Is it you or is it your dwellers in your gut?

Some days you are happy; some days you are sad. You think it is all in your head. You read positive thinking books in order to influence your mind. Now they say, those little buggers you cannot see in your gut also influence your mood, according to this article "That anxiety may be in your gut, not in your head"


Each human body consists of about 100 trillion cells, but we carry about 1000 trillion bacteria (300 to 1000 different species) in our gut. We are walking cosmos to those creatures, sometimes harmonious and sometimes chaotic. . "These bacteria perform a number of functions vital to health: They harvest energy from the diet, protect against infections and provide nutrition to cells in the gut." Every time we take antibiotic to cure one disease, we disrupt the balance of their life in the cosmos.

"Working with healthy adult mice, the researchers showed that disrupting the normal bacterial content of the gut with antibiotics produced changes in behaviour; the mice became less cautious or anxious. This change was accompanied by an increase in brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which has been linked, to depression and anxiety.
When oral antibiotics were discontinued, bacteria in the gut returned to normal. This was accompanied by restoration of normal behaviour and brain chemistry."

"To confirm that bacteria can influence behaviour, the researchers colonized germ-free mice with bacteria taken from mice with a different behavioural pattern. They found that when germ-free mice with a genetic background associated with passive behaviour were colonized with bacteria from mice with higher exploratory behaviour, they became more active and daring. Similarly, normally active mice became more passive after receiving bacteria from mice whose genetic background is associated with passive behaviour."

How to cultivate a healthy gut flora?

Make sure the food you eat is fresh (as opposed to rotten), cook your meat well, so you do not ingest unwanted bacteria into your gut.

If you are in a third world country, make sure you do not order uncooked food (such as salad, sushi) in restaurants. Peel your fruits. Never drink tap water. Do not eat shell fish as they are usually quickly cooked in order to preserve the tenderness, so the bacteria in them are not killed through cooking.

Eat food with probiotic bacteria in them, such as yogurt, miso and other fermented food. However, when eating a new type of fermented food, make sure you eat a very small amount at the beginning and slowly increase the quantity. Kimchi is a Korean fermented food and is claimed to have many nutritional and therapeutic aspects. However, if I eat too much after a long period of not eating them, I always get diarrhea.

The Western diet is way too clean, void of both good and bad bacteria. The first 5 years in the Western world, my gut flora were still very Chinese. The first time we went to China, my husband and I ate the same fermented vegetables. I was perfectly fine, he almost died with violent vomiting and diarrhea. Coca-Cola saved the day. However, afterwards, my gut flora became as Canadian as the Canada-born ones. We would eat exactly the same food as the rest of my family, every one else is fine except my husband and I. Now, after 8 years of living in China for three months each year, we seem to have acquired more Chinese bacteria in our gut. We got sick less and less eating the local food. Have we become more Chinese?

related:
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