Innate Intelligence: Your Amazing Superpower Part 10: Digestive System & Hormone Regulation
What is Innate Intelligence?
Innate Intelligence is your body’s built-in wisdom. It’s the natural intelligence that keeps your heart beating, heals your cuts, digests your food, and helps you grow and adapt every single day—without you even thinking about it. From the moment you were conceived, Innate Intelligence has been guiding your body through every stage of life. It works through many vital functions such as maintaining balance, regulating your nervous system, helping your brain adapt, influencing your genes, coordinating your cells, repairing and regenerating tissues, protecting you with your immune system, guiding your growth and development, keeping your internal clock on track, and supporting digestion and hormone regulation. Each of these areas is essential to your health, and together they show just how powerful your Innate Intelligence really is.
Part 10: How Innate Intelligence Works Through Digestive System & Hormone Regulation
Your digestive system and hormones might seem like two different things, but they’re deeply connected. Together, they play a huge role in how you feel every day—your energy levels, mood, sleep, focus, and even how well your immune system works. And it’s your Innate Intelligence that keeps this entire system running smoothly.
How Innate Intelligence Guides Digestion & Hormones
Every time you eat, your Innate Intelligence springs into action. Without you even realizing it, your body coordinates dozens of complex processes so you can turn a meal into fuel, repair, and energy. From chewing your first bite to the moment nutrients enter your cells, your body’s built-in wisdom is running the show.
Here’s how it works:
Digestive Breakdown – As soon as food enters your mouth, nerves in your brain and gut communicate to release saliva and enzymes that start breaking it down. When the food reaches your stomach, your Innate Intelligence signals the release of stomach acid and digestive juices that turn that food into smaller pieces your body can use.
Nutrient Absorption – In the small intestine, millions of tiny finger-like structures called villi absorb nutrients like vitamins, minerals, and amino acids. Your Innate Intelligence then directs those nutrients where they’re needed—whether it’s repairing muscle tissue, fueling your brain, or supporting your immune system.
Waste Removal – Once nutrients are taken out, the leftovers move through the large intestine, where water is absorbed and the rest is eliminated. Even this process is guided by signals from your nervous system and gut hormones.
At the same time, your hormones—your body’s chemical messengers—are constantly at work, keeping everything in balance. For example:
Insulin helps control blood sugar after you eat, so your cells get energy without your blood sugar spiking too high.
Cortisol, your stress hormone, rises when you’re under pressure, giving you quick energy, but too much can upset digestion and cause inflammation.
Thyroid hormones regulate metabolism—how quickly or slowly your body uses energy.
Melatonin helps control your sleep and wake cycles, which also affect when you feel hungry and how well you digest food.
The Gut-Brain Connection: Your “Second Brain”
One of the most fascinating ways Innate Intelligence works is through the gut-brain connection. Your digestive system is lined with a vast network of nerves called the enteric nervous system (ENS). Scientists often call this your “second brain” because it can function independently, sending and receiving signals even without your conscious control.
This “second brain” communicates directly with your main brain through the vagus nerve—a major highway of information between the gut and nervous system. That’s why emotions and digestion are so tightly linked. For example:
Stress before a test can cause butterflies or nausea.
Eating junk food regularly can affect mood and even contribute to anxiety or depression.
Around 90% of your serotonin (a feel-good neurotransmitter) is made in the gut, not the brain.
Your Innate Intelligence is what keeps this two-way communication running smoothly. When your brain and gut are “in sync,” digestion, hormones, mood, and even immune function are balanced. When they’re not, you can feel it in many ways—stomach upset, cravings, fatigue, mood swings, or brain fog.
Think about it:
You don’t have to remind your stomach to churn after lunch.
You don’t have to tell your pancreas to release insulin when you eat ice cream.
You don’t have to schedule melatonin to kick in when the sun sets.
Your body already knows.
But when stress, poor diet, or spinal misalignments interfere with communication between the brain and body, this system can get out of sync. That’s when you might notice issues like bloating, fatigue, sugar cravings, mood swings, or even difficulty sleeping.
Innate Intelligence is always trying to bring you back into balance—it’s your natural built-in wisdom that keeps everything running, even when life throws you curveballs.
Why This Matters for Your Health
Your digestive system and hormones do far more than just break down food or control growth—they influence almost every aspect of your daily life. If this system is balanced, you feel energized, clear-headed, and emotionally steady. But when it’s out of balance, you can experience a wide range of problems that don’t always seem connected to digestion or hormones at first.
For example, if your digestion isn’t working well, your body may not absorb enough nutrients from your food. Even if you’re eating healthy meals, you could still feel tired, have weak immunity, or struggle to focus. Similarly, when your hormones are off, you might feel unusually stressed, moody, have trouble sleeping, or find it harder to maintain a healthy weight.
These systems also work together. Poor digestion can throw off hormone balance, and hormone imbalances can slow digestion. It becomes a cycle that affects your whole body. This is why people with gut issues often notice mood swings, or why stress (a hormonal response) can lead to stomach aches and indigestion.
Think about these everyday situations:
Before a big test or presentation, your stomach might feel queasy or you may even get diarrhea. That’s your stress hormones affecting your digestion.
When you don’t sleep enough, you often crave junk food the next day. That’s because lack of sleep disrupts hormones that control hunger and fullness.
If you’ve ever felt “hangry,” that’s your blood sugar and stress hormones teaming up to affect both your mood and your appetite.
During stressful times, you might notice you gain weight more easily. That’s cortisol, your stress hormone, signaling your body to hold onto fat.
Keeping your digestive system and hormones healthy matters because they:
Fuel your body with energy by absorbing nutrients and regulating blood sugar.
Protect your mood and mental health by creating neurotransmitters like serotonin (much of which is made in the gut).
Support your immune system by protecting against harmful bacteria and regulating inflammation.
Maintain healthy weight and metabolism through balanced insulin, cortisol, and thyroid hormones.
Improve your sleep and recovery by controlling melatonin and other hormones that affect your body’s rest cycles.
When your Innate Intelligence is supported and able to guide these systems properly, you don’t just survive—you thrive. You have the energy to live fully, the emotional balance to enjoy your life, and the resilience to handle stress without burning out.
How Chiropractic Helps Innate Intelligence
Your brain and nervous system are the command center for your whole body—including your digestive system and hormone-producing glands. For these systems to work properly, clear communication between your brain, spinal cord, and organs is essential. That’s where chiropractic care comes in.
One of the most important communication pathways between your brain and gut is the vagus nerve. This nerve acts like a major highway, carrying messages back and forth that help regulate digestion, hormone release, heart rate, and even your mood. Your gut itself also has its own “second brain,” the enteric nervous system, which works hand-in-hand with your main brain through the vagus nerve.
When the spine is misaligned (what chiropractors call a subluxation), it can create interference in these communication pathways. That interference may cause mixed signals between your brain, gut, and hormone systems, leading to problems like bloating, indigestion, fatigue, mood swings, or irregular sleep.
Gentle chiropractic adjustments help restore proper alignment in the spine, which allows for clearer communication through the nervous system. When that brain-gut connection is working at its best, your Innate Intelligence can fully guide digestion, hormone regulation, and overall balance in your body.
That means better nutrient absorption, steadier energy, calmer stress responses, improved sleep, and more emotional stability—all because your body is able to work the way it was designed to.
Innate Intelligence: Your Built-In Superpower for Life
Over the course of this series, we’ve explored 10 powerful ways your Innate Intelligence works to keep you alive, balanced, and thriving:
Homeostasis (balance)
Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)
Neuroplasticity (brain adaptability)
Epigenetics (how your environment influences your genes)
Cellular communication
Regeneration and repair
Immune system protection
Embryological development
Circadian rhythm (your body’s internal clock)
Digestive system and hormone regulation
What’s amazing is that you don’t have to “make” any of these processes happen. Your body already knows what to do. Every second of every day, your Innate Intelligence is working behind the scenes, guiding millions of processes so you can heal, adapt, and grow.
The truth is, your body was designed to thrive—not just get by. But in today’s world, stress, poor posture, lack of rest, and environmental toxins can interfere with the body’s ability to communicate and function at its best. That’s why supporting your Innate Intelligence is so important.
Chiropractic care helps keep the pathways between your brain and body clear, so your Innate Intelligence can do exactly what it was created to do—keep you healthy from the inside out.
When you honor and trust this inner wisdom, you unlock your body’s true potential for energy, resilience, healing, and vitality.
Your Innate Intelligence really is your greatest superpower. And when you care for it, you allow yourself to live fully—physically, mentally, and emotionally—exactly the way you were built to.
You were designed to thrive. Your Innate Intelligence is proof.
Wellness Within Chiropractic is your local chiropractor in Hoschton, Braselton, and Jackson County, GA. From improving posture and mobility to supporting overall wellness, Dr. Carrillo provides personalized care to help you thrive. If you’re looking for chiropractic care close to home, book your visit today and start your journey to better health.