Gut Bacteria and Emotions/Anxiety

I’m reading a really fascinating new book, This is Your Brain on Parasites, from a respected science writer. I know this isn’t a new idea, but she presents some interesting and developing ideas about just how much parasites/poor gut bacteria/other microbe-y things can effect anxiety, emotions, and energy.

Has anyone taken a probiotic supplement and experienced positive effects?

Respected by whom? Here is a review of the book from a scientist in the field.

[QUOTE=Sheena Cruickshank, an immunologist and parasitologist at Manchester University in the UK]
…McAuliffe has a casual disregard for what parasitology actually is…McAuliffe skips into attention-grabbing territory armed with only the flimsiest of evidence…This is heady stuff, but it is purely speculative. If there is evidence to support it, I couldn’t find it here…Psychological theories about behaviour predominate, and the evidence for these is largely anecdotal. The major issues in parasitology – how parasites can persist in a host, hiding from our immune response and adapting to the host environment – aren’t dealt with at all. McAuliffe’s sincere aim is to present the parasite as a master behavioural manipulator. In doing so, she has overlooked some amazing parasitology research.
[/QUOTE]

Granted, I’m certainly not a scientist, but McAuliffe’s work has been praised in some quarters.

I’ve been cruising some medical journal articles since beginning the book and there is some compelling evidences to consider in regards the “gut brain” and the roles gut flora may play.

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&bquery=(gut+brain+connection)+AND+(emotions)&cli0=FT&clv0=Y&type=1&site=ehost-live

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&bquery=(gut+brain+connection)+AND+(anxiety)&cli0=FT&clv0=Y&type=1&site=ehost-live

http://resolver.ebscohost.com.proxy.bucks.edu/openurl?sid=EBSCO%3aaph&genre=article&issn=17574749&ISBN=&volume=5&issue=1&date=20130401&spage=1&pages=1-16&title=Gut+Pathogens&atitle=Intestinal+microbiota%2c+probiotics+and+mental+health%3a+from+Metchnikoff+to+modern+advances%3a+Part+I±+autointoxication+revisited.&aulast=Bested%2c+Alison+C.&id=DOI%3a10.1186%2f1757-4749-5-5&site=ftf-live

Having a stomachache can certainly impact someone’s mood, but I would not believe that particular claim, no. Any ideas about parasites or gut flora having a measurable and statistical impact on actual clinical levels of depression and anxiety are not backed up by actual research yet.

In fact, probiotic therapy hasn’t really been proven to be much good even for actual stomach issues! There’s very little evidence that probiotic therapy is effective in otherwise gastrointestinally healthy individuals, and lots of evidence that it’s basically a placebo effect.
The only time I’ve benefited from probiotic therapy has been after serious rounds of oral antibiotics have absolutely stripped my system of any biota at all. It takes a while to recolonize (reflorate?) but it did seem to take much less time to recover than when I just waited for everything to grow back naturally on it’s own.

Now, I did feel mentally better when I didn’t want to curl around the gnawing unending agony in my core and simply die, but that’s more easily attributable to simply not being in godawful pain any more.

If one is suffering from gastro issues due to stress and anxiety, the more appropriate response would be to help solve the actual problem, which is dealing with the source of the stress and anxiety, or by discovering and altering ineffective mental/emotional responses to said stressors.

If the pain is intolerable, then an acid-reducing medication (dexilant or omeprazole) helped me quite a lot, but that can also do damage to your gut flora, so they’re really a temporary bandaid or a stopgap while you sort the real issues out.

Sorry - it’s an exciting and interesting new field of study, but it’s important to be able to back these sorts of claims up with actual study results.

(Also, altering your gut flora might result in serious physical impacts - there was a lady who got a fecal colonization transplant (from I believe her mother) and afterward the patient gained an undesired amount of weight in a pattern similar to the person who donated, and was unable to reduce the weight by her normal methods of weight control.)

On a quick review, most of those seem to be focusing on actual neurodevelopment disorders and autism, and also on people’s diets (autism symptoms show a correlation with gluten consumption for some people) all of which is quite different from anxiety/depression.

It would be like me saying that lavender and sunflowers are both plants, and all these studies here say that sunflowers do much better with lots of water, so you should totally try watering your lavender more because it will probably help! (It won’t - it will die.) It’s tempting to want to broaden the applications of the studies, but there’s a reason for the very carefully couched language and super-limited range.

Yes, I actually believe all organs can dictate how we feel. I have taken a probiotic supplement, and didn’t notice any difference, but I only took it for a couple of weeks which was probably not enough time to see if it had any positive effect.

I agree - the brain, in particular.

I took a probiotic for many months in the hope that it would help with chronic constipation. I finally discontinued it a couple of months age and experienced no apparent change.

So my experience is that it did nothing for me.

The idea that parasites (and “other microbe-y things”) cause a variety of deleterious symptoms and ailments has gotten popular in recent years. “Candida overgrowth” has been a big part of this, but there has also been lots of publicity about supposedly hidden parasites that Doctors Don’t Know Anything About and the role of the gut biome (the latter is an interesting field of study, but has also been source of a lot of fervid speculation and outright nonsense).

Here’s another example of taking legitimate science and blowing it up far beyond what evidence will support.

*"As an example of this scare tactic, I found a disturbing “factoid” on the website of Ann Louise Gittleman, who calls herself the First Lady of Nutrition (although I think that Michelle Obama is way ahead of her!). ALG held one of today’s Microbiome Summit talks called “Parasites May be the Hidden Cause of Your Health Issues”…

In her talk, ALG mentioned that a large part of the US population are infected by parasites. She mentioned that her mentor parasitologist estimated that 1970’s this number was 8 out of 10 Americans. She also claimed that most stool tests won’t detect these parasites. They are so hidden inside our guts, she said, that a regular stool test will easily miss them. But they are there! Anyone with GI problems, diarrhea, constipation, gas, GERD, or even sleep problems, Crohn’s Disease, asthma, arthritis and pretty much anything else you can think of, all these symptoms, she says, are an indication that you are infected with parasites. She even went on to say that these parasites are easier to detect “4 days before and after a full moon.”*

The you-are-likely-to-be-infected-with-parasites line sells not only books, but various “cleanses” and other bogus treatments to eliminate the nonexistent parasites.*

Once more we have a call for anecdotes. Yes, I’ve taken a probiotic supplement (kefir). If it did anything for my digestive tract (not to mention mood) I didn’t notice it.

*there is a subset of people convinced that parasites are their problem, who push their doctors not only to do uncalled-for testing, but to prescribe potent antiparasitic drugs as well. When they can’t get these drugs, some will even buy them over-the-counter at veterinary supply stores and take them. They also share their mental illness with like-minded people online. “Morgellons disease” sufferers are among this group.

Well, yes, I am calling for anecdotes :smiley: not because I think I have parasites or am interested in woo-woo cleansing crap . . . I’m just curious!

I’ve had the opposite chronic problem, and 24 hours after I took my first capsule of Probulin (the brand name of this probiotic) that problem was GONE. I’ve taken anti-diarrheals that did absolutely nothing but just one dose of this Probulin stuff firmed everything up almost to the point of constipation.

Hasn’t done a damn thing for my depression and anxiety problems. I’ve only been taking it for about a month, and I forget to take it some days. I’ll give it a bit more time.

Some doctors and scientist think some bacteria or even getting a cold or flu could trigger a strange like problem like diarrhea, constipation, irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn’s Disease, gas, GERD, heartburn.

Having too much bacteria, not enough bacteria, the right bacteria :eek::eek::smack::smack: could cause diarrhea, constipation, irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn’s Disease, gas, GERD, heartburn.

And the only proper cure is is proper bacteria balance.
Other doctors and scientist think too much bacteria, not enough bacteria or the right bacteria could trigger an immune response and symptoms of diarrhea, constipation, irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn’s Disease, gas, GERD, heartburn.:eek::eek::eek::smack::smack::smack: And the only way to fix it is to fix the immune response and make sure the proper bacteria balance does not go off again.

Maybe the best course for uh, regularizing one’s emotions is to get a fecal transplant. We could set up a poop exchange among Dopers to facilitate this process. Just pick your favorite poster who seems to have his/her head on straight and get them to send you a fresh BM through the mail.*

*respect your postal delivery person, and wrap securely.

What? ^

How do they even test for the idea if you have too much bacteria, not enough bacteria or the right bacteria? This is just a theory and not proven that too much bacteria, not enough bacteria or the right bacteria could cause diarrhea, constipation, irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn’s Disease, gas, GERD, heartburn and some other problems.

This is NOT some thing that shows up on a blood test and many of this do not show up on stool sample.

Probably only way is to have a Colonoscopy and take samples long the way.

How else would you do the test? And how do they know what is too much bacteria, not enough bacteria or the right bacteria? When there been very little research into it?

How do they know out of the 1,000,000 people what is the proper fecal transplant? How do they test that?

Jokes aside, there is strong evidence that parasites in some organisms can alter the behavior of the organism in such a way that it helps the parasite spread better. I guess rabies is one example. But I remember one in which it made the host more likely to be eaten by another host. AFAIK, this has not been observed in humans, but maybe it should be studied. But to make assertions that probiotics will improve mood in humans is woo, until it has been seriously studied, parasite identified, etc. It’s called science. Which has had a bad press lately.

I believe the poo transplant must be taken from a first-degree family member (because DNA-related folks have similar gut flora – I think this is the reason).

I also read that a “poo pill” is in development that could replace the poo enema.

and of course…the ever peculiar Cats Made Me Do It…:eek:

“Both infected men and women are also more likely to be involved in traffic accidents, engage in self-violence, and — oddly — develop schizophrenia.”

I have and I can’t explain it. I used to have soaring anxiety at times, it was really hard to concentrate on getting better when my heart was going a million miles a minute and my mind was attacking me for every flaw.

Sometime last year a friend of mine was telling me about kombucha tea. She didn’t mention health benefits apart from being probiotic so I was curious and bought some GT’s at the store, I figured my butt would probably appreciate the help. This stuff tastes like sour beer without the alcohol. I fucking love sour beer. It’s also sometimes vinegary which I don’t mind. I started drinking a bottle a day because I really liked how it tasted.

Over time I started noticing that my emotions were more even keeled than before, despite ongoing stresses at work. This was a good thing. This week I know for sure that probiotics absolutely affect my mood because I’m going through a breakup and am experiencing very mild anxiety and depression. In the past breakups were debilitating to me.

So, kombucha owns. I’m glad I found something to help me cope with my life.

Interesting. I’d actually heard of some probiotics being linked to improved weight loss so I imagine the opposite might be true. The probiotic in question was not one that was available OTC, when I looked into it.

One hopes that the lady in the story you cited at least had relief from whatever promoted her to go that route, anyway!