Let’s begin our lesson with a few rather indiscreet questions:
Do you have a great zest for life, the desire to reach for the moon or, on the contrary, are you lazy and no longer motivated at all?
Do you feel serene and fulfilled, or more on edge and anxious? Do you sometimes (or often!) crave sugar?
What if I told you that it’s all about chemistry, and that it’s all in our brains!
Let’s find out…
Neurotransmitters
At the cerebral level, we have a number of players (the scientific name is neurotransmitters) who play a very important role in our lives:
- Dopamine: Mrs. MOTIVATION and PLEASURE
It’s thanks to dopamine that we’ve all been alive for hundreds of thousands of years! Indeed, without it, our ancestors would not have had the motivation to hunt for food… And without it, no pleasure…. CQFD: end of humanity! Let’s take a look at another very important player, its daughter (chemically speaking, since it’s its metabolite (and what a barbaric name!)). - Noradrenalin: It’s Mrs. ACTION and LEARNING
No matter how motivated you are in life, at some point you have to take action and remember the experience. And Noradrenalin makes it possible. So you’ve understood the vital importance of these 2 essential neurotransmitters, without which little would happen in our daily lives.
However, if we left Dopamine and Noradrenaline to their own devices, we’d be living constantly at 100 km/h! And we’d end up completely exhausted….That’s the end of the story too.
Fortunately, :
- The GABA: Mr ZEN.
Life without Mr Zen is a nightmare. He plays a major role in slowing down the machine to prevent us from becoming permanently hyperactive. Without him, we’d be left with nervousness, anxiety, the inability to “unplug”, restlessness, mornings when we wake up already tired (and at the end of our lives).
So it’s best to make it your ally… - Serotonin: aka Mrs. JOY and SERENITY
Like GABA, Serotonin is important for slowing down the whole machine, allowing us to relax and regain serenity. It’s part of the recipe for happiness… It enables us to feel peaceful, calm and more confident in our daily lives, and to see life as rosy rather than black.
Incidentally, its daughter (its metabolite) is called :
- Melatonin: Mrs. SLEEP, which enables us to sleep well, resting our bodies before setting off on new adventures the next day. All this takes place in our brain, and you may have heard it said that our belly is our second brain. And indeed, it is. Did you know that our bellies can also manufacture dopamine, GABA and serotonin? It’s our microbiota that takes care of this when it’s properly pampered. That’s why I’ll be talking to you about it often. A neglected microbiota can’t lead to top health.
Physiotherapy to boost your brain power
Back to Mrs. Dopamine, Mrs. Noradrenaline, Mrs. Serotonin, Mrs. Melatonin and Mr. Zen. For them to be properly produced, we need to make sure that the raw materials arrive at the right time of day, in the right quantities, and that there are no deficiencies or mechanisms that hinder production.
This is the whole point of the integrative health approach based on physiognutrition, which not only looks for imbalances but also tries to understand their origins in order to correct them and restore balance.
The physionutritional approach is totally personalized and will be based not only on nutrition, but also micronutrition, neuronutrition and chrononutrition, not forgetting Mother Nature and plants, which are invaluable in balancing our neurotransmitters, not forgetting, of course, appropriate lifestyle advice.
