It is home to trillions of microorganisms, including bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other microscopic germs. welcome to you gut microbiome. It’s housed in your intestines and has been dubbed the body’s “second brain,” with research suggesting that the gut microbiome is responsible for communicating with the nervous system and the immune system, and ultimately, yes, affecting overall mood.
That means what you feed your gut and the health of the microorganisms it contains can play a crucial role in how you feel emotionally on a day-to-day basis.
“The gut and the brain are connected,” he explains. Dr Uma Naidooa nutritional psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and a faculty member at Harvard Medical School. Evidence shows that microorganisms in your gut actually produce neurotransmitters in the brain that become accustomed to affecting processes such as memory, learning, attention, and emotional regulation.
“If there’s an imbalance, that can upset your mood,” says Dr. Naidoo, also an author of the book. This is your brain on food.
The way we feed our bodies affects how we feel, says Dr Drew Ramsey, assistant professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and founder of the Brain Food Clinic in New York City. Think about what happened if he ever tried to sit down and focus on a difficult project at school or work after eating a large amount of fast food.
“Increasingly, the microbiome is implicated in mental health issues,” says Dr. Ramsey, who is also the author of several books, including the most recent Eat to beat depression and anxiety. There are definitely some pretty simple dietary changes we can all make to improve gut and mental health, he says.
What are the ways the gut affects mood and mental health?
Ramsey says that research published in the last two decades is beginning to explain the gut-brain axis and why the gut affects depression, anxiety, stress management and Resilience.
Gut health and depressive symptoms
“Simply changing someone’s diet can decrease depressive symptoms, which goes pretty deep,” he says. Christopher Lowry, Ph.D.behavioral neuroscientist and assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, where his research focuses on the role of the gut microbiome in healing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and anxiety-related disorders.
RELATED: What is the connection between gut health and depression?
A study published in 2017 in the journal BMC Medicine, for example, showed that after a 12-week intervention in which patients who had been previously diagnosed with major depression added social support group or dietary counseling sessions to their usual treatment (patients in both groups attended psychotherapy or were on medication), those who started following a healthier, brain-friendly diet did better. At the end of the trial, 32.3 percent of the participants who focused on transitioning to healthier eating went into full remission from their depression, while only 8 percent of the group assigned to social support did.
Other studies have produced similar results. A meta-analysis of 41 studies published in Molecular Psychiatry in 2018 showed that a plant-rich, gut-healthy diet was linked to a 33 percent lower risk of depression. On the other hand, a pro-inflammatory diet, which included higher amounts of sugar, processed foodsY saturated fat (foods associated with poorer gut health), was associated with an increased risk of depression.
Gut health and stress
More research connects other mood and mental health outcomes with gut health.
in a study published in Brain, behavior and immunity in july 2020Dr. Lowry discovered that injecting mice with a bacterium called Mycobacterium vaccae helped protect stressed rodents against stress-induced anxiety. When the mice were placed with larger, more aggressive companions for 19 days, they showed less fear and stress-induced activity, and were also 50 percent less likely to suffer from stress-induced colitis and had less inflammation throughout the body. .
Lowry is currently working on a clinical trialfunded by the Department of Veterans Affairs, to see if improving gut health in people has the same effect on markers of stress and anxiety.
Gut health and resilience
Other work has found that consuming foods ⎯ such as yogurt, kefir, kimchi, and sauerkraut ⎯ with probiotics (living organisms, usually specific strains of bacteria that are thought to increase microbes that can support gut health) can also help with resilience to anxiety and other stressors.
In a proof of concept study, published in 2013 in the journal gastroenterologyResearchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, followed 36 healthy women ages 18 to 55 for four weeks after dividing them into three groups: one that added two servings a day of probiotic-packed yogurt to their regular diet, another that ate two servings a day of probiotic-free yogurt plus their usual diet, and a third control group continued their usual diet.
At the end of the month, scores on emotion recognition tasks revealed that the group that ate the probiotic yogurt they were calmer and less alarmed by anger and fear triggers compared to the other groups. magnetic resonance The scans showed that the probiotic group also had lower activity in both the insula (the part of the brain that processes internal body sensations) and the prefrontal cortex (which handles emotions) than the others.
“It suggested to us that probiotics may actually change the way our brains respond to the environment around us and build our resistance to a stressor,” says lead author, Dr. Kirsten Tillischchief of integrative medicine at Greater Los Angeles VA and professor of medicine at UCLA, where she researches brain-gut-microbiome interactions and the effects of complementary and alternative interventions on gastrointestinal disorders (The study authors note in the article that the study, however, is small and one of the first trials to show this type of brain-gut communication in people, so the results need to be expanded.)
another little to study which followed 23 students in Japan preparing for a nationally decisive medical school exam found that adding probiotics to the diet can improve self-reported stress as well as quantitative levels of stress hormone cortisol
Why does gut health affect mood?
Ultimately, the mechanisms behind what may be at play between gut health and mood are still unknown, according to Lowry. But researchers have started this work and have hypotheses.
For starters, the gut houses its own nervous system, the enteric nervous system, says Lowry. It does not “think” as the brain does, but it does control the processes of digestion and absorption of nutrients. And it communicates with the brain. Large changes in the enteric nervous system of the gut can send signals to the brain that trigger mood swings, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. This may explain why disorders like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis are often tied to symptoms of depression and anxiety (As Lowry points out, have you ever noticed that your tummy and intestines churn when you’re nervous?)
About 90 percent of the body serotonin production occurs in the intestine, and not in the brain as well, says Naidoo. Serotonin, sometimes dubbed the “happy chemical,” helps regulate mood. Gut bacteria produce a library of neurotransmitters that can affect how we feel, including dopamine, norepinephrineY gamma-aminobutyric acidaccording to a brain research article published in 2019. These chemicals are key players in triggering intense feelings of happiness, reward, or anxiety, says Lowry.
Scientists have also zeroed in on the vagus nerve, which is the crucial component of the parasympathetic nervous system (which controls the body’s ability to relax), as one of the ways the brain and gut are connected. The vagus nerve is capable of transferring intestinal information to the central nervous system, according to a review article published in 2018 in Frontiers in Neuroscience.
Do These 3 Things to Improve Your Gut Health and Boost Your Mood
Try the following steps that can help improve your gut health and therefore improve your mood as well:
1. Eat a rainbow of vegetables
Microorganisms in our gut break down and feed on the dietary fiber found in plants, evidence In turn, they produce key metabolites like short-term fatty acids, which are great for gut health, says Lowry.
Different plants produce different metabolites, and the more diverse the mix you consume, the better.
“When we eat a plant, we are eating its healthy microbiome and that contributes to the diversity of our own. This is not the case when we eat a hamburger,” says Lowry. Spinach, for example, has 800 different types of bacteria to keep it healthy, she says.
ramsey says research suggests that eating 30 different plants per week may be ideal for bolstering the diversity of your microbiome and optimizing gut health. It’s what Ramsey does. he reaches for kale, blueberriesand cinnamon for a breakfast smoothie, then toss a salad with yellow bell peppers, leafy greens, edamame, nuts and seeds for lunch. That means he packed eight plants into just two meals. “Getting to 30 plants in a week isn’t that hard,” she says.
One caveat: If you have IBS, certain vegetables can increase the bacteria that cause and exacerbate symptoms. Learn about your triggers and which vegetables to avoid, or talk to your doctor if you’re not sure.
2. Experiment with fermented foods
Packed with bacteria and yeast, fermented foods are natural probiotics that also increase the diversity of microbes in the gut, says Naidoo. Start adding fermented foods to your diet gradually, says Ramsey. They include:
- Yogurt
- kefir
- Kombucha
- miso
- Sauerkraut
- kimchi
3. Prioritize exercise and sleep
Diet is not the only factor that affects gut health. Making sure you make time to exercise and get enough sleep can also help, Naidoo says: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends 150 minutes a week of physical activity while the National Sleep Foundation suggests that adults should get seven to nine hours of sleep a night.
Research suggests sleep is linked to the diversity of the gut microbiome. And when you exercise, your body releases feelings of well-being. endorphinsoxygen flows better, and research suggests that physical activity activates the production of short-chain fatty acids that promote the intestine.
Make time to meditate, practice mindfulness, take walks in the fresh air, or anything else that can help relieve stress, says Naidoo.
“It’s rare that altering your diet is the only thing you need to do for your mental health,” says Ramsey.
