After a year and a half of having a second job as a new author, my first book is finally available in print! A comprehensive, thoroughly referenced guide to how our gut bacteria influence physical and mental health: The Symbiont Factor is now available on Amazon as a paperback! If you ever wondered if and why probiotics are healthy you should read this book. Please share with your contacts 🙂    http://tinyurl.com/pe2g4xt
The HPA axis is not a part of the body that is often discussed. It is a functional “axis” that is used to describe the relationship between three parts of the body: the Hypothalamus, the Pituitary gland, and the Adrenal glands. All three of these organs have critical functions with far-reaching implications for physical and mental health. Many psychiatric drugs have been found to affect the HPA axis, resulting in the therapeutic benefit of the drug. Imbalances in HPA function have been implicated in a wide array of neuropsychiatric conditions including in autism. The gut microbiome, gut bacteria, exert control over the development and function of the endocrine hormone system, in particular the HPA axis. Why does this matter? Because imbalances in gut bacteria can therefore result in imbalances in HPA axis development in early life-and this imbalance has the potential to make the person develop autism (as well as other problems in different individuals). It is important because the gut bacteria are so vulnerable to birth practices (c-section vs. natural), antibiotic use, antibiotics in food, pesticides, herbicides such as RoundUp, and even stress levels perceived by the individual. Higher stress is harmful to the gut bacteria through alterations of the digestive functions, secondary to autonomic nervous system imbalance (more sympathetic, or “fight-or-flight”, function). Many of these are factors under our influence if not control! Gut bacterial populations are one of the most variable factors in human health, and yet one of the most neglected. My work on The Symbiont Factor is my contribution to spreading knowledge about the gut microbiome, so that more people can take control of their health and more conditions like autism can hopefully be prevented or successfully treated. The book is being configured/edited/reconfigured/formatted so that it works well on all Kindle download platforms, a task that is keeping me quite busy the last two weeks! Almost there, almost there…It will be so exciting when it is finally published! The book will also be available as a print format following its release as an e-book. Until then, stay tuned in and take care of your gut bacteria!
References:
http://www.ageofautism.com/2014/05/the-microbiome-could-it-be-the-epicenter-of-autism.html
http://www.jwatch.org/na33305/2014/01/28/more-evidence-links-gut-microbiome-autism
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24882156
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24715565
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24892638
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3985034/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24636517
And, best of all, a slide show from one of the head researchers in the field, Ted Dinan: http://www.genome.gov/Multimedia/Slides/HumanMicrobiomeScience2013/33_Dinan.pdf
As America watches another tragedy unfold, I am saddened by the loss of life as well all are. What I also see is the apparent sluggishness of a healthcare system to rapidly identify/acknowledge/treat brain trauma, PTSD, and the damage that the two cause to symbiont health-and in turn, how damage to the microbiome affects behavior. This post is about understanding those connections and hopefully implementing them into healthcare protocols for PTSD. It would also be helpful if recognizing PTSD and arriving at a diagnosis were done in a more timely and useful fashion; apparently from today’s information this man served in Iraq in 2011 and was still being evaluated for PTSD this year.
There is a well-defined connection between brain health and gut health, such that damage to one results in damage to the other. The gut and brain are functionally linked in what is known as the Gut-Brain axis. The communication between the two occurs through the Vagus nerve as well as indirectly through blood circulation that permits neuropeptides from the gut to arrive at the brain where they act like neurotransmitters. The gut is home to trillions of bacteria known as the microbiome. This vast colony of symbiont bacteria act as an accessory organ and have tremendous influence on neurologic, immune and endocrine functions. When a person is put under extreme stress situations and/or has a brain trauma, (often accompanied by shifts in diet that tend toward pro-inflammatory/allergenic food) there is an immediate response in the gut. This response is not a good one; the autonomic nervous system’s change to fight-or-flight mode (sympathetic mode) causes a loss of activity and reduced circulation in the digestive tract. In the gut, this results in increased intestinal wall permeability combined with death of symbiotic bacteria as their environment becomes dramatically inhospitable. This combination of events can form “a perfect storm” that results in translocation of both food particles and fragments of dead bacteria known as Lipopolysaccharides or LPS. As these are absorbed into the bloodstream, circulating immune system components will respond with an inflammatory cascade that becomes system-wide. This is exacerbated by the partial demise of the symbiont bacteria that, when fully functional, provide immune system modulation and instruction. Without symbiont help, the immune response to the LPS and food molecules creates massive inflammatory change, sensitization to food that results in food sensitivities (and even more inflammation) and behavioral changes. When the wave of inflammation begins to affect the brain, the result is depression and anxiety. These are precisely what the Fort Hood shooter was being evaluated and treated for according to today’s news. Inflammation is so linked to depression and anxiety that some researchers have stated that it could be seen as simply a symptom of inflammation. With the brain’s changes producing a perceptual change, normal environmental and interpersonal activities and interactions can create extreme stress, anxiety and depression. The brain’s shift to a stress mode dominated by stress and anxiety can further drive the autonomic shift to sympathetic dominance, resulting in a positive feedback loop in the gut-brain axis and driving the worsening of these changes.
These changes can be severe enough to make behavior unpredictable (as has been demonstrated at Fort Hood, unfortunately). Behavioral changes would perhaps not seem as unpredictable if the overall mechanism described were better understood and this knowledge implemented by those in charge of the care of soldiers experiencing brain trauma or PTSD. There is sufficient research documenting the causal pathway from brain trauma or PTSD to gut/microbiome dysbiosis and subsequent behavioral instability that this information urgently needs to be better utilized in soldier and patient care. Interventions for successfully interrupting this type of progressive dysfunction are widely available and easily implemented.
Partial Reference List:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24690880
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21832903
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23384445
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23506618
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23910373
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24286462
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24370461
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24422720
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24636517
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24665099
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23981537
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21967891
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24145080
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20113345
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23762997
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23825629
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24096214
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23891039
