Take Care of Your Gut
By Jyoti Pachisia
The way fear, anxiety, love — are felt in the gut, microbes too have impact on brain and feelings. Taking care of gut may avert certain psychological troubles.
Multiple investigations revealed how gut microbiome has influence our physical health and mental well- being. These include digestion, metabolism, weight loss, immune function, autoimmune complication, blood-sugar control and cardiovascular function, as well as mood, anxiety, depression and other internal health issues. There's also growing evidence that the specific makeup of each person's gut flora affects how-- and how well-- they digest and metabolize different foods. That works the other way around, too, in that the foods you eat can directly affect the health of your gut microbiome.
The portrait of the gut- brain axis has evolved in recent decades and the number of mental health diseases related to gut microbiota changes is on the rise. Psychobiotics are one of the new alternate remedies that target the gut to help the brain. In order to develop a substance that targets the microbiome to help palliate some mental health diseases, researchers need to find the bacteria involved in different mental health illnesses.
Our bodies are covered in microbes, inside as well as outside. These microbes change as per niche of the body and the local settings.
Generally, commensal microbial communities ward off incoming pathogens enhancing the health of the local body niche. When the number and composition of helpful commensal microbes are broke, the performing dysbiosis can have serious effects on our health.
For instance, the oral microbiome fights pathogens like Porphyromonas gingivalis . These can else result periodontitis, a condition that destroys the tissue around your teeth. Likewise, a dysbiosis of the vaginal microbiome can affect in the growth of vaginosis-causing microbes. The microbiota – gut – brain (MGB) axis represents the bidirectional communication between the brain and the gut microbiota. Numerous factors impact this interaction the immune system and its chemokines and cytokines; metabolic pathways and metabolic products as well as the central nervous system and its stress hormones and neurotransmitters.
Different bacterial species can metabolise these hormones, metabolites and neurotransmitters in the gut. Furthermore, stress and feelings affect the stashing of gastric acid, bile and mucus. Together, these factors alter the terrain for microbes and therefore the composition of the gut microbiome.
Numerous factors like diet, physical exercise, medicinal treatment or geographical point impact the gut microbiome composition. By shaping the gut microbiome and therefore the produced metabolites, these factors also impact our mental health status and geste.
For illustration, studies delved the effects of foods that contain probiotic strains like Bifidobacterium infantis,B. longum, Lactobacillus helveticus ROO52,L. rhamnosus JB-1 orL. casei strain Shirota. These probiotic foods were shown to reduce depressive-and anxiety- alike behaviour, memory dysfunction and even physical symptoms during stressful times.
Also, prebiotics like fructooligosaccharide and galactooligosaccharide have analogous impacts on our psychological health and cognitive geste. Researchers claim that prebiotics increase the relative abundance of good microorganisms and hence shape the MGB axis
We can sway our gut microbiome and mental health with other than food. For instance, physical exercise not only helps the immune system and metabolism. It also leads to a richer gut microbiome that helps metabolise lactic acid from the muscle to produce further short- chain fatty acids.
Microbial communities across our bodies play vital places in our physical and cerebral health. By taking care of our gut microbiome, we eventually shape our own mental health and cognitive actions.
It seems that the expressions “You’re what you eat” and “Eat what makes you happy” is true. And, we understand it now!
Reference
1. https://lovelace.com/news/blog/taking-care-your-gut-101
2. https://www.providence.org/news/uf/674632899?streamId=5696608
