Enteric Brain
Our gut possesses a separate brain, called the enteric nervous system. It is a grand network of 100-300 Mio neurotransmitters, neurons, and proteins found in the stomach, small intestine, esophagus, and colon.
It has cells like brain-cells and a complex circuitry that lets it act independently, remember, and produce what we call gut feelings. Are you really OK with a situation before your intellectual understanding has sunk into your gut brain?
This elaborate and complex network is designed to monitor the digestion of the foods we take in. It sends and receives impulses to organs, and the head-brain via the vagus nerve.
Many disorders originate from problems in the Gut Brain. Constipation is often caused by stress signals from the head.
It is also the home of our four different feeling systems:
- spontaneous emotional response to an external event,
- (secondary) emotional responses to a past event that has been thought about and thoroughly reviewed,
- background feelings that occur when the feelings of #1 and #2 are not present. We are only aware of them when we check our body for ongoing sensations,
- when we deliberately feel an object or individual.
