A Gut Feeling
Attached is one of the most important articles on health that I have read to date. Here's scientific proof that the health of your gut ultimately effects your body, mind, and soul. The great news is that I might be able to help you or someone you know. After reading this article you can click here to learn about or to order a pro-biotic that I have been taking for several years. The product is called "Ultra Flora" and it is by Metagenics which is one of the finest (if not the best) nutraceutical companies in the world.
Gut feelings: the future of psychiatry may be inside your stomach
The right combination of stomach microbes could be crucial for a healthy mind
Her parents
were running out of hope. Their teenage daughter, Mary, had been
diagnosed with a severe case of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), as
well as ADHD. They had dragged her to clinics around the country in an
effort to thwart the scary, intrusive thoughts and the repetitive
behaviors that Mary felt compelled to perform. Even a litany of
psychotropic medications didn’t make much difference. It seemed like
nothing could stop the relentless nature of Mary’s disorder.
Their last hope for Mary
was Boston-area psychiatrist James Greenblatt. Arriving at his office
in Waltham, MA, her parents had only one request: help us help Mary.
Greenblatt started by
posing the usual questions about Mary’s background, her childhood, and
the onset of her illness. But then he asked a question that no
psychiatrist ever had: How was Mary’s gut? Did she suffer digestive
upset? Constipation or diarrhea? Acid reflux? Had Mary’s digestion
seemed to change at all before or during her illness? Her parents looked
at each other. The answer to many of the doctor’s questions was,
indeed, “Yes.”
That’s what prompted
Greenblatt to take a surprising approach: besides psychotherapy and
medication, Greenblatt also prescribed Mary a twice-daily dose of
probiotics, the array of helpful bacteria that lives in our gut. The
change in Mary was nothing short of miraculous: within six months, her
symptoms had greatly diminished. One year after the probiotic
prescription, there was no sign that Mary had ever been ill.
Her parents may have been
stunned, but to Greenblatt, Mary’s case was an obvious one. An imbalance
in the microbes in Mary’s gut was either contributing to, or causing,
her mental symptoms. “The gut is really your second brain,” Greenblatt
said. “There are more neurons in the GI tract than anywhere else except
the brain.”
Greenblatt’s provocative idea —
that psychiatric woes can be solved by targeting the digestive system —
is increasingly reinforced by cutting-edge science. For decades,
researchers have known of the connection between the brain and the gut.
Anxiety often causes nausea and diarrhea, and depression can change
appetite. The connection may have been established, but scientists
thought communication was one way: it traveled from the brain to the
gut, and not the other way around.
But now, a new understanding
of the trillions of microbes living in our guts reveals that this
communication process is more like a multi-lane superhighway than a
one-way street. By showing that changing bacteria in the gut can change
behavior, this new research might one day transform the way we
understand — and treat — a variety of mental health disorders.
For decades, researchers have known of the connection between the brain and the gut
For Greenblatt, this radical
treatment protocol has actually been decades in the making. Even during
his psychiatric residency at George Washington University, he was
perplexed by the way mental disorders were treated. It was as if, he
said, the brain was totally separate from the body. More than 20 years
of work treating eating disorders emphasized Greenblatt’s hunch: that
the connection between body and mind was more important than
conventional psychiatry assumed. “Each year, I get more and more
impressed at how important the GI tract is for healthy mood and the
controlling of behavior,” Greenblatt said. Among eating disorder
patients, Greenblatt found that more than half of psychiatric complaints
were associated with problems in the gut — and in some patients, he
says he has remedied both using solely high-dose probiotics, along with
normalizing eating.
Greenblatt’s solution might
strike us as simple, but he’s actually targeting a vast, complex, and
mysterious realm of the human body: around 90 percent of our cells are
actually bacterial, and bacterial genes outnumber human genes by a
factor of 99 to 1. But those bacteria, most of which perform helpful
functions, weren’t always with us: a baby is essentially sterile until
it enters the birth canal, at which point the bacteria start to arrive —
and they don’t stop. From a mother’s vaginal microbes to hugs and
kisses from relatives, the exposures of newborns and toddlers in their
earliest years is critical to the development of a robust microbiome.
Greenblatt's actually targeting a vast, complex, and mysterious realm of the human body
In fact, recent research
suggests that early microbiome development might play a key role in at
least some aspects of one’s adult mental health. One 2011 study out of McMaster University
compared the behaviors of normal eight-week-old mice and mice whose
guts were stripped of microbes. Bacteria-free mice exhibited higher
levels of risk-taking, and neurochemical analysis revealed higher levels
of the stress hormone cortisol and altered levels of the brain chemical
BDNF, which has been implicated in human anxiety and depression. “This
work showed us that anxiety was normal, and that the gut-brain axis was
involved in that,” Jane Foster, the study’s lead author, said.
“Everybody knew that stress and anxiety could lead to gastrointestinal
symptoms, but we looked at it from the bottom up and showed that the gut
could communicate with the brain. It was the first demonstration that
the gut itself could influence brain development.”
Subsequent research out of McMaster
further enforces those findings, by showing that swapping one mouse’s
gut bacteria with that of another can significantly alter behavior.
Researchers transplanted microbes from one group of mice, which were
characterized by timidity, into the guts of mice who tended to take more
risks. What they observed was a complete personality shift: timid mice
became outgoing, while outgoing mice became timid. “It’s good evidence
that the microbiota houses these behaviors,” Foster said.
While researchers have
established a compelling link between gut bacteria and mental health,
they’re still trying to figure out the extent to which the human
microbiome — once it’s populated in early childhood — can be
transformed. “The brain seems to be hardwired for anxiety by puberty and
early adolescence,” Foster said. If the microbiome is part of that
hardwiring, then it would suggest that once we pass a certain threshold,
the impact of bacterial tweaks on problems like depression and anxiety
might wane.
In one Japanese study,
for instance, researchers were only able to change the baseline stress
characteristics of germ-free mice until nine weeks of age. After that,
no variety of bacterial additions to the mice’s guts could properly
regulate stress and anxiety levels. The explanation for this phenomenon
might lie in what’s known as “developmental programming” — the idea that
various environmental factors, to which we’re exposed early on, greatly
determine the structure and function of organs including the gut and
the brain.
“There are changes that happen
early in life that we can’t reverse,” said John Cryan, a neuroscientist
at the University of Cork in Ireland and a main investigator at the
Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre. “But there are some changes that we can
reverse. It tells us that there is a window when microbes are having
their main effects and, until this closes, many changes can be
reversed.”
Even if our gut bacteria
carries the biggest influence when we’re young, experts like Greenblatt
and Cryan are still convinced that tweaking these bacteria later in life
can yield profound behavioral and psychological changes. In a study led by Cryan, anxious mice dosed with the probiotic bacterium Lactobacillus rhamnosus (JB-1)
showed lower levels of anxiety, decreased stress hormones, and even an
increase in brain receptors for a neurotransmitter that’s vital in
curbing worry, anxiety, and fear.
John Bienenstock, a co-author
on that study, compared the probiotics’ effects to benzodiazepines like
Valium and Xanax. “The similarity is intriguing. It doesn’t prove they
both use the same pathway [in the brain], but it’s a possibility.”
Although plenty of questions
remain, the benefits of using probiotics to treat human behavior are
becoming increasingly obvious. Yogurts like Dannon’s Activia have been
marketed with much success as a panacea for all of our intestinal ills.
Other probiotic supplements have claimed to support immune health.
Probiotics’ potential to treat human behavior is increasingly apparent,
but will manufacturers one day toss an anxiety-fighting blend into their
probiotic brews?
Experts are convinced that tweaking these bacteria later in life can yield profound behavioral and psychological changes
It’s a distinct possibility: in one 2013 proof-of-concept study,
researchers at UCLA showed that healthy women who consumed a drink with
four added probiotic strains twice daily for four weeks showed
significantly altered brain functioning on an fMRI brain scan. The
women’s brains were scanned while they looked at photos of angry or sad
faces, and then asked to match those with other faces showing similar
emotions.
Those who had consumed the
probiotic drink showed significantly lower brain activity in the neural
networks that help drive responses to sensory and emotional behavior.
The research is “groundbreaking,” Cryan said, because it’s the first
trial to show that probiotics could affect the functioning of the human
brain. Still, he notes that the results need to be interpreted with
care.
As the research community
increasingly lends credence to Greenblatt’s ideas, and public awareness
about gut bacteria grows, he’s confident we’ll soon know more about the
power of probiotics. “Because of the commercials and the other
information that’s out there, patients are beginning to ask,” he said.
“They’re much more aware of how important probiotics are.”
Whether all of our mental woes
respond to probiotic treatment as dramatically as Greenblatt’s patient
Mary remains to be seen. “We have to be very cautious in this field not
to be too hyperbolic about what we promise,” Cryan said. Indeed,
scientists still aren’t sure exactly which microbial species are part of
a healthy microbiome, nor do they know whether certain bacterial
strains are absolutely vital to mental functioning, or whether the right
balance is what’s key. Furthermore, research still hasn’t parsed which
illnesses might be affected by the microbiome and, therefore, treatable
using probiotics. “There are beginning to be suggestions that this type
of probiotic treatment is worth pursuing,” Bienenstock said. “Whether we
can use this to improve people’s lives, well, the door is just
beginning to open on this.”
Again, if this is you or someone you know, please consider reading more about the "Ultra Flora" products or "Ultra Flora Acute Care", which are the highest quality pro-biotics that I know of. You can click here to get into my "store" and learn more. Your body, mind, and soul health might depend on it.
"Beloved, I pray that in all respects you may prosper and be in good health, just as your soul prospers."
3 John 1:2