Dr. Diego Bohórquez: The Science of Your Gut Sense & the Gut-Brain Axis

In this episode, my guest is Dr. Diego Bohórquez, PhD, professor of medicine and neurobiology at Duke University and a pioneering researcher into how we use our ‘gut sense.’ He describes how your gut communicates to your brain and the rest of your body through hormones and neural connections to shape your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. He explains how your gut senses a range of features such as temperature, pH, the macro- and micronutrients in our foods, and much more and signals that information to the brain to affect our food preferences, aversions, and cravings.

Dr. Bohórquez describes his early life in the Amazon jungle and how exposure to traditional agriculture inspired his unique expertise combining nutrition, gastrointestinal physiology, and neuroscience. We discuss how the gut and brain integrate sensory cues, leading to our intuitive “gut sense” about food, people, and situations. This episode provides a scientific perspective into your gut sense to help you make better food choices and, indeed, to support better decision-making in all of life.

Articles

• Neuroepithelial circuit formed by innervation of sensory enteroendocrine cells (The Journal of Clinical Investigation)
• Single Lgr5 stem cells build crypt-villus structures in vitro without a mesenchymal niche (Nature)
• Neuropod Cells: The Emerging Biology of Gut-Brain Sensory Transduction (Annual Reviews)
• Alterations of sucrose preference after Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (Physiology & Behavior)
• Food Reward in the Absence of Taste Receptor Signaling (Neuron)
• SGLT1 sugar transporter/sensor is required for post-oral glucose appetition (American journal of physiology. Regulatory, integrative and comparative physiology)
• The preference for sugar over sweetener depends on a gut sensor cell (Nature Neuroscience)
• Enterochromaffin Cells Are Gut Chemosensors that Couple to Sensory Neural Pathways (Cell)
• Microbial Fermentation of Dietary Protein: An Important Factor in Diet–Microbe–Host Interaction (MDPI)
• A revisited history of cacao domestication in pre-Columbian times revealed by archaeogenomic approaches (Scientific Reports)
• “VOODOO” DEATH (American Anthropological Association)
• The preference for sugar over sweetener depends on a gut sensor cell (Nature Neuroscience)

Books

• The Paraneuron
• Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus
• Memoirs Of A Stomach: Written By Himself, That All Who Eat May Read (1853)

Other Resources

• Lips plant
• Sharing a plate of food leads to more successful negotiations (The Economist)

Huberman Lab Episodes Mentioned

• Dr. Satchin Panda: Intermittent Fasting to Improve Health, Cognition & Longevity

People Mentioned

• Ernest H. Starling: English physiologist, co-discoverer of hormones
• William M. Bayliss: English physiologist, co-discoverer of hormones
• Francis Crick: English molecular biologist
• Hans Clevers: Dutch geneticist and molecular biologist
• Karl Deisseroth: professor of bioengineering, Stanford University
• Polina Anikeeva: professor of material sciences and engineering, MIT
• Charles Zuker: professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics, Columbia University
• Laura Duvall: professor of biology, Columbia University
• Stephen Simpson: professor of environmental sciences, University of Sydney
• Steve Kay: professor of biomedical engineering and biology, University of Southern California
• Stephen Liberles: professor of cell biology, Harvard Medical School
• Santiago Ramón y Cajal: Spanish neuroscientist and histologist
• Camillo Golgi: Italian biologist and pathologist
• Carl Jung: Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst
• Martha Beck: author, sociologist, life coach