Ever hear of the vagus nerve? It's the largest nerve in your body and it directly connects your brain to your gut! You can bet there's a party going on in there, except what happens in vagus doesn't stay in vagus!
So what exactly does happen in Vagus?
A whole lot... and a whole lot yet to be understood.
A growing field in medicine called neurogastroenterology, studies this deep connection between the brain and your digestive tract - which includes your esophagus, stomach, small intestine and large intestine. All these parts of the digestive system are connected to the brain via the longest nerve in your body, the vagus nerve which connects to many other organs too, not just the digestive tract.
In utero, our brain and spinal cord develops from the same piece of tissue as the digestive system called the neural crest. We actually have more neurons surrounding our guts than we do in our spinal cord!
What's also known, is that your gut is doing most of the talking. 90% of the communication going on is happening from the gut to the brain. You'd think your brain would be doing most of the chatter but apparently our guts have a lot to tell us!
No wonder the gut is considered the second brain. This makes the those butterflies in your belly or that frog in your throat all that more real when you're feeling nervous. But with your gut sending the majority of signals to your brain, it makes you wonder how much of our mood is affected by those messages... and how are those messages affected by the food we eat!?
For now, it'll have to be food for thought. :)