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A Traumatic Experience Can Reshape Your Microbiome
06/02/2017 04:56 pm ET

PHOTO: CHRISCHRISW/GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO
By Susie Neilson

I’m not disputing the scientific soundness of the whole brain-gut connection, but it really does sound a little bit like something out of a science-fiction story. I mean, you’re telling me that the trillions of tiny organisms that live in my gut,
chomping up my food for me and maintaining my digestive system, have an impact on what I think and do and say? That the content of my thoughts might be at least partially determined by the eggs I had for breakfast, or the vitamin C I haven’t
consumed enough of? It boggles the mind (at least, a mind influenced by my microbiome, fueled almost exclusively by Sour Patch Kids).

Related: How Violence Warps Childhood Friendships in Chicago

Strange as it may seem, though, it’s also a case of our science finally catching up to our idioms. Without realizing it, we’ve been talking about the link between brain and gut for a long time: Ever had a gut-wrenching car ride, or a gut instinct
about someone, or butterflies in your stomach? In less colorful terms, the stomach and the mind really do talk to one another; in one study, for example, tentative mice that received gut bacteria transplants from braver ones became more fearless,
exploring a maze with less hesitation. So strong is the microbiome’s impact that some have deemed it the “second brain.” And recently, a team of researchers found that our guts may harbor evidence of difficult life experiences many years after
the fact, changing everything from how we digest food to how we process stress. In fact, these changes in our “second brain” may substantially alter the structure of our first, creating a feedback loop between the two.

For the study, published last month in the journal Microbiome, the authors analyzed the microbiomes of a group of students with irritable bowel syndrome, or IBS, a fairly common chronic condition marked by pain in the stomach, gas, and indigestion. (
Though there are ways to manage IBS, many of which involve reducing stress, we don’t know what causes the syndrome.) They did the same for a control group of healthy volunteers, and also collected brain scans, stool samples, and behavioral and
biographical information from participants in both categories.

The results were startling: Across the board, those in the IBS group were far more likely to exhibit anxiety and depression. When the researchers further divided IBS-afflicted subjects into two smaller groups — those with a microbiome
undistinguishable from that of a healthy control, and those with noticeable differences — they found that the subgroup with different microbiomes also had more history of early life trauma, and their IBS symptoms lasted longer. “It is possible,”
the authors wrote, “that the signals the gut and its microbes get from the brain of an individual with a history of childhood trauma may lead to lifelong changes in the gut microbiome.”

Related: What Is the Connection Between Personality and Mental Illness?

It’s also possible — or even probable — that the relationship isn’t uni-directional. The researchers noticed that the people with altered microbiomes had differently shaped brains, too, suggesting that the impacted gut may have doubled back
and impacted certain brain regions — though they noted in the study that they don’t have enough information to be sure that’s the case, and cautioned against leaping to conclusions. Even more than the science of the gut on its own, the science
of what how it affects the brain is still in its infancy; rather than arriving at any firm conclusions, this study is meant to open up the field more, laying a foundation for future researchers to build on.

If it’s true that the gut influences the brain just as the brain impacts the gut, though, then these findings may have tremendous implications for both mental and physical health. It might be a stretch to say that anxiety meds could one day be
supplemented with kombucha, but it’s not too wild to imagine a future where treating ailments of the mind also involves treating the digestive system, or vice versa (already, some people are using talk therapy to ease IBS). For now, it can’t hurt
to remember the connection between the two, and do everything in your power to live a life that gives you peace of mind — because it’ll give you peace of stomach, too.



us_5931ce80e4b062a6ac0acfad

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June 1, 2017 10:15 am

A Traumatic Experience Can Reshape Your Microbiome

By Susie Neilson


I’m not disputing the scientific soundness of the whole brain-gut connection, but it really does sound a little bit like something out of a science-fiction story. I mean, you’re telling me that the trillions of tiny organisms that live in my gut,
chomping up my food for me and maintaining my digestive system, have an impact on what I think and do and say? That the content of my thoughts might be at least partially determined by the eggs I had for breakfast, or the vitamin C I haven’t consumed
enough of? It boggles the mind (at least, a mind influenced by my microbiome, fueled almost exclusively by Sour Patch Kids).

Strange as it may seem, though, it’s also a case of our science finally catching up to our idioms. Without realizing it, we’ve been talking about the link between brain and gut for a long time: Ever had a gut-wrenching car ride, or a gut instinct
about someone, or butterflies in your stomach? In less colorful terms, the stomach and the mind really do talk to one another; in one study, for example, tentative mice that received gut bacteria transplants from braver ones became more fearless,
exploring a maze with less hesitation. So strong is the microbiome’s impact that some have deemed it the “second brain.” And recently, a team of researchers found that our guts may harbor evidence of difficult life experiences many years after the
fact, changing everything from how we digest food to how we process stress. In fact, these changes in our “second brain” may substantially alter the structure of our first, creating a feedback loop between the two.

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The Scientists Who Want to Fix America’s Intestines Started With Their Own For the study, published last month in the journal Microbiome, the authors analyzed the microbiomes of a group of students with irritable bowel syndrome, or IBS, a fairly common chronic condition marked by pain in the stomach, gas, and indigestion. (
Though there are ways to manage IBS, many of which involve reducing stress, we don’t know what causes the syndrome.) They did the same for a control group of healthy volunteers, and also collected brain scans, stool samples, and behavioral and
biographical information from participants in both categories.

The results were startling: Across the board, those in the IBS group were far more likely to exhibit anxiety and depression. When the researchers further divided IBS-afflicted subjects into two smaller groups — those with a microbiome undistinguishable
from that of a healthy control, and those with noticeable differences — they found that the subgroup with different microbiomes also had more history of early life trauma, and their IBS symptoms lasted longer. “It is possible,” the authors wrote, �
�that the signals the gut and its microbes get from the brain of an individual with a history of childhood trauma may lead to lifelong changes in the gut microbiome.”

It’s also possible — or even probable — that the relationship isn’t uni-directional. The researchers noticed that the people with altered microbiomes had differently shaped brains, too, suggesting that the impacted gut may have doubled back and
impacted certain brain regions — though they noted in the study that they don’t have enough information to be sure that’s the case, and cautioned against leaping to conclusions. Even more than the science of the gut on its own, the science of what
how it affects the brain is still in its infancy; rather than arriving at any firm conclusions, this study is meant to open up the field more, laying a foundation for future researchers to build on.

If it’s true that the gut influences the brain just as the brain impacts the gut, though, then these findings may have tremendous implications for both mental and physical health. It might be a stretch to say that anxiety meds could one day be
supplemented with kombucha, but it’s not too wild to imagine a future where treating ailments of the mind also involves treating the digestive system, or vice versa (already, some people are using talk therapy to ease IBS). For now, it can’t hurt to
remember the connection between the two, and do everything in your power to live a life that gives you peace of mind — because it’ll give you peace of stomach, too.

TAGS: MICROBIOME TRAUMA MENTAL HEALTH

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/06/microbiome-trauma-gut-bacteria.html

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A Traumatic Experience Can Reshape Your Microbiome
June 7, 2017

From Science of Us: A recent study suggests that our guts may harbor evidence of traumatic life experiences many years after the fact, impacting our digestion and the way our bodies process stress.

Article →­





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2 COMMENTS

bcharris
June 7, 2017 at 9:39 am
The idea that mental functioning is dependent on digestive processes goes back to Pinel in the late 1700’s/early 1800’s. He was also able to get his patients functional at a better rate than modern psychiatrists.
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kindredspirit
June 7, 2017 at 1:41 pm
I believe an important part of my recovery has been changing my diet in an effort to support a healthy gut microbiome. I find all the research on the enteric nervous system and the brain-gut connection utterly fascinating. In my case, I was a very sickly
child and spent most of ten years from age 2-12 on a steady stream of antibiotics to treat unresolvable ear infections. And this was in the 1980s before there was information widely available to the general public about gut health or the importance of
using probiotics to restore after taking antibiotics. I believe this contributed to my emotional dysregulation as a child. I’ve spent the better part of the last two years during and now after withdrawing from psych meds also working actively to heal
my gut with homemade fermented foods and I believe it has made a substantial contribution to my recovery. I would encourage others, especially those who have had chronic exposures to antibiotics, to try a gut healing diet protocol.

The only criticism I have to this article is that it suggests talk therapy to heal IBS and other functional gut disorders when what is actually needed is a diet change and a change in bacterial colonization. I have heard others also suggest that
treatment of IBS should be relegated to psychotherapy and psychiatry and I find that disheartening. What we need is more nutritional counseling and less head shrinking.


https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/06/traumatic-experience-can-reshape-microbiome/

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Bull Hist Med. 2010 Fall;84(3):358-86. doi: 10.1353/bhm.2010.0023.
Stomach and psyche: eating, digestion, and mental illness in the medicine of Philippe Pinel.
Williams EA1.
Author information
Abstract

In premodern medicine eating and digestion were often linked to psychic disturbance, yet modern "mental medicine" is generally thought to have abandoned this ancient assumption. The work of Philippe Pinel, founder of French psychiatry and advocate of the
"moral treatment," has been regarded as indicative of this process, but in fact eating and digestion remained important to Pinel's understanding of the néuroses, the variety of disease within which he classified both mild and severe forms of mental
illness. Pinel's theoretical and clinical innovations in regard to maladies that blended mental and gastric distress left an important legacy both to asylum-based psychiatry and to medical generalists working in private settings in the nineteenth century.
Today his work remains valuable for its insistence on the inextricability of the "physical and the moral" in psycho-gastric illness.
PMID: 21037396 DOI: 10.1353/bhm.2010.0023
[Indexed for MEDLINE]



https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21037396

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