Hey guys! Jessica here to kickstart our new semester of scientific reporting. Today I wanted to write about something a little bit different: bacteria and the brain. I know bacteria might seem like something that makes us physically ill, but these tiny organisms ('bacteria' is the plural fyi - one called a 'bacterium') actually have a really big impact on our mental health.
Hold onto your hats, we're about to take a ride to our gut, where trillions of bacteria live. It turns out, these bacteria are in pretty constant conversation with our brain. Their connection affects everything from mood swings to more serious mental health conditions, including depression and anxiety. There's a term for their conversation: the gut-brain axis.
One of the craziest things about our gut microbiome is that it’s home to bacteria that produce neurotransmitters - our brain chemical messengers which affect emotions. Serotonin, for example, is not just produced in the brain to make us feel good - in fact, most of it is made in our guts. This is all to say, the bacteria down there are pretty involved in managing how we feel daily.
And that's how things can go wrong. If we experience a 'dysbiosis' - an imbalance of gut bacteria - we can experience inflammation in both the gut and the brain, and this condition is linked to a whole host of mental health issues. Researchers have even shown that people with depression, anxiety, and even schizophrenia tend to have a less diverse gut microbiome. The bacteria who aren't really doing their job can send signals to the brain to WORSEN things for the unwitting host.
The flipside of this is that there are scientists out there studying how to use specific bacteria to help treat mental health issues. Check out these researchers at Purdue who are bioengineering probiotics (here: to prevent Listeria infections, but also in other capacities). I think it's pretty cool how probiotics (our body's 'good' bacteria) can boost mood and reduce anxiety. Another reason to drink my Yakult, I guess.
And then there's stress. Stress can mess up our gut bacteria, giving the negative bacteria more influence, and causing us to spiral - suddenly our brains are receiving even more signals to be anxious or down, and we're caught in a cycle that’s hard to break. These invisible connections are everywhere, starting even from birth. Some studies show that babies born by caesarean and therefore miss out on their mom’s natural bacteria shared during birth might be more at risk for autism or ADHD later on in their life. From our very first breath, the gut-brain axis is important.
Admittedly, our investigations into the role of bacteria in mental health is still a new frontier in science, but I think it provides an exciting extra line of investigation into the complexity of our mental health. Imagine probiotics (or take a look at fecal transplants!) being prescribed to help people with depression or anxiety. The brain and gut are best friends, for better or worse, and we need to understand how bacteria fit into that relationship in order to better address mental health issues. So have a yakult*, and remember to be cognizant of bacteria, your gut microbiome, and everything it influences.
*this post is not sponsored by Yakult
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