Stress, Mood, and the Gut — What’s the Connection?

February 25, 2019 by Dave Asprey

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Your gut and your brain are constantly talking to one another. This communication is known as the gut-brain axis.
Stress is bad news for the brain-gut axis, and stress signals trigger the release of neurotransmitters and proinflammatory cytokines (molecules that contribute to inflammation and disease).
Stress can cause various digestive disorders including inflammatory bowel disease (IBS), peptic ulcers, and food allergies.
Your goal is to control your stress, which in turn will calm your gut. It goes the other way too. By fixing your gut, you’ll feel less stressed.
An inflamed gut has also been linked to various mood and behavioral disorders including depression, autism, and even neurodegenerative diseases.
Stomach irritations and gut imbalances send signals to the brain via the central nervous system (CEN), triggering changes in your mood.
Eating a diet full of anti-inflammatory, nutrient-dense foods is one of the most powerful ways to heal your gut.

[/tldr]

Have you ever felt nauseous when you’ve been worried about something? Or had “butterflies” in your stomach when nervous? The brain sends signals to the gut that produces these physical symptoms.

Scientists are discovering that it goes the other way too — when your gut is inflamed or imbalanced, it sends a signal to your brain. You then feel stressed or worried or depressed. It turns out that your gut and your brain are constantly talking to one another. Learn how this brain-gut communication works, how it impacts your mood and stress levels, and what you can do to control the conversation.

Instantly download Gut Check: Guide to Troubleshooting Your Microbiome to get back in balance fast

The gut-brain axis

The back-and-forth communication between your brain and your gut is known as the gut-brain axis, and occurs primarily along an information superhighway called the vagus nerve. A strong vagus nerve improves the communication between your gut and your brain, so it’s vital that you keep it in working order.

Stress and the gut

Stress is bad news for the brain-gut axis, and stress signals trigger the release of neurotransmitters and proinflammatory cytokines (molecules that contribute to inflammation and disease), which affect the gut in all kinds of ways.[ref url=”https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22314561 “][ref url=”https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21040780”] Stress can cause:

Intestinal dysmotility (when the muscles and nerves of the digestive system don’t work properly)
Holes in the intestine, allowing toxins, bacteria, and food particles to escape and enter your bloodstream
An imbalance in your gut bacteria
Decreased blood flow and oxygenation to the gastrointestinal (GI) tract
Acid reflux

This digestive damage can develop into serious GI disorders including inflammatory bowel disease (IBS), peptic ulcers, and food allergies.

Your goal is to control your stress, which in turn will calm your gut. It goes the other way too. By fixing your gut, you’ll feel less stressed (more on healing your gut below). Meditation, working out, and sleeping better are all tried-and-true ways to lower stress. Learn more stress management techniques here.

Gut health and mood

You’ve just come off a round of antibiotics, and at the same time you’ve been reaching for sugary foods a little too often. You notice you’re feeling more blah than usual and a bit low. That’s probably no coincidence, thanks again to the gut-brain axis.

A groundswell of research in recent years points to a strong link between what’s going on in your gut and various mood and behavioral disorders including depression, autism, and even neurodegenerative diseases.[ref url=”https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4662178/ “] [ref url=”http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/1/e1500997”] [ref url=”https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924933816008464 “] [ref url=”https://www.nature.com/articles/mp201650 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3179073/ “] Stomach irritations and gut imbalances send signals to the brain via the central nervous system (CEN), triggering changes in your mood.

A recent study found that transferring the fecal bacteria of depressed people to rats led to depressed behavior in the rats.

Another study divided 40 healthy women into two groups based on their gut bacteria composition (this after analyzing the women’s stools). The women with a prevalence of one type of bacteria reported feeling less anxious, stressed, and irritable after looking at negative images compared to the other group, whose guts were dominated by a different kind of bacteria. Scans also showed differences in the women’s brains — those who said they felt less stressed showed lower brain volume in areas like the hippocampus than the other group.[ref url=”https://journals.lww.com/psychosomaticmedicine/Citation/2017/10000/Brain_Structure_and_Response_to_Emotional_Stimuli.10.aspx”]

How to fix your gut

Eating a diet full of anti-inflammatory, nutrient-dense foods is one of the most powerful ways to heal your gut. Get more gut-friendly diet tips here, as well as other ways to fix your gut. And if you’re looking to lose weight, learn more about the connection between gut bacteria and weight loss here.

What Is EZ Water and Why Do I Have to Get Naked In the Sun to Make It?

February 22, 2019 by Dave Asprey

[tldr]

EZ water is a special type of water that forms in your cells.
It’s like a charged battery — it stores energy and can deliver that energy to cells that need it.
EZ water makes your mitochondria stronger so you can produce more energy. It also acts as an antioxidant, protecting you from stress and slowing down aging, and improves protein folding across your whole body, which makes you more resilient to stress and speeds up recovery.
Read below for five ways to make more EZ water in your cells.

[/tldr]

Your body is almost 70 percent water. You have water in every single cell of your body[ref url=”https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9879/”], and more and more research suggests that the type of water you take in has a profound impact on your performance. That’s why I drink filtered water and make sure to hydrate properly.

It’s not just the quality or quantity of water that matters, though. It’s also the water’s structure. Up until recently, chemists and physicists have thought that water has three phases: solid, liquid, and vapor (steam).

In the last few years, though, it’s become clear that there’s a fourth phase of water called structured water, or exclusion zone (EZ) water, that is viscous like honey, somewhere between solid and liquid. EZ water is the water your cells use, and it’s very different from the water coming out of your tap.

EZ water delivers power to your mitochondria so your cells have more energy. It also fights aging and stress and helps your body recover faster. This article will cover what EZ water is, why you want it, and how you can make as much of it as possible.

Download this Bulletproof 30-Day Upgrade to supercharge your brain and your body

What is EZ water?

You can think of water like a battery. It’s very good at absorbing and storing energy, and it’s good at transferring that energy from water molecule to water molecule (picture the ripples that happen when you drop a rock in a pond).

EZ water forms when you expose water to infrared light — 1200 nanometer (nm) wavelength light, specifically. When water molecules absorb infrared light, they begin to vibrate, and because water molecules have such strong bonds to one another, that vibrational energy transfers from one molecule to another, much like a ripple across a pond[ref url=”https://www.nature.com/articles/nphys1498″].

The water molecules end up moving closer together to stabilize themselves; they become denser and more viscous, and store energy in the form of a negative charge. This is EZ water. It’s like a charged battery — it’s carrying that valuable vibrational energy and is ready to deliver it.

The more EZ water you have in your body, the more energy you store up and can send to cells that need it.

EZ water benefits

EZ water affects your body in a few different ways:

More energy from stronger mitochondria. EZ water delivers electrons to your mitochondria, the powerhouses of your cells, and helps them generate more energy[ref url=”https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4695805/#sec2-pharmaceuticals-08-00675title”]. That’s why I wrote about EZ water in my book “Head Strong” — it’s a powerful way to upgrade your body’s energy production.
Anti-aging. EZ water acts like an antioxidant, protecting your cells from free radicals and slowing down cellular aging[ref url=”https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5585622/”].
Protein folding. EZ water supports proteins, too. Proteins are the workhorses of your cells. They’re origami-like folded structures that affect just about everything your body does — but proteins can only function if they’re folded correctly. Stress makes proteins unfold and/or misfold; they lose function, and can only start working again if they absorb enough energy to snap back into place. EZ water binds to proteins and can deliver the energy they need to recover and begin doing their job again[ref url=”https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.79.031925″][ref url=”https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemrev.5b00664″][ref url=”https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1832832″].

With better protein folding, you basically become a stronger, more efficient version of yourself. Protein folding affects everything, from aging and inflammation to muscle recovery and brain function. That’s one of the main reasons you want as much EZ water as possible — it makes your entire body run better by protecting your proteins from damage, and helping them recover faster when they do get damaged.

How to make more EZ water

There are a few ways to create more EZ water. You get EZ water naturally when you drink raw vegetable juices, fresh spring water, or glacial melt water, and it forms spontaneously when regular water is vibrated or blended. EZ water also forms in your cells when you expose yourself to 1200 nm infrared light.

With that in mind, here are a few biohacks that help you generate EZ water:

Drink raw vegetable juice or fresh spring water. EZ water forms naturally in vegetable juice and spring water.
Blend regular water (or drink Bulletproof Coffee). Water absorbs vibrational energy when you blend it, which turns a portion of the water into EZ water. Recent research by Dr. Gerald Pollack, who discovered EZ water, shows that even more EZ water forms when you blend butterfat into water, which is one of the many reasons to drink Bulletproof Coffee every morning. If you don’t go for coffee, you can make EZ water by blending regular water for 30 seconds or so.
Get naked in the sun. Sunlight has plenty of the 1200 nm light that creates EZ water, plus a bunch of other spectra that make sunlight great for you. EZ water forms in your cells when you expose your skin (and your eyes, the gateways to the brain) to unfiltered sunlight for a few minutes every day without sunglasses, clothing, or sunscreen. The more skin you expose, the more EZ water you’ll make.
Use a NanoVi. The NanoVi machine at Bulletproof Labs sends water through 1200 nm radiation and you breathe it in, creating EZ water that spreads throughout your entire body.
Sit in an infrared sauna. Sitting in an infrared sauna will give you a concentrated dose of 1200 nm light and make lots of EZ water, which could explain why infrared saunas are so good at speeding up muscle recovery[ref url=”https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4493260/”] and tissue repair[ref url=”https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4333284/”].

For more about the benefits of EZ water, you can also listen to my Bulletproof Radio podcast interview with Dr. Pollack, who discovered EZ water. Thanks for reading!

Scientists Disrupt the Aging Game – James Peyer #569

February 21, 2019 by Dave Asprey

Guided Meditation for Better Sex

February 20, 2019 by Dave Asprey

Regular meditation lowers stress, strengthens your immune system, boosts memory, and improves mood.
But there’s another benefit you may not be as familiar with: better sex.
Read more about how meditation can take your sex life to new levels with this excerpt from “Stress Less, Accomplish More” by meditation expert Emily Fletcher.
Then check out her exclusive guided meditation for better sex, created especially for Bulletproof readers.

You know by now that meditation is really good for you, for all kinds of reasons. Regular meditation lowers stress, strengthens your immune system, boosts memory, and improves mood. But there’s another benefit you may not be as familiar with: better sex.

“Mind-blowing sex might seem like an unlikely benefit of meditation, but it can actually do much more for you in the bedroom than Viagra,” writes Emily Fletcher, founder of Ziva Meditation, in her book, “Stress Less, Accomplish More”.

Read more about how meditation can take your sex life to new levels with the excerpt below from Fletcher’s book. Then check out her exclusive guided meditation for better sex, created especially for you.

FROM OHM TO OMG!

(excerpt from “Stress Less, Accomplish More” by Emily Fletcher)

Once people get over the misperception that they should magically be able to “clear their minds” during meditation, they start to believe that if they have thoughts, they should only be pure thoughts of enlightenment and bliss. Ironically, this mindset often keeps folks from talking about one of the biggest benefits of meditation: better sex. In fact, this chapter may be the number one reason you picked up this book. If that’s the case, I’d like to open by saying, You’re welcome.

Now, at first glance, it may seem a little out of place to have a chapter on how meditation makes you better in bed in a book that is designed for high achievers—after all, this is not exactly the sort of thing that will typically help you get ink on a contract. But have you ever felt as if your sex life was in something of a rut? If so, it kind of makes everything in life a little duller, doesn’t it? On the other hand, the morning after you rocked your partner’s world (and maybe even had your own mind blown in the process), you walk around with a little extra swagger and a little more confidence that you could do anything, didn’t you? That’s what I’m talking about.

Up-leveling your performance in the bedroom, besides being a pretty fantastic benefit in and of itself, can also help you up-level your performance in the boardroom. (Besides, we high achievers tend to be a little competitive and want to feel safe in the knowledge that we are the best at everything.) As the saying goes, how you do anything is how you do everything. So let’s talk specifically about how meditation can up-level your performance in the bedroom.

Mind-blowing sex may seem like an unlikely benefit of meditation, but the Z Technique can actually do much more for you in the bedroom than Viagra. For too long, meditation has been associated with asceticism and monks, which is why it’s taken us so long to get around to exploring its effects on sex (just in case you needed one more reminder that this practice is definitely not for monks).

First, the Obvious . . .

A student of mine who is a lawyer in New York City came to Ziva because he was dealing with anxiety. He joined a group meditation one year after he started with Ziva and said, “You joked once before about meditation making my sex better, but what’s happening for me is crazy. It feels un-meditate-y to say, but my sex life is stunning now.” Animalistic, raw, and mind-blowing were the most memorable adjectives he used to describe his newfound sexual prowess. He told me that since the first week of taking the course, he noticed not only that he was able to last much longer during intercourse, but also that he felt more control over his orgasms and had much more energy, and a stronger sex drive as a result.

Another student vouched for the fact that, after only one week of being fully committed to a regular, twice-a-day practice, she had an orgasm literally every single time she and her partner had adult playtime—a fact that had definitely not been true before she came to Ziva.

Obviously meditation was not the only contributing factor in these scenarios—after all, it takes two to tango—but based on what we regularly hear from Ziva graduates, these experiences are not at all uncommon.

So why does meditation make you better in bed? Well, let’s consider context first. Many of us are stressed out, whether from work, our relationships, money, or any of our many responsibilities. We’re often so caught up in our heads that we’re not fully in touch with our bodies. We’re also frequently so busy reviewing the past and rehearsing the future that we’re not present in the right now.

None of these things are ingredients for a great sex life. And on top of everything else, increased levels of cortisol and adrenaline from stress decrease both sexual desire and sexual performance. Sexual trauma can also play a role here. Remember: We shouldn’t be asking how meditation can do so much good, but how stress can mess up so many things.

But there are a few other reasons, besides the basic biology of stress release, that help make these mental techniques such powerful tools for improving your sexual performance.

Discover these reasons and more in Fletcher’s book “Stress Less, Accomplish More”

Meditation: The Ultimate High-Performance Tool— Emily Fletcher #568

February 19, 2019 by Dave Asprey

Tailor Your Brain’s Neurotransmission with Nutrients — William J. Walsh, Ph.D. #567

February 14, 2019 by Dave Asprey

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