Ways that your Gut Microbiome might be affecting your Mental Health
What is Gut Microbiome?
The gut microbiome refers to all of the microbes in your intestines. Your colon has trillions of bacterial cells which make up a unique ecosystem called the gut microbiome.
If your gut microbiome is imbalanced (dysbiosis), then your overall mood can be affected. That’s because the activity of your gut bacteria affects stress and anxiety — a balanced microbiome can improve your stress resilience, but an imbalanced one can affect your mental health.
Gut Brain Axis
The gut and the brain are connected by the vagus nerve. This component of the autonomic nervous system which enables you to breathe, digest food, and swallow automatically. Its able to send messages to your brain from your colon and vice versa.
Gut bacteria break down food, particularly dietary fibre, and transform it into metabolites like short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs). These are detected by the nerve which then sends data to the brain, allowing the regulation of digestive processes.
On the other hand, when the vagus nerve is impaired by stress (that directs energy and attention to your muscles and brain), it can’t react effectively to inflammation, which is bad for your gut and your gut bacteria. And that’s why your vagus nerve is so important.
This connection explains how stress can take a toll on your digestion and how digestive problems can affect your mental health.
When the body is exposed to stress various changes occur. Stress releases cortisol and major resources are directed to the muscles and the brain.
As someone who has suffered from IBS most of my life I have experienced how anxiety and stress affect my digestion and vice versa.
Long periods of stress, creating high levels of cortisol.
High cortisol levels can also cause inflammation of your digestive tract and throw off the balance between the beneficial and harmful bacteria that live in your digestive tract. Stress can also affect the muscles of your intestines, which prevents your bowels from filtering out harmful gut bacteria.
Can you relate? Think back to a stressful time in your life, how was your digestion? And vice versa. When you have had a stomach bug or eaten something that has affected your digestion? How did you feel mentally?
How can Kinesiology Help?
We will work together to review your situation holistically. Looking at your lifestyle, diet and mental well being.
Stress is the main factor that affects the gut microbiome (as we know from the gut brain axis).
We will work on supporting you through the stressful situation/s you are experiencing or have experienced in your life.
Helping you to regulated your nervous system and working with the vagus nerve to reduce the stress signals being set from the brain to the gut and body.
We will work on limiting beliefs in relation to why you maybe choosing a certain lifestyle or why you maybe feeling stressed. Whilst working with the nervous system to feel safe, secure and grounded in your body.
For example: I need to work X hours whilst maintaining a social life, being a mother and wife. I don’t have time to put myself first and support my gut health.
We will help you to feel empowered, to live the life you wish to live. Whilst also feeling calm and grounded within your body. Giving you tools to support yourself on a daily basis.
Inflammation
To support your health, your gut microbiome needs to be diverse, and diversity helps keep it balanced. However, if it is not balanced — something called dysbiosis — opportunistic microbes can take advantage and proliferate, resulting in inflammation.
That’s because your body doesn’t want opportunistic bacteria, so your immune system is alerted, resulting in inflammation. Interestingly, inflammation can contribute to depression, and depression can cause inflammation. But a diverse microbiome can prevent inflammation.
So, controlling inflammation can help to improve both mood and anxiety levels. Diet is one way to increase the abundance of diverse microbes and reduce inflammation.
What is butyrate?
Butyrate is an essential short-chain fatty acid produced by good gut bacteria.
Butyrate is the main source of fuel for the cells of your gut lining, so it helps keep this barrier strong and intact. It also helps prevent inflammation, which can be bad for your mood. A new study even shows that butyrate might help you grow new brain cells. However, if you have dysbiosis, your gut bacteria might make less important nutrients, including butyrate.
The great news is you can actively contribute to the butyrate production in your gut through your diet. See next slide for details.
One way is by eating prebiotics: foods which directly provide sustenance to your gut bacteria, like fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and pulses. These contain fibre which is transformed into SCFAs like butyrate. So, increasing your intake will positively affect your health!
Probiotics and depression
Probiotic bacteria provide many health benefits, including for the brain. They naturally reside in the gut but are also found in supplements and fermented foods, like yoghurt and kefir. Bifidobacterium, Lactobacillus, and Lactococcus species are all examples of probiotics because they support your whole-body and improve mental health too.
Psychobiotics is a field which investigates the effects of probiotics and mental health. Some research shows that certain Lactobacillus species (These microbes are VIP members of a happy and balanced gut microbiome), improve stress resilience and anxiety. Some studies even show that taking probiotics can help alleviate symptoms of depression.
Probiotics help to support human health by keeping the gut ecosystem balanced and preventing dysbiosis (Imbalance in the gut microbiome). By doing so, beneficial bacteria can thrive and contribute to your health and butyrate production.
Prebiotics
Upping your probiotic intake will help but to reap all their health benefits you need to keep them nourished. Prebiotics keep your gut bacteria sustained, energised and thriving.
Research has also shown that consuming prebiotics is also associated with a reduction in anxiety-related behaviour. So it’s important to never underestimate the role of your diet in improving mental wellbeing.
They are found in plant based foods, alongside polyphenols and resistant starches. These all nourish the gut bacteria creating vitamins etc. Foods include:
Prebiotic fibres
Resistant starches
Polyphenols
Garlic
Legumes
Onion
Onions
Seeds
Apples
Berries
Grains
Tea
Jerusalem artichokes
Cooked and cooled potatoes
Cocoa
Mushrooms
Green bananas
Red wine
Rye
Plantain
Red fruit
Barley
Corn
Soybeans
What should we be eating?
Certain foods, especially those high in fibre, promote butyrate production in the gut: flax and chia seeds; beans and lentils; high-pectin fruits, such as apples and berries; and vegetables like garlic and onions.
Consume probiotic foods such as fermented milk kefir, sauerkraut, tempeh, and miso.
Increase your intake of prebiotic vegetables such as bananas, fennel, asparagus, cold potatoes, onions, garlic, leeks, fennel, Jerusalem artichokes, pak choi.
Consume bone broth/stock.
Try and reduce caffeine, alcohol and refine sugars.
Time restricted feeding is also suggested, which involves fasting for twelve hours between dinner and breakfast, to allow the gut time to stimulate gut bacteria regrowth overnight.
Please be aware these are all suggestions. For specific and personal diet plan suggestions, aligned with your unique situation, please see a nutritionist.
Your unique gut microbiome
The composition of your gut microbiome can tell you a lot about what is going on inside your body. Everyone’s gut microbiome is unique but keeping it diverse produces substances which increase mood-lifting chemicals, like serotonin and GABA.
Gut microbiome and mood disorders
Many researchers are undergoing studies into how the gut microbiome affects mood disorders. An extract from science.org:
1064 Dutch people whose microbiomes had also been sampled—they found the same two species were missing among those who were depressed, and they were also missing in seven subjects suffering from severe clinical depression.
Looking for something that could link microbes to mood, Raes and his colleagues compiled a list of 56 substances important for proper nervous system function that gut microbes either produce or break down. They found, for example, that Coprococcus seems to have a pathway related to dopamine, a key brain signal involved in depression, although they have no evidence how this might protect against depression. The same microbe also makes an anti-inflammatory substance called butyrate, and increased inflammation is implicated in depression.
The extract also stated Linking the absence of the bacteria to depression "makes sense physiologically,".
But no one is certain how microbial compounds made in the gut might influence the brain. Mentioning again the vagus nerve which links the gut and the brain and how this maybe a key factor in the connection between gut microbiome and mood disorders.
What this space!
Vagus nerve
The role of the vagus nerve in digestion:
Motility — helps food move through digestive tract
Digestion — stimulates the release of digestive enzymes
Appetite — communicates satiety to the brain
Supporting the vagus nerve helps to reduce stress. As we know stress also affects the body. When we are stressed we release more cortisol. This can take its toll on the body short and long term.
Shorter term
Longer term, high levels of cortisol release for long periods of time (long periods of stress) affect the gut microbiome and can lead to ‘leaky gut’.
With the gut brain axis the release of cortisol sends signals to the brain and major resources are directed to the muscles and the brain. Theses signals coursing through the body are getting you ready for ‘threat’. Putting you into fight or flight.
This is another reason why high levels of stress, being ‘stuck’ in fight or flight for longer periods affect the body. Especially your digestion.
Conclusion
Its time to start looking at the body holistically. We are a complex physical form with a powerful mental state.
Start asking yourself these questions?:
- Is my diet affecting my mental health?
- Am I taking responsibility for my diet? During the week AND at the weekend (remembering how much alcohol and high sugar diets affect the gut microbiome)
- Am I looking at my body holistically?
An imbalanced microbiome or dysbiosis is associated with many diseases including mood disorders like depression. Including depression can cause inflammation which can affect the gut and vice versa. Research shows that probiotics and prebiotics are having positive affects on depression, anxiety and stress resilience.
Ref:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5470704/#:~:text=Consume%20probiotic%20foods%20such%20as,Consume%20bone%20broth%2Fstock.
https://www.northeastdigestive.com/blog/how-stress-affects-your-stomach/#:~:text=High%20cortisol%20levels%20can%20also,filtering%20out%20harmful%20gut%20bacteria.