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Social anxiety disorder-associated gut microbiota increases social fear
- bloqs 1y agothis astonishes me
- kneel 1y ago16S sequencing doesn't reveal a mechanism, it indicates a narrow genomic pattern that may or may not be relevant.
- ngruhn 1y agoThis is gonna go viral as: just eat more yogurt to stop being awkward or whatever.
- jadamson 1y agoYoghurts probably won't help, but Fecal Microbiota Transplantation might. A team at the University of Calgary is currently recruiting participants with Major Depressive Disorder and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: https://research.ucalgary.ca/participate/clinical-trial-evaluate-safety-and-efficacy-fecal-microbiota-transplantation-population-major-reb19-0016 https://research.ucalgary.ca/participate/clinical-trial-eval... https://research.ucalgary.ca/participate/focused-study-fmt-ocd-patients-reb22-1179 https://research.ucalgary.ca/participate/focused-study-fmt-o...
- bluefirebrand 1y agoDamn, that's my city and I have been struggling with some other stuff I don't fall under the umbrella of Major Depressive or OCD but if they were doing trials to help anxiety or something I would probably sign up
- notfed 1y agoEat more poop?
- Integrape 1y agoYou have to boof the poo for it to work right.
- ninetyninenine 1y agoThe experiment looked to be the other way around. If you introduced new microbiota from patients with SAD this caused SAD in mice. So introducing new microbiota won’t solve the problem. The theory that needs to be tested is that we know microbiota can switch SAD on, but does removal of said microbiota turn it off? It needs to be an antibiotic cleansing. It can even be DIY. People can try this on themselves. I think the unknown factor here though is whether or not a persons diet is introducing the SAD causing microbiota.
- jvm___ 1y agoDo we get gut bacteria from the people around us? Where does a newborn get their gut bacteria from?
- ninetyninenine 1y agoThe entry point to the gut is from the mouth so because of that, I think food is where most of the gut bacteria comes from.
- cwmoore 1y agoSure, as long as you hold your mouth and nose closed when not eating.
- asdff 1y agoYou have a back door as well for the gut that tends to open at least once a day. We know fecal matter is in the air in most bathrooms. It wouldn't surprise me if you got an infusion of community fecal biome right into your anus every time you used a restroom that isn't your own.
- ninetyninenine 1y agoYes but usually when the back door opens things are exiting the gut rather then going in. So I don’t think that counts. There are cases where things do enter the back door but I think that’s just humans getting creative and it wasn’t designed for entry.
- mproud 1y agoLotta yogurts people buy are chock full of added sugars.
- grafmax 1y agoEating more prebiotics in the form of unprocessed plants is much more effective at improving gut health than probiotic supplements or even probiotic foods. (Of course you can do both.)
- chkaloon 1y agoCan we just keep taking courses of scorched earth antibiotics until we come up with a microbiome combo that feels good?
- orionsbelt 1y agoAnecdotally, that generally seems to make things worse, not better.
- SketchySeaBeast 1y agoWhere does having solid stool sit in comparison to not having social anxiety?
- bhaney 1y agoI did this years ago and it seemed to work, but n=1. It took two cycles of antibiotics and intentional introduction of "good bacteria" before I landed on something that seemed to fix most of my food intolerances. Didn't seem to have any impact on anxiety. I learned later that this is pretty dangerous to attempt, since you're very likely to give yourself c diff or some other infection and end up with persistent IBS before you land on a good microbiome.
- Der_Einzige 1y agoGiven that it'll cure the latent chlamydia and gonorrhea that people have - not to mention the cat toxiplasmos - lets do it!
- ninetyninenine 1y agoThey caused SAD in mice by introducing specific microbiota. But does the system have hysteresis? Can the flip be switched the other way? Introduce antibiotics to wipe out all the microbiota and does the SAD improve? There can be human trials for this given that antibiotics are approved low risk medicines. Clinical trials with antibiotics to clean out and reset the microbiome along with strict diets in attempt to prevent reintroduction of said microbiota. It can even be DIY.
- aaron695 1y ago[dead]
- jjk166 1y agoI think it makes sense that our microbiome should be able to trigger such a response. If your microbiome is changing, it means that some microbe is gaining numbers it didn't previously have, and your current bodily functions, such as your immune system, aren't stopping it. That doesn't necessarily mean your immune system is compromised, but if it is then it would probably be good not to spend a lot of time around other individuals, especially large groups or strangers. Other reasons for your microbiome to be shifting, like a sudden change in diet or enviroment, could also be indicative of an issue like food shortages or territorial change where it would also be good to minimize your exposure to and reliance on others. Finally, depending on what exactly is gaining a foothold, you could potentially be a threat to your kin if you come around them. Developing a social fear response to certain changes in gut microbiome could thus be quite beneficial for most social creatures.
- amelius 1y agoBeneficial for the group, not the individual, I suppose.
- MarkusQ 1y agoWhich is to say, maladaptive. Despite all the people wishing evolution worked at the group level, it doesn't. Groups don't have offspring, individuals do, and thus things that are bad for the individual are extinguished regardless of their effect on the group. If you look closely enough, even individuals aren't the true units of evolution, for the same reason; competing alleles is where the real action is.
- energy123 1y agoAlleles are shared with kin which gives rise to multilevel selection effects in rare but real scenarios.
- saltcured 1y agoWhen thinking about evolutionary forces, you cannot conflate "positive" outcome with survival and reproduction. An individual might survive and produce offspring via effects that make the individual unhappy in their own life and/or with shortened life. It's only when an effect causes death or infertility prior to normal reproductive phases that we can really say it has a direct evolutionary pressure. Anything that happens later is always going to be through secondary, social effects on how their condition supports or hinders their offspring from reproducing further generations.
- cyberge99 1y agoMakes sense. People naturally want to poop someplace comfortable because pooping is a very vulnerable position for a human.
- pogue 1y agoI've seen probiotic supplements that have strains that claim to help with anxiety and depression, but I've never really looked into them because I'm quite skeptical they do anything. But if anyone is familiar with them and has any feedback I'd be interested to hear it.
- kenjackson 1y agoStrongly second this ask.
- cwmoore 1y agoSo long as it isn’t eating the variety of fresh fruits and vegetables that produce gut serotonin in the microbial breakdown of complex carbohydrates and fiber, right?
- vorpalhex 1y agoEating fresh fruits and veggies is a great general health advice but unlikely to shift your gut microbiome meaningfully (unless you are eating some specific fruits or fruit skins in specific conditions). And randomly eating healthy stuff is probably not going to shift your biome in a particular direction nor eliminate the cause of biome issues. I eat healthy including a lot of whole fruit, nuts, dried fruits, dark green veggies and grass finished meats and there are still times I have my biome be a bit off.
- cwmoore 1y ago“Unlikely”, “randomly”, and “probably” had me nervous about your contribution to this discussion. I do appreciate the quantitative precision at the end of your last sentence.
- kenjackson 1y agoWhy wouldn’t it be? Do you know which ones exhibit the desired characteristic?
- wosined 1y ago[flagged]
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoWhat? Excuse for what?
- vslira 1y agoI’m writing the following in jest, before anyone takes this seriously, as I assume this kind of correlation has been accounted for. Maybe the causation is reversed: people who go out more are more frequently infected with all kinds of bugs, from getting too intimate with strangers to eating stuff that was prepared by someone not too assiduous in their hand washing - a sibling reply mentioning fecal microbiota transplant comes to mind I know this article is about bugs that cause anxiety, but maybe they just lose the competition in a gut environment with the social bugs People who stay at home are less infected, thus the correlation with these gut specimens
- pogue 1y agoIt's an interesting theory! Maybe find some extroverts and share meals with them & do some consensual saliva exchange with them and pick up their healthy bacteria! :)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- im3w1l 1y agoI kinda skimmed parts of it but a question I have is whether the study was appropriately blinded. ctrl-f blind didn't give any results. One of my biggest concerns with gut flora research is wishful thinking.
- skrebbel 1y agoOfftopic but can we please stop and appreciate the excellent acronym "SAD"? It's gotta be right up there with hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia in the gallery of best disease names.
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoIt also stands for Standard American Diet. So there you go.
- FranklinMaillot 1y agoIt also stands for Seasonal Affective Disorder which is winter depression.
- NotGMan 1y agoThis is well known in low carb and juice fasting communities: many people completely healed life long depression after an extreme dietary change.
- Tarsul 1y agoI know from personal experience that eating sugar does induce more anxiety in me. This might sound weird but I can "physically feel" in my head a certain anxiety when e.g. I think about something awkward. This "physical feel" stopped being there when I stopped eating sweets for a few weeks. One reason why I try to keep my sugar intake down (the other being in danger of getting diabetes...). Thus, I wholly believe this study.
- veunes 1y agoIt's wild how much your gut can mess with your brain chemistry
- frankish 1y agoCan you explain your jump from gut microbiota to sugar? Aside from sugar being one food that passes through our digestion, I'm not certain why you have singled it out.
- kelipso 1y agoJust from basic principles, what you eat affects your gut microbiome because different bacteria reproduce more or less from you eating different foods.
- cjbgkagh 1y agoI believe most people are not notability adversely affected by sugar and a small subset of the population, like myself, are acutely affected. The former does not invalidate the latter. Sarah Wilson of “I quit sugar” fame started off with a zero sugar crusade then later ameliorated her advice in an apparent effort to generalize her advice for a wider audience. I think advice should be tailored by conditioning on what category a person fits into. I would go further and suggest that a zero sugar diet should also have zero fruit. As a ADHD sugar addict I would generally substitute sugar with fruit and that prevented me from finding out that even my ostensibly healthy diet had too much sugar in it.
- itsallboutsugar 1y ago
- veunes 1y agoYeah, the brain might not be the only place we should be looking when it comes to mental health.
- francisofascii 1y agoScientists think of the gut as our second brain or perhaps an extension of our brain.
- keernan 1y agoI've suffered with social anxiety for a very long time. Thirty years ago a doctor prescribed a MAOI which immediately transformed me into a social butterfly (which in hindsight was a very difficult transition). This forever proved to me what the doctor had told me: it is all about chemical balance in the brain. The problem, of course, was the danger. I could die within minutes if I ate fermented food without taking the antidote I always carried. Problem with that was the risk was almost the same if I took the antidote if it wasn't needed. I therefore only stayed on the meds for maybe 6 months (during which time I went from 150lbs to 225lbs). I've never found an alternative substitute. I've taken meds that help lessen the anxiety, but never found anything else that literally changed who I was (making me an incredibly social person). PS: I think it was Nardil. I wasn't having any issues with depression. The doctor was specializing social anxiety and in particular in the use of Nardil to help. He also told me that the chemical balance in my brain indicated that, without Nardil, I would almost certainly become a hermit in my 70s. I'm 72 and his prognosis was spot on.
- pogue 1y agoThat's quite interesting. In my experience, I've suffered from severe anxiety and depression my entire adult life. I spent years working with a psychiatrist trying every SSRI on the market. None of them seemed to help in the slightest, until I asked to try Eldepryl (selegiline), an MAO-B. It helps greatly with depression, but hasn't helped with anxiety. An MAO-B has the advantage of not having any issue with tyramine (the cheese effect) that you're referring to. I've never heard of Nardil, but I'll have to look into it.
- bluefirebrand 1y agoI am always cautious about offering any kind of medical suggestions online. Please take this with a grain of salt: I struggled with anxiety and depression, treated with anti-depressants and such After years of that, a doctor suggested I test for ADHD and I got medicated for that after the test was positive After being medicated for ADHD, I had much less anxiety and basically no depression. Turns out that both Anxiety and Depression are potentially comorbid with unmedicated ADHD It might be worth asking about. It could be that you need stimulants, not antidepressants
- afro88 1y agoMy social anxiety sky rocketed at 19 and didn't start to settle down until 23/24. I never knew exactly why, and that's always troubled me a bit. A microbe population getting out of hand sounds possible, as my diet and surroundings changed drastically at 19. Interesting stuff.
- basisword 1y ago>> surroundings changed drastically at 19 Couldn't this be the easier explanation? People at that age tend to move away from home, go to college or start work - all big changes, all highly social and potentially stressful changes. Mental health issues leading on from this is understandable and anecdotally I've saw it in several friends.
- kridsdale3 1y agoPeople who grew up in a certain SES class (of their parents) also tend to take on poverty-conditions when in college (oh man all I can afford this week are these cup noodles), and not to mention frequent destruction of the microbiome with alcohol. It's probably very disrupting. Maybe has something to do with why those who have a predisposition to having a psychotic break tend to have their first around 20.
- ThinkBeat 1y agoI feel all such studies should be headlined with: In mice: blah blah blah. and then if the research is farther along: In <other animal>: blah blah and finally if ever In humans: blah blah blah. I keep reading storie about what happens to mice in studies but I am far more interested when the research has been able to get to human trials and results are coming in.
- heraldgeezer 1y agooh yea fore sure but I have just given up on life. I have my job and apartment and I will rot here.
- hggh 1y ago(2023)
- Agraillo 1y agoIt's interesting, if we assume that the microbiota "wants" something (like other viruses or bacteria trying to affect the host in some way) and learned it evolutionary then when inside a human it tends to avoid other humans probably due to some disadvantages of the contacts for them. But why? It looks a little strange because humans are highly social species to the edge of survivability so the microbiota just risks losing the host completely.
- footlose_3815 1y agoHave anxiety. Got sick when working for FAANG. Had to take disability as a result. Your guts are VERY tied to your brain, and your gut biome WILL change if you are stressed enough. When your biome goes off, LOTS of bad things can happen to you. I was in constant pain and had IBS-C for two years until I learned how to manage by stress. But it came at a terrible cost of having to flounder a bunch of opportunities as a result. If you have lower-left gut pain, talk to your doctor, but for me it was all stress and anxiety.
- bobsmooth 1y agoIs that why it feels like anxiety comes from the gut?
- Zaylan 1y agoI've experienced social anxiety myself and always thought it was just part of who I am. Seeing that gut microbiota might influence something as specific as social fear and that it can even trigger it in mice is honestly a bit unsettling. I'm really curious whether this kind of research could lead to something beyond the usual therapy or medication. It would be amazing to see new treatments emerge that are based on the microbiome.
- agold97 1y agoSeems like a never-ending cycle for some. You eat sugar and it messes with your brain, then you eat more sugar because your brain is messed up.
- Noelia- 1y agoI’ve dealt with social anxiety myself and always thought it was just part of my personality. This study really surprised me. Transplanting gut microbiota from SAD patients made mice more socially anxious too. If future treatments can target the gut instead of relying only on willpower or medication, that might be a gentler and more effective path.
- francisofascii 1y agoI suspect that this is a compounding effect of two stressors. The mice with a healthy microbiota can handle the social stress, but when you combine both the social stress and disordered gut, the heightened sensitivity is observed.