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The Serotonin and Gut Connection
19 Plays4 months ago
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Hosted by functional health practitioner and longevity author, Christian Yordanov, this podcast is dedicated to helping women struggling with gastrointestinal problems such as gas, bloating, constipation, and other digestive distress.
Whether you have a diagnosis such as IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), IBD (inflammatory bowel disease; Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis), SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth), GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease) or not, you will benefit from the insights we'll share.
Join us as we explore the intricate connections between gut health and overall well-being, addressing common issues like fatigue, poor sleep, hormonal imbalances, and anxiety.
Learn how stress impacts your digestive system and discover effective strategies to reduce inflammation, improve digestion, and enhance your quality of life.
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Transcript
Introduction and Myths about Serotonin
00:00:43
chrisyzen
OK, so today I'm going to talk
Pharmaceutical Influence on Serotonin Perception
00:00:45
chrisyzen
a little bit a little bit about the serotonin and gut connection and kind of this dispel a few misconceptions and myths that are very prevalent not just in the mainstream views, but also kind of the more functional and naturopathic um circles. we a lot of us still think serotonin is the happy hormone or chemical or neurotransmitter that we need to be raising it and you know even I
Serotonin's Role in Gut Health
00:01:18
chrisyzen
used to use 5-HTP, 5-hydroxytryptophan which is like a serotonin precursor for sleep and for other stuff and
00:01:28
chrisyzen
Once I realized how badly we've been conned again, I obviously stopped using that and stop stopped giving it to my wife. um Never used it with clients, but um thank God, you know, because when you actually understand how badly we've been conned, even if you go on Wikipedia right now and you type in serotonin, you will see in like the third section, their biological role, the last sentence says, despite its long-standing prominence in pharmaceutical advertising the claim that low serotonin levels cause depression is not supported by scientific evidence okay so pharmaceutical companies they figured
Serotonin Beyond Human Health
00:02:13
chrisyzen
out what it does they figured out how to raise its levels with various drugs and then what they normally do is just started massive marketing campaigns with a huge huge budget and
00:02:29
chrisyzen
When you actually look at it deeper, we need very, very tiny amounts of serotonin, and especially in the brain and the central nervous system. what What's interesting is that something like 90 to 95% of the serotonin we make is actually made in the gut in these cells called enterochromofin cells. So a lot of that probably has to do with the fact that it's it's used as a motility agent. It kind of kind of
Understanding Serotonin Syndrome and Symptoms
00:02:58
chrisyzen
moves the gut along. So a little bit is needed for that. And when you get some kind of irritant in the gut, be that a path, a quote unquote pathogen.
00:03:09
chrisyzen
or toxin or whatever a massive sort of release of serotonin in the gut will create create diarrhea and that will help to expel it but also it seems like certain potentially pathogenic organisms like certain amoebas like Entomieba histolytica for example which is something we can actually test with my clients that secret serotonin and when you actually get deeper you can just go to this Wikipedia article you can start reading and you'll see that besides in mammals serotonin is found in all bilateral animals including worms and insects as well as in fungi and plants so it's a very ancient sort of ah chemical
00:03:53
chrisyzen
and they They also say serotonin's presence in insect venoms and plant spines
Serotonin's Link to Depression and Mood Disorders
00:04:00
chrisyzen
serves to cause pain, which is a side effect of serotonin injection. Serotonin is produced by pathogenic amoeba, like I said, causing diarrhea in the human gut. So it's not looking like a very beneficial thing here. And actually somewhere else in this article, they say that it seems like serotonin is involved um as like ah like a stress um hormone or or a stress chemical in plants. But what's actually what it seems like is that in humans, it is also a stress chemical. It's not a feel good chemical.
00:04:36
chrisyzen
And I'll tell you, if you look, if you can look up a condition known as serotonin syndrome, which is ah obviously a very, not obviously, but it's a very end stage sort of very um life could be a potentially life threatening um condition that, you know, can lead to death and a lot of horrible symptoms on the way there. But what's interesting, usually the serotonin syndrome type things, ah The only way to get into that sort of state is either to, you know, do the wrong, like mix badly some kind of an SSRI drug or potentially like ah m mao a oxidase inhibitor, which is kind of the older um class of, quote unquote, antidepressants.
00:05:27
chrisyzen
With something else for example like st. John's wort or like so certain drugs like MDMA or LSD so if it's it's usually like in those kind of more edge cases where this can be caused
Interplay Between Serotonin and Stress Hormones
00:05:42
chrisyzen
but if you look at And again, this is, um'm I'm getting this from chat GPT because I want to to show you the mainstream that no, nothing controversial here. This is the mainstream stance on it. So if you look at what are the symptoms of mild serotonin excess.
00:06:03
chrisyzen
Things like mood changes, mild agitation, restlessness, irritability. The cognitive effects include slight confusion or difficulty concentrating. You could even label that as brain fog. Certain ah autonomic symptoms ah can increase mild increases in heart rate, ah increases in blood pressure. the gastrointestinal symptoms can include nausea or mild diarrhea and the neuromuscular symptoms can include tremor muscle twitching or muscle stiffness okay so this when you start here's where we can kind of put the pieces together in terms of how how is this related to gut health and so on
Serotonin's Diverse Functions Across Species
00:06:47
chrisyzen
Remember ah what I just said earlier. So 90% or so of the serotonin in the body is produced in those cells in the gut called the enterochromofin cells. okay So it's it's like I said a motility regulator. But here is the where the problem can occur. If you have intestinal increased intestinal permeability, leaky gut, as it's also known, due to potentially pathogens, toxins from the diet or other environmental exposures. And in addition, you have um some kind of
00:07:28
chrisyzen
irritant in the, again, from the diet, the the gut, from my microorganisms in the gut that can cause an increase in the secretion of serotonin by these cells in the gut, then some of that serotonin can get into the bloodstream. And going back to just the quick track back, What I said earlier, according to the Wikipedia article, it's again, it's common knowledge that the serotonin being low in depression was just a ploy, a scam to sell billions and potentially trillions in in terms of
00:08:08
chrisyzen
these um anti-depressant drugs. um if yeah So the some of the the researchers that have actually exposed this side of things, they've actually shown
Caution Against Serotonin Supplements
00:08:21
chrisyzen
that serotonin is actually elevated in several phenotypes of depression. And here is a direct mechanism where you don't even need necessarily a drug to increase the serotonin in your central nervous system and your brain and so on but just by virtue of having some kind of irritant in the gut you can then secrete those cells in the gut can increase their secretion of serotonin and if the gut is damaged it can cause us to uptake into the bloodstream more serotonin and then eventually it can get into the central nervous system
00:09:06
chrisyzen
um And that can cause, like I said, a number of different issues. So again, the the obviously the nausea and the the mild diarrhea that's ah related to the gut, but the cognitive effects, the mood changes, the restlessness, the irritability. You know, I've i've spoken to so many women that have these kinds of you know irritability or sadness or just but low mood and or the the brain fog. and When the they we get their gut working properly, when we figure out what's going on and we you know they take the steps necessary to heal their gut, a lot of these cognitive and mood effects, they they just go away. but They start sleeping better. That's another one. you actually Serotonin is
00:09:58
chrisyzen
I'm not saying it's the only reason people have migraines but it's a big reason and actually serotonin antagonist drugs are used off of label as it were to as a prophylactic prophylactic sort of um prevent preventionary preventative um measure against migraines so some doctors are smart enough to do that and to kind of offer that to their patients and other people just get the stuff ah Some of them are over the counter others are easy to get and so on um so the other one is nightmares like a lot of Horrible dreams that's a serotonin is can be elevated in those instances um Just not insomnia in general not being able to sleep it that can be cortisol that can be high estrogen and cortisol as well and the the the thing is these things are
00:10:54
chrisyzen
raise each other, they rise like the tide, the stress hormones. So if your estrogen is elevated, that can cause cortisol to go up. If your serotonin is elevated, that can actually also cause cortisol to go up. um it It has to do with this sort of stress cascade, which is well-intentioned The problem is it's a survival type of system that was only designed to be used once in a while back in the day, quote on quote, when we were living in more natural circumstances. Now we're living in environments where not only is the stress of daily life very high, but also there's a lot of
00:11:39
chrisyzen
biochemical stress from that just the stuff we're exposed to on a daily basis. There's a lot of estrogenic compounds, not just in the food, but also in like plastics and other toxins and so on. So there's a lot of different ways that this serotonin can be elevated in a person or there's a lot of things that could be elevating it. And then if you have um some kind of gut dysfunction, damage to the gut lining and so on, then that can get into the bloodstream, get into the central nervous system. And that actually can cause the you know the the mood related, the fatigue related
Impact of Gut Health on Serotonin Levels
00:12:15
chrisyzen
things like that. right So this is important to understand and um I think
00:12:25
chrisyzen
I think just the fact that marine animals, like marine snails, cone snails have serotonin in their venom, which can paralyze prey. Amphibians, certain frog species have serotonin in their skin secretions, which can cause pain and inflammation in predators or threats. Invertebrates, several species of stinging and biting invertebrates, invertebrate such as wasps, Scorpions and some spiders include serotonin in their venoms. So this is not a Happy chemical it's more the so the way they've characterized it is more of like a stress
00:13:10
chrisyzen
hormone, that's kind of like a metabolic inhibitor. So under under times of like, let's say famine or severe stress, whatever, it seems to like shut down certain more higher functions that let's say higher cognitive functions like joy, and um creativity and a bunch of the stuff. And this is what a lot of people on these ah SSRI drugs say, you know, the high Highs aren't as high But at least the lows aren't as low some some people kind of tell themselves that it's kind of compresses it Where there's no real don't experience joy, but you don't experience severe grief. So some researchers are um They are Sorry, just saw a massive spider here on On my ceiling and
Balancing Serotonin and Estrogen
00:14:02
chrisyzen
I was like oh Sarah told me you know
00:14:05
chrisyzen
um yeah So what what the hell was I talking about? um Yeah, so it seems to like almost be a chemical that numbs you down so that you can survive the stress. um So yeah the the moral of the story here is we really, first of all, do not want to be raising it. We want to be inhibiting as much as possible its excess, if possible, in the gut and just its its general synthesis in the body. And then you know were really if we if we have a gut issue that we know we do have, the like vi um actual physical symptoms of a gut issue, it's likely that we have intest increased intestinal permeability. And then it's likely that there could be an excess of serotonin getting into the blood. So we really have to tackle this early on.
00:15:01
chrisyzen
as quickly as we can. And then the other thing is anything that is marketed as raising serotonin like supplements like 5-HTP, 5-hydroxytryptophan, I would personally, I would never ever use that again. We used that with my wife for a while and um she was having a lot of insomnia at the time and it actually seemed to to to help her but when I kind of delved into the research deeper I was like oh my god this is I would never ever ever take this again for any reason whatsoever it's it's um serotonin it's like estrogen you either have just the right amount
00:15:47
chrisyzen
or you have too much. It's very, very unlikely to that you will have too little. It's like similar to chord as always, especially like in a, not an end stage sort of um diseased person but like you know you know relatively healthy or unhealthy person cortisol will there will almost never be a deficiency in cortisol it's likely just the right amount or way too much for most people being secreted so any anything that adds to the serotonergic tone of of a human
00:16:25
chrisyzen
is most likely going to be adding fuel to the fire right so this is something that is quite important to to understand because it there may come a time when one is goes to a certain practitioner or something like that and then they are offered ah a chemical that increases their serotonin and that's going to be purported
Conclusion on Serotonin Insights and Warnings
00:16:54
chrisyzen
to to make them feel better and so on and so forth. But um if you look at some of the side effects of these chemicals, it's it's actually pretty horrific. So it's important to understand some of these things so that one does not get duped into this kind of stuff, if you know what I'm saying. OK, so I think we ended there. Thanks for tuning in.