Your Brain Can Change Your Gut Microbiome in Just Two Hours

Gut Brain Connection

1 May 2025

For years, we’ve known that our gut can influence our brain – affecting everything from mood to memory. But now, compelling new research in mice suggests the brain can return the favour, reshaping the gut microbiome in as little as two hours.

A team led by Marc Claret at the August Pi i Sunyer Institute of Biomedical Research in Spain discovered that activating specific brain circuits rapidly changed the makeup of gut bacteria. This groundbreaking finding strengthens the case for two-way communication along the gut-brain axis.

Using a technique called chemogenetics, researchers targeted neurons in the hypothalamus – the brain region responsible for regulating hunger. By activating or inhibiting these neurons in mice, they observed changes in microbial diversity across different parts of the gut within hours. The most dramatic shifts occurred in the duodenum, the first part of the small intestine, just two hours after brain activation. Here, microbial diversity increased by an average of fivefold compared to control mice.

When the same neurons were inhibited, different regions of the gut responded at different times – highlighting how nuanced and fast the brain’s influence can be. Follow-up experiments using appetite-regulating hormones injected into the brain produced similar results.

“We’ve known that diet, medications, and environmental factors can change the gut microbiota,” says Claret. “But the idea that the nervous system could directly modulate microbial composition is completely new.”

The exact mechanism remains unclear, but researchers suspect the brain may be sending signals to prepare the gut for food processing – potentially instructing microbes to adjust in anticipation. Since the neural circuits involved in hunger and digestion are similar in humans and rodents, these findings may have significant implications for people too.

According to Christoph Thaiss of Stanford University, this research urges scientists to rethink how they study the microbiome. “Mood and mental state might influence gut microbiota more rapidly than we thought. We need to consider microbial shifts not just over days or weeks – but by the hour.”

Beyond digestion, the research hints that other brain functions – like memory or emotion – might also shape our gut bacteria, opening up new frontiers in neuroscience and microbiology.

In short: your gut doesn’t just listen to what you eat – it listens to what you think and feel, too.

When the nervous systems parasympathetic system is engaged the digestive system is optimised. Meaning the digestion is able to make better use of nutrients we consume.

So it follows then that doing Havening helps to rebalance the nervous system and optimise our gut as well as our brain. We know that 80% of Serotonin is made in the gut and Havening Touch helps us get into a relaxing state and helps us make better use of Serotonin (along with Oxytocin and GABA) in a way that enables the letting-going of unresolved and unhelpful emotional links with old traumatic memories. When the delinking happens it help rewire the neurons in the brain and the neurons in the gut towards a more positive disposition.

Recommendations: do more daily Havening!

Author: Jan Carpenter

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