The Way to Better Mental Health May Go Through Your Stomach
https://bcmp.hms.harvard.edu/news/getting-how-gut-bacterias-connection-depression
https://magazine.publichealth.jhu.edu/2021/gut-microbiome-and-brain
Important to note: fast food and sweets are NOT what make your gut bacteria happy even if you think you are happier by eating them.
what if my sweets are made out of probiotic yoghurts and garlics
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YSK that this is just plain wrong for serotonin at least. Serotonin can’t cross the blood brain barrier.
Most of the neurotransmitters can’t. That’s like one of the things the blood brain barrier does - keeps the chemicals IN the brain as well.
Fun exception is endocannabinoids, giving you a runners high when running.
Is serotonin only effective within the brain?
It works both inside and outside, it just does something completely different when not in the brain.
Oh - what does it do outside the brain?
I feel like Wikipedia will be way better than explaining. I’ll put it here inside a spoiler tag. I don’t know a lot about this besides the basics so I won’t be able to do it justice. Fair to say it does a lot of stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotonin
Biological role > Outside the nervous system.
Digestive tract (emetic)
Serotonin regulates gastrointestinal (GI) function. The gut is surrounded by enterochromaffin cells, which release serotonin in response to food in the lumen. This makes the gut contract around the food. Platelets in the veins draining the gut collect excess serotonin. There are often serotonin abnormalities in gastrointestinal disorders such as constipation and irritable bowel syndrome.[75]
If irritants are present in the food, the enterochromaffin cells release more serotonin to make the gut move faster, i.e., to cause diarrhea, so the gut is emptied of the noxious substance. If serotonin is released in the blood faster than the platelets can absorb it, the level of free serotonin in the blood is increased. This activates 5-HT3 receptors in the chemoreceptor trigger zone that stimulate vomiting.[76] Thus, drugs and toxins stimulate serotonin release from enterochromaffin cells in the gut wall which can induce emesis. The enterochromaffin cells not only react to bad food but are also very sensitive to irradiation and cancer chemotherapy. Drugs that block 5HT3 are very effective in controlling the nausea and vomiting produced by cancer treatment, and are considered the gold standard for this purpose.[77]
Lungs
The lung,[78] including that of reptiles,[79] contains specialized epithelial cells that occur as solitary cells or as clusters called neuroepithelial bodies or bronchial Kulchitsky cells or alternatively K cells.[80] These are enterochromaffin cells that like those in the gut release serotonin.[80] Their function is probably vasoconstriction during hypoxia.[78]
Skin
Serotonin is also produced by Merkel cells which are part of the somatosensory system.[81]
Bone metabolism
In mice and humans, alterations in serotonin levels and signalling have been shown to regulate bone mass.[82][83][84][85] Mice that lack brain serotonin have osteopenia, while mice that lack gut serotonin have high bone density. In humans, increased blood serotonin levels have been shown to be a significant negative predictor of low bone density. Serotonin can also be synthesized, albeit at very low levels, in the bone cells. It mediates its actions on bone cells using three different receptors. Through 5-HT1B receptors, it negatively regulates bone mass, while it does so positively through 5-HT2B receptors and 5-HT2C receptors. There is very delicate balance between physiological role of gut serotonin and its pathology. Increase in the extracellular content of serotonin results in a complex relay of signals in the osteoblasts culminating in FoxO1/ Creb and ATF4 dependent transcriptional events.[86] Following the 2008 findings that gut serotonin regulates bone mass, the mechanistic investigations into what regulates serotonin synthesis from the gut in the regulation of bone mass have started. Piezo1 has been shown to sense RNA in the gut and relay this information through serotonin synthesis to the bone by acting as a sensor of single-stranded RNA (ssRNA) governing 5-HT production. Intestinal epithelium-specific deletion of mouse Piezo1 profoundly disturbed gut peristalsis, impeded experimental colitis, and suppressed serum 5-HT levels. Because of systemic 5-HT deficiency, conditional knockout of Piezo1 increased bone formation. Notably, fecal ssRNA was identified as a natural Piezo1 ligand, and ssRNA-stimulated 5-HT synthesis from the gut was evoked in a MyD88/TRIF-independent manner. Colonic infusion of RNase A suppressed gut motility and increased bone mass. These findings suggest gut ssRNA as a master determinant of systemic 5-HT levels, indicating the ssRNA-Piezo1 axis as a potential prophylactic target for treatment of bone and gut disorders. Studies in 2008, 2010 and 2019 have opened the potential for serotonin research to treat bone mass disorders.[87][88]
Organ development
Since serotonin signals resource availability it is not surprising that it affects organ development. Many human and animal studies have shown that nutrition in early life can influence, in adulthood, such things as body fatness, blood lipids, blood pressure, atherosclerosis, behavior, learning, and longevity.[89][90][91] Rodent experiment shows that neonatal exposure to SSRIs makes persistent changes in the serotonergic transmission of the brain resulting in behavioral changes,[92][93] which are reversed by treatment with antidepressants.[94] By treating normal and knockout mice lacking the serotonin transporter with fluoxetine scientists showed that normal emotional reactions in adulthood, like a short latency to escape foot shocks and inclination to explore new environments were dependent on active serotonin transporters during the neonatal period.[95][96]
Human serotonin can also act as a growth factor directly. Liver damage increases cellular expression of 5-HT2A and 5-HT2B receptors, mediating liver compensatory regrowth (see Liver § Regeneration and transplantation)[97] Serotonin present in the blood then stimulates cellular growth to repair liver damage.[98]
5-HT2B receptors also activate osteocytes, which build up bone[99] However, serotonin also inhibits osteoblasts, through 5-HT1B receptors.[100]
Cardiovascular growth factor
Main article: Cardiac fibrosis Serotonin, in addition, evokes endothelial nitric oxide synthase activation and stimulates, through a 5-HT1B receptor-mediated mechanism, the phosphorylation of p44/p42 mitogen-activated protein kinase activation in bovine aortic endothelial cell cultures.[clarification needed][101] In blood, serotonin is collected from plasma by platelets, which store it. It is thus active wherever platelets bind in damaged tissue, as a vasoconstrictor to stop bleeding, and also as a fibrocyte mitotic (growth factor), to aid healing.[102]
Adipose tissue
Serotonin also regulates white and brown adipose tissue function, and adipocytes are capable of producing 5-HT separately from the gut. Serotonin increases lipogenesis through HTR2A in white adipose tissue, and suppressed thermogenesis in brown adipose tissue via Htr3.[103]
Jesus Christ bodies are complex…
YSK the idea that the “self” or “consciousness” is centered in the brain is called Duality and it’s a philosophical position, not a scientific one. It’s the same idea that “mind” and “body” are separate things and it’s most common iteration is the idea of the “soul”.
You probably can’t upload yourself to a computer or be preserved in a frozen brain.
Not exactly related, but I think the typical conception of self being centered around the head at all is maybe just because that’s where our eyes and ears are. Curious how deaf and blind people conceptualize the physical location of thier consciousness
Wouldn’t the typical conception of self being centered around the head be due to the fact that that’s where all of our memories are stored, bodily signals are sent to instructions to the body are sent from, where emotions are processed, and cognition is generated?
I could be wrong, but I don’t think awareness that the brain being “where memories are stored” is innate. I think that’s something we are told. If I’m recalling correctly, a surprising amount of what we perceive as cognition is offloaded to other distributed parts of our nervous system, so it’s maybe not even quite as true as we think it is.
And even if it were, through informal polling over the years, when pressed, almost everyone I’ve ever talked to conceptualizes the exact center of thier “self” to be around the bridge of thier nose. Nobody I’ve talked to described the pinpoint location as being the position of thier frontal lobe.
I’m the fucking furthest thing from an authority, though. If you had to pinpoint the exact “point” of your consciousness, where would you describe it to be? I’m curious how far offset it is from your center of vision.
So are you saying it’s literally impossible even with future technology to put a medically preserved brain in a new body and have that be a person that can do stuff and you could talk to, or just that it wouldn’t be the same person or consciousness somehow?
The former seems pretty out there as an idea. There are people whose brains are cut off from the rest of their nervous system and are still alive. The other connection the brain has to the body is the bloodstream, but blood transfusions are a thing and doesn’t kill you.
i remember reading something back in the 90s that something like that had been done on a primate (maybe it was a head transplant and not a brain transplant), and it only survived a few days or something. given that, not a lot of people were that excited about the prospect of getting new bodies every few days. maybe i’m misremembering.
I think most of that is just because it’s really tricky to get right though and there’s a lot of medical complications, not because it’s impossible for philosophical reasons.
I’m not disagreeing with you
What do you mean it’s not a scientific one, you can put someone’s head on a machine keeping them alive and they would still be the same consciousness…
Never have so many unrelated points been made so quickly, incisively, and fruitlessly!
How do you make happy guts?
Avoiding processed food, like that high in sugars. Having probiotics and probiotics, which is things like yoghurts and fermented foods like kimchi, kombucha and sauerkraut.
Happy guts also like exercise to help move things along and most people have too little fibre from fruits vegetables and nuts. So increase fibre and get your 7 a day.
Alcohol is a general irritant and should be limited or avoided. For more complex answers, look into FODMAPs as well, which can be a problem for some people.
So, overall, less stodgy complex carbs, more fresh fruit and veg. Mostly the same as what is better for heart health, but with added probiotics!
“Dietary fiber” is carbohydrates that you can’t digest for food but which your gut bacteria can live on happily. Take psyllium husk capsules or eat foods with lots of dietary fiber.
You want healthy gut flora. So probably probiotic stuff like yogurt (though who knows how many of those bacteria actually make it through the gauntlet of stomach acids).
Antibiotics can do the opposite and really fuck up your gut flora.
Yogurt is interesting because it’s already acidic, and dairy contains proteins, salts, and acids that buffer pH. So the microbes that thrive in that environment are already able to handle more acidic environments generally, and then might not experience as acidic of an environment in the human stomach compared to some other foods.
A lot of probiotic foods don’t actually have more microbes in them, but have certain microbes that tend to be found in human guts. I wonder if there’s some kind of filter effect where only certain types of microbes are more likely to survive the stomach, and therefore our guts tend to consist of microbes that are hardy against those conditions.
toum
I just bought this for the first time last week. It’s now done. Toum is like a spiritual awakening
i have been eating it for breakfast, but like i have a dental appointment today. it has been hard.
Wine, bread and cheese, personally.
If you can eat whatever you want, be glad. Once gut microbiome is damaged, it’s pretty much irreparable without fecal transplants (and even that sounds like it only helps the intestines, not the stomach).
That said, kefir helps a lot, but only short-term.
Oh yeah? I give my gut all the vodka and fast food it wants, and I’m still not happy! Checkmate, liberals!
It’s the shots of liberal tears that bring the real gut happiness.
Did you tip the vodka into the fast food? If not then that’s your issue!!
My wife had an overgrowth of candida bacteria in her stomach, and it caused irritability and exhaustion. When she starved it out, it was wild. If she had any sugars or yeast she would have almost stroke like symptoms. Like she had just drank a ton of alcohol that hit her all at once. She had 1 bite of ice cream (she had been good for months and wanted to try it), and she literally started slurring her words and getting dizzy. Our stomach colony has way more control over us than we think.
Are you sure she’s not diabetic? My sister is Type 1, so she’s had diabetes her whole life. Whenever her blood sugar was out of whack, she’d become drunk-like and also have seizures in really bad instances.
Yeah, they tested her for that. It took a long time to diagnose, but once this was found, everything else sorted itself out. Thus was also, like, 5 years ago? Now she’s fine due to a mix of killing off the candida through diet, and then her whole gut biome completely changing when she got pregnant. The human body is bizarre and wonderful, and way more complex than we understand.
Did your wife have antibiotics that started her overgrowth of candida?
Yeah, when she was a kid she had something called a Z-pack, I think. We theorize that was what lead to this. Plus poor food quality from her parents. Her mom used to pour the old milk into the new milk to stretch it…basically cultivating a super colony of bacteria, lol.
“Bacteria” is already plural
deleted by creator
Bacterium
Bacteriode
jfc
DEA is used in industrial, agricultural, and consumer products.
“We knew that micropollutants can be incorporated into fatty molecules in the body, but we didn’t know how this occurs or what happens next,” Clardy said. “DEA’s metabolism into an immune signal was completely unexpected.”
The team proposes that DEA could be added to the growing list of biomarkers used to detect some cases of major depressive disorder.
The study also strengthens arguments that major depressive disorder, or a subset of cases, could be considered an autoinflammatory or autoimmune disease and be successfully treated with immune modulator drugs, Clardy said.
Honestly your gut is more central to your existence than your brain. There’s plenty of organisms out there that are just a tube, and not all of them even have two ends!
Well if you want to be more than a worm you really need the brain. There is a reason most of your senses are clustered in your head.
we are just gastric tubes with appendages
That food heart was 100% created by a Zelda fan.
Neurotransmitters in the gut cannot reach the brain due to the blood brain barrier (or very limited at best). Reuptake proteins and breakdown enzymes also prevent outside neurotransmitters from interfering. Your gut already produces large amounts of serotonin and it was first identified in the gut. 90% of the serotonin in the body is made in the lining of the stomach where it modulates smooth muscle contractions. About 50% of the dopamine is produced in the gut also.
However, microbes could affect gut behavior and that could effect mood simply by feeling poorly or well. There is also the matter of inflammatory responses and signaling (i.e. cytokines) that could affect one’s general sense of health. The small intestine is packed with immune cells that will also react to changes in the gut biome.
Finally there is the vagus nerve, a highway running from the gut, lungs and heart straight to the hindbrain, bypassing the spine. More here. We are still learning about how much this ancient nerve controls and influences. I’ve even wondered if it is related to dementia and Parkinson’s because of its physical proximity to locations such as the substantia nigra (Parkinson’s) and areas that show the first signs of dementia, possibly due to influences traveling up the nerve similar to the way rabies viruses travel. People who have had their vagus nerve cut, in an effort to stop severe stomach ulceration, showed a significant drop in Parkinson’s. More here, and here.
Are there efforts to genetically engineer superior gut biomes? Like a set of microbes that digest better, more efficient, filter out more toxins, produce vitamins, ignore too much carbs or fat, destroy harmful foreign bacteria or microbes etc?
It seems a relatively easy way to genetically improve homo sapiens. Can we do stuff like that already with the advances in AI for e.g. protein folding?
that would be in the field of synthetic biology. although genetically engineering ecoli up produce more serotonin might be harder than using artificial selection to make happy ecoli.
about being better at digesting or making proteins, same thing, except that they already have natural selection pushing then to suggest as efficiently as possible.
in fact if you made a super strain, it’ll eventually die out as it’s replaced with the natural ecoli (or lose those traits) because they are less optimised than your original ecoli
The gut biome isn’t well understood - there are tons (well, pounds) of bacteria we don’t understand well, how they interplay, how they eat and digest and how the body is affected. We’re just now at the point of having biome capsules that can be swallowed instead of fecal transplants, which is an improvement, but we don’t really know what we’re doing. They might take a family member and use their bacteria to treat someone’s GERD for instance - but only in studies and private labs, not at your doctor’s office yet. Now that they know how beneficial it is, they’re hauling ass (hehe) on it.
We only recently figured out that natural births do better than caesarians in terms of immunity and overall health, because well, women often defecate while they give birth and apparently that’s a good thing for the baby, as well as bacteria in her vagina. There’s sort of an instant bacterial infusion that happens.
Give it 20 years and there’ll probably be bespoke treatments available for the masses, so I won’t have to listen to my boss give his daily update on his IBS.
You would think that we should have caught on sooner considering how there are plenty of mammals, like rabbits, that need to eat their moms poop to get the proper bacteria in their own guts in order to survive. Otherwise they simply die.
The biomes are what it says - not one species, not a few of them, whole fucking biomes! There are thousands and thousands species, bacterial worlds inside of us, and the species interact in complicated ways. It’s not just the presence or absence of a species that is beneficial, it’s often a question of combination of species that makes a huge difference. As was said, we’re just beginning to understand. But I’d bet any treatment that makes the system simple will have some serious downsides that will appear later, when we know better.
Yeah there would be serious dangers to creating a synthetic biome, but theoretically it should be possible to vastly improve through actual engineering instead of natural selection. And it should be easier than doing any genetic engineering on a human genome, because you could create a more simple model for a single celled biome with specific input and output chemicals. I imagine LLMs could help with creating the map of inputs and outputs, then generate candidates to refine. But I understand we still don’t even have a scientific model for a single cell.
Like produce everything a human needs just from sugars, fats and some minerals. That’s not the way to do it but in an extreme case you could. Maybe we could even engineer to digest cellulose.
Of course you’d want a quick and easy killswitch and be able to replace a synthetic gut biome it with a natural gut biome again. And you’d want some kind of “predator species” that kills any foreign bacteria, like in any biome.
I was trying to be more positive this year, but that’s the worst plural I’ve ever seen.
It didn’t take much to knock you off the wagon did it? Poor showing. Try again.
