Wall Street Journal Best Seller Dr. M's Seven-X Plan for Digestive Health
Accumulating literature indicates that our intestinal bacteria or our microbiome are in constant communication with our brain. While signals from our brain can affect our gut bacteria, the opposite is also true. Our personality and how we react to certain situations is in part controlled by gut bacteria. In fact, changes in our gut bacteria can actually change our personality functions.
Gut bacteria and our brain grow in parallel fashion while interacting constantly and affecting each other fro birth and beyond programming our brain on how to respond to stress in life.
Is It Leaky Gut or Leaky Gut Syndrome?
Mechanisms of brain gut interactions
The routes of this bidirectional interaction are not clearly understood. These involve the hormonal system, immune system, nervous system and bioactive products of metabolism. For example, bacteria or bacteria products interact with our vagus nerve which is one of the connectors between our brain and the gut. These communications starts while the child is still in the uterus and persists into adult life.
According to Burokas and colleagues from the University College Cork, Cork, Ireland, the gut bacteria interactions with brain “contribute new insights into individual variations in cognition, personality, mood, sleep, and eating behavior, and how they contribute to a range of neuro-psychiatric diseases ranging from affective disorders to autism and schizophrenia.”
Aidy and colleagues call the gut bacteria as “The Conductor in the Orchestra of Immune-Neuroendocrine Communication.” Studies in mice indicate that intestinal bacteria affects our higher functions as far as to manage our social interactions and stress management capabilities.
Wall Street Journal Best Seller Dr. M's Seven-X Plan for Digestive Health
For example, studies indicate that have shown that Bifidobacteria type of bacteria also used as probiotic in many formulations modulates brain functions in anxious mice.
It is well known that gut bacteria of kids born of vaginal delivery is different than those born via C-section. Studies by Khalaf and colleagues have shown that children born by elective C-section experience a delayed cognitive and musculoskeletal development during infancy.
Gut bacteria not only help help strengthen the intestinal barrier and reinforcing leaky gut against harm, but also potentiate the blood brain barrier that protects brain. According to Braniste and colleagues from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, “Pivotal to brain development and function is an intact blood-brain barrier (BBB), which acts as a gatekeeper to control the passage and exchange of molecules and nutrients between the circulatory system and the brain.”
These investigators have demonstrated that germ-free mice have a leaky blood brain barrier as compared to those with normal healthy gut bacteria. The mice unexposed to gut bacteria have defective structure and function of the claudin-like proteins of the tight junctions of healthy barriers between the cells of various tissues including gut and brain. Introduction of gut bacteria into the germ-free mice reduces leakiness of blood brain barrier along with an increases the fence proteins of tight junctions.
Wall Street Journal Best Seller Dr. M's Seven-X Plan for Digestive Health
Why do gut bacteria communicate with our brain?
One of the reasons is based on evolutionary concept . It;s just a matter of survival and spread the net wider. Gut bacteria wish to control our personality that allows them to propagate further through the human population. More the interaction among people, the more the surviving healthy bacteria can spread to other people.
Behavior of germ free mice
Germ free mice especially males exhibit dysfunctional social behavior and recognition, decreased preference for social situations which can be modulated by introduction of bacteria in gut. Such behavior is similar to those exhibited by patients with neurodevelopmental disorders like autism.
According to Desbonnet and colleagues, the reversal is not associated with any improvement in mouse movements indicating that while introduction of bacteria into mouse gut reverses social avoidance, it does not impact social cognition impairments. According to them, leaky gut may be at the core of brain gut axis disorders.
