PTSD, diet, and the gut microbiome

An October 2023 study at Brigham and Women’s Hospital said,

• “There is a very intriguing relationship between the human gut microbiome and the brain,”

• “Through our study, we examined how factors, like diet, are associated with PTSD symptoms. While further research is needed, we are closer to being able to provide dietary recommendations for PTSD prevention or amelioration.”

• “Examining the gut-brain axis can provide insights on the interdependence of mental and physical health,”

• “Our findings suggest the PTSD and human gut microbiome relationship is a promising area of research that may lead to recommendations for alleviating the down-stream negative health consequences of PTSD.”

• “It’s exciting that our results imply that the Mediterranean diet may provide potential relief to individuals experiencing PTSD symptoms … We are eager to learn more about the relationship between PTSD, diet, and the gut microbiome. In a future study, we will attempt to validate the efficacy of probiotics as a method to prevent PTSD.”

Gut Bacteria and Hypertension

An October 2023 study at the University of Toledo said that,

• “The question we always ask is, can we exploit microbiota to help our health, for which optimal blood pressure is a cardinal sign. Until now, we have simply said changes in microbiota play a role in elevated blood pressure or hypertension. Those are important findings, but they don’t always have an immediately translational application,” she said. “This is the first time we have shown that we really can do this. It’s a proof of principle that you can use microbiota to make products that measurably improve your health.”

• “Females therefore appear to readily accept all the help they can get from gut microbiota supplying ACE …For now, this is a theory that requires further experimental proof.”

• “There have been questions about microbiome medicine — is it a fad or is it real? This is an extremely exciting demonstration that we can exploit bacteria to work for us, and it works for high blood pressure, something that affects a significant portion of the population … It’s that ray of hope that you may not need traditional medications to keep your blood pressure in check.”

• “It is a real possibility that we can use bacteria to correct hypertension. This is a big deal, and the concept could be applied to other diseases … For example, if you are unable to control your sugar, can we have a bacteria make a protein that can lower your blood glucose? There are still a lot of questions that need answered, but now we know the paradigm works.”

Fibre

A July 2022 study by Duke University said,

• “The people who responded the best had been eating the least fiber to start with,” 

• “We’ve evolved to depend on nutrients that our microbiomes produce for us,” 

• “But with recent shifts in diet away from fiber-rich foods, we’ve stopped feeding our microbes what they need.”

• “We didn’t see a lot of difference between the fiber supplements we tested. Rather, they looked interchangeable,”

• “Regardless of which of the test supplements you pick, it seems your microbiome will thank you with more butyrate,” 

• “If you’re a low fiber consumer, it’s probably not worth it to stress so much about which kind of fiber to add. It’s just important that you find something that works for you in a sustainable way.”

• “It doesn’t need to be a supplement either,” 

• “It can just be a fiber-rich food. Folks who were already eating a lot of fiber, which comes from plants like beans, leafy greens, and citrus, already had very healthy microbiomes.”

High Fibre Diets, Gut Bacteria and Antibiotic Resistance

A May 2022 study by the ARS Western Human Nutrition Research Center in Davis, California, said

• “… the results lead directly to the idea that modifying the diet has the potential to be a new weapon in the fight against antimicrobial resistance. And we’re not talking about eating some exotic diet either, but a diverse diet, adequate in fiber, that some Americans already eat,”

• “Surprisingly, the most important predictor of low levels of ARG [antimicrobial resistance genes], even more than fiber, was the diversity of the diet. This suggests that we may want to eat from diverse sources of foods that tend to be higher in soluble fiber for maximum benefit,”

• “Our diets provide food for gut microbes. This all suggests that what we eat might be a solution to reduce antimicrobial resistance by modifying the gut microbiome,”

• “But this is still just a beginning because what we did was an observational study rather than a study in which we provided a particular diet for subjects to eat, which would allow more head-to-head comparisons,” Lemay said. “In the end, dietary interventions may be useful in lessening the burden of antimicrobial resistance and might ultimately motivate dietary guidelines that will consider how nutrition could reduce the risk of antibiotic-resistant infections.”

Gut hormones and proteins

A May 2021 study by KAIST Seoul National University said

• "All organisms require a balanced intake of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats for their well being," 

• "Taking in sufficient calories alone won't do the job, as it can still lead to severe forms of malnutrition including kwashiorkor, if the diet does not include enough proteins," 

• The team studied the neuropeptide CNMamide (CNMa)

• "Our study showed that enterocytes have a more complex role than we previously thought,”

• "We chose to investigate a simple organism, the fly, which would make it easier for us to identify and characterize key nutrient sensors. Because all organisms have cravings for needed nutrients, the nutrient sensors and their pathways we identified in flies would also be relevant to those in mammals. We believe that this research will greatly advance our understanding of the causes of metabolic disease and eating-related disorders,"

Mucus and mucins

A July 2021 study by the DNRF Centre of Excellence, Copenhagen Center for Glycomics said 

• “We have developed a method for producing the important information found in human mucus, also called mucins, with their important sugars. Now, we show that it is possible to artificially produce it in the same way as we produce other therapeutic biologics today, such as antibodies and other biological medicine.”

• “It is the body's way of selecting the good bacteria and deselecting those that cause diseases. And it is precisely the sugars in the mucus that we are now able to design as needed”

• “We have found a small molecule from bacteria - which we call X409 - that binds to the intestine, and that is precisely one of the many possibilities we are now working on”

• “An incredible number of diseases have a connection to the intestinal flora, but we still know very little about how we can control the intestinal flora in the treatment of diseases. This is where synthetic mucins could open up new treatment options”

• “Ultimately, one can imagine using mucins as a pre-biotic material, that is, as molecules that help the good bacteria in the body””

• “We imagine that instead of using antibiotics, you might produce for example eye drops with the mucin that normally removes the bacteria in the treatment of eye infections. In concrete terms, this means that mucin can dissolve the so-called biofilm of bacteria, which is often pathogenic"

• “We also show that mucins are very important for the way in which the common flu virus infects our mucous membranes in competition with mucins which inhibit the infection and flush out the virus”

Stomach, Obesity, GKN1

A May 2021 study Indiana University School of Medicine said,

"While diet and exercise are critical to maintaining a healthy weight, some individuals struggle with weight loss -- even in cases of bariatric surgery, maintaining weight loss can be a challenge,”

"These results are an example of how a better understanding of the gut microbiome and the physiological aspects of obesity -- how our bodies regulate metabolism and accumulate body fat -- could help inform new therapies."

Obsesity, Metabolism and Brd4

A May 2021 study by Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign said, 

"One of the biggest challenges we face is trying to understand how people develop obesity. If we can understand that, we can develop solutions for treating or preventing these diseases,"

"Our previous studies showed that Brd4 [a regulator of the innate immune response] plays an important role in the innate immune response, so we were trying to understand how it influences the development of diseases such as obesity," 

"We observed that after several weeks of the high-fat diet, the normal mice became obese while the mice lacking Brd4 did not. They also had reduced inflammation and higher metabolic rates," 

"We know that bacteria in the gut can sometimes trigger diet-induced obesity. We're currently working with our MME theme members in the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology to figure out how Brd4 modulates microbes to do that,"

prebiotic supplements and anxiety levels

An April 2021 study by the University of Surrey said,

"This new research marks a significant step forward in that we were able to show that we can use a simple and safe food supplement such as prebiotics to improve both the abundance of beneficial gut bacteria in the gut and to improve mental health and wellbeing in young women."

"This is an exciting study that brings together different dimensions in mental health research; finding prebiotic effects in a sub-clinical group shows promise for translational clinical research on multiple markers of mental health."

Some examples of prebiotic foods

• Barley

• Oats

• Apples

• Cocoa

• Flaxseed

• Garlic

• Onions

• Bananas

• Wheat Bran

• Seaweed

• Burdock Root

• Chicory Root

• Dandelion Greens

• Asparagus

• Leeks

Fasting, blood pressure, gut microbiota

Fasting > gut health > lower blood pressure

An April 2021 study by Baylor College of Medicine said,

"Previous studies from our lab have shown that the composition of the gut microbiota in animal models of hypertension, such as the SHRSP (spontaneously hypertensive stroke-prone rat) model, is different from that in animals with normal blood pressure,"

"This result told us that gut dysbiosis is not just a consequence of hypertension, but is actually involved in causing it," 

"This ground work led to the current study in which we proposed to answer two questions. First, can we manipulate the dysbiotic microbiota to either prevent or relieve hypertension? Second, how are the gut microbes influencing the animal's blood pressure?"

"Next, we investigated whether the microbiota was involved in the reduction of blood pressure we observed in the SHRSP rats that had fasted,"

"It was particularly interesting to see that the germ-free rats that received microbiota from the fasting SHRSP rats had significantly lower the blood pressure than the rats that had received microbiota from SHRSP control rats,”

"These results demonstrated that the alterations to the microbiota induced by fasting were sufficient to mediate the blood pressure-lowering effect of intermitting fasting.”

"We applied whole genome shotgun sequence analysis of the microbiota as well as untargeted metabolomics analysis of plasma and gastrointestinal luminal content. Among the changes we observed, alterations in products of bile acid metabolism stood out as potential mediators of blood pressure regulation,"

"Supporting this finding, we found that supplementing animals with cholic acid, a primary bile acid, also significantly reduced blood pressure in the SHRSP model of hypertension," 

"This study is important to understand that fasting can have its effects on the host through microbiota manipulation," 

"This is an attractive idea because it can potentially have clinical applications. Many of the bacteria in the gut microbiota are involved in the production of compounds that have been shown to have beneficial effects as they make it into the circulation and contribute to the regulation of the host's physiology. Fasting schedules could one day help regulate the activity of gut microbial populations to naturally provide health benefits."

Newborn Babies, Gut Yeast, Asthma

An April 2021 study by the University of British Columbia, Vancouver said, 

"We recently showed that overgrowth of a type of gut yeast called Pichia kudriavzevii in newborns in Ecuador is associated with an increased risk of asthma," 

"In this study, we wanted to see if we could replicate these findings in children from an industrialised setting and identify how fungi of the gut microbiota affect the development of the immune system."

"Our findings show that there is a critical window in early life where disruptions in the gut microbiota caused by Pichia kudriavzevii affect the development of the immune system and increase the risk and severity of asthma later in life,"

"Immune responses to gut microbe disruptions early in life have long-term consequences for diseases of the immune system later in life," 

"Our study adds to our understanding of microbiota-associated asthma and suggests that inhibiting yeast overgrowth with [short-chain fatty acids] in early life could be an effective approach to preventing this condition."

Beetroot Juice and Healthy Ageing

A March 2021 study by the University of Exeter said, 

"We are really excited about these findings, which have important implications for healthy ageing,”

"Previous studies have compared the oral bacteria of young and older people, and healthy people compared to those with diseases, but ours is the first to test nitrate-rich diet in this way.

"Our findings suggest that adding nitrate-rich foods to the diet - in this case via beetroot juice - for just ten days can substantially alter the oral microbiome (mix of bacteria) for the better.”

"Maintaining this healthy oral microbiome in the long term might slow down the negative vascular and cognitive changes associated with ageing."

"Our participants were healthy, active older people with generally good blood pressure,”

"Dietary nitrate reduced their blood pressure on average, and we are keen to find out whether the same would happen in other age groups and among people in poorer health.

"We are working with colleagues in the University of Exeter Medical School to investigate interactions between the oral bacteria and cognition to better understand the how diet could be used to delay cognitive decline in older age."

Some Nitrate Rich Foods

• Betroot

• Garlic

• Meat

• Dark Chocolate

• Leafy Greens

• Citrus Fruit

• Pomegranate

• Nuts & Seeds

• Watermelon

Kombucha Tea

Kombucha Tea - a Japanese tea (also known as tea mushroom, tea fungus and Manchurian mushroom) - is good for gut health and halal.  You can buy it at most health stores or make it yourself following one of the million Youtube guides.

loneliness and gut health

A March 2021 study at University of California San Diego School of Medicine found 

“…lower levels of loneliness and higher levels of wisdom, compassion, social support and engagement were associated with greater phylogenetic richness and diversity of the gut microbiome,”

"It is possible that loneliness may result in decreased stability of the gut microbiome and, consequently, reduced resistance and resilience to stress-related disruptions, leading to downstream physiological effects, such as systemic inflammation,”

"Bacterial communities with low alpha-diversity may not manifest overt disease, but they may be less than optimal for preventing disease. Thus, lonely people may be more susceptible to developing different diseases."

"Loneliness may lead to changes in the gut microbiome or, reciprocally, alterations of the gut milieu may predispose an individual to become lonely," 

"We need to investigate much more thoroughly to better understand the phenomenon of the gut-brain axis."

human gut microbiome and high-fibre diets

A March 2021 study by the University of California, Irvine found,

"The lack of fiber intake in the industrialized world is starving our gut microbes, with important health consequences that may be associated with increases in colorectal cancer, auto-immune diseases and even decreased vaccine efficacy and response to cancer immunotherapy," 

"We were amazed to find how high in fiber berries and avocados are and exchanged ideas for how to prepare beans and lentils,”

"I think this experience will have a life-long impact on how we all look at nutrition labels."

"The students came to class very excited to discuss what they had eaten and could not wait to analyze the microbiome sequencing information to make data-driven conclusions. The study had an interesting and educational impact,”

"Our education research showed that the experience increased student's interest in science and heightened the awareness of their diet habits."

"Students raised their fiber intake by an average of 25 grams per day, but the variability of pre-intervention fiber intake was substantial,”

"A few students had to go from nearly zero to 50 grams daily by the end of the study. We all became a little obsessed with how much fiber was in the food we were eating."

gut microbiota and inflammatory skin diseases

A May 2021 study by Hacettepe University and Usak University Training and Research Hospital said,

"Our research provides evidence the gut-skin axis is implicated in the progression of this chronic inflammatory skin disorder. While further evidence is required, our research suggests that dietary alteration and personalised probiotic supplementation might also be beneficial for Hidradenitis suppurativa patients, particularly since treatment options are limited for these individuals."

Fasting then a Healthy Diet

A March 2021 study by the Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association and the Experimental and Clinical Research Center run by the Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin found that, 

"Switching to a healthy diet has a positive effect on blood pressure," 

"If the diet is preceded by a fast, this effect is intensified." 

"The innate immune system remains stable during the fast, whereas the adaptive immune system shuts down," 

"Body mass index, blood pressure and the need for antihypertensive medication remained lower in the long term among volunteers who started the healthy diet with a five-day fast," 

"We were able to isolate the influence of the medication and observe that whether someone responds well to a change of diet or not depends on the individual immune response and the gut microbiome," 

"Those who have [low healthy gut bacteria] often feel that it is not worth the effort and go back to their old habits," 

"Fasting acts as a catalyst for protective microorganisms in the gut. Health clearly improves very quickly and patients can cut back on their medication or even often stop taking tablets altogether."

Fibre Per Serving

These are some of the many useful resources online to help you achieve your daily target:

https://www.guysandstthomas.nhs.uk/resources/patient-information/gi/increasing-the-amount-of-fibre-in-your-diet.pdf

https://www.med.umich.edu/mott/pdf/mott-fiber-chart.pdf

https://www.stjoes.ca/patients-visitors/patient-education/patient-education:-f-j/fibre-eating-more.pdf_2

Some avocado daily for gut health

A January 2021 study by the University of Illinois said, "We know eating avocados helps you feel full and reduces blood cholesterol concentration, but we did not know how it influences the gut microbes, and the metabolites the microbes produce.”

The study found that, “people who ate avocado every day as part of a meal had a greater abundance of gut microbes that break down fiber and produce metabolites that support gut health. They also had greater microbial diversity compared to people who did not receive the avocado meals in the study.”

Mediterranean diet, gut bacteria and healthy ageing

A February 2020 study said, “The interplay of diet, microbiome and host health is a complex phenomenon influenced by several factors … While the results of this study [how the Mediterranean diet affects gut bacteria and ageing] shed light on some of the rules of this three-way interplay, several factors such as age, body mass index, disease status and initial dietary patterns may play a key role in determining the extent of success of these interactions,"