Impact of Mindful Eating Practices on Gut and Brain health

Abstract

Mindful eating is a practice of mindfulness which supports eating with a nonjudgmental relationship to food. This review then examines the effect of mindful eating on gut and brain health. Mindful eating research shows that it positively affects the gut brain axis and improves the gut mini biome. Mindful eating decreases stress and supports better self-regulation, which can assist digestive problems like irritable bowel syndrome (half of those with this disorder are also prone to tension headaches) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Mindful eating is also associated with better cognitive functions, emotional regulation, and neuroplasticity, and that is good brain health because of the ability to improve memory, attention, and mood. This practice is able to effectively handle the issues of problematic eating behaviors such as overeating, binge eating and emotional eating, resulting in a long-lasting psychological processes like improvements related to food attitudes and mental health. Nevertheless, yet other issues like the social gaps, the individual variability, or the necessity of the further longitudinal works prevents. Future research needs to expand beyond the sample and incorporate mindful eating into public health. Overall, mindful eating offers a holistic approach to improving both physical and mental health, with substantial potential for wider implementation in clinical and public health contexts.