How the Gut's "Second Brain" Influences Mood and Well-Being (2010) | Hacker News Reader

How the Gut's "Second Brain" Influences Mood and Well-Being (2010)

scientificamerican.com

116 pointscsdrane37 comments

My next door neighbour is a scientist who researches the connection between gastrointestinal microbes and mental wellbeing. Essentially, he believes that it may be possible to treat anxiety and depression by encouraging the growth of certain beneficial bacteria in your stomach.

From http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/news/why-researchers-...:

> Kunze, a researcher with the Brain-Body Institute at St. Joseph’s Healthcare, has discovered a new nerve pathway in the gut that is key to sending signals from an anti-depressant and anti-anxiety microbe to the brain.

> Kunze’s findings were recently published in the journal FASEB, or Federation of the American Societies for Experimental Biology. His team of international researchers have been studying signals in mice, and plan for human trials over the next year.

> Kunze’s mouse trials showed that the gut could send signals from specific probiotic bacteria, which have anti-depressant and anti-anxiety properties, to the brain.

I'm keen to learn the drug administration pathway / route. Not oral, not IV, not skin patch... Will these future gastrome (?) remedies be administered in time release capsules (to get past the stomach's acid bath) or thru FMT or...?

Reminds me of this: http://www.economist.com/node/18557594

> At the start of the day, [parole judges] granted around two-thirds of the applications before them. As the hours passed, that number fell sharply, eventually reaching zero. But clemency returned after each of two daily breaks, during which the judges retired for food. The approval rate shot back up to near its original value, before falling again as the day wore on.

I think this has to do more with the amount of glucose in the judges brain.

Paul Graham has reported that YC interview admissions exhibit that same pattern.

Oh man, I can confirm this. I had to take a course of SSRI's last year and my gut-mind was so relaxed and happy on them that I completely lost the sensation of hunger. It was . . . odd. I had to set timers to remember to eat.

What's interesting is that in German, you very often use the word "Bauchgefühl" (literally stomach / gut feeling) as a synonym of intuition, pretty similar as in English. I can't find the same kind of expression in Slavic or Latin languages though.

In russian language there are also phrase "нутром чувствовать" (literally insides / gut feeling).

In Portuguese we use the adjective that refers to the gut, "visceral", with the same meaning as English to characterize strong/deep emotions - and more often than not negative ones - but as you say not intuition, as far as I know.

Same in Spanish

Aha, is this why I am able to think so clearly after a fast, I wonder! If anyone else wants to try it, this is what works for me : skip dinner, (take as much water as you feel like, though), sleep early, wake up early, and feel the clarity. It's amazing.

Just in the past week I've been more strict about fasting between dinnertime and breakfast. I did this thinking that it might move my sleep schedule earlier, but now that I've done it for a little while, I think it might be helping my thinking and energy too.

I have noticed such a massive productivity boost that I intentionally skip lunch (for about a year now). I spend my lunch hour running instead.. Feels better throughout the whole day, and have a nice boost of cognitive energy in the afternoon, instead of the post-lunch sleepies.

That's such a great combination! But I wonder if I personally will have the resolve to BOTH skip lunch and exercise :-)

First, the fact that I didn't know this existed bothers me. Second, the fact that I now know this exists disturbs me a little bit.

Same here.

I certainly never really considered just how intertwined the gut and the brain are until I was diagnosed with IBS (or perhaps a better name, the "we have no clue what's wrong with your digestive system, but it's not physical" syndrome).

About 18 months ago a number of things conspired against me: I was having a very stressful and uncertain time at work/home, and I went on a strong course of antibiotics for an infection which wiped out my gut (a known side effect). For about six months I had serious digestive problems, both bloating, gas, diarrhea, nausea, abdominal pain - real, visible, symptoms...but despite a barrage of tests, nothing at all medically wrong. I had dozens of blood tests, an ultrasound, a gastroscopy, and a colonoscopy with biopsies - nothing. At the same time, I went through a serious depression and malaise that nearly always coincided with my digestive problems.

A year an a half later, I have a lot more respect for how the gut is tied in to general mental health. I'm not totally back to normal, but I'm a lot better than I was, thanks to meditation, watching my diet (my gut is a lot more sensitive to what I put in now - previously, I would eat any old junk), and generally making that connection between my mood and my stomach.

I have IBS and a history of panic disorder. A couple weeks ago, after five years of no attacks I had a relapse after taking a probiotic. I'm almost back to normal (heart palpitations and slight uneasiness whenever I eat) but man, that experience shook me.

I never had any IBS symptoms as a result of panic disorder but I can say from experience that finding a good evidence based* therapist can change your life. I've gone from panic attacks sending me running home and downing Xanax to them being a general annoyance lasting 5 minutes tops. And given my trajectory I have every reason to believe that soon, with a possible rare exception, I won't have any at all.

* This is key. A therapist who works off their intuition ("why do you think you freaked out?") is a waste of money.

This. It's so weird when you conclude your mind is having a direct and undeniable influence on your physical wellbeing.

In my case, I can't eat certain foods (I'm still trying to work out which, but it includes chocolate) when I'm stressed. I get severe cramps, bloating, pain and even hot flushes (intense sweating). It happened to me on a train once and people thought I was OD-ing.

And stressed doesn't mean "close to the edge". Just a bit of nerves about something, definitely not enough to keep me up at night, will do the trick.

When the evidence suggested chocolate made me really unwell, but only if I was a bit stressed, it was really hard to accept because it just sounds so weird and implausible.

It's not really surprising, as we already know that the gut is influenced by stress. The main pathways are the vagus nerve and the HPA axis, which control gastric emptying and colonic movement. Stress will either shut down your vagus nerve resulting in reduced stomach emptying, or it will activate the HPA axis and cause diarrhea (or both).

I get IBS myself, so I find it a little strange that some people don't. My guess is that my nervous system is simply more liable to over-activate than most people's. This is useful in that it gives me copious amounts of mental energy and ability to crank out amazing code very quickly and do stuff that most people (present company excepted) wouldn't be able to do, like design and build a compiler/VM for my own programming language, or build an HTML5 web conferencing system by myself. The downside is that I am prone to IBS and burnout.

While there is ample evidence of the brain influencing the gut, there isn't really much evidence of the gut influencing the brain. It seems unlikely that 'butterflies in the stomach' is caused by the gut influencing the brain, rather than the other way around. The afferent vagus nerves do signal to the brain when there is a gut infection, and that can certainly cause anxiety and depression. However most people with anxiety/depression/IBS don't have any active infection, and there is more evidence that it is the brain influencing the gut rather than the other way around. One possibility is that people with these conditions are genetically programmed to release more serotonin, and that happens both in the brain and the gut.

Similar. 30 years never a (serious) symptom. Relationship / work problems and bam! - severe Crohn's disease resulting in a bowel resection. But also lost the relationship and the job. It's taken 15 years and I've had to change my lifestyle (no more late nights and the things you do during late nights) but I feel better than ever and no longer have day to day gut problems.

You know, this really sums up a lot of what I learn online. And by the way, I'm referring to provable facts, not just "well it's on the internet so it must be true ... 'bonjour!'"

Our brains are just crazy chaotic things. Who knows what sort of factors go into affecting how our brains work.

That's why it's good to have routines, systems and checklists for pretty much everything. Even these won't be perfect, but at least they codify and somewhat standardize the thought processes that go into the things we do.

Edit:

And like with any good agile person, we can iterate on our systems.

This topic combined with Google's Project Ara gave me an idea. There is nothing stopping us from being able to "hot-swap" brains or brain modules.

If you need to do a lot of work one day or need to figure out an exceptionally difficult task, then plug-in lots of computing resources, then disconnect them afterwards to return to "normal".

Maybe even have a "think-tank as a service" that you can connect to. If you have a particularly daunting task ahead of you and need advice and collective brain-power then connect to a remote brain cloud and "collaborate", I'm not sure if latency will be an issue, hopefully that can be overcome.

Even defragging or moving memories or emotions around (or to external storage) could be done.

When unplugged these brain modules would be "sleeping" and would be fresh and ready to go when you needed to plug them back in.

The future will be weird.

It has been done at least once (with a man and his wife, for a limited period of time) so it's certainly possible.

This was proven practically by George W. Bush, as reported by Steven Colbert here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7FTF4Oz4dI

Well researched article. If a little out there:

> His work with the gut's nervous system has led him to think that in coming years psychiatry will need to expand to treat the second brain in addition to the one atop the shoulders.

I'm pretty sure that will still be the Gastroenterology...

Shameless self plug: if you are in the bay area and interested in taking probiotics, I'd like to give you a free months supply in exchange for tracking mood & stomach function.

email me: david@generalbiotics.com

There is a lot of knowledge about this belly brain to be gained from studying the japanese arts (as in Dō).

Zazen and Aikido come to my mind, but all the Japan's traditional disciplines seems to center around the development of the Hara [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hara_(tanden)

I recommend adding Bob's Red Mill Potato Starch to your diet / regiment. Wonderful resistant starch product.

Can you expand on why this would be a benefit?

My 2 cents: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistant_starch#Potential_heal.... Dietary fiber (which resistant starch is) is often, by my impression, recommended as part of the diet to improve colonic health.

Heh heh, I'm laughing that you are downvoted and you literally had the absolute most useful and best suggestion of any post here. Not everyone hangs out in the paleo world though clearly as some of the discussion here shows the hacker news people are light years behind the paleo world in terms of up to date scientific knowledge about health.

Page is down, cached copy here:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:OTr-CgU...

My mood improved noticeably when I stopped eating meat and dairy.

My mood declines when I don't eat meat and dairy. I like meat and dairy.

Are you diabetic by chance?

Nope.

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