Go With Your Gut: Why You Should Make Decisions Based On Gut Instinct

The ability to make quick and correct decisions is a key aspect of Ultimate Masculinity. It's such a common concept that the dialogue between men and women of "what do you want for dinner / I dunno" has become a trope in our culture. Our gut and gut health is an important but neglected part of being decisive. When we maintain good gut health, we can begin to rely on and trust our gut in making quick decisions that would take our brain longer to reason.

When I was in college, I took a class in artificial intelligence; the professor had an interesting insight that has stuck with me: intelligence is a factor of correctness and speed. For example, most people would consider someone who takes only 10 minutes to get 90% of questions right smarter than the person who takes 2 hours to only get 5% more correct. Therefore, when striving for ultimate masculinity, it is important to be able to make quick, in addition to, correct decisions.

It should not be a novel concept that we use our gut in decision making. People often refer to a "gut feeling" when speaking of an inexplicable intuition or suggest that people "go with [their] gut" when facing a hard decision. Research suggests that this concept may be more than metaphor. Humans have a "second brain" in our guts, the "enteric nervous system" (or ENS), in addition to the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.

According to emerging science, this "second brain" is involved in "affect, motivation, and higher cognitive functions, including intuitive decision making". [1] In other words, the ancient wisdom is right - we use our gut when making "gut decisions". This is supported by additional research out of John's Hopkins; researchers there "suggest that digestive-system activity may affect cognition (thinking skills and memory)". [2]

 [T]he ancient wisdom is right - we use our gut when making "gut decisions".

We can influence the wisdom and accuracy of our intuitive decisions by, you guessed it, eating a whole-food, plant-based diet. The gut wall, where the enteric nervous system is housed, "gets most of its nutrients from [short-chain fatty acids, which are] by-products of fermentation in the colon". [3] Since people who eat a plant-based diet have a gut microbiome that are "fiber-feeders and pump out more short-chain fatty acids"[4], it follows that to optimize our gut health, and thereby intuitive decision making, we should prioritize high-fiber plant foods, like dark leafy greens, nuts, legumes and whole grains.

In addition to feeding our second brain with the by-products of gut bacterial fermentation, our healthy gut bacteria can more directly influence our well-being. Gut bacteria "directly stimulate afferent neurons of the enteric nervous system to send signals to the brain via the vagus nerve." In this way, "gut microbes shape the architecture of sleep and stress" which can "influence memory, mood, and cognition". [5]

When attempting to make the most right decision the most quickly, why wouldn't we use both our first and second brain, especially when our gut is tuned to make intuitive decisions? If we are sure to nourish our second brain and gut microbiome with high-fiber, whole plants, we don't need to reason about the right call, we can just "trust our gut".

[1] Mayer EA. Gut feelings: the emerging biology of gut-brain communication. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2011 Jul 13;12(8):453-66. doi: 10.1038/nrn3071. PMID: 21750565; PMCID: PMC3845678.

[2] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/the-brain-gut-connection 

[3] Pollan, M. (2014). Earth. In Cooked: A natural history of transformation (p. 324). essay, Penguin Books. 

[4] Greger, Michael. (2021). Ingredients for the Ideal Weight-Loss Diet. In How not to Diet: The groundbreaking science of Healthy, Permanent Weight Loss (pp. 230–231). essay, BLUEBIRD. 

[5] Galland L. The gut microbiome and the brain. J Med Food. 2014 Dec;17(12):1261-72. doi: 10.1089/jmf.2014.7000. PMID: 25402818; PMCID: PMC4259177.

Additional Reading: 

Lee, SH., Yoon, SH., Jung, Y. et al. Emotional well-being and gut microbiome profiles by enterotype. Sci Rep 10, 20736 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-77673-z

Fried S, Wemelle E, Cani PD, Knauf C. Interactions between the microbiota and enteric nervous system during gut-brain disorders. Neuropharmacology. 2021 Oct 1;197:108721. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropharm.2021.108721. Epub 2021 Jul 15. PMID: 34274348.