Serotonin: How to Increase Your Production

Where is serotonin produced?

Let’s talk about gut, mood, a little bit about sleep. Serotonin is a chemical that is produced — even though it’s a brain chemical… that’s how we think about it as far as mood stabilization, not feeling anxious, depressed — some 70 to 90% of it is produced in your gut by your microbiome, that 38 trillion group of microbes in your large intestines.

The gut-brain-diet-mood connection

Very quickly, we see that gut-brain connection that we always talk about. You need a healthy gut microbiome to produce adequate amounts of serotonin. That’s interesting. Again, now you see the mood-diet connection.

Now what else does serotonin do? It also helps produce melatonin so you can get a nice, good night of sleep. Melatonin is also protective of the brain. It’s anti-cancer, it’s anti-inflammatory. It’s a major hormone that has so many protective benefits, longevity benefits, and how is it made? From serotonin.

Where is serotonin made? In your gut. What’s it made from? The microbes. You don’t have enough microbes because you don’t have the healthy diet. All of this kind of falls down.

A paraxodical response to melatonin

I thought another interesting thing — and now I’m going from science to my opinion for a moment — but I’ve always found it very interesting for the patient that would have the, as they call it, a “paradoxical response” to melatonin. It’s like, “Oh, I hate melatonin. I’m up all night. Crazy dreams and nightmares. Worst thing in the world.” It took me a while [to figure it out] and I was asking some experts in the field of melatonin… What I came to understand, getting their various responses, is that when someone has that paradoxical response, it means that they’re toxic.

Toxicity

They have too high an inflammatory, toxic load on their body. What handles toxins? You’re back to the microbiome.

I had that epiphany this morning as I was preparing to do this video, and I was like, “Oh, that makes so much sense.” Again, hearkens back to what you’re eating: getting enough fiber, getting enough fermented foods, enough vegetables and fruits, and creating that beautifully healthy microbiome, you’re making enough serotonin and healthy melatonin.

Then it’s likely — again, this is an opinion, but it seems to add up pretty well for me, let me know your thoughts — that, of course, with a healthy microbiome, you’re not going to be toxic because you’re dealing so well with any toxins coming your way. That is the summary of that.

Serotonin, melatonin, and sleep

The takeaway is that it’s very important to have a healthy gut microbiome so that you’re producing enough serotonin for nice mood stability, but also really deep sleep because sleep is so incredibly important.

I’m going to leave you with one statistic I also saw, which is that even a one night of very poor sleep, interrupted sleep will increase your risk for a viral infection by 88%. Crazy, but not. We’re also about to, as I’m filming this, daylight savings is about to change over and we’ll lose an hour of sleep. The statistics on that, you lose one hour and the rate of death from heart attacks goes up, infection goes up. Very, very interesting little nuance changes in sleep.

We really want to value and embrace healthy sleep habits. I hope you found this interesting. Please share it with others. A lot of people try to get away with very little sleep and say, “I’m fine, I’m fine.” It is going to catch up with you.

If you are on an SSRI

If you’re somebody who has that odd response to melatonin, realize there’s a deeper reason for that, with too much of a toxic load. If you need help with that, we’re delighted to help. If you’re somebody who is living on an SSRI, an antidepressant-type of medication, realize that healthy gut, serotonin, there’s so much we can do to help balance the natural levels of serotonin and other chemicals, hormones so that mood stabilization can come back and then you can wean or, hopefully, get off completely some of these medications.

Helping you increase your serotonin production