Diet and its effects on the gut biome in the pathophysiology of mental disorders
nature.com
nature.com
The best explanation I’ve heard is food is like explicit instructions for how our bodies and brains perform through our DNA. Gut health is the engine of the biological machine humming or sputtering accordingly. The research is out there on the differences between food types and impacts of processed foods. The Pollan mantra still still sticks with me: Eat (whole) foods. Not too much. Mostly plants. I’ve added: Sleep better. Move more. Stress less. (To eat well.)
Also important to note, many plants have toxins in them to prevent animals eating them, and that most research studies on red meat are greatly flawed.
Care to elaborate on this? Preferably with sources.
The reason is simply that oleic acid is the most abundant fatty acid in human fat. When the ingested fat consists mostly of oleic acid, it can be used as such, while when the ingested fat contains either mostly saturated fats, like many animal fats or mostly poly-unsaturated fatty acids, e.g. linoleic acid, like most cheap vegetable oils, the ingested fatty acids must be converted by the liver into the fatty acids preferred inside the human body, so that is extra work for the liver and the liver becomes less efficient at old ages. If the liver does not succeed to convert all the ingested fatty acids that should have been converted, than the composition of the fat used for various purposes in the body may be suboptimal.
Examples of foods with optimal fatty acid composition are olive oil, high-oleic sunflower oil (not classic sunflower oil, which contains mostly linoleic acid), hazelnuts, almonds, pistachios, cashews, peanuts.
Nuts & seeds are often high in omega-6 and are hard enough to digest that it's hard to have them as a staple. I say this as someone who was a big fan of nuts, especially almonds, but had to give them up as they triggered autoimmune symptoms. Macadamia nuts by be okay though, they are also the highest in MUFA and low in phytic acid (which causes digestive troubles and inhibits mineral absorption).
There are more than 450 references to saturated fat in the document, but I found this phrase early on:
> Our view is that saturated fats intake is at worst neutral for CVD risks and the current 10% upper limit should be lifted.
Apologies if there was some other property of red meat that you had in mind, although I've been convinced from people commenting studies purportedly linking red meat and say, colon cancer, are just based on poor quality epidemiological data. And, while there was some sort of intuitive sense in which one could imagine the saturated fat eaten with meat/dairy products would mechanically clog arteries, I don't see anything like this with red meat. In fact, we are made of it, why would eating it have a deleterious effect? To the contrary, it seems that abstaining from meat often quite quickly causes iron deficiency/disregulation, B12 deficiency and so on.
Last time I googled these tests I got so many results it seems like a small bullshit industry.
Gut bacteria is obviously important but I'm not sure the results of these tests are useful.
Importantly, should be ordered by a nutritionist and requires a blood draw. It’s got some challenges but overall helped me when paired with a restricted diet. Easy to relapse though, 2-3 months versus a lifetime of eating behaviors.
Why I think Pollan’s mantra is great, he’s not absolutist about any meat. Just mix and match, which we would in nature. It’s really hard to catch a consistent meat source.
Anyway, I do believe (citation needed) that food sensitivity is also correlated to gut biome, and that some sensitivities can be overcome with dietary and/or gut biome changes.
For example, all the kinds of seeds, including all kinds of dry legumes and all kinds of nuts, require soaking in water for many hours and the water must be dumped and they must be washed before cooking, in order to remove as much of the phytic acid as possible.
The soaking in water is much more efficient if the water is acidulated, e.g. with lemon juice or with vinegar.
Another example is with the vegetables rich in oxalic acid, e.g. spinach, which must be boiled in several stages. After each stage, the boiling water must be dumped and replaced by fresh water, in order to remove as much of the oxalic acid as possible.
Or you can just... not do any of that. Eat raw almonds and shit out phytic acid. What's the problem?
Almost all of the plants humans eat have been domesticated and bred to no longer produce these compounds in the parts that we eat. For other plant parts, such as fruit, being full of sugar and tasty is an adaptation because it helps with dispersing the plant's seeds. If this is something that interests you I recommend reading 'With Bitter Herbs they shall eat it: Chemical ecology and the origins of human diet and medicine.' by Timothy Johns. It was published 30 years ago and is essentially his PhD dissertation but quite readable and still one of the best resources on this subject.
Last I looked into this, the science didn't really support this interpretation and in fact may have been directionally opposite.
Iirc in layman's terms, a "positive" result in that test didn't really mean "immune response" it just meant your body had the corresponding chemical to break down the food. What you had eaten in the past week could alter the results of the test and the results weren't predictive of foods that would cause digestive issues.
2) GI irritation is separate from inflammation, and many common food stuffs that may be causing irritation generally decrease inflammation.
3) Those "plant toxins" are either deactivated by processing (cooking etc.) or are in such low quantities that there's no negative effect, and most of the time even a slightly positive one.
4) "Most research studies" on red meat are not flawed.
Edit: Formatting.
IgG tests are objectively bad science, used to scam people into thinking they have allergies when they don’t. IgG will basically just give you a list of what foods you’ve eaten lately. They are completely and utterly useless.
IgE tests are what matter. I have dozens of food allergies and unfortunately have had to learn more about allergies and the immune system than I ever imagined. I know what I’m talking about here.
My suggestion was for a cheap and easy hack that is likely to benefit a majority of the population. Obviously the best way is to have a well-rounded diet and get all nutrition that way but we know that can be challenging for many.
Edit: in today's news feed: https://www.sciencealert.com/in-a-first-a-dietary-supplement...
I found out I am a FUT2 non-secretor through 23andMe, unusual for a European Caucasian. So basically I cannot fight of gut microbes like you heart farmer folk.
Secretor Genotype (FUT2 gene) Is Strongly Associated with the Composition of Bifidobacteria in the Human Intestine
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
Human genetic variation and the gut microbiome in disease https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg.2017.63
Since FUT2 releases fucose (Not fructose) I decided to see what foods contained fucose and try eating those. Turned out it is very high in seaweed and mushrooms, which is interesting because I have Sami heritage. Also the spuds that changes my gut microbiome were important as well, this meant reducing my short chain PUFAs as low as possible because of my FADS1 and FADS2 genetics.
Eating those regularly turned my IBD into IBNormal and it helped my brain and inflammation as well.
So "Eat (whole) foods. Not too much. Mostly plants" is quite wrong for me, genetically. In fact, when I was a (good) vegan and vegetarian my HDL was 30 with hyperlipidemia! Eating kind of keto with only seafood pushed my Hal up to 55.
As a neuroscientist you should know that Mood Disorders are highly polygenic so there is no same cause and therefore no same cure for anyone.
So can you please start looking into personalized medicine so people like me do not have to live in constant hell? Thanks.
Fuctose has no wikipedia page. Could you provide some sources?
> I found out I am a FUT2 non-secretor through 23andMe, unusual for a European Caucasian.
Wikipedia says:
> Approximately 20% of Caucasians are non-secretors due to the G428A (rs601338) and C571T (rs492602?) nonsense mutations in FUT2
20% doesn't seem extremely unusual.
20%, uncommon, unusual, whatever. It is not rare but it is not usual.
Still 20% of the people might be eating a diet that is wrong for them. But I suppose you think this does not matter? I mean are you denying the science behind this? Are you denying it helped me?
And now I just want to add, for your interest, that Mood Disorders are not fundamentally neurological, I am sorry to say, but in fact they are immune disorders which affect neurology. You would do the mentally ill a huge favor by sending your patients to rheumatology for care.
It has been 50 years since my mother was diagnose with Bipolar Disorder and here I am now, with the same issues, and they are pretty much prescribing the same meds and looking at it in the same way. So whenever I meet a neurologist I have to express my frustration because you need to think about mood disorders in a radically new way if something is to change and being nice did not change anything. And now, when I find things out that help me I get no help from my doctors, just a "glad that worked for you" and the cold shoulder when I ask for more testing.
This is interesting to me, thank you. The gut-brain link is fascinating.
Have you read "The Body Keeps the Score"? There are some absolutely shocking stats in that book about the correlation between early childhood trauma and mood disorders. You may find the stuff about EMDR and reconnecting with the body interesting. That said, BPD is often an outlier; as in, it doesn't respond the same as most others.
... I'm not an expert. But, I think the author of that book would agree with you on the difficulty of presenting new information to doctors/neurologists/psychiatrists. It seems to require a lot of resilience.
Yes, I have read Mate's book. I assure you my fcked up childhood was one part of the problem but my genetic risk combined with a "farmer's diet" is a greater factor for me, even more so in relation to my cardiovascular and autoimmune health.
I do have a feeling that genetics is even more important than trauma and that the correlation between the two is found because of the genetics.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to dismiss medicine right away but it was an essential 15% to the 85% of my work putting in place methods and giving myself a chance to change.
That was pretty much the whole point of my comment. Why are there many theories? Because their are are many causes. Until we start looking at every one individually no one will get well.
And I am in no way dismissing medicine, I only want doctors to start practicing it again.
That's an ungenerous interpretation when otherwise the GP demonstrated curiosity about your provided information. It's easily read as "this may be important to more people than you implied".
As someone with Inuit heritage this is harmful to me. For 80% of people a vegetarian diet will be helpful. But for 20% it is probably not helpful. But all you will read in the news is how a vegetarian diet is the only diet to cure heart disease, etc...
Inulin is in every food now because it is "healthy". Do you know what inulin does to my gut? But this is one of those "healthy" foods.
I'm guessing current western high carb/low nutritional value diet is detrimental to mental health.
Historically our microbiome and the external environment must have been in a kind of dialog: available food would be a pretty direct function of the local ecosystem, and our feces, which are something like 80% microorganisms, would of course be integrated back into the soil. (It's not really that surprising, from this POV, that our bellies would have brains.)
I would eat a roll and 20 minutes later I was feeling hot and flushed and irritated. Just like I had been for years. A slice of pizza is basically a day of feeling horrible.
Was this a self-directed or clinician (nutritionist / MD / ...) programme?
I'm presuming this began with a minimum baseline to which you added foods over time?
I did this with added sugars. I could definitely feel the cravings to not only eat more as you added it back in but also the baseline cravings to just have some amount of sugar in your body. It is very eye opening.
You also become very aware of how much sugar is in everything.
A nice thing about the gut microbiome is that it's self-reinforcing, both psychologically and gustatorily--as in, once one's body realizes a food doesn't help, one tend to both think "why would I make myself feel like that?", and to find the experience of eating/drinking it less pleasurable, alien, or even disgusting.
In the U.S., a dietician is a board-certified credential with specific training and licensing requirements.
Nutritionist is a far looser term, though there may be some registration required.
Elsewhere, the terms may be interchanged, or used interchangeably.
Be aware of which you're looking at.
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/dietitian-vs-nutritioni...
This was self directed. I was in horrific agony every moment of every day, stuck in bed 20 hours a day.
I slowly added things back in, most things caused issues. Eventually I realized I was just re-inventing the AIP diet.
Few months later I was out kayaking every weekend.
Surely not as a result of the diet?
"If you haven't got your health, you haven't got anything."
-- Tyrone Rugen
But I've found myself occasionally faced with food-related unpleasantness, and it's remarkably debilitating.
YMMV
Fixing diet, adding supplements (Vit E, D, K B12, magnesium) avoiding the sun were massive in getting body under control.
I find it highly amusing that people who have never heard of AIP diet end up recreating it over and over again.
Rice is often mentioned as another low-inflammation / -irritation food. Though I've heard through a friend of someone with a rice allergy --- by an east-Asian, to boot!
I'd look at minimising complexity whilst achieving nutritional sufficiency (macros, vitamins, essential oils) and take it from there, I suppose.
It became very obvious, very quickly that a few foods (mostly dairy) were causing me major issues.
[1] the FODMAP acronym: Fermenatble Oligo-,Di-,Monosaccharides And Polyols
Also they say not to avoid all of those long term, just temporarily.
Similarly, the salivary oral microbiome has also been correlated with mental disorders, cognitive health, is modulated by diet, and plays a major role in systemic health. And saliva is objectively easier to collect. Instead of jumping straight into collecting poop, we should be collecting our spit instead!
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-022-01922-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-94498-6
Kind of like when an auto-immune disorder is causing inflammation. You can treat the inflammation, but you aren't treating the real problem.
cavities caused by acid producing bacteria? drill and fill
gum disease caused by oral dysbiosis? bone and gum grafts
diabetes from autoimmunity? insulin
high cholesterol from… anything? statins
I recently had mouth surgery where they had to open up the lower part to access the jaw bones. From what I understand, they sterilize your mouth pretty well beforehand. I had to rinse my mouth out with a foul tasting mouthwash and woke up with strange tastes and dark products around my lips. Since then, I've felt like crap. At first I thought it was the surgery itself. Then a long effect of the anesthesia. Except that it did not go away.
Anyway, I recently read a lot about probiotics and decided to try L. reuteri orally.
The result is so instantaneous that I was scared it might be psychosomatic from a placebo. But if it is indeed a placebo, it is the strongest I have experienced, so I doubt it.
My mouth went from always dry and smelly to well hydrated in one day. After 5 days, my mood completely changed, including the quality of my sleep.
I don't know if I was depressed per se, I had not consulted anyone. However, I had a heavy weight on my shoulders that is now gone.
Since that experience, I have added L. reuteri pills made for gut health to my diet. I am now considering making my own probiotic yogurts and as a family we have started to experiment with fermented sauces and pickled vegetables.
There is something very important about probiotics that is almost overlooked. I think we should all pay much more attention to it.
Neither the linked article nor Morita's mention Serguei Fetissov's pioneering work on the topic though, which is disappointing, given that he and his colleagues have long documented the link between E. Coli, the immune system and eating disorders.
The gist is that E. Coli produces a protein (CLBP) that mimics a feeding-related hormone (IIRC melanocortin). That protein ends up in the blood stream and can bind the corresponding receptors. It can also generate an immune response, and these antibodies are cross-reactive, causing autoimmunity and complicating the story.
this https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.222658699
and this https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/am-pdf/10.1002/eat.22531
among many others...
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=7%2C39&q=ser...
A key point is that the same anomalies are seen in anorexia, binge eating and bulimia.
I can't say that I've experienced a world-altering impact to my life (wow, no more acne and I've lost 22lbs!) but I do think I've been able to eat dairy products (cheese and yogurt) with far less upset stomach than before. Careful with introducing Kefir if you're looking to try it out - start small. I was adding a tablespoon to my dishes and it made me gassy as heck for the first couple of days.
I've been on antibiotics twice in this time and do feel like I get my appetite back more quickly after stopping them now. An antibiotic course used to mean weeks or months of poor appetite, nausea and indigestion now it's like 10 days. But that could be coincidence or something else entirely, who knows.
can't do it too often since I don't to well with the sugar content of dairy but it's fun!
Warped in a space battle once, barely missed some shooting turret and deep dove into a beforehand invisible sun wich was made of blue water filled cells, good thing, dreams don't have to make sense!
There's plenty of science out there but it's still early.
https://charliefoundation.org/am-i-a-candidate/keto-for-epil...
"Ketogenic Therapies and brain surgery are the only known cures for Epilepsy. Half of the people with epilepsy who try the diet have a seizure reduction of at least 50%. Up to 25% become completely seizure free. In the sections below, we explain how Ketogenic Therapies compare to anti-epileptic medications, how keto’s mechanisms are thought to affect the body, and stories from a few of the thousands of families who have had amazing results by implementing keto for epilepsy."
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/7156-ketoge...
A few patterns I've noticed.
The people who have been mostly managing their conditions via diet without understanding whats happening. Basically they eat healthy, and it mostly works.
People who love food / don't want to cook healthy and refuse to acknowledge the possibility that's causing problems.
People who say they eat healthy but really don't. (Salad once a week) Or a variation, people who ate a salad, didn't get better and claim diets don't work).
The ones who are at deaths door and are finally desperate enough to try anything.
Actually following a strict diet like KETO / AIP. Paying close attention to trigger foods, etc. These ones often can reduce or eliminate medication.
Learning to be honest with yourself about food is one of the major challenges. Giving up various food addictions can be brutal.
Having said that, I do think that doctors need to be aware of and make sure the alternatives are discussed with the patient. The paternal MD attitude of just tell the patient what they think the patient needs to hear should not be tolerated. If I ever get that vibe from a doc I move on and find someone who will respect me as a patient.
Unfortunately, keto doesn't always control seizures either. Pills still work better than diet for some people.
> Symptoms of depression and psychosis improved in all 28 patients who followed the diet for longer than two weeks, with improvements becoming noticeable within three weeks or less. 43% of patients achieved clinical remission, and 64% were discharged from the hospital on less psychiatric medication.
It's amazing that results were seen in just 3 weeks
https://www.epilepsy.com/treatment/dietary-therapies/low-gly...
One interesting thing about these low-carb diet therapies is that they can result in long-term seizure control even after discontinuing the diet. They are worth trying imo. However, I'll personally attest to the fact that they are not a silver bullet.
But I didn't read it too closely. One of my favourite YouTubers just released a video on the subject: https://youtu.be/FleMtTEEYlc
Regardless of what you think of Wakefield, and the disservice he (and/or Brian Deer) did with respect to autism and vaccines, an even bigger tragedy to me is that nobody dared to investigate the BGM axis for decades now, for fear of association.
It's good to see it back on the list of acceptable research agendas. Perhaps finally the healing can begin.
> to date there is insufficient evidence from mechanistic human studies to make conclusions about causality between a specific diet and microbially mediated brain function.