Movement, Gut Bacteria, and Your Mental Health

It is no surprise that exercising helps with our mental health but what about when we struggle with our mental health and we lose our motivation and drive to continue exercising?

Movement helps our body with its circadian rhythm. This is our cells and organs internal clock to regulate our body. Movement helps the body know when it is “awake” to start this internal clock. The internal clock is what helps regulate our cells, regulates our organ systems, and ultimately helps the body function as effectively as it can. 

So when we live sedentary lifestyles, it isn’t just causing us to put on weight, it is actually causing our body to slow down and not function as effectively as it should. When our body isn’t functioning as it should, our body will slow down its digestion which causes us to feel “backed up”, bloated, and increase inflammation. This changes our composition in our gut bacteria. 

Our gut bacteria is the major source for our mental health. We are starting to see strong links with gut bacteria and mental health disorders. If our body is not cycling through toxins and bacteria at an appropriate rate, it will cause it to stay in our gut longer. When this happens we may feel lethargic, unmotivated, anxious, depressed, and have struggles with concentration, focus, and brain fog. 

Ultimately our “solution” to this is start a probiotic to help move the toxins through our body and replenish our gut bacteria. This is helpful but what is called a “quick fix” which never gives us long-term results. When we do flush out our system, we are left to fill our body with the same food and toxins that once caused our gut bacteria to become irregular in the first place. Plus, if our body is not pushing through these toxins itself with exercise and movement, then we are relying on this probiotic to do this every time. 

So a long term solutions that you may not see results in right away is to understand where our body is at when we are lying in bed with our alarm blaring and telling our ourselves that we don’t have the energy for exercise. We haven’t been fueling our gut with the appropriate bacteria, we are backed up, and we are not allowing our body to function at its best. 

The best strategy for this is to start with movement at the same time every day and to start off with something small while working up towards longer workouts. This will be uncomfortable, painful, and not what we want to do but as we continue this routine, we will develop more energy because the movement at the same time every day is reseting our clock, which moves our gut bacteria, which helps us become more “regular” and ultimately moves out the backed up toxins. 

The most important thing as we become more regular and continue with our exercise routine, is to fill our body with appropriate food and replenish our gut with “good” bacteria so that is can help us to have more energy to work out. 

Here are some food that helps with replenishing “good” bacteria in our gut:

whole grains

bananas

green vegetables (broccoli, spinach, kale, green beans)

onions

garlic

soybeans

artichokes

Yogurt

Almonds

Chickpeas

Beans

Berries

Avocados

Apples