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Blog
March 13, 2017
Your gut microbiome is like a lush tropical garden home to trillions of microbes, comprising approximately 1800 different phyla and 40,000 bacterial species—this is 1.3 to 10 times the number of human cells! The various species of bacteria, your microbiota, interact with the rest of your body and affect how your body works.
Now, if you’ve ever had that “gut feeling” that your gut talked to your brain, and influenced how you felt, thought or behaved … you were right (so always listen to your gut, seriously!) This concept of our gut influencing our brain has existed for almost two centuries. It has even been widely integrated into our everyday vernacular:
However, it was not until the advent of brain imaging that neuroscientists really began to appreciate the influence of our gut-brain axis on our brain and mental health.
Your gut and brain do literally talk to each other, and the gut microbiota is now seen as a key regulator of the gut-brain axis.
Scientists are studying just how exactly our microbiome communicates with our central nervous system (including the brain). So far, they’ve identified that our gut and brain chat through 1) our immune system, 2) via a special nerve called the vagus nerve, 3) through special short chain fatty acids, and 4) via our enteric nervous system (our gut’s own nervous system).
Targeting the brain via the microbiome is a massive paradigm shift in neuroscience and psychiatry, and has led to the concept of psychobiotics:
We are starting to recognize that your brain is influenced by gut bugs throughout your entire life!
There is considerable evidence to suggest a role for your microbiota in neuropsychiatric conditions.
The preclinical (rodent) work is corroborating pretty nicely with the clinical (human) work on autism, depression and schizophrenia. What’s more, preclinical work is finding some cool stuff out about anxiety, ALS (amyotropic lateral sclerosis) and Alzheimer’s:
Prebiotics improve cognitive function and reduce pro-inflammatory cytokines.
Prebiotics reduce pro-inflammatory cytokines.
Probiotics reduce motor neuron death, reduce muscular atrophy, increase serum folate, increase vitamin B12, and reduce homocysteine.
Clearly, we love bugs at NeuroTrition. Gut bugs, that is. We love them so much that we prescribe daily probiotic-rich foods to our clients (anywhere from 1 to 3 times a day).
Miso, tempeh, kimchi, yogurt, real sourdough bread, raw sauerkraut (and other fermented veggies), kefir, kombucha, raw, fermented salsa
We respect our “symbiotic” relationship with our gut bugs, in that if we help them (by feeding them what they need), they in turn help us.
So we add prebiotics to the NeuroTrition Rx for brain and mental health!
In case you’re wondering, what the heck IS a prebiotic, there are three criteria a food must meet to be called a “prebiotic”:
The more of these prebiotics we eat, the more healthy probiotics will grow in our gastrointestinal system. This is known as the “prebiotic effect” and it can be used to increase the number of “good” microbes, and decrease the activity of the “bad” ones.
Sweet potato, kale, blueberries, avocado, hemp & chia seeds, walnuts, quinoa, cacao
Cooked onion, raw onion, raw jerusalem artichoke, raw asparagus, raw dandelion greens, raw garlic, raw leek, cruciferous vegetables (eg. broccoli, cauliflower), beans
We believe, first and foremost, in the power of whole foods for optimum brain and mental health—and supplements as a “supplement” to a healthy diet.
However, we respect that this is not always possible.
We are also passionately driven by what the science is saying and, for gut-brain health we are seeing the value in probiotics (the ones that have been studied the most for their brainy benefits are lactobacillus, and bifidobacterium). It’s as easy as 1-2-3 to find a top notch probiotic, just make sure it’s:
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