<p>Who is the author of Gut Feelings?</p>

<p>Dr. Will Cole is the author of Gut Feelings.</p>

Health & Nutrition

Gut Feelings Book Summary - Gut Feelings Book explained in key points

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Gut Feelings summary

Name: Gut Feelings
Rating: 4.5 (94 reviews)
Author: Dr. Will Cole

Dr. Will Cole

Healing the Shame-Fueled Relationship Between What You Eat and How You Feel

4.5 (94 ratings)

18 mins

Brief summary

Gut Feelings by Dr. Will Cole is a guide to the gut-brain connection and how it affects our overall health. It emphasizes the importance of listening to our bodies and offers tips for improving digestion, reducing inflammation, and optimizing mental wellness.

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Healthy Living The Body Self-Care Mental Health Body Optimization Diet

Table of Contents

Gut Feelings
Summary of 6 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 6

What’s in it for me? Confront shame and heal your relationship with food to enjoy better health.

Medical research has confirmed that the age-old chestnut, trust your gut, is actually biologically accurate. Your digestive system is a veritable ecosystem of bacteria, fungi, and yeasts interacting with extensive neural networks and communicating directly with the brain. A healthy gut microbiome helps regulate mood, energy, hormones, and sleep to help you feel vital and energized. A deficient microbiome can do the opposite, triggering body-wide responses like inflammation, poor digestion, and insomnia, and can even affect mental health. Conditions that used to be considered unrelated to physical health, like depression, anxiety, and PTSD, are increasingly being shown to have both psychological and physical causes.

This blink is not a fix-yourself-overnight take on wellness, though. It offers information about how gut health is far more than just physical. It will explore how emotions and chronic stress play outsized roles in overall health, and what you can do to address these without crash diets or overnight life changes. The gentle, mindful, three-week plan is designed to illuminate your current diet and lifestyle, find the emotional roots of your health, and give actionable advice for slowing down and nourishing your body, mind, and spirit.

So if you’re ready to end the shame spiral, and ditch the idea of an instagram body for true health and wellness, read on.

Food for Thought: Shame and the Second Brain

There’s a reason why the gut is linked so closely to intuition: the intestines contain somewhere between 200 and 600 million neurons. That essentially means your intestines are a part of your nervous system, in constant communication with your brain. When you’re feeling butterflies before a big date, or your stomach turns when you think about a betrayal, that’s not random – it is clear evidence of the gut acting as a second brain, sending important messages about what’s going on.

These responses are so strong in part because these neurons are connected to the vagus nerve, the largest individual nerve in the body, which winds from the base of the skull down past the heart and onward through the gut. In other words, the gut not only controls digestion, but also regulates the immune system, mood, and overall metabolism.

But because the gut is so full of neurons, it is incredibly sensitive to emotions and stress. This was a great advantage for early hunter-gatherers: if an angry lion suddenly pounced, their gut emptied itself before they’d even processed what was happening. They could run more quickly and perhaps live long enough to have children.

But in modern life, stress isn't as straightforward as running from a hungry lion. Modern stress is chronic. From financial worries to relationships, job struggles to traffic jams, many are dealing with stress on a daily basis, and it’s having an outsized impact on health.

That’s because emotions affect the gut directly, which in turn influences mood. Remember the gut microbiome mentioned earlier? There’s about five pounds of microbes in your intestines. Chronic stress spurs the overgrowth of bad bacteria, leading to a widespread immune response – inflammation – in the digestive tract. While physical and mental health are treated as separate, they are, in fact, intertwined. And some emotions have a particularly strong impact on the gut – especially shame.

Why shame? It’s because, of all the negative emotions, shame has at its heart feelings of inadequacy, fear, and worthlessness. These feelings send a powerful message to the physical body – so powerful, in fact, that the author has called this effect shameflammation. Like a negative spiral, unresolved stress leads to feelings of inadequacy and shame, which affects mood, health, and wellness, leading to yet more shame.

Sadly, shame also has a tendency to keep sufferers from seeking help – from thinking they’re worthy or capable of changing diet, or habits, or negative life situations that in turn fuel more feelings of shame. When this becomes chronic, inflammation may also become chronic, and begin to affect health.

How to begin healing this relationship between shame and gut health? That’s what we’ll take on next.

Know What’s Eating You

While gut health influences mental and physical health more than previously thought, the same is true of emotions and your gut. That means that optimum gut health isn’t a matter of juice cleanses, restrictive diets, or relentless exercise routines. It’s about feeling and expressing your emotions with self-compassion. That’s because shame, like bad gut bacteria, thrives in environments of stress, disconnection, and exhaustion. To end shameflammation, it’s vital to slow down, tune in, and reconnect.

For instance, many seeking treatment at the author’s clinic have eliminated all possible trigger foods, and suffered through severe elimination diets, but still have symptoms of irritable bowel or ulcerative colitis. Others have exhaustive exercise and diet routines, but their bodies still carry excess weight due to unprocessed past trauma. These people may feel their lack of success in treatment is their fault, leading to increased stress and shame.

Ditch the FOMO to Thrive

It seems like social media is unavoidable these days. With perfect highlight reels of everyone’s curated lives on display, it can feel hard to keep up. But there’s a secret to reconnecting with yourself and healing your gut: stop trying.

Let’s face it, at the heart of FOMO, or fear of missing out, is the belief that you somehow don't measure up to the perfect lives you see while scrolling. Perfect bodies, perfect smoothie bowls, perfect relationships — comparing real life to someone’s latest reel is a recipe for shameflammation. To curb this, it’s important to fast from endless self judgements, and cultivate self-compassion.

Feed Your Heart – and Your Head

So, for gut healing, reconnecting with your feelings and examining your feelings about food happen together, just like the first day described earlier.

During day two, try to give your gut some rest by eliminating snacking. Breaks of four hours or more between meals give your gut a break from digestion. If you feel the need to keep snacking, it's a good sign that your regular mealtimes lack sufficient protein, like nuts and eggs, that deliver lasting energy.

Small Changes, Big Results

The following days of the plan bring even more small changes to savor. Dedicate a day to exploring sources of healthy fats, like walnuts, avocadoes, wild-caught salmon, or extra virgin olive oil. Another day, try probiotic foods like sauerkraut or kefir. Choose a day to examine your sleep routine to see whether you can set yourself up for better rest by turning down the lights and logging off screens at least an hour before bedtime. You might need to eliminate caffeine in the afternoon, too, and lower your thermostat to trigger deeper sleep.

During the three weeks of the plan, you can also dedicate a day to upping your protein intake, which has a host of healing benefits and gives your body the building blocks it needs for repair. Similarly, you can choose a day to get some safe sun and up your vitamin D intake. It’s important to get natural sources of vitamin D, and sunshine for short periods can boost your mood, too.

Final Summary

Your gut has a lot more going on than simple digestion, with its ecosystem of microbes that aid immunity, regulate mood, hormones, and blood sugar levels, and curb inflammation. Keeping this ecosystem healthy means connecting with and feeling your emotions, especially shame – because millions of neurons are responding. Slowing down, and becoming aware of the emotional roots of your relationship to food, cultivates the most powerful healing force of all: self-compassion.

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What is Gut Feelings about?

Gut Feelings (2023) illuminates the vital connections among emotions, the gut microbiome, and health. Taking a holistic approach to body, mind, and mood, the author offers a three-week plan to address the underlying causes of chronic illness, including stress, shame, suboptimal nutrition, and sleep.

Gut Feelings Review

Gut Feelings by Dr. Will Cole (2021) explores the intricate connection between our gut health and overall well-being, offering valuable insights for those seeking to optimize their health. Here's why this book is worth reading:

With in-depth research and scientific evidence, it sheds light on how our gut influences not only physical health but also mental and emotional wellness.
The book provides practical strategies and actionable steps to improve gut health, empowering readers to take charge of their well-being.
Through compelling stories and personal anecdotes, it brings the often complex topic of gut health to life, making it accessible and engaging for all readers.

Who should read Gut Feelings?

Self-help fans looking for mind-body approaches
Those looking for more clarity on their relationship with food
Wellness gurus looking for the latest on reducing inflammation and enjoying better health

About the Author

Will Cole is an author, podcast host, international speaker, and functional medicine practitioner who has published many books on lifestyle and wellness topics, including Ketotarian, The Inflammation Spectrum, and Intuitive Fasting.

Categories with Gut Feelings

Health & Nutrition

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