Kelly Harrington, MS, RD

Human Design Gate 40's Nutrition and Physiology

About Gate 40

Name: The Gate of Aloneness

Center: Will

Gate 40 Physiology: Stomach

Will Center Physiology: Heart, Thymus gland, Stomach, Gall Bladder

Circuitry: Tribal

Gene Keys Shadow: Exhaustion

Gene Keys Gift: Resolve

Gene Keys Siddhi: Divine Will

Archetype: the Father

Gate 40 Tribal Circuitry: Support

Gate 40 is part of Human Design's Tribal circuitry. The theme of tribal circuitry is Support. Your tribe is defined as your people, your family, your friends, your supporting crew. This energy often speaks in "we" or "you and I" and cares a lot about the people within their tribe.

Gate 40's Inherent Energetic Traits

When someone has gate 40 defined in their chart, i's so important you love your work, especially in the form of resources, time, and value!

Gate 40 is a a provider role with a desire to help and give to your friends, family, and community when you're doing work you love. When you’re involved in work that’s correct for you, you derive great satisfaction from providing for the people you love and delivering what you promised to an appreciative “tribe.”

The service to your people will feel good as long as they show appreciation and loyalty for your efforts and support you emotionally, feed you, give you time alone to rest, and take care of you with the resources you provide for them.

Aloneness and Gate 40

The name, the gate of Aloneness, comes from your strong energy for independence (even independence within your tribe), and aloneness creates wholeness.

The loneliness of gate 40 motivates this person to go out in the world to seek others, and create new agreements and bonds so the energy for creating resources is always renewed and evolving.

The energy may feel lonely to this person with gate 40, but in reality, this person is not as alone or unloved as they think!

Stomach Physiology and Gate 40 in Human Design

Gate 40’s physiological connection in the body is the Stomach. If you try to use Will energy from the Heart and push yourself too much, you may have stomach problems.

If gate 40 is from an undefined Heart Center, it can be prone to pushing too hard to prove yourself and prove your worth and value. Perhaps you forget to eat.

Exhaustion and Gate 40 in Human Design

The Low Expression (aka: Shadow) of Gate 40 is Exhaustion.

Those with gate 40 are prone to over giving and burn out. They can have a hard time saying no (people pleasing), and can become dependent on being needed (co-dependency). They can also push through with their willpower and overwork to exhaustion. This will impact a person's stomach health, gut microbiome balance, and digestion.

If this sounds like you, I encourage you to get to the root of why saying "no" is difficult.

Check in:

Do I actually want this?

Will this make me happy?

Am I helping because I want to or because I think I should?

Am I giving and not receiving the appropriate amount of recognition?

To reduce the chances of exhaustion and weakness, set boundaries and find a good way to say “no.” Understand this isn’t your only value and the boundaries allow you to give in a more sustainable manner. If you don’t stand up for yourself or value your time, nobody else will. You must be honest with yourself first.

You don’t have to get to the point of overextending yourself and exhaust yourself to that level!

If you feel exhausted and have gate 40, evaluate your digestion. Do you get indigestion? Bloated? Gassy?

Stress, Exhaustion, and Digestion

If someone is in a state of exhaustion, they're most certainly experiencing stress in their life.

When you eat while stressed out, regardless of what's causing the stress (ie: over-giving, burn out), your body is in the opposite state of where you need to be to digest, assimilate nutrients, and burn calories. You may be eating extremely healthy, but if your body cannot fully digest and assimilate that food due to stress, then you will not reap the benefits from it, nor will you be able to burn calories effectively.

Top Things to Know About the Stomach and Health

The stomach plays an important role in the digestive process, and it's also where the gut microbiome resides.

If food isn't being digested properly by the stomach, food can't be effectively converted to energy, which can lead to gate 40's exhaustion.

Here are the main digestion processes that happen in the stomach:

The stomach churns and mixes food with digestive juices, which helps break down food into a form that can be absorbed and utilized by the body.
The stomach secretes stomach acid (hydrochloric acid) to help break down protein into smaller pieces called peptides.
The stomach produces digestive enzymes to help break down the food even more.
The stomach doesn't absorb nutrients, but it does absorb some substances, such as alcohol and certain medications directly into the bloodstream.

1) Without adequate stomach acid or digestive enzymes being produced by the stomach, food has a more difficult time being digested, absorbed, and utilized by the cells of the body.

2) When there’s an imbalance within the gut microbiome of the stomach, this impacts digestion and the conversion of food and liquid into energy, which can lead to Exhaustion, the shadow of gate 40.

Within the stomach (and extending into the small and large intestines) is the gut microbiome, which is home to trillions of bacteria involved in just about every aspect of our health.

o Gut health directly affects the health and resiliency of your immune system.

o Gut health impacts genetic health since the gut is home to approximately five million genes.

o The health of your skin is a good indicator of the health of your gut.

3) The stomach produces neurotransmitters, such as Serotonin and Dopamine, which are utilized by the brain to regulate mood. Gut health impacts brain health. The gut-brain axis is bidirectional communication between the brain and stomach/intestinal tract.

Suggestions from a Functional Nutrition Dietitian for Optimizing Digestion in the Stomach

DIGESTIVE ENZYMES

Consider adding digestive enzymes before eating.

I have been using these chewable digestive enzymes by American Health and I find them really effective. I travel with it too.

DIGESTIVE BITTERS

Consider eating a digestive bitter before eating to stimulate your digestive “juices."

Bitters are used to support overall digestion by promoting the secretion of the body’s natural digestive fluids. As soon as bitters touch the tongue, the salivary glands are triggered and the stomach starts secreting digestive juices.
Classic bitter flavors include dandelion, gentian, licorice root, burdock, peppermint leaf, orange peel, ginger root, fennel seed, milk thistle, chamomile, wild berries and Oregon grape root, to name a few.
This is my favorite digestive bitter - Digestive Juice by Organic Olivia . I have no affiliation with this - just a fan. I've used Digestive Juice for four years, and travel with it because it eliminates indigestion.

FERMENTED FOODS

Include more fermented foods. Eating more of these types of foods helps populate the gut with beneficial bacteria, which allows for more optimal digestion. It also creates more competition to crowd out the sugar-eating, craving-causing bacteria.

Examples include fermented vegetables (ie: cabbage, cucumbers), sauerkraut, kefir, kimchi, miso, apple cider vinegar, and no added sugar kombucha.

WATER

Drink a lot of water! Water keeps the digestive system hydrated and functioning properly. It also helps to soften and break down food so it can be more easily digested and assimilated as energy throughout the body.

STRESS MANAGEMENT

Schedule time to eat without rushing! When the body is in a fight, flight, freeze, or fawn state, digestion completely shuts down, and the fragile balance within the gut microbiome is disrupted, which can have severe ramifications for your overall health.

When the body is under stress, your cortisol and insulin levels rise, which impacts the body's ability to burn body fat and gain muscle mass.

Please do all you can to manage stress with healthy coping strategies because it wreaks havoc on the gut microbiome and digestion!

OPTIMIZE YOUR GUT MICROBIOME

If you want to optimize your gut microbiome, here are 6 nutrition tips for gut microbiome health, and the best place to start.

It's also important to know that sugar and processed, highly palatable foods throw your gut microbiome out of balance and feed the bad bacteria, allowing them to grow and thrive.

Optimizing your gut can require you to remove things while also adding things into your diet.

Follow Your Strategy and Authority

When you have complete trust in your Strategy and Authority, this is how you create ease and alignment in your life, and how you begin to shape your life into the highest potential of what you came here to be and do.

Making decisions from your mind, and not trusting your body, leads to fear, anxiety, self-doubt, confusion, and not-self. This will impact digestion in a negative way!

Primary Health System Determination

Consider following your PHS Determination Diet type. This is a way of eating that supports your digestion.

Do you have gate 40? What is your experience with Exhaustion and Burn out? Do you experience stomach troubles, gut dysbiosis, leaky gut, or digestive issues?

I would love to hear from you.

Much love,

Kelly

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