By Conqueror Team
Gut bacteria have an important role in your mood and mental wellness. They can alleviate symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress, but they can also exacerbate them.
Trillions of bacterial cells live in your colon, forming a unique environment known as the gut microbiome. Their functions influence your brain in addition to allowing nutrients into the body and keeping opportunistic microorganisms out.
When the body is stressed, it undergoes a sequence of changes that send all energy and key resources to the muscles and brain. Stress also leads the body to release cortisol, which can all have an impact on the gut microbiota.
Similarly, if your gut microbiota is out of balance (dysbiosis), your general mood can suffer. This is due to the fact that the activity of your gut bacteria affects stress and anxiety – a balanced microbiome can promote stress resilience, but an imbalanced microbiome can harm your mental health.
Your gut microbiota needs to be diverse to sustain your health, and diversity helps keep it balanced. However, if it is not balanced — a condition known as dysbiosis — opportunistic bacteria can take advantage of the situation and multiply, resulting in inflammation.
Because your body does not desire opportunistic bacteria, your immune system is activated, causing inflammation. Inflammation, interestingly, can cause depression and sadness can cause inflammation. However, a diversified microbiota can help to reduce inflammation.
Controlling inflammation can thus assist to enhance both mood and anxiety. Diet is one approach to boost the abundance of certain bacteria while decreasing inflammation. Because fibre is a vital source of energy for beneficial gut bacteria, they flourish on a natural, plant-based diet.
It’s tempting to think of the body’s systems as distinct entities, and while they are in some ways, they are also interconnected and can influence each other’s actions. The gut and the brain are good instances of how one can influence the other.
Dysbiosis, or an imbalanced gut microbiome, has been linked to a variety of ailments, including mood disorders such as depression. Similarly, depression can produce inflammation, which disrupts the natural environment in the gut. However, encouraging evidence reveals that probiotics and prebiotics are having positive benefits on depression, anxiety, and stress resilience.
