we want to or not, we all experience stress in one form or another. Maybe chemical, emotional or physical stress. With stress, comes different levels of resiliency, or the ability to adapt to that stress. The way we adapt to stressors can also impact the way we learn, connect, and engage with our world.

There has been a huge increase in the number of children, adolescents and even adults, who are experiencing challenges with learning, socialization and behavior. It’s unfair to say that one specific thing has caused these challenges, so instead we need to look at all of the research and evidence across multiple disciplines and from there, we can begin to facilitate better health, growth and development.

The first thing we need to understand is that our brain is not fully developed at birth, and we have to move through a specific trajectory of brain development, which we will continue to dive into as we move through the videos. We also need to understand that stress, in any form (chemical, physical, emotional), and negatively impact the way the brain moves through development. When a person is stressed, it creates an autonomic imbalance, which means we move into a flight or fight scenario. When our brain is under stress, something called subluxation may occur, which is a neuro structural shift of the spine. Addressing these shifts can improve the balance of our autonomic nervous system, and help to facilitate healthy growth and development.

Something else that can happen when there is a lot of stress, is a change in the bacteria of the gut; we see an increase in bad bacteria, a decrease in good bacteria, and that often results in inflammation. And this creates a cycle of stress in the gut, as well as in the brain, which can definitely impact the way a brain is developing!

Take a listen to learn more or check out our previous video here!