ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) — Have you ever heard someone say—”I have a gut feeling about that?” Well, it turns out your gut may know more than your brain when it comes to some things. In fact, some researchers believe by controlling the good bacteria in your gut, you can stave off cognitive decline. Ivanhoe has the details on how a simple drink could save our memories. The Gut Brain Connection.
“I feel like I’m about 42 and a half,” Michael Brown told Ivanhoe.
Add 23 and a half years to that and you have Brown’s real age. Brown is increasing his exercise routine and focusing on his diet, which some researchers say is key to taking care of not only your body, but also your brain.
Hariom Yadav, PhD, an associate professor of neurosurgery and brain repair at USF Institute for Microbiomes explained, “There is a natural abundance of the good and the bad bacteria there living together.”
Creating a microbial community in your gut that lives and works together, but Yadav details, “The bad guys grow much faster than the good guys. The microbiome is very different in the people who are have high risk of developing dementia.”
Studies have shown the gut microbiome may affect executive brain function, including its influence on cognition, depression and anxiety. Ninety-five percent of serotonin and 50 percent of dopamine are produced in the gut. Those are the feel good neurotransmitters that help to regulate our moods. Researchers are working to find a way to read each individual’s own microbiome signature and create personalized probiotic drinks and foods to help restore the balance.
Yadav stated, “Our hope is by offering or correcting the microbiome abnormalities early enough, it will delay or prevent the cognitive decline or dementia progress.”
Brown said “I’m trying to control the aging process, right. I don’t want to get old.”
Researchers at USF are launching a research study for people who are concerned about their brain health, cognitive impairment and dementia, and the link to their gut health. They will track alterations in the gut microbiomes to see if certain biomarkers can accurately predict which individuals are most likely to develop cognitive impairment or dementia. To find out more, email jains10@usf.edu .
Contributors to this news report include: Marsha Lewis, Producer; Roque Correa, Editor
THE GUT-BRAIN CONNECTION: MICROBIOMES FOR AN AGING BRAIN
REPORT #2953
BACKGROUND: A microbiome is a community of micro-organisms living together in a particular habitat. Researchers now have the tools to capture a whole microbiome and its microbiota and metagenome. They can investigate a system across time and across multiple samples, and for the first time determine who’s there and what they are potentially doing. This allows them to take a holistic approach rather than reductionist approach to try and explain how different microbiomes are involved in ecosystem and biosystem function. This research is based on a multi-disciplinary research model where a scientist can make a career looking at a single species. In microbiome research, due to the large and complex datasets, the microbiologist will need a biological chemist to create the data for metabolite profiles, and a physicist to help make sense of it and answer the research.
(Source: https://microbiologysociety.org/blog/what-is-a-microbiome.html)
YOUR BRAIN AND YOUR GUT: The brain has a direct effect on the stomach and intestines, and this connection goes both ways. A troubled intestine can send signals to the brain, just as a troubled brain can send signals to the gut. A person’s intestinal distress can be the cause or the product of anxiety, stress, or depression. This is also true in cases where a person experiences gastrointestinal upset with no obvious physical cause. For such functional GI disorders, it is difficult to try to heal a distressed gut without considering the role of stress and emotion. Many people with functional GI disorders perceive pain more intensely than other people do because their brains are more responsive to pain signals from the GI tract. Stress can make the existing pain seem even worse. Multiple studies have found that psychologically based approaches lead to greater improvement in digestive symptoms compared with only conventional medical treatment.
THE FUTURE OF GUT-BRAIN HEALTH: Psychobiotics refers to probiotics and prebiotics that can influence the gut–brain relationship. In the past few years, researchers have compiled convincing evidence that suggests the gut and its resident microorganisms influence mental health and cognition, which they refer to as the microbiome-gut-brain axis. Researchers in fields including psychology, microbiology, and neurobiology are not discouraged by this complexity. Research has already uncovered digestive and immune benefits of probiotics, live microorganisms in foods or supplements that benefit the health of their host and are moving closer to the prospect of treating psychiatric and behavioral disorders with dietary changes or “psychobiotic” supplements filled with brain-benefiting microbes. “I think we have every reason to be optimistic that these psychobiotics are coming,” says Christopher Lowry, PhD, an associate professor of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado Boulder. More work is needed to bridge the gap from mice to people, but the findings raise the possibility that beneficial bacteria could help people with cognitive and mental health problems.
(Source: https://www.future-science.com/doi/10.2144/btn-2021-0071)
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