So again , if you enjoy alcoholic drinks , I'm not trying to um take them away from you uh by any means , but you should know what drinking does if you're consuming it in this kind of typical chronic pattern as we can now refer to it , which is that one or two a night or a few stacked up on Friday and maybe three or four on Saturday , this kind of pattern of drinking , which is quite common . And one of the more serious effects that we should think about is the impact on the so-called gut brain axis . Or for of today's discussion , the gut liver brain axis .
The trillions of little micro bacteria that take resident in your gut and that live inside you all the time and that help support your immune system . And that literally signal by way of electrical signals and chemical signals to your brain to increase the release of things like serotonin and dopamine and regulate your mood generally in positive ways . Well , alcohol really disrupts those bacteria and this should come as no surprise .
I mean , you take in something that disrupts two systems , the gut microbiota and it disrupts in two ways , it's killing the good gut microbiota and it's allowing the bad bacteria to move from the gut into the bloodstream . You've also got pro inflammatory cytokines coming from the liver and those converge or arrive in the brain and create a system in which the neural circuits cause more drinking . That's a bad situation .
And anyone who says they did , you should be very skeptical of them . The net effect of this is actually to disrupt the neural circuits that control regulation of alcohol intake and the net effect of that is increased alcohol consumption . So this is just terrible , right ?
And so now you've got leaks in the gut wall , you've got the release of this bad bacteria . You've got inflammatory cytokines and other things being released from the liver and they are able to get into the brain through neuro , what's called a neuro iun signaling and what's really bizarre in terms of the way that this manifests in the brain . I mean , it's not the way I would have done it .
