Gut-Brain Interaction: The Biopsychosocial and Dietary Approach to Gut and Brain Disorders

Course overview

According to a recent American Gastroenterological Association survey, approximately 40 percent of Americans daily lives are disrupted by gastrointestinal GI conditions that can take a significant toll on their physical and mental health as well as on our health care system. Today many of these gut conditions are being attributed to dysregulation of the gut brain axis, a collective term for all the channels of communication now known to exist between the gut or GI tract and the brain. The gut brain axis provides a pathway for the gut to affect the brain and for the brain thoughts and feelings to influence the operations of the gut. While at one point several GI conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome and dyspepsia were viewed as functional or psychosomatic disorders, they have since been renamed disorders of gut brain interaction or DGBIs. This course will address gut and brain issues using a biopsychosocial perspective, viewing illness as the product of biological, psychological, and social subsystems that combine and interact at multiple levels. Using this perspective, we can examine the big picture, the wide range of factors that can contribute to the development and maintenance of DGBIs, including genetics, epigenetics, stressful and traumatic early life events, psychosocial conditions, altered gut microbiota, adverse food reactions, pharmaceuticals, poor lifestyle factors, aging, and COVID SARSCoV2. Importantly, this course will address a range of interventions for a gut that is off track including brain gut behavior therapies, eating for gut health, microbiota based therapies, physical activity, sleep, and reducing environmental toxins.