Here’s How Your Gut is Affected By Your Thoughts
4 ways to think better for enhanced digestion
Have you ever heard about nutritional psychology? It’s essentially the correlation between what you eat and how you think. It should come as no surprise that the food you eat affects you. But did you know that the way you think about your food also affects you? This isn’t a “woo-woo” branch of mysticism, it has been proven in reputable, valid research.
To clarify, our thoughts can’t change the nutritional composition of the food. An apple will always be an apple, even if you think hard about it being a banana. However, our thoughts can alter our metabolic processes. The way we think about our food affects our internal neurobiology and nervous system.
Here’s how.
When we view a plate of food, it takes shape in the cerebral cortex. This cognitive process then interacts with the limbic system, where emotions and primary motivational drives are born. The hypothalamus and the insula are responsible for processing the information surrounding the food and the emotional response to it.
For example, if the plate of food in front of us is something we deem as healthy and delicious, the hypothalamus modulates this positive message through the activation of the parasympathetic system, which…
