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Category: Prebiotic
The Standard American Diet (SAD) is making us miserable.
What we eat has a huge impact on our moods and cognition. Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. – Hippocrates Can food affect your mood? Of course, it can, especially in the short term. Who hasn’t joyfully consumed a candy bar or a bag of cheese nips? It can be the…
Flavonoids Keep Your Brain Young
The gut-brain connection is a story that just keeps giving. The idea that gut microbes could affect your mood and cognition is startling and potentially very useful. The microbes that improve your mood are called psychobiotics. Microbes eat prebiotics, which include complex sugars like fiber. Recent studies show that substances called flavonoids are also prebiotic, and seem to…
Do Microbes Make Us Social?
“Microbes may have influenced the evolution of the social brain and behavior as a means to propagate their own genetic material.” —Cryan, Dinan, et al., Science Do our gut microbes make us party animals? It sounds preposterous, but nothing beats socializing when it comes to spreading microbes. And, perhaps, nothing beats microbes when it comes…
Is Your Diet Making You Depressed?
“One should eat to live, not live to eat.”—Moliere Feeling gloomy? Look to your diet. When you eat, you feed yourself—but you also feed your gut microbes. There are trillions of them in your gut and they make up a thriving community called the microbiota. Like you, they have their own favorite foods. Amazingly, they may…
Your Immune System Is Aging. Here’s How to Rejuvenate It.
Aging brings some rewards. Our acne clears up and we have a small chance of becoming wise. But most of the effects of aging are not so great. Wrinkles, stiff joints and forgetfulness are just a few of the things we have to look forward to. But the worst insult may be the aging of our…
Psychobiotics Get Real: A Case Study
Are you in a rainy-day mood even when the sun is shining? You may be depressed. If so, you have a lot of company. The World Health Organization asserts that depression is the number-one cause of disability in the world. This is in spite of all the antidepressants, old and new, available to psychiatry. And yet, all is…
Gut Microbes May Help Fight Long COVID
COVID-19 isn’t over yet, dammit. Long COVID promises to stress our health system for years to come. That’s why it’s good news that something simple and natural may help diminish this continuing pandemic nightmare. Several research groups have discovered that gut microbes can help inhibit the growth of coronavirus as well as lessen the impact of long COVID. A group…
Prebiotics Can Improve Brain Function by Balancing Gut Microbes
What are prebiotics? They should not be confused with probiotics, which are beneficial, living microbes. Probiotics get a lot of press, but prebiotics – the stuff that feeds those probiotics – are less familiar. Recently, a new term has been added to this biotic lexicon: psychobiotic. The term was coined by John Cryan and Ted Dinan, prolific researchers…
What is the Diversity Diet?
Diversity is a hot topic these days. Certain TV pundits will tell you that diversity is a bad thing, but Mother Nature begs to disagree. Ecology always favors diversity. Diversity allows redundancy: when several creatures can perform the same task, losing one is not fatal to the ecosystem. Variety thus creates a more resilient network, with a great store…
The Psychobiotic Revolution
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Have you ever wondered why some people seem to have more focus and energy than you do? Their secret may be psychobiotics (read on). We all have microbes in our intestines, and some are better than others when it comes to keeping us alert and motivated. Don’t despair, you too can have a better gut…