I was given this article, neatly paper-clipped together by a client a couple of years ago. It was lost in a box of papers for a while now - the joys of moving! By Geoff Watts, from The Telegraph [my parents will be proud] 12/01/2005:

"Anyone eager to make his mark by finding a new species of living creature should forget the Amazon rainforest and the ocean depths and look closer to home. Scientists believe that the human intestine still harbours scores of undiscovered organisms. Too bad that work on the gut lacks the glamour of research on the heart or the brain. In the past six decades, gut science has revealed the stomach and the rest of the digestive tract to be much more subtle and interesting than previously thought. For a start, the gut has a 'brain'. Nerves and nerve pathways wrapped around it are sometimes referred to as the little brain in the gut.

The nervous system of the gut has all the types of nerve cells that the brain has. It also has every type of chemical messenger found in the brain. In the case of one of them - serotonin, closely associated with depression - it has the greater part of the body's entire store. The gut can make it's own decisions. In fact it has to. Different foods require different responses: is this veg or fruit coming through? Its layers of muscle have to choose the appropriate program of complex co-ordinated movement: mix the gut contents; move them on; do both at once. No time to wait for signals from central control" says Professor Michael Gershon. If the brain in the gut is as elaborate as the experts claim, it's tempting to imagine an alternative evolutionary pathway in which higher brain functions developed inside the abdomen. How different might we be if the seats of reasoning and consciousness were located in our intestines?"

From tongue to bum - Love your donut ✖