Your gut and your brain talk to each other,
and when the gut talks, the brain listens.
I'm Dr. Tracy Marks, a psychiatrist
and I make mental health education videos.
Your intestines has about 39 trillion microorganisms in it.
And yes, I said, trillion.
We call this collection of organisms, the microbiome,
and it consists mostly of bacteria,
but it also contains viruses and fungi.
Collectively it weighs about three pounds,
which is the same way as your brain.
We feed these organisms
and they produce chemicals that we need.
They send messages to the brain through the vagus nerve.
The vagus nerve is cranial nerve number 10
that originates in the brain stem,
and then it travels down your neck
and alongside your carotid arteries,
and then into your chest,
and then branches out and sends out feelers
to control your internal organs
in your abdomen and your chest including your intestines.
It's the longest nerve that originates in the brain,
and not only controls the contractions
of your gut, which is called Peristalsis,
but it also controls your heart rate.
So it's a super important nerve,
and that's what the microbiome
uses to send messages directly
to your chief operating officer, your brain.
That's probably more than you wanted to know
about the vagus nerve but I couldn't help myself.
The vagus nerve is an important
in triggering a relaxation response
more on that in another video.
We know that people who are depressed and anxious
have very different microbiomes
and people who are not depressed.
With depression you have a higher number
of bad bacteria that produce inflammatory chemicals,
they send these inflammatory chemicals back to the brain
and they get distributed in the body.
So the ideal scenario
is to have a diverse population of bacteria strains.
Yes, even the microbiome values diversity,
even though the microbiome contains viruses
and fungi, it's mostly bacteria,
so I will refer to it as your gut bacteria.
What makes you have good versus bad bacteria?
Several things, diet and medications.
Diets high in processed foods, sugar, red meat,
and fast food promote the bad bacteria,
and lots of medications and not just antibiotics
can change the population of your gut.
Your age, as you get older, your bacteria
population becomes less diverse.
Your sleep, bacteria are sensitive
to circadian rhythm changes,
so poor sleep promotes bad bacteria
and increases inflammation
And then activity level, aerobics activity
improves the diversity of your microbiome.
The connection between having poor microbiome health
and depression is so strong that research has shown
that transplanting feces containing the bacteria
from a non-depressed individual
to a depressed individual treated the depression.
So we know that this is a real thing that matters,
but unfortunately it's not practical to do fecal
transplants because of the risk of transmitting infection.
Plus there's just something about
having someone else's feces injected into your body
that just doesn't right, no pun intended.
So until we have maybe an artificial option,
you have to boost your own gut health.
And here's some suggestions.
The first thing is to clean up your diet
by eliminating or reducing processed foods,
sugar and red meat.
The Mediterranean diet is a good choice
for this kind of diet.
And I talk about this diet as a treatment
for depression in this video.
Then you want to eat prebiotics.
Prebiotics are the fiber that feeds
the bacteria and keeps them in circulation.
These are foods that are high in inulin, fruit,
sugars, polyphenols, and polyunsaturated fatty acids.
Some examples of prebiotics are onion, garlic,
bananas, walnuts, wine, oily fish, and oats.
I have a handy guide that you can download from my website.
If you're already part of my email community,
you got this when the video first published,
you can get it from my website
without leaving your email address,
but then you'll have to go back to my website
every time I give away something.
Then there's probiotics.
Probiotics contain the actual bacteria
that you ingest to increase the good population of bacteria.
You can get them from your diet, or you can take capsules.
It's always best to get important
nutrients from your food rather than supplements.
Some examples of dietary probiotics are yogurt,
sauerkraut, pickles, and kombucha,
because these foods contain live bacteria
you should check with your doctor.
If you are severely immunocompromised.
The more good bacteria that you have the better,
and you can increase the diversity
by taking probiotic supplements
along with eating probiotic food.
The probiotic capsules contain freeze dried bacteria,
that reconstitute once they get past
the stomach and into the gut.
And by the way, because of the positive effect
on your mental health, some people refer
to probiotics as psychobiotics.
It matters when you take your probiotic supplements
you need to take them on an empty stomach
before for your meal.
Why? Because your stomach secretes
acid as part of the digestive process
to break down your food.
Some bacteria are very resistant to acid,
like certain strains of E Coli that cause food poisoning.
These bacteria survive the stomach acid
and then secrete toxins causing vomiting and diarrhea.
The most common good bacteria strains
are Bifidobacteria and Lactobacilli,
and they can also survive the stomach acid
if they're not exposed to the acid for too long.
So the bacteria containing food or pills
need to move through your stomach
as fast as possible so the bacteria
isn't killed off by the acid.
Movement through the stomach is fast when it's empty,
but when you eat a heavy meal there's a backup
as the food gets processed,
it's like waiting in line to go through airport security.
In that case, the bacteria can get killed off
while it sits in the stomach.
So probiotics work best on an empty stomach
or with a very light meal.
The next thing you want to do
is increase your aerobic exercise.
The department of health and human services
recommends 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week.
This could be 30 minutes of brisk walking
or swimming five days a week,
and then running would be vigorous exercising,
with this you would only need 75 minutes a week.
As for sleep set a consistent bedtime that allows you
to get seven to nine hours of sleep each night.
Even if you've never been depressed or anxious,
good gut health begets good overall health
including maintaining a proper weight.
Have you ever wondered what makes some people
naturally thin while others large?
Even when the two people eat the same amount of food,
you may say it's genetic, well, guess what?
That population of 39 trillion organisms
house a lot of genetic material in their cells,
and that influences a lot of our body functions.
Some people refer to the microbiome as the second brain
or the secondary immune system.
So it would be who view to take care
of your microbe community and then it will take care of you.
Thanks for watching.
See you next time.