2 Brains, 1 Body

Have you ever heard the saying, “Your gut is your second brain”? 

If you haven’t, then maybe you’ve been told once or twice to trust your gut, or maybe you’ve experienced the butterfly feeling in your stomach when you get nervous.

The reason for all of these feelings and sensations in your second brain is because of a web of nerve cells that line the gut, which is also called the gastrointestinal tract. Your gut is made up of an army of neurons with over 100 million neurons that make up this army. Neurons are tiny web-like cells that are connected to each other all throughout the body. So with over 100 million nerves inside the enteric nervous system alone, it’s no wonder why we feel so many feelings and sensations in our gut.

Our second brain is structured a lot like our first brain because they are both made up of sensor neurons that pick up on senses and motor neurons that project our motor skills.

It’s self-sustained by functioning independently from the first brain because it doesn’t rely on the first brain to function. It’s the same concept in the sense that the first brain doesn’t rely on the gut to function. Even though they’re structured similarly, they have two separate jobs and control different parts of our bodies, but they work together by sending messages of information from one brain to the next. 

Our first brain controls decision-making and voluntary movement, whereas our second brain controls our gastrointestinal functions. These two communicate through a very significant nerve called the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve plays a critical role in our mind-gut connection because its purpose is to communicate messages from your body to the brain. It’s located at the base of the brain and runs down to the tip of the spinal cord making it the longest nerve in the body.  It’s responsible for controlling 

• Heart rate

• Taste

• Speech

• Immune response

• Blood pressure

• Digestion

• And most importantly, your mood

So yes, there’s an actual connection between your brain and your gut and it’s called the vagus nerve.