Cutting edge science is discovering that to an extraordinary degree, not only physical health, but brain and mental health is dictated by what goes on in the gut.
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The microbiome is the collection of bacteria in the GI tract, and for years we always thought that our thoughts and our feelings affect our GI tract, so we might get stomach aches, we might get diarrhoea when we are nervous. But over the past 20 years or so we now understand that the gut can affect brain function. The amount of bacteria that we harbour in our GI tract is massive. There are more cells, more bacterial cells in our gut than there is in our entire body, three to four pounds of total weight of bacteria, and what we are finding is that this collection of bacteria, this microbiome if you will, has tremendous neurophysiological effects on mood and behaviour and appetite.
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It was renowned Greek physician Hippocrates who said that 'all disease begins in the gut'. Today we take a closer look at how scientists are starting to see the gut as our second brain.
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We know that the gut, for example, makes more than 90% of very important neurotransmitters, like the happy chemical serotonin that is the reason people take antidepressants, to raise that chemical. More than 90% of that is made in the gut. The gut plays a huge role in detoxifying the body, keeping the brain in a healthy state. The gut manufactures various vitamins that are critically important for the brain.
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So when we see changes in the gut bacteria resulting in inflammation, driving down available serotonin, it gives us a strong connection in terms of our understanding as to why depression is now looked upon as representing an inflammatory disease.
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One of the most studied is the action of a chemical that lives in the gut, it's called LPS, it stands for lipopolysaccharide. When it gets through the gut wall, when the gut wall isn't functioning appropriately, in other words when the bacteria are imbalanced or when we've consumed certain foods that challenge the gut lining or take certain medications that challenge the gut lining, then this LPS gets out and stimulates certain white blood cells that then go on to create the chemical mediators of inflammation called cytokines. So this is a process by which changes in the gut through this chemical LPS get out of the gut into the systemic circulation and amp up inflammation.
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James Greenblatt is unusual, being a psychiatrist who treats the gut for mental health issues, but he says that the scepticism in his field is decreasing.
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There is not a robust level of research indicating the effectiveness of, for example, probiotics. But I think the exciting part for me as a clinician, as an individual dealing with patients all the time, and that is that I think the door is open to a whole new area that we never conceptualised before. Now I think I can at least say that I for one as a brain specialist am very hopeful that there are new opportunities to treat patients, but I think that it needs to be done in a very measured, careful, safe way.