6 ms·

Gut Microbes May Talk to the Brain Through Cortisol

124 points by MichaelAO 9y ago

thriftwy 9y ago
Since bullshit is cheap, viruses, bacterias and fetuses try to use hormones to make host organisms jump hoops for them. That's why there's evolutionary pressure to make hormones hard to craft.
- utexaspunk 9y ago
  So hormones are like the body's proof-of-work system?
  - thriftwy 9y ago
    Some of them are based on hard currency: Iodine.
Chiba-City 9y ago
We are linking gut health to schizophrenia and now ASD. At 51, I eat homemade yogurt, Braggs vinegar, live pickled vegetables, some miso and ground flax seed every day. I just avoid sugars, booze and factory food at home. I have serious seasonal allergies and inflammation common to people who relocate to flowery swampy Washington, DC. I had one round of sinus surgery due to constant infections. I will not be an Olympic swimmer, but strong gut maintenance makes food better and days easier than time wasting doctors, pills and powders. The solutions are too simple and regimen based to weaponize, refine, patent and bottle.
- CodeWriter23 9y ago
  Have you looked into the GAPS protocol? There's an operating theory that allergies and autoimmune issues are linked pinhole-sized ruptures in the intestines, and GAPS takes a very pragmatic and mechanical approach to helping heal one's intestines. My wife had eczema from her fingertips to her shoulders on both arms and GAPS mostly cleared it up over a couple of weeks. She fully cleared up the eczema using the Autoimmune Paleo Protocol for a few more weeks.
  - dimmuborgir 9y ago
    GAPS protocol is a quackery and its creator is antiscientific and dogmatic.[1] Your wife's eczema cure probably had nothing to do with GAPS protocol. Even if it was the reason it may not work for others and other diseases. [1] - http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/08/01/gaps-in-a-doctors-reasoning-about-vaccines/ http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/08/01/gaps-in-a-docto...
    - CodeWriter23 9y ago
      The idea of healing small ruptures in the intestines by lining them with fats and collagen to isolate them from inflammatory stool components, and then preserving that lining by eating soft foods seems highly practical to me. And on a scientific scale, I give your assessment a zero. You have simply wielded the word "science" with contempt prior to any observation. IOW you're employing pseudoscience to make your point, then referencing a blog post which cherry picks assertions from a licensed scientist, cites them out of context, relies on analogy, and you present this as "Science". You have in essence conflated science with rhetoric, especially given the well-documented biases of the Skeptics, the organization behind scienceblogs.
      - tomsthumb 9y ago
        Criticize work not people.
      - equalunique 9y ago
        Wish I had enough karma to downvote. Not CodeWriter's comments, but dimmuborgir's - for being so rude.
      - vanderZwan 9y ago
        Contrary to you he at least gave a reference link to pick apart and discuss the validity of his claim. Which is better than a counterargument thar boils down to "I believe it could work because these ideas behind it soundsl reasonable" with no actual back-up from scientific studies testing those hypotheses. Which is then followed by an ad hominem accusation of being unscientific, and topped off with a claim of "well documented biases" but again without providing any actual references to said biases. I don't know anything about GAPS and have no stake in its validity going either way, but I can say that your accusations of unscientific behaviour come across as projection.
Jun8 9y ago
It seems more and more possible that we will soon discover substances that affect the gut microbiome to control/change people's behavior, for good or worse.
- fb03 9y ago
  you can do it right now through food. the gut microbiome tells the host what it wants to eat or not. Different diets cater to different bacteria, that's the reason (for example) that people that now eat healthy but before could eat as much junk food as they wanted without side effects can't simply "switch back" to their old habits without getting bloated or just plain sick. Anecdotal evidence: I lost about 50kg thru dieting, during my old days I could eat as much McDonalds as I wanted. Now if try to have anything but the smallest burger there I get sick, my system simply does not accept it anymore ;)
- will_brown 9y ago
  Well we know we can curb even cocaine addicted rats (behavior) by offering a mutually exclusive option of the cocaine or sugar/sweetener. They don't exactly get into the microbiome, but in a separate study they do test the differences of high fat vs high sugar diets and the impact on the microbiome: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2894525/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2894525/ The study showed the same preference using both saccharin –a calorie-free sweetener - and sucrose (natural sugar w/calories). The study was also performed on rats who had never been introduced to cocaine and those exposed and with addiction to the drug. Up to 94% of the rats preferred the sweetener. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1931610/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1931610/ I'd go into some of the human studies, but it tends to start a flame war here, so I'll skip it and just link to this, and allow people to draw there own conclusions: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4940716/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4940716/
  - Simon_says 9y ago
    I'm not sure what that proves other than that sugar is more addictive than cocaine.
CodeWriter23 9y ago
Gut microbes _may_ talk to the brain through cortisol. On related note, a direct passage between the brain and the lymph system was discovered last year. It's behind the sinus cavity and bypasses the blood brain barrier. https://news.virginia.edu/illimitable/discovery/theyll-have-rewrite-textbooks https://news.virginia.edu/illimitable/discovery/theyll-have-...
- epmaybe 9y ago
  how is this related?
  - CodeWriter23 9y ago
    Gut microbes interact with and effect the lymph system.
bitwize 9y ago
It just wouldn't be Hacker News without a gut-bacteria story, replete with commenters dietarily virtue-signalling and even dusting off "leaky gut syndrome", which precisely zero medical evidence proves is a thing. Remember, gut bacteria are why webshit stinks.
- 6d6b73 9y ago
  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22109896 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22109896 Autoimmune diseases are characterized by tissue damage and loss of function due to an immune response that is directed against specific organs. This review is focused on the role of impaired intestinal barrier function on autoimmune pathogenesis. Together with the gut-associated lymphoid tissue and the neuroendocrine network, the intestinal epithelial barrier, with its intercellular tight junctions, controls the equilibrium between tolerance and immunity to non-self antigens. Zonulin is the only physiologic modulator of intercellular tight junctions described so far that is involved in trafficking of macromolecules and, therefore, in tolerance/immune response balance. When the zonulin pathway is deregulated in genetically susceptible individuals, autoimmune disorders can occur. This new paradigm subverts traditional theories underlying the development of these diseases and suggests that these processes can be arrested if the interplay between genes and environmental triggers is prevented by re-establishing the zonulin-dependent intestinal barrier function. Both animal models and recent clinical evidence support this new paradigm and provide the rationale for innovative approaches to prevent and treat autoimmune diseases.
cpncrunch 9y ago
They didn't actually find that microbes talk to the brain through cortisol. They just found an association between gut microbes, cortisol and the brain. We already know that the brain influences gut microbes through cortisol. So why did they not say that this is the most likely route for communication, rather than speculating on an unproven association in the other direction? I find it odd that these studies keep popping up, and HN users keep voting for them. It seems there is a great desire for people to want to blame bacteria for autism/depression/IBS/CFS, rather than accepting a neurological or psychiatric cause. Now, I'm not saying this stuff shouldn't be researched. Of course it should. It's just sad that people automatically assume the direction of causation is the unlikely one (gut->brain), rather than the one we know for certain exists (brain->gut). (And yes, we do know there is a gut-brain pathway, but generally it is just active during infections).
- brightball 9y ago
  On the autism side, it's because autism also comes with serious gastrointestinal issues. So many people think it's just a neurological issue but there is a legitimate, non-conspiratorial link there. What people want to know, is why? https://www.autismspeaks.org/science/science-news/new-insight-autism-and-intestinal-problems https://www.autismspeaks.org/science/science-news/new-insigh...
  - nudiustertian 9y ago
    as an autistic person with many autistic friends i would definitely like you not to grossly simplify the matter so bluntly. thanks
    - brightball 9y ago
      I mean no offense, but what am I simplifying?
- vanderZwan 9y ago
  Well, there is the case where a double-blind research project into a gut microbial cure (I believe it had something to do with cancer) failed the double-blindness aspect because the doctors could tell which patient got the real treatment and which one got the control group, because those with the real bacteria were visibly happier (and no, the control group did not have more digestion problems). I recall reading about this a few years back in the New Scientist. There is also the fact that many of the people who get their stomach stapled report (usually temporary) changes in taste, in the sense that a glass of orange juice might suddenly taste like fish for a few weeks. That only makes sense if the stomach is somehow involved in the process of flavour perception. So there definitely is more going on between the gut and the brain than the former only sending sensory information to the latter and the latter then deciding what happens next. We just don't know how that works yet.
dispo001 9y ago
side note: "The researchers studied 1-month-old piglets, which are remarkably similar to human infants in terms of their gut and brain development." http://www.macroevolution.net/human-origins.html http://www.macroevolution.net/human-origins.html
stefantalpalaru 9y ago
From the actual scientific article - http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19490976.2017.1353849 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19490976.2017.13... : > Our results indicated brain mI, a marker for glial cells and pre-myelinating events in the developing brain, was positively predicted by both Bacteroides and Clostridium XIVb. Additionally, brain Cr+PCr, an indicator of energy metabolism was positively predicted by Bacteroides. Lastly, these analyses indicated brain NAA, a marker of neuronal health was negatively predicted by Ruminococcus but positively predicted by Butyricimonas. Concentrations of these brain metabolites change over the course of development and our research suggests gut colonization of microbiota may play a pivotal role in this phenomenon.

124 points by MichaelAO 9y ago

Since bullshit is cheap, viruses, bacterias and fetuses try to use hormones to make host organisms jump hoops for them. That's why there's evolutionary pressure to make hormones hard to craft.

utexaspunk 9y ago
So hormones are like the body's proof-of-work system?
- thriftwy 9y ago
  Some of them are based on hard currency: Iodine.

Chiba-City 9y ago

We are linking gut health to schizophrenia and now ASD. At 51, I eat homemade yogurt, Braggs vinegar, live pickled vegetables, some miso and ground flax seed every day. I just avoid sugars, booze and factory food at home. I have serious seasonal allergies and inflammation common to people who relocate to flowery swampy Washington, DC. I had one round of sinus surgery due to constant infections. I will not be an Olympic swimmer, but strong gut maintenance makes food better and days easier than time wasting doctors, pills and powders. The solutions are too simple and regimen based to weaponize, refine, patent and bottle.

CodeWriter23 9y ago
Have you looked into the GAPS protocol? There's an operating theory that allergies and autoimmune issues are linked pinhole-sized ruptures in the intestines, and GAPS takes a very pragmatic and mechanical approach to helping heal one's intestines. My wife had eczema from her fingertips to her shoulders on both arms and GAPS mostly cleared it up over a couple of weeks. She fully cleared up the eczema using the Autoimmune Paleo Protocol for a few more weeks.
- dimmuborgir 9y ago
  GAPS protocol is a quackery and its creator is antiscientific and dogmatic.[1] Your wife's eczema cure probably had nothing to do with GAPS protocol. Even if it was the reason it may not work for others and other diseases. [1] - http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/08/01/gaps-in-a-doctors-reasoning-about-vaccines/ http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/08/01/gaps-in-a-docto...
  - CodeWriter23 9y ago
    The idea of healing small ruptures in the intestines by lining them with fats and collagen to isolate them from inflammatory stool components, and then preserving that lining by eating soft foods seems highly practical to me. And on a scientific scale, I give your assessment a zero. You have simply wielded the word "science" with contempt prior to any observation. IOW you're employing pseudoscience to make your point, then referencing a blog post which cherry picks assertions from a licensed scientist, cites them out of context, relies on analogy, and you present this as "Science". You have in essence conflated science with rhetoric, especially given the well-documented biases of the Skeptics, the organization behind scienceblogs.
    - tomsthumb 9y ago
      Criticize work not people.
    - equalunique 9y ago
      Wish I had enough karma to downvote. Not CodeWriter's comments, but dimmuborgir's - for being so rude.
    - vanderZwan 9y ago
      Contrary to you he at least gave a reference link to pick apart and discuss the validity of his claim. Which is better than a counterargument thar boils down to "I believe it could work because these ideas behind it soundsl reasonable" with no actual back-up from scientific studies testing those hypotheses. Which is then followed by an ad hominem accusation of being unscientific, and topped off with a claim of "well documented biases" but again without providing any actual references to said biases. I don't know anything about GAPS and have no stake in its validity going either way, but I can say that your accusations of unscientific behaviour come across as projection.

Jun8 9y ago

It seems more and more possible that we will soon discover substances that affect the gut microbiome to control/change people's behavior, for good or worse.

fb03 9y ago
you can do it right now through food. the gut microbiome tells the host what it wants to eat or not. Different diets cater to different bacteria, that's the reason (for example) that people that now eat healthy but before could eat as much junk food as they wanted without side effects can't simply "switch back" to their old habits without getting bloated or just plain sick. Anecdotal evidence: I lost about 50kg thru dieting, during my old days I could eat as much McDonalds as I wanted. Now if try to have anything but the smallest burger there I get sick, my system simply does not accept it anymore ;)
will_brown 9y ago
Well we know we can curb even cocaine addicted rats (behavior) by offering a mutually exclusive option of the cocaine or sugar/sweetener. They don't exactly get into the microbiome, but in a separate study they do test the differences of high fat vs high sugar diets and the impact on the microbiome: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2894525/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2894525/ The study showed the same preference using both saccharin –a calorie-free sweetener - and sucrose (natural sugar w/calories). The study was also performed on rats who had never been introduced to cocaine and those exposed and with addiction to the drug. Up to 94% of the rats preferred the sweetener. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1931610/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1931610/ I'd go into some of the human studies, but it tends to start a flame war here, so I'll skip it and just link to this, and allow people to draw there own conclusions: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4940716/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4940716/
- Simon_says 9y ago
  I'm not sure what that proves other than that sugar is more addictive than cocaine.

CodeWriter23 9y ago

Gut microbes _may_ talk to the brain through cortisol. On related note, a direct passage between the brain and the lymph system was discovered last year. It's behind the sinus cavity and bypasses the blood brain barrier. https://news.virginia.edu/illimitable/discovery/theyll-have-rewrite-textbooks https://news.virginia.edu/illimitable/discovery/theyll-have-...

epmaybe 9y ago
how is this related?
- CodeWriter23 9y ago
  Gut microbes interact with and effect the lymph system.

bitwize 9y ago

It just wouldn't be Hacker News without a gut-bacteria story, replete with commenters dietarily virtue-signalling and even dusting off "leaky gut syndrome", which precisely zero medical evidence proves is a thing. Remember, gut bacteria are why webshit stinks.

6d6b73 9y ago
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22109896 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22109896 Autoimmune diseases are characterized by tissue damage and loss of function due to an immune response that is directed against specific organs. This review is focused on the role of impaired intestinal barrier function on autoimmune pathogenesis. Together with the gut-associated lymphoid tissue and the neuroendocrine network, the intestinal epithelial barrier, with its intercellular tight junctions, controls the equilibrium between tolerance and immunity to non-self antigens. Zonulin is the only physiologic modulator of intercellular tight junctions described so far that is involved in trafficking of macromolecules and, therefore, in tolerance/immune response balance. When the zonulin pathway is deregulated in genetically susceptible individuals, autoimmune disorders can occur. This new paradigm subverts traditional theories underlying the development of these diseases and suggests that these processes can be arrested if the interplay between genes and environmental triggers is prevented by re-establishing the zonulin-dependent intestinal barrier function. Both animal models and recent clinical evidence support this new paradigm and provide the rationale for innovative approaches to prevent and treat autoimmune diseases.

cpncrunch 9y ago

They didn't actually find that microbes talk to the brain through cortisol. They just found an association between gut microbes, cortisol and the brain. We already know that the brain influences gut microbes through cortisol. So why did they not say that this is the most likely route for communication, rather than speculating on an unproven association in the other direction? I find it odd that these studies keep popping up, and HN users keep voting for them. It seems there is a great desire for people to want to blame bacteria for autism/depression/IBS/CFS, rather than accepting a neurological or psychiatric cause. Now, I'm not saying this stuff shouldn't be researched. Of course it should. It's just sad that people automatically assume the direction of causation is the unlikely one (gut->brain), rather than the one we know for certain exists (brain->gut). (And yes, we do know there is a gut-brain pathway, but generally it is just active during infections).

brightball 9y ago
On the autism side, it's because autism also comes with serious gastrointestinal issues. So many people think it's just a neurological issue but there is a legitimate, non-conspiratorial link there. What people want to know, is why? https://www.autismspeaks.org/science/science-news/new-insight-autism-and-intestinal-problems https://www.autismspeaks.org/science/science-news/new-insigh...
- nudiustertian 9y ago
  as an autistic person with many autistic friends i would definitely like you not to grossly simplify the matter so bluntly. thanks
  - brightball 9y ago
    I mean no offense, but what am I simplifying?
vanderZwan 9y ago
Well, there is the case where a double-blind research project into a gut microbial cure (I believe it had something to do with cancer) failed the double-blindness aspect because the doctors could tell which patient got the real treatment and which one got the control group, because those with the real bacteria were visibly happier (and no, the control group did not have more digestion problems). I recall reading about this a few years back in the New Scientist. There is also the fact that many of the people who get their stomach stapled report (usually temporary) changes in taste, in the sense that a glass of orange juice might suddenly taste like fish for a few weeks. That only makes sense if the stomach is somehow involved in the process of flavour perception. So there definitely is more going on between the gut and the brain than the former only sending sensory information to the latter and the latter then deciding what happens next. We just don't know how that works yet.

dispo001 9y ago

side note: "The researchers studied 1-month-old piglets, which are remarkably similar to human infants in terms of their gut and brain development." http://www.macroevolution.net/human-origins.html http://www.macroevolution.net/human-origins.html

stefantalpalaru 9y ago

From the actual scientific article - http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19490976.2017.1353849 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19490976.2017.13... : > Our results indicated brain mI, a marker for glial cells and pre-myelinating events in the developing brain, was positively predicted by both Bacteroides and Clostridium XIVb. Additionally, brain Cr+PCr, an indicator of energy metabolism was positively predicted by Bacteroides. Lastly, these analyses indicated brain NAA, a marker of neuronal health was negatively predicted by Ruminococcus but positively predicted by Butyricimonas. Concentrations of these brain metabolites change over the course of development and our research suggests gut colonization of microbiota may play a pivotal role in this phenomenon.