

How the Gut's "Second Brain" Influences Mood and Well-Being (2010) - csdrane
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/

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adriand
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-...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/news/why-researchers-
think-the-gut-holds-the-key-to-depression-1.2642007):

> 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.

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specialist
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...?

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nostromo
Reminds me of this:
[http://www.economist.com/node/18557594](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.

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

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jprobitaille
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.

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iagooar
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.

~~~
pedrosorio
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.

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vijucat
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.

~~~
spydum
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.

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

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sesteel
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.

~~~
objclxt
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.

~~~
michh
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.

~~~
cpncrunch
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.

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gexla
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.

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dm2
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.

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

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dlss
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

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gbaygon
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)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hara_\(tanden\))

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

~~~
Zelphyr
Can you expand on why this would be a benefit?

~~~
goblin89
My 2 cents:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistant_starch#Potential_heal...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistant_starch#Potential_health_benefits).
Dietary fiber (which resistant starch is) is often, by my impression,
recommended as part of the diet to improve colonic health.

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mozboz
Page is down, cached copy here:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:OTr-
CgU...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:OTr-CgUEX-
kJ:www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-
brain/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk)

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

~~~
taco_john
Are you diabetic by chance?

~~~
vegancap
Nope.

