Gut Check: Is a Microbiome Imbalance Undermining Your Mental Health?

Trust your gut. Go with your gut. What does your gut say?


Kind of like all that business about following your heart, usually "gut check" talk is figurative, not literal. It's in your head, after all, where you're working things out – in matters of love and logic.

But what if, in a way, what's happening in your gut actually does plays a role in what's going on in your brain? As it turns out, that's precisely the case (and vice versa). There's even a name for it: the gut-brain axis. As described in research, this goes both ways, involving the bidirectional interaction between the nervous system, including the brain, and intestinal function. Increasingly, as more research is done on the gut microbiome – the typically diverse mix of microorganisms living in our guts – and how it affects our health, the importance of these microbiota in influencing the gut-brain interaction is becoming clearer. Building on this foundation, researchers are now developing a better understanding of how the gut microbiome – which may be affected by everything from our genes to what we eat – could also be linked to mental health.

But scientists have pieced together ways the gut microbiome influences health, including impacting immune function and inflammation in the body, which may shed light on how it could affect mental health. Overall, what's becoming clear is that there are health benefits to having a highly diverse microbiome. "This is particularly well-established in the context of allergy and asthma," Lowry notes. "Allergy specifically is related to an overactive immune response. And what we're learning in psychiatry is that [with] both affective disorders like depression and trauma and stressor disorders like PTSD, an increase in inflammation appears to be a risk factor for development of these disorders."

Adds Gilbert: "Think of the immune system and the microbiome as two sides of the same coin. So if you have an imbalance in the microbiome, you have an imbalance in the immune system." Since all things are connected in the body, that can have far-reaching effects. "If you have an imbalance in the microbiome, you're also going to have an imbalance in the kind of chemicals being produced," he says. This can alter the neurotransmitters, or so-called chemical messengers, produced by nerve cells, that communicate with other cells, such as other nerve cells and muscle cells. When neurotransmitters are altered, that "will change how your body senses those neurotransmitters, and hence will alter brain development and brain function," Gilbert says.

Read the article in its entirety on US News.com here:
https://health.usnews.com/wellness/mind/articles/2018-05-01/gut-check-is-a-microbiome-imbalance-undermining-your-mental-health