Prebiotics In Your Gut Make Your Brain Less Anxious

Now your brain is linked to your gut---and it's not just because of food. Neuroscientists find that there is a connection between the two, with most studies being done on animals, according to The Huffington Post.

There is some new research on the connection between the gut and the mental health of humans, published in the journal Psychopharmacology. When supplements are designed to increase healthy bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract, also called "prebiotics", they may also have an "anti-anxiety effect", hence changing the manner in which people are processing data related to emotions.

Earlier research by scientists showed that a big nerve known as the vagus nerve, connecting the brain and the abdomen, helps them both to communicate! When researchers in Ireland cut the linking vagus nerve in mice, they did not see the brain reacting to the changes taking place in the gut, according to npr.org.

"The vagus nerve is the highway of communication between what's going on in the gut and what's going on in the brain," says John Cryan of the University College Cork in Ireland,

Probiotics have some traces of "good bacteria", while prebiotics are present in the carbohydrates that nurture those bacteria. Even as it is found that gut bacteria impact the brain and mental health, probiotics and prebiotics are being researched in order to understand the lowering of anxiety and depression.

"Prebiotics are dietary fibers (short chains of sugar molecules) that good bacteria break down, and use to multiply," the study's lead author, Oxford psychiatrist and neurobiologist Dr. Philip Burnet said. "Prebiotics are 'food' for good bacteria already present in the gut. Taking prebiotics therefore increases the numbers of all species of good bacteria in the gut, which will theoretically have greater beneficial effects than [introducing] a single species."

During the research on prebiotics to help reduce anxiety, the scientists told 45 adults between 18 and 45 years to ingest either a prebiotic or a placebo continuously for three weeks. After that, the scientists conducted many computer tests to check how they went through emotional data linked with positive and negatively charged words.

Those who took a prebiotic were less tuned to negative information, compared to the placebo group, which shows that the prebiotic group suffered less anxiety even when faced with negative information. Strangely, this seems parallel to the behavior exhibited by those who have ingested antidepressants or anti-anxiety medication.

The prebiotics group also exhibited less cortisol, or a stress hormone in their saliva when they woke in the morning. Cortisol is linked with anxiety and depression.

Earlier research came to similar conclusions during studies in mice. But the latest study examines the phenomenon in humans. Still, the study is in its initial phase.

Last year, at UCLA, women who consumed probiotics through regularly eating yogurt showed altered brain function while resting as well as during an emotion-related activity.

"Time and time again, we hear from patients that they never felt depressed or anxious until they started experiencing problems with their gut," Dr. Kirsten Tillisch, said the study's lead author. "Our study shows that the gut-brain connection is a two-way street."

Maybe mental problems can be fixed with probiotic treatment. However, they cannot replace conventional treatment, according to scientists. "I think pre/probiotics will only be used as 'adjuncts' to conventional treatments, and never as mono-therapies," Burnet says.