Very interesting show worth a listen on NPR. This is an exploding area of research that’s going to important effects in the near future:
How Your Gut Bacteria Influences Your Emotions
With guest host Jane Clayson.
Can bacteria in your gut influence your brain? Your mood? Your emotions? Top scientists say yes.
The human body is crawling with trillions of microorganisms. They outnumber human cells. Scientists think this gut bacteria could play a key role in how our bodies run. More and more researchers are looking not just at how the microbiome affects our health, but how it could affect our brain. Beyond digestion and stomach diseases. To how we think and feel. Tying gut bacteria to anxiety, depression, and other disorders. And the medical potential could be huge. This hour On Point: we’re going deep into the gut and the bacteria that could have a big impact on our entire body.
Gut microbiota is an interesting area of emerging research. I’m skeptical of the tendency for the concept to be as far-reaching as some of the current articles in the “less-scientific” publications claim…and I certainly see this as a ripe area for hucksters and scammers. However, there is an increasing amount of data in actual peer-reviewed literature, particularly as it relates to obesity, that strongly suggests that gut microbiota might play a significant role.
I’m very interested to see how this plays out. It’s an area where pharmacological management might not apply. Maybe get into a potentially weird area where OTC “supplements” play the major role, or it might be as simple as dietary modification.
I’m a natural skeptic when it comes to this stuff, but I confess, I’m taking probiotics these days.
It would be nice if someone would develop a better way to deliver probiotics to the gut in a broad spectrum of biotics, so that one could easily improvev the gut bacteria, without having to do a fecal transplant… blech! I know they say you should mostly just eat raw fruits and veggies etc, clean but unwashed. Yet that does not guarantee you will get the good bacteria into your gut, only a widely varied batch…
There is much to this theory. If you suffer from Crohn’s disease, Ulcerative Colitis, Diverticulitis, Celiac, and a bunch of other digestive issues, this is a great book, written in 1994, that opened my eyes:
One of the most enlightening parts of the book for me was eating and moods/emotions. I have celiac disease. Always had gut pain and joint pain when I ate wheat, but never understood what was going on until I learned what I had and eliminated gluten from my diet. Not only did much of my chronic gut pain and body ached go away, so did my quick temper and occasional, minor anxiety issues. I used to wake up in the middle of the night in cold sweats at least once a week. Thats gone since giving up almost all wheat several years ago.
And if you have kid who’s diagnosed with ADD, autism, etc., this book addresses that as well. There are many amazing reviews at the Amazon link above…
Lot’s of crap available on the subject, with a lot of “authorities” giving opinions and writing books. On the positive side, almost everything those folks talk about is not harmful, so no downside to following the suggestions. Those things will never gain acceptance in mainstream medicine until it comes from Level 1 evidence and presented in peer-reviewed journals rather than books on Amazon. Those studies are starting to happen. It’s a very interesting field but way premature to base rational medical treatment on what little we know so far.
Fecal transplant has shown promise in treating chronic C. dificil infections. There are currently no adequately-powered studies that support the use of fecal transplant or other microbiota-driven therapies in the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease, nor divertulculitis, nor celiac disease. And then we throw in its magic effect on ADD, autism, and other such maladies and we truly have a charlatan’s dream opportunity here. All we need is to gather some shit from people and market it as a cure-all.
A coworker of mine has had Chron’s for about 15 years, and hasn’t exhibited any symptoms for approximately 5 years, after starting inner-eco probiotics. He’d experimented with various other probiotics and didn’t see improvement til starting the inner-eco. I was pretty amazed by this story, due to having a great personal friend who struggles with Chron’s as well, and my wife who’s been dealing with Ulcerative Colitis for about 14 years now.
My wife had fiddled with various probiotics without much in the way of positive results so she’d kind of sidelined the idea. She’s taken everything from Prednisone to prescription enemas. The latest drug she’d been prescribed by her Gastro was Lialda which has had minimal positive effects, especially during a flare up. After hearing my coworkers story we decided to give the inner-eco a shot and have been met with fantastic results!
She’d noticed quite an improvement in the first 2 weeks but continued the Lialda in conjunction with the probiotic. The past 2 weeks she’s been Lialda free and her only supplement to combat the effects of her UC is the inner-eco. In her words, “I feel 1000% better!”
We buy ours at Wegman’s here in NY but I know it’s carried in places like Whole Foods as well. It’s in the refrigerated section and cost about $15 for a bottle, which lasts 1 month. Our store only offers the Berry Flavor currently and doesn’t taste bad at all.
I have no financial interest in inner-eco, Whole Foods, Wegman’s or anything else even remotely related to the health industry. I simply wanted to pass on 2 first hand accounts of people having dramatic improvements in their quality of life, utilizing the same supplement. I have no idea if it’s their specific probiotic, their suspension liquid or something involved in their process, but I know it’s worked amazingly well for 2 people I know personally, and I hope that someone else benefits from their experience.