How Gut Bacteria Affects The Brain And The Body
Our gut is the beginning and end of our health. How we treat it on a
daily basis determines our longevity, and how disease free we’ll be.
If you would like to heal yourself and get back on the wellness bandwagon, you need to treat your gut right. The good news is that simple changes to diet and exercise can reverse the damage.
We've more bacteria in our gut than humans in this world, hard to believe, right?
Mounting research has suggested that the bacteria living in our digestive tract play a significant role in our overall health. Here are some of the physical and mental health conditions that have been linked to imbalances in gut flora.
Depression- More than a 3rd of depression sufferers have " leaky gut", or permeability of the gut lining that allows bacterium to seep out into the bloodstream.
Anxiety- Prebiotics can have anti-anxiety and anti-depressant effects. Consuming beneficial bacteria can also positively change the way the brain responds to the environment.
Schizophrenia- Studies in mice have linked a lack of normal gut bacteria with changes in brain development, but the genetics of the disorder are complete and not fully understood.
Autism- Autism often co-occurs with gastrointestinal issues like leaky gut or irritable bowel syndrome.
Obesity and diabetes- A number of studies have linked instability in the gut microbiome to obesity and obesity-related health problems.
Parkinson's disease- People suffering from this disease have different gut bacteria than healthy people.
Crohn's disease- Abnormally high levels of certain bacteria strains may be present when Crohn's disease develops, possibly triggering an atypical immune response.
Colon cancer- Sugar-loving microbes in the gut- along with the carbs that feed them- can fuel colon cancer. High carb-diets may even be contributing to the rise of colon cancer.
Ulcerative colitis- Imbalances in gut flora may be a main factor in both the onset and continuing symptoms of ulcerative colitis.
Irritable bowel syndrome- There is a definite link between IBS and an overgrowth of bacteria in the small intestines.
There are thought to be more than 5,000 species of bacteria living in the gut. Here are some good and few bad ones too-
Good bacteria
1) Lactobacilli- may ward off stress and anxiety.
2) Bifidobacteria- effective at treating many intestinal conditions
3) Lactobacillus helveticus- associated with reduced anxiety and depression.
4) Bifidobacterium longum- also associated with reduced anxiety and depression.
bad bacteria-
1) Helicobacter pylori- most common bad bacteria, causes ulcers.
2) Mmethanobrevibacteria amithi- responsible for the majority of methane production.
Sugar, processed foods, alcohol strip our gut of its flora and healthy bacteria that cleanses our blood, organs, and cells. It inhibits regeneration and mental and physical issues result.
Health is our natural state and we
are built to perfection. It is only when we mess around and treat ourselves like trash cans. We need to be more discerning with what we eat and understand that every choice has a consequence in the positive or negative.
Gut smoothie Ingredients
carrots 3
green apples 2
garlic clove 1/ 1/2
lemon juice 2 tbsp
ginger 1"
blend all together and drink it for your breakfast.
The issues directly associated include Arthritis, Colon Cancer, Depression, Anxiety, Irritable Bowl, Autism, Crohn’s Disease, the list is never-ending. While we’re on the subject, a meat-heavy diet is also a major contributor.
We gave up meat, fish, and anything with a heart from our diets 15 months ago and have noticed a huge difference to the way we feel. This Gut Smoothie is a great addition to your diet too. Be sure to seek advice prior to changing your diet.
The microbiome n your gut can also affect the brain.
Biologists that that it wasn't possible. Now they know that they're wrong. They're discovering all kinds of connections, from how stress affects the microbial make-up of your intestines to how the microbiome affects behaviour.
Your guts might have such a big influence on your brain that funding agencies are pouring millions of dollars into understanding what researchers are calling the microbiome-gut-brain axis. By learning more about this connection, scientists are hoping to better understand human mental health- and may be even develop some new therapies along the way. We've known for a long time that your gut and your brain are pretty tight in some ways. For years, researchers have been studying the enteric nervous system or ENS and its dynamic relationship with the central nervous system(CNS).
The ENS is a massive web spread over your Entire Digestive Tract. It's made yo of more than 500 million neurons that control your guts. The 2nd brain, as it is sometimes called is pretty self-sufficient and can take care of most of its job by itself. But it is connected to your CNS by your vagus nerve, which is basically an information superhighway between your gut and your brain.
We also knew that stress could affect digestion, because who hasn't experienced some tummy troubles during a stressful week?
Despite this connection, for a while, scientists assumed that the microbes in your gut couldn't affect your brain because of the blood-brain barrier. Your brain's blood vessels are structured so they're packed super close together in a way that keeps your brain's immune system basically separate from the rest of your body. The blood-barrier is reallyimportant, because unlike an infection in your toe or on your skin, which aren't usually life-threatening, brain infections tend to be pretty deadly. Our brain is structured to keep infections out. It's hard for almost anything, including microbes, to get through the barrier, except in cases of serious injury or illness, so neuroscientists figured that meant they could pretty much ignore your microbiome.
Even though there's a lot of cross-talk between your ENA and your brain, researchers mostly assumed that microbes didn't play into it. But more recent breakthroughs are challenging that assumption and changing our understanding of how the blood0brain barrier works.
Because we're learning that your microbiome can affect your brain- in some pretty big ways.
Early research starting in the 1970s showed that stress could affect the kinds of microbes found in the guts of mice. One groups found that steering out mice by depriving them of food or water caused them to have more bacteria, like E. coli, and less of another kind of bacteria , called lactobacilli, in their intestines.
Another groups found that the stress of dealing with an aggressive cage-mate led to changes in the populations of other kinds of bacteria. But eve though it was clear that stress could affect the kinds of microbes in the intestines, it wasn't clear if it was a two-way relationship. Could gut microbes be affecting psychological stress level?
The 1st breakthrough on this question came in 2004, when some scientists discovered that exposure to certain kinds of microbes had dramatic effects on brain chemical levels.
For the study, the scientists used germfree mice: mice that were delivered by C-section and immediately placed in a super clean cage, so they're barely exposed to any microbes at all.
Compared to specific pathogen free mice that is, mice that were exposed to a known set of microbes- the germfree mice got a lot more stressed out when they're restrained. So, it seemed like something about thebacteria in the mice was helping keep their stress lvels in the back. The team found that tbe brains of the germfree mice had less of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor or BDNF. BDNF is important for learning, memory and higher-order thinking, and the gerfree mice had less of it in the brains regions, that determine how an animal reacts to stress.
It's not clear how, exactly microbes could be affecting BDNF levels, since we're still pretty sure they can't cross the blood-brain barrier under normal circumstances. But something about the presence of bacteria in the gut seems to have a body-wide effect and leads directly to changes in brain chemistry.
The results of that study kicked off a bunch of new research projects to better understand the relationship between the microbiome and the brain. mostly using these germ0free mice,
Some research from the early 2010s found that, while the germ-free mice were more affected by certain kinds of acute stress ( like restraint). They're less anxious about other kinds of stress ,like being placed in a new environment.
So, it seems like the relationship between microbes and stress is a kind of complex- mice without a microbiome aren't always more sensitive to stress.
Other studies have looked into what happens when you colonise germ-free mice with bacteria- like whether their behaviour changes or how the bacteria affects certain stress-related genes in the brain. For e.g., in a study from 2011, one group of scientists found that exposing germ-free mice to the microbiomes of other mice could influence their behaviour.
Like a shy germfree mouse might do more exploring if it was implanted with microbes from a more adventurous mouse- which is just weird. And the behavioral changes corresponded to an increase in that BDNF protein, meaning that the microbiome transplant had direct effects on brain chemistry.
So, it is clear that the connection is there. The microbiome does affect the brain. And now, all kinds of scientists are investigating the microbiome-gut-brain axis. They've started to learn a lot about how your microbial balance can affect the levels of specific chemical messengers in your body and brain. The microbes in your guts produce a whole bunch of different molecules. And somehow, despite the blood-brain barrier, these chemicals affects your brain.
Take serotonin, for eg,- It's a critical messenger in your brain, and it's especially well known for influecning mood. That's why a lot of the drugs prescribed for depression and anxiety affect serotonin signalling in the brain. But it turns out that the majority of your body's serotonin isn't made in your brain. Up to 80% of it is made in your gut, and the microbes living there can affect how much serotonin is produced.
So changes in the numbers if microbes that produce serotonin could have big effects on overall levels of serotonin in your body, and could also affect your brain.
Even when they aren't producing important neurotransmitters, microbes can trigger responses from the immune system, and the immune response can have a big impact on the brain. See, the microbiome can affect the production of cytokines, which are proteins produced by immune system cells. And some of those proteins, like one called interleukin-6, are known to influence stress.
Researchers have also discovered that microbes can release molecules that affect the behaviour of the blood-brain barrier, like making it more or less permeable to outside molecules, which can affect what's allowed in and out of the brain.
But even as scientists are picking oout individual pieces of the puzzle, they still can't really see the big picture yet. The germ-free mice studies have been important and informative, but it's hard to translate them to humans, because-- mice aren't humans.
There's really no situation where a human would be totally microbe-free. But these studies do show that the microbiome has an effect on the brain, and they're still useful because they give researchers total control over what kinds of bacteria the mice are or aren't exposed to. There's not a whole lot of research that is super clear on the relationship between the gut and brain in humans though.
These discoveries are so new that no one's been able to do any large-scale studies in humans yet.
But small studies have tried treating volunteers with probiotics, deliberately introducing new microbes to their guts as well as prebiotics, which are fiber supplements designed to feed good bacteria.
And the microbes and fiber affected the subjects mood and cognition. So there might be a relationship between your microbiome and your mental health. Although the studies haven't been able to look closely at what, exactly the prebiotics and probiotics are doing to the microbes in the guts, or how that might be translating into changes in mood.
So in the future, researchers will be getting more into the nitty-gritty of these relationships and trying to figure out of their discoveries can translate into medical treatments. Other scientists are working on humanizing the mouse microbiome- basically, making the microbiomes of the mice mire human-like. They do this by taking fecal transplants from both healthy and sick human patients and inserting then into mice to study the effects.
That kind of experiment can let researchers pick apart how differences in the microbiome connect with changes in mental health. And they can get right into the brains of the mice in ways they can't with human patients, using dissected tissue to look directly at the structures of brain cells and how they connect.
Some researchers are also trying to figure out how specific kinds of microbes are affecting our brains, and how we can tailor our microbiomes to maximize the health benefits.
Others are starting to ask questions about how other things that affect our microbiomes, like antibiotic treatments, could be affecting our mental health and cognition. So, there's still a lot we don't know about how our microbiomes affect our brains ! But there are a ton of new studies in the works, and scientists and doctors are hoping that as our knowledge of the microbiome-gut-brain axis grows, so will our ability to tweak it, and hopefully improve some lives along the way.
THIS IS ONLY FOR INFORMATION, ALWAYS CONSULT YOU PHYSICIAN BEFORE
HAVING ANY PARTICULAR FOOD/ MEDICATION/EXERCISE/OTHER REMEDIES.
PS-
THOSE INTERESTED IN
RECIPES ARE FREE TO VIEW MY BLOG-
https://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com/
If you would like to heal yourself and get back on the wellness bandwagon, you need to treat your gut right. The good news is that simple changes to diet and exercise can reverse the damage.
We've more bacteria in our gut than humans in this world, hard to believe, right?
Mounting research has suggested that the bacteria living in our digestive tract play a significant role in our overall health. Here are some of the physical and mental health conditions that have been linked to imbalances in gut flora.
Depression- More than a 3rd of depression sufferers have " leaky gut", or permeability of the gut lining that allows bacterium to seep out into the bloodstream.
Anxiety- Prebiotics can have anti-anxiety and anti-depressant effects. Consuming beneficial bacteria can also positively change the way the brain responds to the environment.
Schizophrenia- Studies in mice have linked a lack of normal gut bacteria with changes in brain development, but the genetics of the disorder are complete and not fully understood.
Autism- Autism often co-occurs with gastrointestinal issues like leaky gut or irritable bowel syndrome.
Obesity and diabetes- A number of studies have linked instability in the gut microbiome to obesity and obesity-related health problems.
Parkinson's disease- People suffering from this disease have different gut bacteria than healthy people.
Crohn's disease- Abnormally high levels of certain bacteria strains may be present when Crohn's disease develops, possibly triggering an atypical immune response.
Colon cancer- Sugar-loving microbes in the gut- along with the carbs that feed them- can fuel colon cancer. High carb-diets may even be contributing to the rise of colon cancer.
Ulcerative colitis- Imbalances in gut flora may be a main factor in both the onset and continuing symptoms of ulcerative colitis.
Irritable bowel syndrome- There is a definite link between IBS and an overgrowth of bacteria in the small intestines.
There are thought to be more than 5,000 species of bacteria living in the gut. Here are some good and few bad ones too-
Good bacteria
1) Lactobacilli- may ward off stress and anxiety.
2) Bifidobacteria- effective at treating many intestinal conditions
3) Lactobacillus helveticus- associated with reduced anxiety and depression.
4) Bifidobacterium longum- also associated with reduced anxiety and depression.
bad bacteria-
1) Helicobacter pylori- most common bad bacteria, causes ulcers.
2) Mmethanobrevibacteria amithi- responsible for the majority of methane production.
Sugar, processed foods, alcohol strip our gut of its flora and healthy bacteria that cleanses our blood, organs, and cells. It inhibits regeneration and mental and physical issues result.
Health is our natural state and we
are built to perfection. It is only when we mess around and treat ourselves like trash cans. We need to be more discerning with what we eat and understand that every choice has a consequence in the positive or negative.
Gut smoothie Ingredients
carrots 3
green apples 2
garlic clove 1/ 1/2
lemon juice 2 tbsp
ginger 1"
blend all together and drink it for your breakfast.
The issues directly associated include Arthritis, Colon Cancer, Depression, Anxiety, Irritable Bowl, Autism, Crohn’s Disease, the list is never-ending. While we’re on the subject, a meat-heavy diet is also a major contributor.
We gave up meat, fish, and anything with a heart from our diets 15 months ago and have noticed a huge difference to the way we feel. This Gut Smoothie is a great addition to your diet too. Be sure to seek advice prior to changing your diet.
The microbiome n your gut can also affect the brain.
Biologists that that it wasn't possible. Now they know that they're wrong. They're discovering all kinds of connections, from how stress affects the microbial make-up of your intestines to how the microbiome affects behaviour.
Your guts might have such a big influence on your brain that funding agencies are pouring millions of dollars into understanding what researchers are calling the microbiome-gut-brain axis. By learning more about this connection, scientists are hoping to better understand human mental health- and may be even develop some new therapies along the way. We've known for a long time that your gut and your brain are pretty tight in some ways. For years, researchers have been studying the enteric nervous system or ENS and its dynamic relationship with the central nervous system(CNS).
The ENS is a massive web spread over your Entire Digestive Tract. It's made yo of more than 500 million neurons that control your guts. The 2nd brain, as it is sometimes called is pretty self-sufficient and can take care of most of its job by itself. But it is connected to your CNS by your vagus nerve, which is basically an information superhighway between your gut and your brain.
We also knew that stress could affect digestion, because who hasn't experienced some tummy troubles during a stressful week?
Despite this connection, for a while, scientists assumed that the microbes in your gut couldn't affect your brain because of the blood-brain barrier. Your brain's blood vessels are structured so they're packed super close together in a way that keeps your brain's immune system basically separate from the rest of your body. The blood-barrier is reallyimportant, because unlike an infection in your toe or on your skin, which aren't usually life-threatening, brain infections tend to be pretty deadly. Our brain is structured to keep infections out. It's hard for almost anything, including microbes, to get through the barrier, except in cases of serious injury or illness, so neuroscientists figured that meant they could pretty much ignore your microbiome.
Even though there's a lot of cross-talk between your ENA and your brain, researchers mostly assumed that microbes didn't play into it. But more recent breakthroughs are challenging that assumption and changing our understanding of how the blood0brain barrier works.
Because we're learning that your microbiome can affect your brain- in some pretty big ways.
Early research starting in the 1970s showed that stress could affect the kinds of microbes found in the guts of mice. One groups found that steering out mice by depriving them of food or water caused them to have more bacteria, like E. coli, and less of another kind of bacteria , called lactobacilli, in their intestines.
Another groups found that the stress of dealing with an aggressive cage-mate led to changes in the populations of other kinds of bacteria. But eve though it was clear that stress could affect the kinds of microbes in the intestines, it wasn't clear if it was a two-way relationship. Could gut microbes be affecting psychological stress level?
The 1st breakthrough on this question came in 2004, when some scientists discovered that exposure to certain kinds of microbes had dramatic effects on brain chemical levels.
For the study, the scientists used germfree mice: mice that were delivered by C-section and immediately placed in a super clean cage, so they're barely exposed to any microbes at all.
Compared to specific pathogen free mice that is, mice that were exposed to a known set of microbes- the germfree mice got a lot more stressed out when they're restrained. So, it seemed like something about thebacteria in the mice was helping keep their stress lvels in the back. The team found that tbe brains of the germfree mice had less of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor or BDNF. BDNF is important for learning, memory and higher-order thinking, and the gerfree mice had less of it in the brains regions, that determine how an animal reacts to stress.
It's not clear how, exactly microbes could be affecting BDNF levels, since we're still pretty sure they can't cross the blood-brain barrier under normal circumstances. But something about the presence of bacteria in the gut seems to have a body-wide effect and leads directly to changes in brain chemistry.
The results of that study kicked off a bunch of new research projects to better understand the relationship between the microbiome and the brain. mostly using these germ0free mice,
Some research from the early 2010s found that, while the germ-free mice were more affected by certain kinds of acute stress ( like restraint). They're less anxious about other kinds of stress ,like being placed in a new environment.
So, it seems like the relationship between microbes and stress is a kind of complex- mice without a microbiome aren't always more sensitive to stress.
Other studies have looked into what happens when you colonise germ-free mice with bacteria- like whether their behaviour changes or how the bacteria affects certain stress-related genes in the brain. For e.g., in a study from 2011, one group of scientists found that exposing germ-free mice to the microbiomes of other mice could influence their behaviour.
Like a shy germfree mouse might do more exploring if it was implanted with microbes from a more adventurous mouse- which is just weird. And the behavioral changes corresponded to an increase in that BDNF protein, meaning that the microbiome transplant had direct effects on brain chemistry.
So, it is clear that the connection is there. The microbiome does affect the brain. And now, all kinds of scientists are investigating the microbiome-gut-brain axis. They've started to learn a lot about how your microbial balance can affect the levels of specific chemical messengers in your body and brain. The microbes in your guts produce a whole bunch of different molecules. And somehow, despite the blood-brain barrier, these chemicals affects your brain.
Take serotonin, for eg,- It's a critical messenger in your brain, and it's especially well known for influecning mood. That's why a lot of the drugs prescribed for depression and anxiety affect serotonin signalling in the brain. But it turns out that the majority of your body's serotonin isn't made in your brain. Up to 80% of it is made in your gut, and the microbes living there can affect how much serotonin is produced.
So changes in the numbers if microbes that produce serotonin could have big effects on overall levels of serotonin in your body, and could also affect your brain.
Even when they aren't producing important neurotransmitters, microbes can trigger responses from the immune system, and the immune response can have a big impact on the brain. See, the microbiome can affect the production of cytokines, which are proteins produced by immune system cells. And some of those proteins, like one called interleukin-6, are known to influence stress.
Researchers have also discovered that microbes can release molecules that affect the behaviour of the blood-brain barrier, like making it more or less permeable to outside molecules, which can affect what's allowed in and out of the brain.
But even as scientists are picking oout individual pieces of the puzzle, they still can't really see the big picture yet. The germ-free mice studies have been important and informative, but it's hard to translate them to humans, because-- mice aren't humans.
There's really no situation where a human would be totally microbe-free. But these studies do show that the microbiome has an effect on the brain, and they're still useful because they give researchers total control over what kinds of bacteria the mice are or aren't exposed to. There's not a whole lot of research that is super clear on the relationship between the gut and brain in humans though.
These discoveries are so new that no one's been able to do any large-scale studies in humans yet.
But small studies have tried treating volunteers with probiotics, deliberately introducing new microbes to their guts as well as prebiotics, which are fiber supplements designed to feed good bacteria.
And the microbes and fiber affected the subjects mood and cognition. So there might be a relationship between your microbiome and your mental health. Although the studies haven't been able to look closely at what, exactly the prebiotics and probiotics are doing to the microbes in the guts, or how that might be translating into changes in mood.
So in the future, researchers will be getting more into the nitty-gritty of these relationships and trying to figure out of their discoveries can translate into medical treatments. Other scientists are working on humanizing the mouse microbiome- basically, making the microbiomes of the mice mire human-like. They do this by taking fecal transplants from both healthy and sick human patients and inserting then into mice to study the effects.
That kind of experiment can let researchers pick apart how differences in the microbiome connect with changes in mental health. And they can get right into the brains of the mice in ways they can't with human patients, using dissected tissue to look directly at the structures of brain cells and how they connect.
Some researchers are also trying to figure out how specific kinds of microbes are affecting our brains, and how we can tailor our microbiomes to maximize the health benefits.
Others are starting to ask questions about how other things that affect our microbiomes, like antibiotic treatments, could be affecting our mental health and cognition. So, there's still a lot we don't know about how our microbiomes affect our brains ! But there are a ton of new studies in the works, and scientists and doctors are hoping that as our knowledge of the microbiome-gut-brain axis grows, so will our ability to tweak it, and hopefully improve some lives along the way.
THIS IS ONLY FOR INFORMATION, ALWAYS CONSULT YOU PHYSICIAN BEFORE
HAVING ANY PARTICULAR FOOD/ MEDICATION/EXERCISE/OTHER REMEDIES.
PS-
THOSE INTERESTED IN
RECIPES ARE FREE TO VIEW MY BLOG-
https://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com/
FOR INFO ABOUT KNEE
REPLACEMENT, YOU CAN VIEW MY BLOG-
https:// kneereplacement-stickclub.blogspot.com/
FOR
CROCHET DESIGNS
https://gscrochetdesigns.blogspot.com
FOR INFO ABOUT KNEE
REPLACEMENT, YOU CAN VIEW MY BLOG-
https:// kneereplacement-stickclub.blogspot.com/
FOR CROCHET DESIGNS https://gscrochetdesigns.blogspot.com
Labels: anxiety, Arthritis, blood -brain barrier, central nervous system, Colon cancer, Crohn's disease, Depression, enteric nervous system(ENS), gut microbiome, immune system, irritable bowel syndrome(IBS)
posted by G S Iyer at 9:07 AM
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