I’m reading The Happiness Hypothesis in the evenings, psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s exploration of the neural and evolutionary origins of morality and happiness.
Haidt tells me something I never knew, but always suspected. I have a second brain in my bum:
Our intestines are lined by a vast network of more than 100 million neurons; these handle all the computations needed to run the chemical refinery that processes and extracts nutrients from food. This gut brain is like a regional administrative center that handles stuff the head brain does not need to bother with.
After several days eating street food in Liberia, all of it quite spicy, my gut brain is stewing in ire and plotting its bitter, bitter revenge against the thoughtles head brain.
3 Responses
man, that’s the area of one of the chakras! i’m agnosthic, but can’t refuse those ancient indians had a good point…
So there is actually a lot more to “gut instinct” than I thought.
Props for eating the street food. So many people miss out on that because they’re worried about their stomachs. When I visited Pakistan maybe 6 years back, my whole family got sick from eating bhuttay (which is corn cooked in hot sand, and can be made spicy). I was sick enough to not eat anything for two days, but man, was that stuff good.