Our Gastrointestinal tract is home to a trillion microbes, about the same number of cells in the human body. If we put all of these microbes together they would weigh approx. 2.6 pounds about the same weight as our brain, based on this the gut microbiota is often referred to as the forgotten organ.
Gut microbiotas differ from person to person’s life fingerprints no two people have the same microbiota. It also depends on so many other factors like your genes, your mother’s microbiota, diet, and most of all your state of mind. This is the reason there is a unique connection between our gut and our brain.
The gut and the brain are closely linked through bidirectional signaling pathways that include nerves, hormones, and inflammatory molecules. The gut is connected to the brain through thick nerve cables that can transfer information in both directions. A channel of hormones signals all the way up to the brain and similarly signals down to various cells of our gut lining. An example of this is when the stomach gets full it sends the signal to our brain and we feel a sense of fullness and know when to stop eating. The information shared gets stored in the database of the brain. what we feel in our gut that information gets used later while making decisions in our day-to-day lives, a phenomenon also popularly known as” Gut feeling”.
