Probiotics and Mental Health

I wrote this in the borderline thread

borderline (not madonna)

Basically I was recommended that I start taking probiotics to help fix my anxiety levels and the effect has been so remarkable that I want to talk about it. I hesitate to post about it on Facebook because it'd read both as "look at my mental health issues solved so easily!" and also because I don't want to come off as selling something.

When I heard about this, I called my doctor, my therapist, my friend the paediatric surgeon, my mom, and a couple of med student friends, and they all said "yes of course this is totally a thing". I had no idea. I thought probiotics were for indigestion.

Anybody have any experience with this?

I have Colin Stetson to thank for tipping me off, which is nice, he is hot and talented and also a lifesaver

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/11/18/244526773/gut-bacteria-might-guide-the-workings-of-our-minds

so I shd eat more yogurt?

Ya there are more recent studies than this, too, that are like "omg take probiotics nowwwwww". They've linked patterns of addiction and states of depression to "your gut flora is influencing your hormone production to maintain the status quo"

I started taking pills which are expensive but you don't need to take them for more than two months at a time

thanks for the info this definitely seems worth trying out

It's great to hear how effective it's been for you. I don't have any personal experience with probiotics for anxiety, but I do know the more I read about them the more benefits appear to exist. I have no idea if they're replacing things in our bodies that we've lost/killed/misplaced, or adding something extra that wasn't necessarily there before, but results are results, and from digestion on down they seem to do lots of good. There was a story in the New Yorker a while back about a man who had a chronic ear infection cured simply by moving wax from one ear to the other. Digestively, stuff like Kiefer is traditionally great for you, and even stuff like psyllium husk, which is purely physical, has been found to have an effect on mood and counters lethargy.

I do think it's better to take probiotics in some sort of rawer/natural form, like yogurt, than via pills, since a lot of the bacteria in the pills may be inert/dead, or could be by the time the pill dissolves. Doctors/experts/experienced, correct me if I'm wrong ...

Interesting. I have social anxiety and other moderate mental health issues that I've been thinking about trying to address again recently. My wife's anxiety has been pretty bad lately though. She quit buproprion last year after experiencing unpleasant side-effects and never went back for anything else since that's supposed to be one of the milder treatments.

Are there any particular reputable brands? Supplemental ANYthing I'm always convinced I'm just getting powdered carrots or whatever.

Kefir and yogurt! Bugs are bugs.

I still take buproprion. The mildest thing! But I went off it for a week and was finding myself laughing at how often I was crying-- I cried when I dropped my change, cried when I ran out of eggs. I'm back on it now, it's been a good one for me

Because I travel and probiotics need to be refrigerated, I take the kind that require no refrigeration http://www.jarrow.com/product/605/Jarro-Dophilus_EPS

I mentioned on the other thread that I traced "the exact moment my mental health went to shit" as beginning right around being prescribed Cipro. I am not scapegoating antibiotics for all my mental health issues. But wow, correcting my gut flora has had such a profound effect. It's not like a pharmaceutical where "all of a sudden I'm in a good mood", it's more like the experience of having done a lot of meditation, and feeling not happier but way more in control and finding my behavioural patterns just naturally far more stable and consistent

The probiotic bit of yoghurt has been marketed here by Danone as 'bifidus digestivum' and 'bifidus regularis' among other made-up things, ensuring I'll never take it seriously

I tried this as an add-on and I really didn't notice any additional effects, nor any harm.

I didn't notice any effects of any type from probiotics but I think my diet was essentially empty of prebiotics and low on fiber at the time. The rest of your diet has to be friendly to building the new bacteria, IIRC.

hate to admit it but i strongly believe in building healthy gut bacteria and have experimented a lot

probiotics and yogurt are wonderful

the gimmicky marketing side of it puts a lot of people off, which is unfortunate

i feel like i should give this a try, maybe just drink a kombucha every day i guess?

google microbiome or gut biome

but i should backtrack a little

there are two separate things here

for a healthy microbiome, the point is to increase bacteroidetes and decrease firmicutes (two main families of bacteria in the digestive system)

this is an okay read: http://nautil.us/issue/31/stress/what-your-microbiome-wants-for-dinner

you'll find a lot of articles mix in bad science with good science because this is all very new so you are never experimenting under a controlled sample/environment -- so there is a lot of trial and error unfortunately (this is where people get put off)

the other thing is probiotics

look for probiotics that have bifidobacterium or lactobacillus

people get worked up about this because lactobacillus is actually part of the firmicutes family of bacteria. this happens to be the good type and is what yogurt contains

bifidobacterium comes from a totally different family called actinobacteria, but still good for you

general info on bacteria and germs: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/10/22/germs-are-us

don't consume artificial sweeteners: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/artificial-sweeteners-may-change-our-gut-bacteria-in-dangerous-ways/

this is neat too: http://americangut.org

lastly an interesting fun read: http://nautil.us/issue/30/identity/how-the-western-diet-has-derailed-our-evolution

nb most commercial yogurts don't actually have live culture and won't do anything for yr biome

that's a good point

you just have to constantly read the labels, nutrition facts and ingredients in everything you're buying and get past the marketing stuff

The microbiome certainly plays a role in mental health. Useful reviews:

Cryan and Dinan, 2012. Mind-altering microorganisms: the impact of the gut microbiota on brain and behaviour. Nature reviews neuroscience, 13(10), pp.701-712.
Saulnier et al, 2013. The intestinal microbiome, probiotics and prebiotics in neurogastroenterology. Gut microbes, 4(1), pp.17-27.
Dinan et al, 2015. [Collective unconscious: how gut microbes shape human behavior](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022395615000655). Journal of psychiatric research, 63, pp.1-9.

However, probiotics have less effect than changing one's habitual diet to favor microbiota available carbohydrates. Beans, bulbs (Allium vegetables), and bran (whole grains). The simple truth is that probiotics and food fermenters are different strains from those adapted to the gut environment, and don't compete well with established populations. Their rRNA is visible in fecal samples while taking the probiotic, and disappears thereafter.

nb most commercial yogurts don't actually have live culture and won't do anything for yr biome

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.