The first and most obvious way to harness your neuroplasticity and create balance in your gut-brain axis is to form a new habit. And it’s easier to form a new habit than to remove an old one. The “use it or lose it” principle ensures that if you do create a new highway in the brain and stop using an old one, the old highway will eventually become less important. It may or may not go away completely, but it will no longer continue to dominate your behavior. Building a new highway, however, requires both time and energy. In one study it was shown that it took 20 days to establish a habit of drinking a glass of water at the beginning of the day, and 84 days to establish the habit of doing 50 sit-ups everyday. The important thing to understand is that simple habits will take a relatively short time and more difficult habits may take substantially longer. It is important for you to explain this to your client in order to produce reasonable expectations.