Surprising ways your gut health impacts your mood during menopause

What causes your gut to impact your emotions during perimenopause and menopause?

Your gut and the way your gut behaves can have a huge impact on your emotional symptoms in perimenopause and menopause. So, let’s look at this connection in more detail. Firstly, there are several factors to know about:

1. Gut-Brain Axis

We have something called the gut-brain axis. The gut-brain axis is a bidirectional communication system between the gastrointestinal tract and the brain, which means how you feel affects your gut and vice versa. We have all experienced this at some point; for example, if you're going to the dentist, if you're flying, or if you're really scared of something, the minute you have that scared thought you can feel your gut clenching up.

Your gut also has a direct link to how your brain functions. This axis also involves your nervous system, your immune system, and your endocrine system (which is in charge of your sex hormones). And this is why how we feel can have an impact on other areas of our health and not just our hormones.

2. Hormonal Changes

When we're going through the perimenopause, the hormonal changes can impact digestion. As your oestrogen and progesterone fall, it can slow things down much more, so that can then have an impact on how your gut functions generally. These hormones (oestrogen and progesterone) also play a role in regulating mood.

3. Microbiome

More and more people are understanding about what's called the microbiome. This term refers to our friendly gut bacteria. We have trillions of them, all surviving in our gut, as well as other microorganisms, which all work together. The good ones all work together for our overall health, our mental health, physical health, and hormonal health. You can therefore see how all of these areas of health are interconnected at the very, very simple level of the gut bacteria.

If our microbiome starts to change in some way, and the number and the variety of these friendly bacteria and microorganisms decreases, that will have an impact on our gut-brain axis. This can happen through the gut slowing down as hormone levels decrease.

Many things can impact your gut. It could be something like taking a course of antibiotics, having IBS, or it could be just having diarrhoea. One episode of diarrhoea, one episode of food poisoning, and you may find that it’s affected your gut, and that can then affect your mood too. And it's not something we tend to connect. You might find you haven't been particularly well and then wonder why, even if you're back on your feet, your mood and emotional issues are much more pronounced or you feel that little bit lower.

4. Diet and Lifestyle

If you are not having a particularly healthy diet, if you're eating a lot of processed foods, high-salt and sugary foods, lots of caffeine, fizzy drinks, alcohol, maybe a high-fat diet as well, these will all impact on your friendly bacteria and how well your gut manages everything.  

Also, if you're less active, that will have an impact. So, if your hormones are changing, if you're feeling tired, if you're a bit run down, if you've got joint aches and pains, you're going to be less active; and being active is a real tonic for the gut. The minute you start moving, you're actually massaging the whole of the digestive tract, which keeps your elimination and everything moving much better. So, you're going to have a much more positive impact on your friendly bacteria by being active.

Managing gut health to help your emotional well-being

To support mood through gut health during menopause, consider the following strategies:

Probiotics and Prebiotics

One of the most important things to keep all our friendly bacteria and our gut healthy is to look at what are called prebiotics and probiotics.

Now, a prebiotic is something that helps to feed and support your friendly bacteria. So, I liken the gut to a garden. If you want beautiful flowers to come from the seeds, you need to fertilise and till the soil. So, a prebiotic is helping to create the right environment in the gut and to provide food for the friendly bacteria.

Your friendly bacteria are your probiotics. If you find your gut is a little bit all over the place, or if you want to just try and see if you can improve things, then you go with a prebiotic first to get everything ready. And then, you introduce a probiotic.

Prebiotics are things like fermented foods, so that would be things like sauerkraut. You can have things like fermented tofu, tempeh, miso. These can all be really helpful.

You would then introduce a probiotic supplement. You don't need to go overboard, but you can look for a general one-a-day probiotic and take that. I normally recommend, if you find it improves things, that you take a course of probiotics maybe once every six months, just to keep everything working tiptop.

Daily Gut Health Support

You could also try a daily gut health support drink such as Molkosan Fruit Digestion, which contains fermented whey and calcium, which contributes to the normal function of digestive enzymes.

Bitter Herbs

You can also look at what's called bitter herbs. Bitter herbs are great for digestion. So that would be things like the herb Yarrow. I recommend taking Yarrow drops in a little water before meals to help support your digestion.

Diet

You're looking at having a good, balanced diet. And remember last week, I looked at the type of diet that you can build for yourself and the key foods you should be eating. So, you're looking at things like plenty of fibre, foods like vegetables, a little bit of fruit, and add in your fermented foods as well.

Regular exercise

Remember that exercising helps to massage and keep your gut healthy and working well, because elimination is really important. If you get constipated, that's going to affect your friendly bacteria.

If we exercise outside in nature, there's so much research looking at how being in nature lifts our mood and just makes us feel that much better. So even getting out once or twice a week, just for a walk in the fresh air, can be really helpful. [1]

Stress management

That would include deep breathing, mindfulness, meditation, and things like Yoga, Qigong, Tai-chi as well. So, all of these can help with this particular situation.

So, I hope you found this one helpful. It's a really interesting one, and as I said before, we don't tend to link how we feel with how our digestion is doing. Especially for those of you in perimenopause, at certain times of the month, the hormones are really fluctuating, which can have quite a big impact on the levels of friendly bacteria in your gut.

If you find at certain times of the month your mood is much lower, then that also may be an indication that your friendly bacteria are not particularly happy. So, it's a nice one to try and look at what's going on and connect the dots.

Please, if you have any tips yourself, has anything you've done to change your diet had a big impact on how you feel? Please share your stories. You know I love to read them.

Until next time, take care and have a lovely week.

You may also find these topics helpful:

The importance of good gut health in perimenopause and menopause

Signs you might need a probiotic during menopause

Emotional Menopause Symptoms: Why they can worsen or come back