Dr. Diane explains how gut bacteria produce butyrate and other short chain fatty acids when they ferment fiber, fueling your gut lining and repairing the blood-brain barrier. Beneficial bacteria like Bifidobacterium lower inflammation and help produce serotonin and dopamine in your gut.
Hey, everybody. Dr. Diane here. And in this video, we're going to talk about the microbes of the gut and how they directly impact mental health. So we're going to look at different mechanisms. And remember on this channel, we're talking about Lyme, we're talking about mold, but we're really talking about all of these underlying chronic things that are making somebody feel unwell. And so when we're dealing with mental health, we want to make sure that we're really considering what is going on in the gastrointestinal. And there's a few different reasons why this is so important. So I want to bring us to the importance of the short chain fatty acid process. So short chain fatty acids are actually things or molecules that are made when the good bacteria in our gastrointestinal tract get fed. So when we give them fiber as one of their favorite foods, for example, fiber, things that are fermentable, like inulin and fructooligosaccharides, like these types of things are really, really good for the gastrointestinal microbiota. They're good for the good bugs. Now, when the good bugs get fed, they produce something called short chain fatty acid. Short chain fatty acids, there's quite a few of them. They do different things. One of the more commonly heard about short chain fatty acids is butyrate. Butyrate is something that is produced by the good bacteria of the gut. When the good bacteria are fed, fiber and butyrate is helps to provide fuel for the colonocytes, the cells of the colon. So that's one example of what happens when these short chain fatty acids are produced. Now, another thing that can happen, and here's one way this ties into mental health, is short chain fatty acids help to heal the blood brain barrier. So the blood brain barrier is a permeable type of membrane, meaning it is protecting the brain from the rest of the body. Certain things are allowed in, other things are allowed out. Now we're learning now in science, it might be a bit permea bill than we once thought, but there is a regulatory mechanism. We don't want everything to enter the brain. And so one of the things that happens with mental illness is we can get toxins, we can get infections, we can get things into the brain that are not supposed to be there, and that makes the brain inflame and not function as well. So we need to heal the blood brain barrier. One of the things that can heal the blood brain barrier is short chain fatty acid. So having a healthy gut helps to stabilize the brain in order for us to actually regulate what comes in and out. Another thing that we know about the gut is that we make serotonin and dopamine. So we make a good amount of our serotonin. Almost all of our serotonin comes from the healthy bacteria of our gut. And our gut function and all of that. We also make dopamine in our gut. So that's another connection of the gut and the brain. And so serotonin and dopamine are happy hormones. They stimulate mood and reward and all these wonderful things. And it's been a little bit debatable around how much serotonin that we make in our gut, for example, actually gets into our brain, right? How permeable is this membrane? But now, like I said, we're seeing in science that this membrane is maybe a little bit more permeable than we once thought. So it may be that the neurotransmitters that things like serotonin, dopamine that are produced in the gut may actually be getting into the brain after all. So that's, you know, these are a couple of huge mechanisms that can be really impacting things. Another thing is just thinking about overall inflammation, right? So different microorganisms in the gut do different things. So Bifidobacterium is a bacteria that a normal flora. It's a category of normal flora of the good bacteria. Well, when bifidobacterium levels are up, inflammation, such as a inflammatory marker, Interleukin 6, goes down. When this good bacteria in the gut goes down, inflammation goes up. So this is another thing, right, because we see a huge link with sickness of all different types and inflammation. But so many times people are thinking, oh, give anti inflammatories, right? Well, anti inflammatories are not the root. So there's something that's, that's generating an inflammatory process. The body's ability to regulate inflammation will come from a lot of different processes. But one process of the body regulating inflammation that the body encounters is by the healthy bacteria in the gut. Because healthy bacteria are go up and good, we don't want them too high either. It's really about the right balance, right to too high of these healthy bacteria. And we can start getting gas and bloating and things we don't want. But when we have good numbers of these healthy bacteria, we do see that inflammation can go down. And that's another link to mental health, because of these inflammatory markers can make our nerves inflamed, can make mental health issues worse. So these are a few different mechanisms through which the gut is directly related to inflammation and to mental health imbalances. And so, you know, the take home point with this really is like, okay, here are the links, right? Here are the mechanisms of how this is all connected. And then the other take home point of course is then we have to go when we actually want to fix the gut. So. So we're actually feeling better and we're feeling like we can actually do these anti inflammatory types of processes. So hopefully that helps clear this up. Again, this is April. We're going to be doing a special on all of these different connections between the gut, the brain, mental health, infections, toxins, so much more. Keep putting things in the comments because I really want to hear this stuff that helps me curate content. So let me know what kind of things you want to know about more and I will make you guys some videos on them. Please do subscribe to this channel and please don't keep me a secret. Please do share this channel with anybody that you think could be, you know, could benefit from this information. It really does help my mission of getting this information out there when you share me with your friends and family. All right, everybody, see you next time.
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