The Gut-Brain Axis: Dysbiosis, Mood Disorders & Personalized Lifestyle Medicine Strategy

Event Summary

We now know that the 100 trillion gut microbes of healthy people influence their wellbeing in substantial ways. Those trillions of bugs vary from one healthy person to another and from one unhealthy person to another. Meanwhile, as practitioners, we are witnessing an epidemic rise in the incidence of inflammatory conditions associated with the gut-brain axis dysfunction, including anxiety, depression, and early memory loss. Developing research shows these conditions are associated with an imbalance (dysbiosis) in the gut microbiome. There is constant talk between the gut and brain: Some of it travels along the vagus nerve, and some of it travels in the blood, especially via nutrients, hormones, proteins, peptides, and inflammatory messengers like antibodies and cytokines. The good news is that while abnormal gut microbiota can lead to dysfunction of the brain body and cause brain symptoms like anxiety, depression, brain fog, rising set point, and memory loss, correcting perturbations in gut health is an emerging strategy used as part of a plan to address such symptoms.

There are five key ways that dysbiotic gut flora can promote anxiety, depression, and cognitive decline: by making your gut wall leaky, by manipulating your stress response (and therefore your hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal/thyroid/gonadal axes), by disrupting your immune response, by causing chronic inflammation in the body and brain (neuroinflammtion), and by producing harmful peptides and other chemical messengers. In this interactive presentation, you will learn personalized lifestyle medicine strategies for improving intestinal wall integrity—specifically with the use of targeted dietary and lifestyle interventions—including nutrigenomic approaches, “behaviorceuticals” (physical activities that improve mental health), and targeted prebiotics and probiotics.

Objectives:

• Review the normal and abnormal function of the gut-brain axis and how it impacts the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal/thyroid/gonadal (HPATG) axes and default mode network.
• Identify the role of intestinal permeability and the gut microbiome in stress, mood, an overactive HPATG, and central nervous system disorders.
• Review personalized lifestyle medicine strategies for improving intestinal wall integrity with the use of targeted dietary and lifestyle interventions, including nutrigenomic approaches, “behaviorceuticals,” and targeted prebiotics and probiotics.

Cost: $60

Continuing Education Information:

Commission on Dietetic Registration (RD’s) – Approved for 1.5 CEU

Certified Nutrition Specialists (Nutritionists) – Approved 1.5 CEU

National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine – Pending approval

* Requirements: Complete 10 question quiz

California Acupuncture Board – Pending approval

* Requirements: Complete 10 question quiz

CA Registered Nursing Board – Pending approval

Presenter Bio

Sara Gottfried, MD is a board-certified gynecologist and physician scientist. She graduated from Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and completed residency at the University of California at San Francisco. Over the past two decades, Dr. Gottfried has seen more than 25,000 patients and specializes in identifying the underlying cause of her patients’ conditions to achieve true and lasting health transformations, not just symptom management.

Dr. Gottfried is a global keynote speaker who practices evidence-based integrative, precision, and Functional Medicine. She recently published a new book, Brain Body Diet and has also authored three New York Times bestselling books: The Hormone Cure, The Hormone Reset Diet, and Younger.