About 40 trillion bacteria are living inside your body right now. Most of them reside in your gut and don’t cause any health problems. Besides all those little bugs, you are composed of roughly 30 trillion human cells. Based on widely accepted democratic principles, if each cell in your body were given a vote, a bacteria would be elected president in a landslide. The panoply of microorganisms (bacteria, fungi, virus, etc.), including their genetic material, which naturally exist within your body are called the microbiome, with the majority being gut microbiota.
The best way to maintain a healthy balance of gut bacteria is to live a healthy lifestyle and eat well. Certain foods, like yogurt, are chock full of live active cultures. If you choose your yogurt wisely, it may have billions of probiotics in each cup.
“What’s all that got to do with my brain?”
A healthy microbiome is important for more than just your colonic health. Science has revealed that probiotics can also benefit the brain. The gastrointestinal tract and the brain are chemically connected by a bi-directional signaling pathway called The Brain-Gut Axis.
The gut communicates with the brain through your gut microbes, which produce molecules that carry information to the brain. Each of these bacteria can produce different substances that might affect the brain. These include bacterial genetic material, short-chain fatty acids, neurotransmitters, and amino acids. Gut bacteria can also influence the brain and central nervous system by controlling inflammation, modulating the immune system and hormone production (neuroendocrine mechanisms). Some bacteria and their metabolites might target the brain via a different pathway; stimulation of the vagus nerve (an extremely long nerve that wanders from the brain along the breadth of the gastrointestinal tract). In 2020, scientists from New York determined that sugar in the gastrointestinal tract can affect the brain even before it’s digested. The researchers reported that the branches of the vagal nerve sense the gut sugar and send electrical signals up to the brainstem and cause sugar craving. If scientists find a way to break the circuit, we might win the fight against obesity and diabetes
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Probiotics may benefit mental health.
The family of probiotics that may affect mental health has been termed ‘Psychobiotics’. Bifidobacteria, Streptococcus, Lactobacillus, and Lactococcus have all been used as Psychobiotics. Scientists have administered Psychobiotics to both patients and healthy volunteers and have reported some interesting findings. Researchers have found that Psychobiotics may affect the brain regions that control emotion and sensation. In various studies, scientists have reported that probiotics may reduce symptoms of depression, reduce negative thoughts associated with a sad mood and increase feelings of well-being. Psychobiotics have been reported to be helpful in alleviating some aspects of schizophrenia in some patients.
Several research teams have discovered that people with certain mental health conditions (clinically diagnosed depression, anxiety and psychological distress) also have an altered gut microbiota. A literature review in 2017 linked gut microbe abnormalities to alcoholism, drug addiction and eating disorders.
In 2018, Australian scientists speculated on which was the chicken and which was the egg. In other words, whether the imbalance of gut bacteria contributed to the patients’ mental health conditions or whether depressed people have an altered diet and lifestyle, which may have caused the gut imbalance independent from the mental condition.
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A great book on this topic is Brain Maker by Dr David Perlmutter. After reading that book I started making my own probiotic yogurt using his recommended strains of probiotic and organic cream.