4 睡眠とストレス

**Managing Stress and Prioritizing Sleep: Essential for Gut Health** Stress and poor sleep can wreak havoc on your gut, leading to imbalances in the microbiome and digestive issues. **The Gut-Brain Connection:** The gut and brain are closely connected through what is called the gut-brain axis. Essentially, when you experience stress, this causes a cortisol release, which directly causes harm to your gut health. Specifically, it disrupts the gut microbiota (the beneficial bacteria) and damages your gut lining, both leading to inflammation and thus a worsened appearance. Ever wonder why when you're stressed you break out? It’s because the gut (very responsible for your skin health - 'gut-skin' axis) gets inflamed when you're stressed. **Stress Management for a Healthy Gut:** Managing stress is essential for maintaining gut health. Some of the best practices for managing stress can be as simple as deep breathing (box breathing, 4-7-8 breathing, regular movement, (ideally grounded in nature and in sunlight) meditation, more social activity, or supplementation with adaptogens such as Rhodiola and holy basil. See the full guide to cortisol in the expanded healthmaxxing section. **Prioritizing Sleep for Gut Health:** Quality sleep is crucial for gut health. Good sleep obviously controls cortisol, supporting the gut-brain axis, but also improves gut health via various other mechanisms: Good, consistent sleep, leads to regular and proper releases of melatonin which acts as a repairing antioxidant in the gut, reducing inflammation. Sleep is also when crucial gut regeneration and repair processes occur. So-called tight junction proteins, such as occludin and zonulin, are produced and act during sleep, and these are which are what keep the cells of the gut lining closely bound together, reducing leaky gut.