Post by healthy11 on Jul 20, 2015 22:06:55 GMT -5
finance.yahoo.com/news/scientists-keep-finding-more-evidence-201216216.html
A portion of the article says, "Mark Lyte has been studying this relationship for approximately 30 years. When he first started this work, "it was dismissed as a curiosity," according to a recent profile of research into the gut-brain connection in The New York Times, but over time, as Lyte and others continued to publish their research, they uncovered more and more compelling evidence that bacteria could not only affect but could perhaps even be a causal factor in mental disorders — something that implies they could also be eventually used to treat these same conditions.
Researchers have shown that the presence of certain bacteria can identify people that are more prone to depression and anxiety disorders. Other bacterial communities have even been connected to conditions like hyperactivity and autism. Just last September, as the Times reported, the National Institute of Mental Health awarded up to $1 million to four separate research projects looking at ways to better understand how these colonies of gut bacteria affect mental health.
This research is so fascinating because of its potential impact: if we find that abnormal bacterial colonies have a role in causing mental disorders, then perhaps if we alter these bacterial colonies, we can treat these mental conditions.
This is the promise and claim of the multi-billion-dollar and growing probiotics industry, but it should be very clearly noted that as of right now, we still have no idea how to effectively manipulate gut bacteria to treat mental conditions or many other issues; we're not even sure such treatments are possible. And it's worth noting that the gut-bacteria effective treatments that have proven useful for specific applications like a C. diff infection are vastly different from the probiotics being marketed at your local drugstore....
Lyte's lab focuses on figuring out some of the ways these bacteria could affect our mental health. They've found that gut bacteria produce neurochemicals like dopamine and serotonin. We've known those were produced in the gut for a long time, but didn't know until recently it was the bacteria making them...."
A portion of the article says, "Mark Lyte has been studying this relationship for approximately 30 years. When he first started this work, "it was dismissed as a curiosity," according to a recent profile of research into the gut-brain connection in The New York Times, but over time, as Lyte and others continued to publish their research, they uncovered more and more compelling evidence that bacteria could not only affect but could perhaps even be a causal factor in mental disorders — something that implies they could also be eventually used to treat these same conditions.
Researchers have shown that the presence of certain bacteria can identify people that are more prone to depression and anxiety disorders. Other bacterial communities have even been connected to conditions like hyperactivity and autism. Just last September, as the Times reported, the National Institute of Mental Health awarded up to $1 million to four separate research projects looking at ways to better understand how these colonies of gut bacteria affect mental health.
This research is so fascinating because of its potential impact: if we find that abnormal bacterial colonies have a role in causing mental disorders, then perhaps if we alter these bacterial colonies, we can treat these mental conditions.
This is the promise and claim of the multi-billion-dollar and growing probiotics industry, but it should be very clearly noted that as of right now, we still have no idea how to effectively manipulate gut bacteria to treat mental conditions or many other issues; we're not even sure such treatments are possible. And it's worth noting that the gut-bacteria effective treatments that have proven useful for specific applications like a C. diff infection are vastly different from the probiotics being marketed at your local drugstore....
Lyte's lab focuses on figuring out some of the ways these bacteria could affect our mental health. They've found that gut bacteria produce neurochemicals like dopamine and serotonin. We've known those were produced in the gut for a long time, but didn't know until recently it was the bacteria making them...."