How the Gut Microbiome Affects Your Mental Health
Happy New Year
There is something special about this time of the year. For a lot of people it means a fresh new clean slate and a chance to leave things behind that are no longer serving you.
It is also something to be celebrated that our days are beginning to feel longer. After such a long period of darkness leading up to the winter solstice (December 21st) I couldn’t help being affected by the lack of light.
The first signs that I knew my mental health was being impacted was that I felt more sluggish and tired and with the holidays fast approaching, I felt a lot of stress and pressure and before you know it, my diet was out the window! I had allowed myself to indulge to the point where I felt sick both physically and mentally.
Who can relate to this?
So that is why I want to really focus on the relationship of food and mental health this coming month. I feel that the pressure continues for us to set these resolutions which in all honesty most of us are not going to be able to maintain.
I would like to offer an alternative to the conventional new years tradition of resolutions.
Instead of setting goals, why don’t we set intentions?
I invite you to examine where you are and how you got there. And with that understanding, where we want to go this year?
And then set the intention and take the first step towards that direction.
For me, I realized how much being in the water has a profound healing effect on my body and my mind. So my intention is to be out in the water as much as I can.
This “something” that you set your intention to should feel good and organic, not forced. I never have to force myself to take my board out in the ocean, no matter how cold it is. But I do need some discipline in sleeping earlier and having a bedtime routine in place so I can wake up early and get out to surf before going to work. So my area of focus would be creating a bedtime routine so I can make space to do what I love.
What is yours?
Also, while we are on the subject of what makes us feel good, I just want to bring intentionality to the fuel we put in our body. I am talking about food and how it not only affects our physical health but also our mental health.
I want to specifically get back to the gut microbiome and how it affects our mental health.
You might have heard of the “Gut Brain Axis” before. And if you haven’t let me break it down for you. The Gut-Brain Axis is exactly how it sounds. The connection or communication between your brain and your gut. There are many ways that your brain communicates with your gut.
It does so using chemical neurotransmitters. Some of which you might have heard of such as dopamine and serotonin which have been known to be “feel good” neurotransmitters. Did you know that there is more serotonin and dopamine in the gut than in your brain? About 90% of serotonin is in the gut! How did it get there? Well the bacteria in your gut (your microbiome) helps make them! These hormones then affect your mood, sleep and digestion! Do you see how they are all interconnected now?
The other way the brain and the gut communicate is through the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis (HPA-Axis or short). Simply put, the hypothalamus or the “thermostat” of your brain detects changes in your body and sends signals to the adrenal glands that sit on top your kidneys to secrete hormones, such as cortisol in times of stress. This cortisol helps us adapt to the short term stress but can have some adverse effects long term effects if we are constantly under stressed such as weight gain.
Lastly, we got the good ol cranial nerve 10, the vagus nerve!. The word vagus comes from the latin roots vagabond, meaning “wanderer”. It got this name because the vagus nerve is the longest cranial nerve, traveling through several vital organs such as your heart and your gut collecting signals prior to relaying this information to the brain. This is why sometimes people describe having a “gut feeling” when something is kind of “off”. It could be their vagus nerve telling them information! The vagus nerve influences the parasympathetic nervous system or the “rest and digest”. Basically the opposite of stress or flight or fight. The parasympathetic nervous system then affects our digestion, hence the “digest” part, our heart rate which we can expect to slow down when we are relaxed and even our immune system! As we covered in the last newsletter article, 70% of immune cells are in the gut!
So what does this all have to do with our mental health?
Well, if I have not made the point yet, our gut and our brain are intricately connected through various systems I mentioned above. When one thing happens to one, it also affects the other.
Let me give some more concrete examples that have been discovered in recent experiments.
Remember the fecal transplant situation I spoke about in the last article? That is inoculating fecal matter from one organism to another. In humans, this has now become an acceptable treatment for a highly antibiotic resistant bacteria called Colostrum Difficile. So we take fecal matter from a healthy human and introduce it to the colon of the person with the infection with the hopes that the bacteria or microbiome of the healthy person will populate the person with the C. Diff infection thus controlling the growth of the bacteria.
In Mice models, they took sterile mice, that is mice with no bacteria in them and inoculated them with fecal matter from humans with major depressive disorder and the outcome was that the mice became depressed. They measured this in several ways including stressing them out and seeing how long it will take them to give up. I know, poor mice. But what this shows us is that taking the microbiome of an individual with depression has an effect on the mental health of mice that did not have those symptoms prior to the introduction of the microbiome. This was also true for mice that were inoculated with fecal matter from obese individuals suggesting some relationship between the microbiome and metabolic disorders.
It is interesting that people who suffer from mental health disorders are also more likely to have chronic metabolic disorders and in a large number of cases, it is the metabolic disorders that results in the mortality of these individuals. The medications we use to treat many mental health conditions also have side effects that worsen metabolic disorders, so this is an area that we need to do more research on.
Well that is on mice you might say, what about humans? Obviously there are some ethical considerations in carrying out such research on animals let alone humans so let us pull on some human research that is available.
People who were inoculated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) produced from the bacteria e.coli, yes the same bacteria that causes food poisoning and urinary tract infections lead to social withdrawal, low mood and motivation. LPS has a known inflammatory effect. This is important as we are discovering more and more, the effects of inflammation in brain health such as in dementia for example.
There are also certain differences in the gut microbiome between the lifestyle choices of people. Let us take athletes for example. Runners were discovered to have a more abundant veillonella in their gut, a type of bacteria that breaks down lactic acid that responsible for muscle soreness after a workout.
Another example showed that rugby players have higher gut microbiome diversity which was linked to protein-rich diets and intense exercise, suggesting improved gut health, energy metabolism, and potentially reduced inflammation.
So what can we learn from this?
Well it is clear that there is a relationship between our gut and how we feel. For patients who have already tried conventional psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy, yet continue to experience persistent symptoms of low mood and anxiety, it could be worthwhile to investigate gut health as a frontier in improving mental health.
The very aspect of being intentional with your relationship with food, such as learning about the sources of your food, how it is processed and how it arrived to your plate gives one a sense of connection to food and thus creates agency or choice. The skill of learning how to read food labels gives one a sense of control over their health. Lastly, learning how to prepare food and share it with others also affects our mental health in a positive way. And of course, the energy we get from eating healthy foods all contribute to our overall wellbeing including our mental and emotional health.
If you are curious to learn more about your gut health, I offer detailed gut microbiome testing that maps out your gut microbiome. This allows us to see exactly the types of bacteria that exists in your gut and determine which of these bacteria can be causing your symptoms. This will allow us to select treatments that promote a healthy microbiome to support your mental and physical wellbeing.
Now before I leave you with the free 3 take-aways, I just want to encourage you to share this newsletter with someone you think would benefit from it.
If you are a patient of mine, I would love to hear your feedback through my google review page. This helps me out tremendously.
https://g.page/r/CdJQzrg0M_R1EAE/review
Have a happy new year and I’ll write to you next month. It will be the last of the 3 part gut microbiome series and we will examine how chronic illness is linked to gut health.
For now here are 3 things you can do to promote your gut health right now.
Diversity your plant portfolio
Eat 30 different plants per week. It sounds a lot but plants come in many shapes and forms including beans, pulses, legumes, seeds, roots, grains. Just 5 different plants a day will let you achieve that target. So if for breakfast, you had oatmeal and you put in some berries, nuts and seeds in that bowl, you’ve already knocked out a couple out of the five. Last time, I spoke about increasing fibre in your diet . How much Fibre? 25-30grams. Most people are getting only 10grams per day in North America. The fibre becomes food for your gut microbiome. They absolutely love fibre!
Eat with others
This is an important determinant to your mental wellbeing. Eating together with someone you care about 2 - 3 times a week could have a profound impact on your mental health. Eating has been a social and cultural part of our society and eating together allows us to be present, slow down and share a positive experience with one another.
Eat mindfully
Focus on eating when eating. Be mindful, chew slowly, smell and taste your food. Put away the phone during this time. No screens. Do not eat while working. Eat with intentionality. Remember that your body needs to be in a state of “rest and digest” in order to assimilate the food you ate. It needs to be in this state in order to release the acids and enzymes for digestion. It also promotes motility which will help you digest your food.