Stanford Medicine researchers describe the gut-brain relationship and how it affects conditions from anxiety to long COVID to Parkinson’s.

It affects your mood, your sleep, even your motivation to exercise. There’s convincing evidence that it’s the starting point for Parkinson’s disease and could be responsible for long COVID’s cognitive effects. And it sits about 2 feet below your brain.

The gut plays an obvious role in our health by digesting what we eat and extracting nutrients. But there’s a growing appreciation among scientists that our digestive systems affect our general well-being in a much broader fashion. One fascinating aspect of the gut’s widespread impact on health is its direct influence on and communication with the brain, a conduit known as the gut-brain axis.

Through direct signals from the vagus nerve, connects the brain and the gut, as well as through molecules secreted into the bloodstream from our gut microbes and immune cells that traffic from the gut to the rest of the body, our brains and our digestive tracts are in constant communication. And when that communication goes off the rails, diseases and disorders can result.

  • jpreston2005@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 hour ago

    I’ve wondered about this, and think that maybe this reinforces an age old method of “fake it till you make it.” with the added benefit that once you “make it,” your gut microbiome is primed to help you stay in that lane. if that makes sense? Like, it takes 3 weeks for a habit to become a habit, and the rate of turnover within your gut microbiota suggests that after 3 weeks of a sustained new diet, or sustained exercise, would lead to a gut that expects that, or perhaps even craves it. It’s the communication of that to your central nervous system that’s so interesting, but if we take it at face value that the two do talk to each other, then it’s like extra motivation for sticking with your good habits. Because you know that once they’re established, you’ll have millions of gut germs rooting for you (and even helping you) to continue.

    Another idea is that if they have found a correlation between some diseases, like long COVID or Alzheimers or Parkinsons, and some specific set of microbiota, then it could make diagnosis of these much simpler (I bet dogs could be trained to smell a healthy vs. diseased gut fairly simply). And perhaps, with a fecal transplant from a healthy doner, we could even help to counteract some of the symptoms. It wouldn’t be a cure, but anything that could help is something worth taking a look at.

  • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
    12·
    1 day ago

    This is crazy:

    Much of the gut’s influence on the brain seems to be driven by the gut microbiome, the collection of (usually) beneficial bacteria and other microscopic organisms that reside in our digestive tracts. Introducing gut bacteria into germ-free mice has been shown to reduce anxious behaviors in the animals, and fecal transplants from humans with depression into rats ramped up depression and anxiety-like behaviors.

    A study led by Thaiss that published in 2022 found that mice’s gut microbiomes influence their motivation to exercise. The team found that in a diverse population of mice, those that were more inclined to run on their exercise wheels had different microbiomes than their sedentary brethren. When the researchers performed a microbiome swap via fecal transplant, the animals’ exercise enthusiasm also switched. The scientists traced the difference to certain fatty acid metabolitess generated by the microbes in exercise-loving mice; these molecules in turn stimulate nerves in the gut that send signals to the brain to produce dopamine, a brain hormone associated with pleasure.