The way we respond to the various stressors in our lives probably depends upon a number of factors including genetics, upbringing as well as physical and mental health. Recently several lines of evidence show that our resilience is mediated by adaptive changes in several neural circuits, including numerous neurotransmitters and molecular pathways which are linked back to the gut and that our gut microbiome may impact on our personal resilience to various stressors.
The gut microbiome refers to the collection of microorganisms in the gut which not only has effects localized in the gut, but also influences many distant organs and processes throughout the body including the brain and nervous system and has been implicated in a wide range of processes including what is commonly termed the “microbiota-gut-brain axis”. This is best highlighted through the number of terms and expressions like “a gut feeling,” “a gut reaction,” “go with your gut,” “gut instinct” even “misery guts” which shows us how we have interpreted the relationship between gut and microbiome in influencing our behaviour.
The gut-microbiota-brain axis consists of bidirectional communication between the gut and brain. The brain acts on gastrointestinal and immune functions that can impact the gut’s microbial composition and the gut microbes affect host brain functions by producing and secreting substances consisting of metabolites and neurotransmitters like serotonin and melatonin. In fact your gut produces hundreds of times more of these neurotransmitters than your brain so you can understand how it can have such a big influence on your mental health, moods and resilience. While we have all heard of serotonin its sister compound melatonin is critical for nervous system coordination through the gut and of course sleep. By direct routes or indirectly, through the gut mucosal system and its local immune system, these molecules can find their way to the brain, and can impact our cognition, emotion, mood, stress resilience and recovery, appetite and metabolic balance and even pain.
On the other side the microbiota composition has been shown to change as a response to a stressful situation, and thereby the effect of the stress response, for example trauma and stressor exposure can alter the composition of the gut microbiome and, consequently how it then works with the brain.
As a result almost without exception the workings of the gut have been linked to all forms of mental health conditions including depression, anxiety and stress, focus and memory problems, learning, mental productivity and cognitive decline as well as controlling some of our needs and desires, i.e., food cravings and appetite, our relationships, social interactions and on how we cope with the day to day stressors and conditions.
On the positive side manipulating the microbiome including healthy eating, increased fibre, prebiotics, probiotics and fecal microbiome transplants, in that order, has consistently been shown to improve mental health and resilience. Not to mention all the other health benefits.
In animal studies a complete microbiome changeover results in increased brain motor activity and reduced anxiety-like behaviour. Of even more interest, it was possible to transfer an “anxious” behavior between two mouse strains via fecal microbiota transfer. That is, the poo from anxious mice of one breed once inserted caused the normal healthy mice of the other strain to become more anxious. Even more scary, fecal microbiota transplantation with microbiota derived from depressed human patients resulted in increased depression-like behaviors in the mice compared to mice colonized with microbiota from healthy individuals.
More down to earth, orally administered probiotics have been shown to induce anit-anxious and antidepressant-like effects in animal models. One study found that oral intake of Bifidobacterium significantly increased the number of resilient mice exposed to chronic social defeat stress and in another study treatment with Lactobacillus rhamnosus led to decreased stress-induced anxiety-like behaviours and improved social interaction.
However, before you all head out and think about swapping poo or even adding probiotics to your productivity protocol first start with the food you eat. What you put in your mouth is more important than any other factor on the health of your gut microbiome and as a result you resilience to the everyday stress. Then after that my next suggestion is to invest in a complete gut food Kfibre to kick start your gut microbiome.
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