Questions & Answers

Unable to Concentrate? It Could Be Because of Poor Gut Function

We’re currently in summertime still and all my friends in the Northern Hemisphere will be soon going in summer, and we’ll be plunging into winter. What’s the next question we’re talking about? Poor concentration, could it be because of poor gut function? many people suffer from brain fog, okay. When I used to hear the word brain fog, I sort of thought like clouds and fog and stuff like this, or you envisage your full of cotton wool. But there’s nothing worse than sort of walking around in a daze where you’re stoned kind of thing, where you don’t really understand what you’re doing or people talk to you and it doesn’t really get in there and you forget your train of thought and all that kind of stuff.

So a really good cognitive function is dependent on a very good gut function. In fact, for years we’ve known that the gut, in fact, is the second brain, but many people now actually think that this does more thinking than this. I’ll tell you, when I walk around Los Angeles, I know a lot of people think way more with this than they ever would think with that. And when you go to Las Vegas, well we won’t go there, okay. But anyway, what were we saying? We were talking about gut function and concentration, brain fog. When I think about brain fog, I think of a couple of key issues. One of them is lipopolysaccharides. So LPS are basically fragments, and some bacterial cells have got way more of these LPS than others. For example, proteobacteria or bacteroidetes, a common group of bacteria in our gut, they’re represented by having a large amount of LPS on their cell surface.

So bacteroidetes favor also a meat diet. So people who eat more meat or large … the caveman kind of person, will have a higher chance of having way more LPS in their guy than a person who tends to lean sort of more towards the vegan kind of approach. There’s a lot to be said for eating a diet higher in plant-based material. I’m not a dinosaur, I’m not a T-Rex and I’m not a Diplodocus. So I’m not going to take that side of the vegetarian dinosaur and the meat eating dinosaur. I reckon the best dinosaur’s the one in the middle, the one that eats a bit of this and a bit of that sort of thing. So, but yeah, what we talking about? We’re talking about the gut. So if you think about the brain, the brain’s very dependent for good … the ability to really think concisely, having excellent gut function.

So when LPS go up, basically inflammation goes up and inflammation affects the brain very bad. Inflammation is something we really don’t want in the brain. It’s linked with depression, anxiety and all kinds of different disorders. But it’s also linked up with brain fog. So LPS can be a problem, and of course sugar, and if we start eating diets on sugar, but also shitty fats, those poor fats, deep fried fats and refined oils, these things actually drive up the poor bacteria, which drive the inflammatory pathways up. So LPS, we don’t want that kind of stuff.

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The second category I’m thinking of would be histamine. So when people think of histamine, they think of the sneezing, anti-histamines and bee stings and stuff like that. But histamine’s also produced in the gut, okay. So you may be allergic to a particular food. Now, you could be eating something that’s creating a lot of histamine reaction. Now, histamine in the gut affects histamine production in the brain quite a lot too. And also the nerve endings here, can very much affect … Histamine can affect the nervous response, it can stimulate the brain in bad ways. Panic attacks are associated with a high histamine overload. So histamine can also signal itself with pain in the gut, like bad cramping or bloating, lots of gut issues. If you’ve got lots of sensations down here particularly, that could be a histamine reaction.

I’ve had some patients tell me that when they took a histamine, an anti-histamine tablet, their gut feels so much more comfortable. Or if that ever happens to you, make yourself right off down to the naturopathic physicians’ office and get tested. At least do a food allergy profile and check that there are no strong antibody responses to foods that you could be consuming, because it could be a problem.

The third category will be probably malabsorption. So people not really breaking food down properly, not absorbing the nutrition, not getting out of their diet and what they need. And I’m thinking about vitamin B12, I’m thinking about zinc and folic acid, I’m thinking about all these nutrients that are so critical for good brain function, magnesium for example. So you need to maybe get your gut checked to see if it’s permeable. You may need a stool analysis from your practitioner to find out how healthy the gut is. But if you think about those three points, the LPS, the histamine reactions, the malabsorption, get the gut fixed up.

When you get that gut fixed, the brain fog can lift and I can tell you the feedback I’ve had from many people when their brain fog disappeared, it was just fantastic. Patience, patience, patience. Rome wasn’t built in a weekend. It takes more than that to get the gut right when it’s really been trashed. Give yourself plenty of time. I’ve always maintained if a person’s very unwell in their got function, it takes a good six to 12 months to really restore that gut into good shape, just like it would to get a garden back in a reasonable shape.