Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by belltaco | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

belltaco

What if depression was causing the gut microbe changes? Like it was recently found with autism and gut changes.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/health/body-and-mind/autism-gut-m...

View on HN

From the beginning of the article:

"Whether those microbial deficits actually help cause the disorders is unclear, [...]"

For the time being it appears to be careful in only suggesting correlation, not causation.

Note that the original article mentions:

> "researchers recently reported in Frontiers in Psychiatry that fecal transplants improved symptoms in two depressed patients"

That doesn't disprove that depression caused the microbial imbalance in the first place.

It's very reasonable to think that a lot of these systems are bidirectional, and for any individual, you may not know which part of the body was dysfunctional first.

I think we're actually heading into a ditch there. As if you can heal a depression by just changing serotonin levels or improving the gut health. I would say most often there are good reasons the brain put one into "stop what you're doing right now" mode aka depression. Year long experiences, maybe even the most defining years as children. But I would argue that it might help us move away from SSRIs and stuff. Soften the disease so that it becomes bearable and healable by therapie.

I agree that depression is likely so prevalent because it's adaptive in some cases that are increasingly common now.

I would suggest that rather than look at childhood experiences exclusively, we can look at current circumstances. It's much, much easier to be depressed when you're poor and have no hope for a better life, for example.

You're right, that was my bias! In therapy at least you also look at the current circumstances as you're patterns of behaviour that one learned in the past hold true today as well.

Depression might lead people to eat differently. I know when my diet suffers when I'm down, there's definitely more pizza and less fruit and veg.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com