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A New Connection Between the Gut and Brain
- bynormous 8y agoThe gut brain axis is a new and exciting field of research. Here's an educational animation showing the pathways that make these connections possible: http://mmm.hsiao.science http://mmm.hsiao.science
- popsomoa 8y agoFor a deeper dive on the topic that lab was on a recent gut biome episode of the Ologies podcast! https://www.alieward.com/ologies/2018/11/26/microbiology-gut-biome-with-dr-elaine-hsiao https://www.alieward.com/ologies/2018/11/26/microbiology-gut...
- haivri 8y agoHere's another good animated video on this topic, titled "How Bacteria Rule Over Your Body – The Microbiome": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzPD009qTN4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzPD009qTN4
- hammock 8y ago>immune signals sent from the gut can compromise the brain’s blood vessels This is known, Rhonda Patrick talks about it on Joe Rogan (I can hear you groaning). What confuses me is that this ties new research to old, outdated research (the old wisdom that salt leads to high blood pressure). No sources, but latest studies show excess salt is not harmful in healthy people.
- dzhiurgis 8y agoMy doctor still recommends me use less salt due to my high pressure. Is he an idiot?
- rootusrootus 8y agoMine still tells me I should avoid eggs because they will raise my cholesterol. I wouldn't call him an idiot, just not quite up to date on the latest nutritional studies. Not a big deal since our understanding of nutrition seems really weak and changes pretty often. In any case, there is this: https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/08/10/spoonful-salt-makes-blood-pressure-go-down-13289 https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/08/10/spoonful-salt-makes-blo... Which suggests that salt intake does raise blood pressure slightly, but it's a very small effect and does not measurably impact actual cardiovascular outcomes.
- hackits 8y agoI think it is folly to diss-regard your doctors advice.
- stubish 8y agoI've found it is folly to blindly accept doctor's advice, at least for general practitioners. Second opinions and personal research are a must for anything that matters, unless you have been lucky enough to find a good doctor one and are able to stick with them. Respect for the GPs who are capable of saying 'I don't know' or 'I'll need to research this'. Even specialists disagree, leaving you with the choice of which you trust more. They can't all be right.
- yetihehe 8y ago> Even specialists disagree, leaving you with the choice of which you trust more. They can't all be right. That leads to confusion and general mistrust for doctors. If skilled doctor doesn't know what he does, how can I? If I don't know better than doctor, how can I know who gives better advice? How to find that good advice?
- rootusrootus 8y agoI've had enough doctors that my viewpoint is different. They are human and can absolutely be wrong. Challenge them if you don't agree with their recommendation, a good doctor will tell you why they gave the advice, what the probable consequences are for ignoring it, and how confident they are. If your doctor reacts negatively to being challenged, find another.
- bvinc 8y agoMan, Rhonda Patrick is awesome. With so much disinformation in the field of nutrition, everything she says is well thought out and researched.
- glastra 8y agoCertainly. The first sentence already instilled a sense of "they're full of it" in me. I know that's biased. I checked one of the papers they refer to [0] and... well, they fed mice (not humans) a diet with an 8- to 16-fold increase in salt. As with all nutrients, there is an optimal intake range, and anything below or above that is by definition sub-optimal. In humans, the optimum for sodium intake per day seems to be well above dietary recommendations, but also well below 16 times the amounts described in those recommendations. Also, it is worth noting that the first sentence in the linked paper is again repeating the same unreasoned "we all know salt is bad" dogma. Diets high in salt in the western world are also high in many, many other things that are bad for you. Epidemiology is useless to derive new information, it only works to establish future work or to deny previous hypotheses. [0]: http://sci-hub.tw/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-017-0059-z#Sec12 http://sci-hub.tw/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-017...
- coldtea 8y ago>I checked one of the papers they refer to [0] and... well, they fed mice (not humans) a diet with an 8- to 16-fold increase in salt. As with all nutrients, there is an optimal intake range, and anything below or above that is by definition sub-optimal. In humans, the optimum for sodium intake per day seems to be well above dietary recommendations, but also well below 16 times the amounts described in those recommendations. Is there some underlying assumption that those researches are idiots and didn't know all that? The logical interpretation is that they gave 8- to 16-fold increase in salt purposefully, because they cared to see whether there are any specific effects mediated through salt. In over words, they want to put the effects on full blast to magnify responses and be able to see some novel connection, not to see how a mouse cops with mild over-consumption of salt. Specifically, the article says that they found it resulted "in increased vulnerability of the brain to autoimmunity", which one wouldn't expect from sub-optimal salt intake alone. This is not some rehash of "very high salt = blood pressure, duh!".
- glastra 8y agoOh, not at all. They are not idiots. That paper was written with a purpose which was properly met (mainly getting to publish and, to a lesser extent, to confirm a previous notion or bias). The issue is reporting of results to the public. Someone feeds mice a ridiculous amount of salt and notices they have some health issues. Let's assume for an instant that this is somehow useful for some reason (I mean, salt poisoining has been known for millenia and people actually commit suicide by drinking saturated salt solutions). Even in that case, journalists are still distilling the whole thing into "more salt is bad", which is what the average person will understand. The general public doesn't read scientific literature with a critical thinking mindset, if at all.
- rednerrus 8y agoBring that up young Jamie.
- jshowa3 8y agoExcess salt is a known factor of kidney stones and kidney failure. It also a factor in profuse diarrhea and dehydration. Saying its not harmful in healthy people (depending on how you define healthy) is a pretty ignorant thing to say.
- dilawar 8y agoI wonder if many traditional medicine systems has some inkling of it?
- 8bitsrule 8y agoQuite possibly ... not too long ago, knowing what you could and couldn't eat and the effects were surely part of oral tradition. E.G. US natives knowledge of the pain-killing effects of 'something' in birchbark existed long before Bayer synthesized the same chemical in the late 1800s.
- IndrekR 8y agoWillow, not birch. Salix in latin as in salicylic acid.
- 8bitsrule 8y agoWillow, and yes birch ('canoe birch' = white). Each is probably preferred where it's more common. Fur trappers knew about birch where willow was rare, and BTW long before Herr Bayer was born. EG https://www.survivopedia.com/how-to-make-your-own-aspirin-for-survival/ https://www.survivopedia.com/how-to-make-your-own-aspirin-fo... EG https://www.anniesremedy.com/betula-alba-birch-bark-leaf.php https://www.anniesremedy.com/betula-alba-birch-bark-leaf.php
- Santosh83 8y agoYes. The traditional Indian medicinal system called Ayurveda (as well as traditional Indian culture in general) regarded food as a form of medicine. Every form of food could potentially affect your body in various ways and many disorders and diseases were treated by either modifying the diet or by special herbal concoctions (as the concept of synthetic, molecular medicine wasn't discovered back then)... it makes sense for preventing many lifestyle related problems.
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- andreygrehov 8y agoResearch is here: https://twin.sci-hub.se/6638/a9852778fa43b8bb70b67ce5abc71d7e/faraco2018.pdf https://twin.sci-hub.se/6638/a9852778fa43b8bb70b67ce5abc71d7...
- vklx 8y agoPhrenology: "Show me your head and I tell you who you are". Gut bacteria frenzy: "Show me your bowels and I tell you who you are".
- berlinstartup 8y agoYou seem to be implying that studying gut bacteria is not scientific, but that does not logically follow.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoSo, a few thoughts from a person with a condition that significantly impacts how my body processes salt: 1. After years of pursuing diet and lifestyle approaches to managing my condition and reading up on health stuff generally (and talking to people with PhDs in topics like Chemistry and Biology), I concluded that the circulatory system is the means by which all of the body interacts with all other parts of the body. So if one thing is out of whack in one part of the body, the primary way it impacts some other part of the body is by way of how it impacts blood health. At this point, I think this should be viewed as a kind of "Biology 101" thing and I'm not very impressed with dramatic pronouncements that the gut impacts blood vessel health in the brain, le gasp. To me, that's kind of "Well, duh!" 2. The body uses various molecules in conjunction with various others, so one of the things you see is that adding more of X by itself will naturally cause chemical derangement. Salt in particular works in conjunction with a number of other minerals and the natural source of salt -- the sea -- contains a variety of other minerals. "Table salt" is not how nature supplies us with salt. It is, itself, chemically deranged from the get go and very much on purpose. One of the things they put in table salt is a chemical to make it pour easier. We assume this chemical is harmless, but I'm not aware of any actual studies on what it does to the body, especially not if you start consuming a lot more of it than "normal". So if you are consuming a lot of table salt, you are likely consuming other things that aren't normal while not getting the variety of minerals found in ocean water. I found high quality sea salts that had that variety of minerals to be highly helpful in regulating my body's relationship to salt. Getting more salt helped me, but only if it was accompanied by the right minerals, the right carbs and the right fats. It took some experimenting to find the right combo. 3. About 70 to 80 percent of the immune cells in the body are found in the gut. So, your gut is a primary part of your immune function. It really should be no surprise at all that what you eat impacts immune function. 4. I found it enormously helpful to read up on Altitude Sickness. This was a huge Aha! moment for me that makes it clear how the blood connects different organs. You begin peeing at altitude well before you are at any risk of suffering Altitude Sickness because the thin air means you can't breathe out as much blood gas wastes as you normally would, so your body starts shunting the excess blood gas wastes through the kidneys to get rid of them. This has other consequences, such as dragging salt and other electrolytes out with it. So you need not only more fluids at altitude, but also more electrolytes as well. Heat waves above 105F and hiking at altitude are about the only time I consume Gatorade.
- novaRom 8y agoI find I consume more salt at times after intensive sport (semi-marathons, swimming). It looks my body naturally requires more salt to restore itself. So the advice to consume less salt should not be generalized.
- FiberBundle 8y agoHow do you know your body naturally requires more salt?
- glastra 8y agoCravings. Also, if you put salt in your mouth and it tastes good, you need sodium. If you can't stand the taste or it tastes "chemical", then you don't need it as much.
- FiberBundle 8y agoIt's strongly hypothesised [1] and currently a very active research question that gut microbes are able to send signals to your brain to influence your "cravings". If that should be the case, listening to your cravings wouldn't be what your body naturally requires or what's healthy for your. [1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/gut-bacteria-may-be-controlling-your-appetite-180957389/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/gut-bacteria-m...
- glastra 8y agoThere is a mechanism for gut microbes to cause cravings, thus all cravings must be caused by gut microbes. Are you sure that's a logical and valid conclusion?
- FiberBundle 8y agoI didn't say anything that would imply that. However, if gut microbes, who act in their self interest, do cause cravings, then cravings cannot be used to determine what your body needs.
- how_to_bake 8y agoAnecdotal thought: I have noticed that I feel angry after eating bread. Sounds goofy, but I realized that it wasn't the caffeine from coffee and it wasn't me "not being a morning person". Recognizing this has helped my relationships a surprising amount.
- sizzle 8y agoI have a problem with bread too, I start falling asleep for like 5-10 minutes. I think it's either gluten sensitivity or carbs to blame. I try to avoid bread because of this.
- b0bby_tabl3s 8y agoI thought there was NO legit scientific evidence that salt lead to these health issues. It was 'suspected' but not proven?
- jshowa3 8y agoThe discussion on this piece is quite alarming. From general distrust of doctors, to thinking people can research themselves into knowing better, to slights about animal studies not being effective arbiters to humans. No wonder there's so much BS in the medical industry. Too many non-doctors with an opinion.
- tzjmetron 8y agoYou can go take a flying leap for all I care. Doctors, like all other professions, place on a spectrum of skills. Don't act like they are infallible. In fact, I myself spent the last decade recovering my gut from doctor prescribed medication, when I clearly would have healed faster without them. Much much faster. So get the fuck out of here with your misplaced sense of umbrage.