I'm Dr. Shannon Ritchie. I'm a doctor of physical therapy, fitness trainer, and founder of Fethlo Fitness.

In the Dr. Shannon show, you'll learn applicable tools to improve your health based on science.

Welcome to the show.

Brenda, so excited to have you here in Austin. We were just talking about how coming from Canada to Austin is a big change. So I could have you here. Thank you so much for having me. Yay.

Well, we've had you on the podcast before, so listeners will have to go back and listen to our first

episode.

But today I really want to focus on how to eat to feel better.

So fueling to feel better.

I love this concept.

And food can be used to change body composition and all of that. But today I want to focus on energy and mental health and micronutrients and how to stay

more consistent, things like that. So food and anxiety, I hear a lot about this like gut brain

connection thing. So can you explain from the evidence what this means and why it impacts

are, why food and the gut impacts our mental health. Yeah. So I will kind of

start by saying the research in regards to food and mental health and anxiety and especially

that gut brain connection, I think, is definitely still emerging. So in terms of like the exact

mechanisms that are happening and I think we have a lot of work to do to fully

understand that. But what I think we do know is that food definitely has the power to impact our

mood, to impact our energy levels and to impact anxiety. It's just kind of one of those things

where it's, you know, like a lot of things in nutrition, where it's a lot about your dietary pattern as a whole versus very specific foods and exactly

what you need to be including to feel better.

Right, right.

Because I've heard so much, like if you have anxiety, it could be the root could be your gut health,

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