Comments on: From guts to brains – eating probiotic bacteria changes behaviour in mice

By: Carolyn Shanahan

Carolyn Shanahan — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 23:18:41 +0000

I recently got off antibiotics because I had been getting a lot of painful gas and constipation and loose stools. I started taking probiotics (Saccharomyces boulardii), and several days after that, I started to feel happy. There was a marked change in my mood which I could not explain. I also notice that I am feeling much more relaxed. I looked up “probiotics and depression” on the internet, and I was thrilled to find out about the connection between probiotics and mood! This is amazing! I also have almost no abdominal symptoms.

By: Amber Shakti

Amber Shakti — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 17:19:31 +0000

Ive been using Probiotics for years. I’m not talking about yogurt – I don’t eat yogurt. I use VSL#3, fabulous, and I have changed, significantly. I don’t need a case study to tell me otherwise. I like the author, the scientist – and I agree with the possibility that good bacteria swimming, floating – living whatever they do – help my brain function better. I mean take a look at an image of the central nervous system, the “gut” also known as the second brain – with all of those nerve endings there – well it make sense to me and the large vagus nerve as the major highway to both – well it seems logical to me.

I love science, but when I hear scientists ignorantly bark about the human experience – because it lacks some 50 year case study – uncontrolled – I get bored quickly. If I notice a difference, that’s all that matters and I am intelligent to make that decision. About mice….I am open to the efforts of science and the use of technology to offer up information that gives me more to think about than an arrogant doctor or scientist. Great work!

By: Susan Durham

Susan Durham — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 22:51:04 +0000

And lastly, you affect the effect.

By: Susan Durham

Susan Durham — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 22:50:08 +0000

After reading a few of the responses, I must put my 2 cents in about CFS. I am a life-long fibromyalgia sufferer (another auto immune disorder). When I started eating paleo, the pain and depression disappeared! After almost 60 years of pain, disability, depression, etc. Same with my daughter. And we lost 25 and 30 pounds respectively. These disorders were not evidenced on skeletons that are over 10,000 years old (when farming was invented). (Uti is 6,000 and has musculo-skeletal evidence of arthritis, and had a grain breakfast before he was killed and frozen)

By: Susan Durham

Susan Durham — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 22:44:59 +0000

I thought this was crazy, and probably didn’t apply to humans for some reason, until I was on antibiotics for 4 weeks and suddenly out of the blue had the Big Bertha of anxiety attacks! I couldn’t go to court (I’m an attorney) and face the big bad judge. I went to a doc, who did tests, bp pretty normal, ekg good, blood flow 97% for an old bat, pretty damn good. So what was wrong with me? I had forwarded this article to a friend who knows about these things, and he called and reminded me of it when I told him about my horrible attack. So I’m gonna go get some unsweetened yogurt (I’m a no-carb paleo), even while I’m still on antibiotics! Maybe something will get as far as my brain so I can function!

By: Elyn

Elyn — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 01:27:51 +0000

Not in any way contesting the report – just having a thought about it.

What affect has the bacteria had from the mouse’s point of view?

In the world of a mouse, he is now more likely to space out in public, and not react as quickly when startled or uncomfortable. Just because we see beneficial changes from the context of our world, doesn’t mean that this is a positive step for the mouse.

When you think of pain and body functions as a massive influence on mood, does anyone really understand yet what’s happening in there? Somehow your body is taking physical sensations and converting them into a worldview for your consciousness – somehow they help create your emotions, opinions, and personality.

Personally, i feel that for as much as we do know, and much more that we are on the cusp of comprehending, consciousness still largely remains in the realm of philosophers.

Would a wild mouse react the same way to this supplement? Lab mice are very domesticated. I’m curious to see what this does to a more self-sufficient organism. Would they become blissed-out, reckless, space cases, or just a slightly more “centered” omnivore?

As a final stab in the dark – isn’t it likely that the natural selection is mutual? That the most successful digestive ecosystem of any species or group is the one with hosts that survive. In nature, there’s no intentional selection of foods for the “benefits”… Macaws don’t eat dirt off cliff because they heard about it on Oprah. Over a long period of time, the ones that ate more dirt just managed to stay alive longer and have more sex. Maybe the improvement was just in personality. The tough guys got bigger, or the nicer guys always got laid, or the females formed a supportive social structure. Maybe it was something subtle.

In that case, would they even want to improve on it?

Then again, they don’t have McDonalds.

We’ve changed what we eat and how we live so drastically over the last century, and at such a rapid rate over the last few thousand years, that i’m not surprised the first world especially is plagued with chronic complaints. I think probiotics are a good idea. Their effect sounds mostly positive and it’s not like they’re the only thing influencing our brain function these days.

By: WP Ho @ The Conscious Life

WP Ho @ The Conscious Life — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 05:34:22 +0000

Thanks for the fascinating report. The thought that bacteria can alter behavior is mind boggling. But, what if bacteria have been influencing our behaviours all along, just that we haven’t make the connection? After all, gut bacteria have been quietly producing neurotransmitters ever since humans walk the face of this planet until scientists discovered it one day.

By: Anita Mitchell

Anita Mitchell — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 17:12:08 +0000

Does not the microbe T. gondi (cat feces) change the behavior of infected mice ( i.e., making the mice unafraid of the scent of a cat when they would normally be petrified)?

This isn’t the first gut microbe or set of microbes that has been found to mediate behavior in infected individuals.

By: Alan C. Logan

Alan C. Logan — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 21:50:39 +0000

Ed thank you for excellent reporting on an important topic.
I recall attending an international probiotic conference in Montreal in 2002 and during the lunch breakout I found myself sitting with a group of young microbiologists – when I said that I was interested in the gut-brain connection and mood as influenced by bacteria, they looked at me as if I had landed from Mars…a decade later and it is finally starting to heat up.

btw, although the contemporary work on gut bacteria and mood/behavior can be traced to Mark Lyte’s landmark paper showing that miniscule levels of C. jejuni causes anxiety (Lyte, et al. Anxiogenic effect of subclinical bacterial infection in mice in the absence of overt immune activation. Physiol Behv 1998), if you go back even further it was dermatologists John Stokes and Donald Pillsbury that laid out a nice theory connecting the brain and gut (as well as the skin) in 1930…much of it has been confirmed to one degree or another.
see the open access paper I recently co-authored with dermatologist Dr Whitney Bowe – Acne vulgaris, probiotics and the gut-brain-skin axis – back to the future? Gut Pathogens 2011
as Goethe said – everything has been thought of before, but the difficulty is to think of it again…
and for Anne, a clinical trial of probiotics and major depression is now recruiting @ Mass General (Harvard) – see “Study of Probiotic GanedenBC30 for Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Major Depressive Disorder” at clinicaltrials.gov
Hopefully Ed will have even more exciting reports in the future…

By: Anne

Anne — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 15:41:40 +0000

@ Ed – You are correct. I missed the word accompanying. My apologies.

I still think this line of thinking has a ways to go before I would consider it evidence-based. But if scientists don’t pursue ideas then they never know whether they will pan out or lead to other discoveries that could put scientists on the right track.

Science is definitely a fascinating process. Cool slide show.