The Gut-Brain Connection: How Gut Health Impacts Sexual Wellness
Health problems do not always affect just one part of the body but multiple parts, as our body systems are mostly intertwined. For example, have you ever thought that poor gut health would impact sexual function? Keep reading this blog post, it shares the concept of gut-brain connection, and how gut health affects sexual health.
Welcome to the Holmen’s Health dietitian blog post, I am dietitian Oscar and here we talk about foods, drinks, snacks, desserts, anything that you can think of when it comes to eating. I personally love eating and am passionate about assisting others in finding their most suitable diet pattern while promoting maximum health benefits. Let’s take a closer look at what a gut-brain connection is.
Despite the brain and gut being two different systems – one being the nervous system and the other being the digestive system – the relationship between the gut and brain is fascinating. They can communicate bidirectionally and influence multiple body systems, including the metabolic, immune, circulatory, and hormone systems.
Your gut is a highly diverse environment with more than 200 different species of bacteria and microorganisms living inside. They are called gut microbiomes, and they help with breaking down the food you eat and converting it into nutrients. The microbiome can transmit information about the health status of the gut to the brain and alter brain signalling towards different body parts to change behavioural responses.
You may ask, even though the gut and brain are highly related, what do they have to do with sexual health? The simple answer to this is that the brain controls the majority of the sexual function. Hence, poor gut health could severely impact our sexual health in three ways: immune system, cardiovascular system, and hormone system.
Immune system
Apart from the gut microbiome, the gut itself accounts for approximately 70% of the components of the immune system. The gut microbiome could facilitate the immune system to release a substance called cytokines, which are responsible for regulating inflammation metabolism. Moreover, the gut microbiome promotes the durability of the intestinal lining to prevent harmful substances inside the gut from leaking outwards to the bloodstream. Therefore, an imbalanced gut microbiome might cause higher inflammation rate due to more cytokines being released and a higher chance for harmful substances to leak from the gut. These stresses induced on the body could potentially affect sexual well-being.
Cardiovascular system
The gut is a powerhouse that works continuously whenever there are foods in the gut, helping to break them down into nutrients. One of the by-products produced by the gut during digestion is trimethylamine (TMA). It then travels along the bloodstream and is transported to the liver. TMA is then transformed into trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO) in the liver. TMAO is a risk factor for atherosclerosis, a cardiovascular disease that develops fatty plaques in the bloodstream and reduces blood circulation by promoting the accumulation of cholesterol. Poor blood flow could potentially lead to erectile dysfunction.
Hormone system
One of the linkages between the gut and brain is the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. It is a hormone-regulating system that helps the body adapt to different kinds of stress, such as hunger, panic, or anxiety, by releasing or suppressing different kinds of hormones. Abnormalities in the composition of microorganisms in the microbiome could induce stress to our body, known as inflammation. Once the HPA axis detects inflammation from the gut, it releases a hormone that acts to suppress sex hormone production, including testosterone.
How To Keep Your Gut Healthy
Fibre
Over the past few centuries, the consumption of fibre has dropped drastically, which might be due to the widespread adoption of a Western-style diet with high-fat, high-salt foods and low fibre content. This trend could potentially cause obesity, type 2 diabetes, erectile dysfunction. The theory behind this is that fibre serves as fuel for the gut microbiome to work properly and promote a healthy gut environment. Insufficient fibre intake could reduce gut microbiome diversity and cause loss of specific microorganisms in the gut, which eventually could cause problems on digestion and all other body systems.
Vegetables like asparagus, leeks, and onions; legumes like chickpeas, beans, and lentils; and whole grains like rye bread, barley, and oats are some examples of good sources of fibre. On average, an Australian male adult is recommended to consume 30g of fibre each day. Specifically, meeting this recommendation would look something like this; 100g rye bread (6g fibre), 100g of chickpea (17g fibre), 300g of asparagus (7g fibre).
Highly processed foods
A study conducted in 2019 revealed that more than 40% of the food energy sources of Australians were coming from ultra-processed foods such as ham, sausages, soft drinks, and ice cream. These foods are typically highly palatable, have long shelf-life and are relatively cheap. However, their poor nutritional values alongside extensive food additives are the harmful factors that could alter the gut microbiome and cause inflammation. Therefore, it is recommended to minimise the consumption of ultra-processed foods.
Fun fact: ‘ultra-processed foods’ is actually one of the categories under the NOVA classification developed by researchers at the University of Sao Paulo in 2010. It is somewhat equivalent to the ‘discretionary food’ category in our Australian Dietary Guidelines. The only difference is that NOVA classifies according to the level of processing while the Australian Dietary Guidelines categorise according to food composition. The recommendation of discretionary food consumption under the Australian Dietary Guidelines is no more than three serves per day.
Water
Drinking enough water helps with gut health in four different ways. First, water can soften stools and assist with movement along the entire digestive tract, reducing the occurrence of constipation. This would allow less time for the digestive system to re-absorb toxic substances from the stools, thereby benefiting the gut health. Second, water can facilitate digestion by providing an optimal environment for acids and enzymes to break down foods and convert them into nutrients. Next, water can reduce inflammation in the gut. If food substances are too hard or there is insufficient water to move them, friction can occur when the hard food substance makes contact with the gut. This friction can lead to inflammation in the long term when dehydration is constant. Lastly, water can also prevent harmful substances from leaking out of the gut to impact the immune system by reducing the inflammation rate of the gut wall.
The Australian Dietary Guidelines provide recommendations of daily fluid intake, but it varies depending on age, weather, lifestyle, activities level. In general, males aged from 9 to 13 years old require around 1.6 L per day. The requirement increases with age: males aged 14 to 18 years old require around 1.9 L per day and males older than 19 years old require around 2.6 L per day.
Polyphenol
Polyphenols are the components of plants that might be beneficial to the gut microbiome. They are difficult to digest, and most dietary polyphenols remain undigested in the small intestine. The undigested polyphenols are then bio-transformed by colonic microbiota into different forms of metabolites. This transformation process might promote the production of probiotics, which helps the good microorganisms in the gut to grow. It also inhibits the growth of bad microorganisms in the gut to maintain a healthy gut status.
Foods that are naturally high in polyphenols include berries (blueberries: 535 milligrams in a 50 g serving), herbs and spices (garlic: 190 milligrams in a 10 g serving), nuts (chestnuts: 612 milligrams in a 50 g serving), vegetables (spinach: 40 grams in a 50 g serving). While there are no clear recommendations for polyphenol intake, a study conducted in 2021 suggested that around 1-2 grams of polyphenols each day are associated with chronic disease prevention.
If you’re wanting support in learning how to improve your diet to support sexual function, learn more about our philosophy and services, please reach out to us! We work with clients virtually throughout Australia.
This blog post on the relationship between gut health and sexual wellness was published May 2024.
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