Probiotics and Mental Health

i honestly can't say i've ever seen credible evidence for -- or even heard lay people discuss -- a link between probiotic consumption and mental health. and probiotics people claim they do everything short of curing cancer. though tbh i haven't exactly been looking for it, so it may be out there

i'm opening for CS in a couple weeks, will be sure to bring a gift basket of yogurt and kombucha.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-14/how-gut-bacteria-are-shaking-up-cancer-research

also i was able to get rid of my spring/summer allergies by changing my eating habits

However, probiotics have less effect than changing one's habitual diet to favor microbiota available carbohydrates. Beans, bulbs (Allium vegetables), and bran (whole grains).

This sucks for me as my Crohn's disease makes me unable to tolerate beans or whole grains (I can do cooked alliums though)

Lol k3vin, Sanpaku posted some links so you don't need to even work to uncover "credible evidence", that said, me neither, I had had zero conversations about this until The Conversation I Had and then my doctor, my doctor friend (head of pediatric surgery at a Canadian hospital; she is always giving probiotics to babies FYI), my therapist, and friends and friends of friends were full of "yes this is totally a thing" statements and "holy shit yes my mom took antibiotics and went crazy for a year". But I hadn't heard about it until recently, thus this thread

thanks [infinity] for the education this is v interesting

The biggest (only) drawback to taking probiotic pills is of course the price

Also, it's still considered "weird" in North America to do certain gut flora treatments that are considered commonplace in Europe. Using a familial fecal transplant is hilarious to think about but is THE effective treatment for C. difficile which has killed a lot of people, in Quebec especially :(

That transplant is not commonplace in Canada btw, tho friends of mine in Holland say that parents there regular threaten their kids "eat your yogurt or you'll need a poo injection"

next time an ilxor says they want to shit in someone's mouth i'll take it as a caring statement then

what brand of probiotic pills are you taking?

uh xpost

do you live in canada? because at least in vancouver ~6 years ago (and even before that) probiotics were all the rage and there were constantly probiotic yogurt commercials

xp to fgti

Yeah, Montreal. Obv everybody is saying "hey hey probiotics are great" but I didn't realize the link w/ mental health until recently

Also it's not a shit-in-mouth scenario more of a ))<>((

wait, like goatse or butts meeting or what. sorry

forever

Lol k3vin, Sanpaku posted some links

you don't say! this is what happened one recent time he did that though.

This is the thread where we curse cancer.

Well, until there's a thread on lifestyle strategies for cancer risk reduction, I'm not going back there. I'm teachable.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KQoJo81lujk

In Oregon we have a local creamery (Springfield Creamery) that sells yoghurt with live cultures under the brand: Nancy's. You can probably buy it in Washington State, too. We never purchase or eat any other kind. It is flat out the best.

Kefir and yogurt! Bugs are bugs.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 27 July 2016 12:39 (Yesterday) Permalink

i dont think its as simple as that tho? there are different types of bacteria, which (maybe) do different things

e.g i had stomach trouble, saw this study - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3419998/ - and so looked out for probiotics containing Lactobacillus plantarum... this wasnt in any of the yoghurt i looked at, so i had to get pills.

yogurt makes me bloaty & i fkn hate kombucha, but i have neverending digestive issues etc so i am gonna investigate a lower dose of these probiotic supplements

and hey if they help my brane too, hooray

xpost Yeah, there are different bacteria, but I didn't think they were specialized for any particular function. Are they? Anyway, can't speak to Lactobacillus planetarium or its particular benefits, but a quick glance at my boring ol' Trader Joes Kefir bottle shows it as one of the many Lactobacillus ingredients, so it can't be that hard to come by.

In Oregon we have a local creamery (Springfield Creamery) that sells yoghurt with live cultures under the brand: Nancy's. You can probably buy it in Washington State, too. We never purchase or eat any other kind. It is flat out the best.

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless)

Aimless OTM, I eat it every weekday morning

Wait; Yakult helps anxiety?

There are over 800 bacterial species seen in the human gut microbiota, with individuals from Western cultures typically carrying varied subsets of about 150. More diversity is seen in traditional cultures like the Hazda.

For a decade quantitative PCR has revealed that more easily cultured fermenters like those in probiotics and fermented foods (Lactobacillus) are relatively minor constituents of the gut population, but due to the streetlight effect, those species dominated earlier literature. More recent research has focused on better markers of microbiota health (A. muciniphila (a 2016 wow), F. prausnitzii, Roseburia sp., etc.) which are too difficult to culture for commercial probiotics and aren't used in food fermentation. Species like these are the reason the microbiota accessible carbohydrates and whole plant food polyphenols are "more good for you than a wheelbarrow full of yogurt".

Are microbiota accessible carbohydrates similar to the resistant starch that was all the rage a couple of years ago (like potato starch or plantain starch)?

The term is the Sonnenburgs', a response to the vagueness and inadequacy of the term "fiber".

Sonnenburg and Sonnenburg, 2014. Starving our microbial self: the deleterious consequences of a diet deficient in microbiota-accessible carbohydrates. Cell metabolism, 20(5), pp.779-786.

Resistant starch is one microbiota accessible carb; as are galactans from beans; fructans from garlic, leeks, onion, shallot, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, raddichio, snow peas etc.; and arabinoxylans from wheat, barley, and rye bran. Some fermented dairy products have transgalactooligosaccharides.

There's a newer open access review for the curious:

Rogers et al, 2016. From gut dysbiosis to altered brain function and mental illness: mechanisms and pathways. Molecular psychiatry, 21(6), pp.738-748.

I love how for all the science and medicine involved, the word still used is "gut."

effing love these types of body/human science experiments

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/opinion/gut-hack.html

https://daily.jstor.org/your-gut-your-emotions/

How do probiotics survive your stomach acid?

up the butt is the only way, sorry

~hiyever~ morning is when stomach acid is weakest; if you eat/drink dairy simultaneously that can also quell the acidity somewhat; and if you take a big dose of the critters they have a better chance of surviving the alimentary gauntlet and establishing themselves in yr gutpipes.