Mental Fitness Magazine Volume 2 | Page 7

happier, healthier you Hunger not only makes one moodier, it also makes one more likely to be a high-risk taker, says a UK study by researchers from the Institute of Neurology and Department of Metabolism and Experimental Therapeutics from University College London, so try to avoid making an important decision on an empty, growling stomach. Mental fitness is not just about strengthening your mind. It’s also about following your heart and listening to your gut. And that’s not just popular wisdom anymore. It’s science. Neurobiologist Dr. Michael D. Gershon discovered that in fact we do have a second brain in the stomach, which, with 100 million neurons, has the intelligence to run our gut all on its own. Unfortunately, when there’s poor cooperation between the brain in the head and the brain in the gut, gastrointestinal problems arise, including cramps and irritable bowel syndrome. According to the Institute of HeartMath, the third brain in our heart was first identified back in the 1960s by pioneer physiologists John and Beatrice Lacey, who discovered our heart also has its own intelligence and communicates with the brain in the head, likely influencing how we think. Looked at biologically, the heart’s efficiency is amazing. The heart works without interruption for seventy to eighty years, without care or cleaning, without repair or replacement. Over a period of seventy years, it beats one hundred thousand times a day, approximately forty million times a year— nearly three billion pulsations all told. It pumps two gallons of blood per minute—well over one hundred gallons per hour—through a vascular system about sixty thousand miles in length (over two times the circumference of the earth.) The heart starts beating in the unborn fetus before the brain has been formed. Scient