How Your Gut Influences Your Brain (stanford.edu) 31
A blog post from the Stanford University School of Medicine attempts to answer the question: What's the deal with the gut-brain connection?
It affects your mood, your sleep, even your motivation to exercise. There's convincing evidence that it's the starting point for Parkinson's disease and could be responsible for long COVID's cognitive effects. And it sits about 2 feet below your brain. The gut plays an obvious role in our health by digesting what we eat and extracting nutrients. But there's a growing appreciation among scientists that our digestive systems affect our general well-being in a much broader fashion.
One fascinating aspect of the gut's widespread impact on health is its direct influence on and communication with the brain, a conduit known as the gut-brain axis. Through direct signals from the vagus nerve, [which] connects the brain and the gut, as well as through molecules secreted into the bloodstream from our gut microbes and immune cells that traffic from the gut to the rest of the body, our brains and our digestive tracts are in constant communication. And when that communication goes off the rails, diseases and disorders can result. The gut-brain connection is a key part of how the brain forms a picture of the rest of the body, a phenomenon known as interoception, explained Christoph Thaiss, PhD, an assistant professor of pathology at Stanford Medicine...
The gut also contains the largest number of neurons outside the brain of any structure in the body — more than 100 million neurons line the human digestive tract, from the esophagus to the anus. These cells make up what is known as the enteric nervous system, which some scientists refer to as a "second brain." The enteric nervous system is more brain-like than other peripheral nerves because it consists of lots of different types of neurons that communicate with each other, while other peripheral nerves primarily serve to communicate between the brain and the body, said Julia Kaltschmidt, PhD, the Firmenich Next Generation Faculty Scholar and an associate professor of neurosurgery. In fact, the gut's nervous system can act alone. Scientists have found that if they remove an animal's gut and bathe it in a special fluid designed to keep neurons alive, the gut continues to contract, pushing its contents from top to bottom.
One fascinating aspect of the gut's widespread impact on health is its direct influence on and communication with the brain, a conduit known as the gut-brain axis. Through direct signals from the vagus nerve, [which] connects the brain and the gut, as well as through molecules secreted into the bloodstream from our gut microbes and immune cells that traffic from the gut to the rest of the body, our brains and our digestive tracts are in constant communication. And when that communication goes off the rails, diseases and disorders can result. The gut-brain connection is a key part of how the brain forms a picture of the rest of the body, a phenomenon known as interoception, explained Christoph Thaiss, PhD, an assistant professor of pathology at Stanford Medicine...
The gut also contains the largest number of neurons outside the brain of any structure in the body — more than 100 million neurons line the human digestive tract, from the esophagus to the anus. These cells make up what is known as the enteric nervous system, which some scientists refer to as a "second brain." The enteric nervous system is more brain-like than other peripheral nerves because it consists of lots of different types of neurons that communicate with each other, while other peripheral nerves primarily serve to communicate between the brain and the body, said Julia Kaltschmidt, PhD, the Firmenich Next Generation Faculty Scholar and an associate professor of neurosurgery. In fact, the gut's nervous system can act alone. Scientists have found that if they remove an animal's gut and bathe it in a special fluid designed to keep neurons alive, the gut continues to contract, pushing its contents from top to bottom.
here at /. the experts know better (Score:1)
The /. experts will all tell you that weight management is merely a reflection of your worth as a person, that overwieght people are simply inferior. That can't be this "gut-brain connection" because that would contradict their appearance of superiority. Right, SuperKendalll?
Re:here at /. the experts know better (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: here at /. the experts know better (Score:4, Interesting)
Never met a person who was falling apart who was actually contented, just hedonistically careening, desperately attempting to reach a calm and fulfilled feeling but never getting there; just a rollercoaster they feel a need to ride because it's all they know.
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I'm honestly not sure what you are trying to say there. Everyone dies sometime and you cannot predict what will kill you or when. Some suffer a longer death and some do not, again no way to predict. Life is not a simple choice between "hedonism" and not-"hedonism". You act as though any act of self-enjoyment is necessarily bad in some way. I suspect this is based on your religion, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. Go ahead, hold yourself back in life, pine for every boring second you can muster, I won't st
Re: here at /. the experts know better (Score:2)
Hi Jon. Iâ(TM)m sorry that you saw this and took this personally. You obviously felt that this was partly about you, and a small party of it probably is, but itâ(TM)s also about mostly about my extended family, friends I have elsewhere, and the people Iâ(TM)ve seen around me for much of my life doing the same thing.
but Iâ(TM)m also allowed to have my opinion. And Iâ(TM)m also allowed to post it on the Internet.
you talk about killing yourself and how you hate the world and you just w
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So this graduated from quack science after all? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you go back in time on the web sites that promote raw milk they have been writing about this for a decade or more. Also Mercola.
Although I started drinking raw milk (reliable source) and seemed to get some benefit from it, I never bought into all the new-agey "here's the study that shows" type of hype that the fan base cultivates. It is sort of interesting to see this go mainstream.
Re:So this graduated from quack science after all? (Score:5, Informative)
If you go back in time on the web sites that promote raw milk they have been writing about this for a decade or more. Also Mercola.
Although I started drinking raw milk (reliable source) and seemed to get some benefit from it, I never bought into all the new-agey "here's the study that shows" type of hype that the fan base cultivates. It is sort of interesting to see this go mainstream.
Drinking raw milk is like eating raw steak. If you have a taste for it then that’s great, but eventually statistics catches up and it comes time to pay the price. Despite being very careful I get food poisoning once every few years, it’s very easy to feel like a bus ran your intestines over. It can be days before you feel better or even be fatal. Because of that I’m in favor of restrictions and warnings so that people have to obviously brush them aside and take things into their own hands because it shouldn’t be possible to stumble into an Oregon trail ending to life.
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Quite. For some reason these dumbfscks seem to think that dairy companies just pay huge amounts of money to pasteurise milk just for the fun of it. I'm sure there's the name for a fallacy whereby someone doesn't believe something because it hasn't happened to them - yet. But it will, one day, when he drinks some raw milk with a boatload of ecoli 157 in it. I can guarantee he'll never drink it raw again after that.
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Dairy companies pay huge amounts to pasteurize milk because that fits their business model. They save more money than they spend on it. You can't handle raw milk intended for human consumption the way you do with industrially processed milke.
Humans have been drinking milk from farm animals for 10,000 years or more. They weren't dying in droves over it or they would have stopped.
It was only when factory farming practices became sufficiently widespread that things got bad enough that governments had t
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Drinking raw milk is stupid. Don't do it. It's going to kill you some day. The placebo effect you derive from it isn't worth your fucking life- find better ways to trigger it. Crystals are pretty benign, I imagine.
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He'd probably burble about how our ancestors drank it raw in their paloe diet. Conveniently forgetting 80% of kids died before adulthood and most adults didn't make it past 40.
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The faecal transplant craze seems safer than drinking raw milk, if you are into that.
What is this fluid? (Score:2)
mens sana in corpore sano (Juvenal) (Score:5, Insightful)
We discovered electrons before atomic energy (Score:2)
Nothing here really seems to be news. The critical question is what you can actually do to positively affect the situation. The gut microbiome is tremendously complex and very poorly understood.
The microbiome was not well understood even 20 years ago when I was in grad school for biochemistry. It's come a long way and as you said, it's complex and underappreciated until recently.
With science, yeah, a few trailblazers pave a way and the wide industry eventually follows. It doesn't move as fast as the software industry in silicon valley, for example. However, that's obvious because some caffeinated and motivated engineers can come up with an idea and have it in beta within 6 months, whereas a
Re: mens sana in corpore sano (Juvenal) (Score:2)
I agree that it is poorly understood from a western science point of view. I think other cultures have gotten a reasonably good handle on it in their own way for much longer though.
I wish they would bring all these ideas together to better understand what is happening and how to help people, but thatâ(TM)s not something that a PhD, who has been embroiled they're entire lives in traditional academia in the west would necessarily even understand or see how to integrate, sadly.
Here's to diversity though!
Re: mens sana in corpore sano (Juvenal) (Score:2)
Contact Hawking's former carer and ask what hi-IQ snacks to have instead of steak pies and bacon subs. ðY(TM)
Gut thought? (Score:3)
Re: Gut thought? (Score:2)
this is a significant difference between eastern and western culture:
we think this stuff is new in the west. We're SO egotistical culturally. We did not invent it at all. This has been the idea in traditional pre Mao Chinese culture, for instance, for thousands of years. Yogic/ayurvedic "science" also points to this as well as a little Buddhism.
in the west, people have traditionally asked âoehow can this make me money?â
in traditional Chinese culture they ask, âoecan I eat this?â
while the
Maybe things have changed (Score:2)
External organisms aren't your digestive system (Score:2)
I used to be very reliably able to detect the cranks by their saying "gut" vs. "digestive system".
The digestive system are the parts your body made. Your gut includes the bacteria inside them. So stomach/intestines?...digestive system...the flora of bacteria inside the intestines?....gut.
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If gut really did mean "digestive system + flora of bacteria", it seems to me that terms like "gut microbiota" would be inventions of the Department of Redundancy Department.
I'm pretty sure it's just a synonym for your digestive tract.
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Frankly, I call bullshit on the digestive system not including the... well, wouldn't it be fauna? Bacteria aren't plants, are they?
I don't think our digestive system would digest much without the bacteria, would it?
What I want to know... (Score:2)
...is how to make my gut understand that it's being a pain in the arse, both literally and figuratively, and to please stop.
Re: What I want to know... (Score:2)
Is my gut telling me I need to sleep outside more because when I do my stools become deer-like, exiting cleanly and quickly leaving very little residue?
Yong (Score:3)
2. Unfortunately, there haven't been many studies that have shown a beneficial effect on diseases by interventions on the microbiome. Not for lack of trying (i.e., there are many negative studies).
3. Nevertheless, eating plenty of vegetables and fruits is a good thing.
It makes sense (Score:3)
Before brains evolved, organisms needed some mechanism for making decisions to enhance their chances of survival/reproduction, and they (generally) already had a digestive system that was directly involved in their day-to-day survival, so why not keep the necessary neurons there?
The brain we keep at the top of our spinal column is just the modern-day, optional processing-accelerator; the GPU to our gut's old-school CPU.
Insane in the membrane... (Score:2)
If that's true, given my insane thoughts, there must quite a shit storm happening in my colon.