The Mind Body Connection: Guest Blog Post
By Jayta Szpitalak from Fermentanicals
Nutritious and delicious yoghurt with activated LSA
As a Psychologist and the owner of Fermentanicals, a health brand focused on the digestibility of superfoods, I’m often queried on how psychology and food are related. The answer lies in science. According to research, 90% of the neurotransmitters created in your gut affect your mental wellbeing, hence our gut is now being referred to as our second brain. Turns out the age old saying of “too much stress may make you sick” may hold more weight to it.
Science has found that one integral key to both physical wellbeing and mental wellbeing is having a healthy microbiome. This is because our microbiome is a powerhouse comprised of trillions of bacterial colonies that not only affect our digestion and immunity, but help with the production of vitamins B and K. Also many neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, are created here, which affect both mood and the GI tract. Essentially, research indicates our gut microbiome can influence neural development, brain chemistry and a range of behavioral responses and patterns, including emotional behavior, pain perception and how our stress system responds.
Psychologists now practising in the functional medicine space are considering probiotics and their efficacy for emotional regulation. So, how can we flourish the bacteria in our guts to have a healthy microbiome? Incorporate pre and probiotics into your diets. You can do this with supplements, or you can do this naturally with fermented foods. (Fermented foods can contain millions of good bacteria, and are often more diverse than probiotics). Also, incorporate nutrient dense foods into your diet – foods that are rich in quality fats, particularly omega-3 fatty acids, as well as folic acid and quality proteins. Also, actively try and de-stress during your day. Stress is a double-edged sword when it comes to our gut health as the two affect each other. Try practicing mindfulness or engage in an activity that helps you unwind.
How else can you help your mind and body connection? Practice prevention and consider functional foods. Nature has given us so many cures, it’s just up to us to find them. For example, research indicates that turmeric / curcumin works better than anti-depressants. Turmeric, however, is very hard for our bodies to digest. Empirical findings indicate that fermenting turmeric makes it more bioavailable and easier to digest, and not only this, it gives us a dose of those healthy probiotics mentioned earlier. Fermented turmeric is great not just for mental health, but for pain, inflammation, prevention, etc. Fans of functional medicine advocate to use the entire root, as opposed to just extracting the curcumin, as research also shows that non-curcumin turmeric is just as effective in reducing inflammation and staving off cancer. Examples like this are how you can arm yourself with knowledge to help practise prevention by practising self-care while diversifying your gut flora. Happy Eating!
About Jayta & Fermentanicals
Vijayta Szpitalak, fondly known as Jayta, is a Columbia University trained Psychologist and Nutritional Health Coach, and most recently the Founder of up-and-coming brand Fermentanicals Pty Ltd.
Since hitting the shelves with products launched in July of 2016, Fermentanicals is all ready set to rock the "food as medicine" or functional foods industry which is seeing incredible growth right now. With a mission to empower and support an individual’s path to achieve physical and mental wellness holistically, Fermentanicals delivers on excellence with high-quality, sustainable and organic health products. Borrowing from Jayta’s Indian heritage, Fermentanicals’ products undergo specific processes to ‘pre-digest’ the ingredients via sprouting or fermenting nutrient-dense superfoods with an end result of a ‘live’ or activated food. These processes aid foods by increasing their nutritional benefits, as well as improving the rate of absorption within the body, hence presenting consumers with nutrient dense superfoods in the most bioavailable form. Fermentanicals aims at not only improving physical health, but mental health as well, and all of their products are backed by empirical research.