Mental Health Archives

Probiotics: Can they replace migraine medication?

Mental Health, Probiotics / By @drHoberman

Anyone who experiences migraines on a regular basis knows how painful they can be, not to mention the harrowing side effects — vomiting, nausea, blurred vision and sensitivity to light and sound — that come with them.

Some 12 percent of all Americans suffer from migraines, conditions that can last for several days and are three times more common among women than men.

As our understanding of the human microbiome expands, science is discovering new connections that link the microbes in our bodies to all sorts of health conditions, even migraines, according to a recent study in MSystems (an open access journal published by the American Society For Microbiology).

The nitrate trigger

To understand the relation between migraines and the microbiome, researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine discovered a link in nitrates, common food additives used to preserve cured meats — think hot dogs — that are also found naturally in vegetables and in some medicines (heart drugs) and wines.

First, bacterial gene sequencing was used to uncover differences in 172 oral samples and some 2,000 fecal samples from healthy donors supplied by the American Gut Project.

This initial sequencing process found differing amounts of bacterial species based on whether donors suffered from migraines or not, yet the bacterial composition of both groups varied little.

The real breakthrough came when scientists used PICRUSt, a bioinformatics software tool, to analyze which genes were more likely to appear in migraines sufferers versus healthy folks.

That was where they discovered an increase in the number of genes that encode nitrate, nitrite and nitric oxide-related enzymes in patients who struggle with migraines. Plus, those genes associated with migraines were far more prevalent in oral samples.

A probiotic solution?

Interestingly, this discovery may lead to more targeted migraine treatments like a mouthwash or probiotic to restore the proper balance, according to Dr. Embriette Hyde, a co-author of the study as told to CNN. Could it be possible that probiotics could become a go-to treatment instead of migraine medication? Maybe some day…

This suggestion makes good sense, based on previous research that found probiotic strains of beneficial bacteria from the Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium families were powerful enough to reduce tooth decay and thrush.

Protecting your microbiome and overall health is as simple as taking a probiotic, ideally with multiple strains of bacteria, like EndoMune Advanced Probiotic and EndoMune Junior.

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The gut-brain axis even works between mice and men

The importance of a healthy gut-brain axis — the connection that links your brain, intestines and emotions — is critical to protect your cognitive and physical well-being.

That connection seems pretty clear, considering as much as 90 percent of your body’s serotonin, a chemical neurotransmitter that sends message from one part of your brain to another, may be produced in your gut.

A recent study appearing in Science Translational Medicine takes the gut-brain axis connection to the next level, literally between mice and men, with the help of fecal transplants.

IBS and the gut-brain axis

Curious about the effect irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) has on behavior and intestinal health, researchers from McMaster University and the University of Waterloo took an unconventional approach: Transplanting fecal samples from eight patients suffering from IBS with diarrhea for at least two years and five healthy people into germ-free mice.

Three weeks later, compared to mice that received healthy samples, animals that were given IBS-laced transplants experienced increased gut permeability, low-grade inflammation and faster gastrointestinal transit (how long it takes food to travel from the stomach and through the intestine).

Then, scientists tested anxiety-associated behaviors by measuring the time mice spent in the dark and how long it took them to step down from a platform to explore their environments, according to The Scientist.

Mice that were given fecal samples from human IBS patients who reported anxieties experienced similar emotional difficulties, compared to animals given fecal samples from healthy patients and those with IBS who reported no problems with anxieties.

Probiotics to the rescue

Researcher Dr. Giada De Palma called these findings a landmark “because it moves the field beyond a simple association and toward evidence that changes in the microbiota impact both intestinal and behavioral responses in IBS.”

These results also offer more evidence that human gut health may play a larger role in the range of brain disorders ranging from the emotional (mood or anxieties) to more serious problems, like multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and autism, according to a press release.

The good news: Scientists believe treatments such as probiotics and prebiotics could be beneficial in treating, not only the physical aspects of IBS but the behavioral issues associated with it too.

Protecting the health of your gut by taking a probiotic like EndoMune Advanced Probiotic is certainly much safer and more effective than taking a drug like mesalazine that merely treats symptoms but not the root cause of IBS: Restoring the balance of beneficial bacteria in the gut.

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Probiotics Improve Workplace Health and Increase Productivity

Mental Health, Probiotics / By @drHoberman

Probiotic means ‘promoting life,’ and they are life-enhancing supplements that work at your gut level. The live microorganisms of a probiotic benefit the host’s gut by launching healthy bacteria in the gut. Your gut health is closely related to your work life, and plays a significant role in your quality of work and productivity.

There are many cases where employees miss days at work due to infections and diarrhea. In an earlier study in Sweden, it was found that strains of Lactobacillus can “reduce the proportion of subjects reporting sick from gastrointestinal or respiratory tract diseases by 60%. The effect was highly statistically significant and similar to the findings by Weizman et al., where small children in daycare centers had a 70 percent lower frequency of absence when given Lactobacillus as compared with a placebo,” according to ehjournal.

Benefits of a Probiotic

Probiotics help the food move through your gut. Researchers are still trying to figure out which are best for certain health problems. Some common conditions probiotics treat include:

Irritable bowel syndrome
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)
Infectious diarrhea (caused by viruses, bacteria, or parasites)
Antibiotic-related diarrhea

Research has also shown that probiotics seem to improve other health problems like:

Skin conditions like eczema
Urinary and vaginal health
Preventing allergies and colds
Oral health

The use of probiotics can counter-attack these problems by launching the good helpful bacteria in our system. Researchers are always working to find more uses of probiotics and how it can help the human body especially by replacing the harmful bacteria in the gut.

In the workforce, employees are constantly expected to perform up to their optimum levels, and probiotics can turn out to be a boon for keeping productivity levels up by reducing health problems and chances of stomach infection.

Different bacteria have a reputation of causing stomach related diseases. Growing scientific evidence suggests that probiotics can control many health problems and benefit the body.

An estimated 100 trillion microorganisms representing more than 500 different species inhabit every normal, healthy bowel. Gut-dwelling bacteria keep pathogens (harmful microorganisms) in check, aid digestion, and nutrient absorption, and contribute to immune function.

Higher immunity means lesser cases and bouts of sickness at the workplace. A regular dose of probiotics means a happy gut and increased productivity. When you start a dose of probiotics, ensure you choose a good probiotic with the right amount of probiotic strains. The more varied the bacteria, the better the probiotic supplement.

Probiotic Strains

While probiotic cultures naturally occur in certain fermented foods, these foods won’t have the same effect of taking a multispecies probiotic like EndoMune Advanced. Additionally, EndoMune is one of the few probiotics to contain a prebiotic, which acts as a fuel source for the probiotic. Overall, adding a daily multispecies probiotic that contains a prebiotic has been shown to be more efficacious in improving gut and systemic health.

To find the relief you’ve been looking for, talk to your doctor about adding a probiotic like EndoMune to your daily regimen for help in aiding gut-related health issues.

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fruits and nuts organized into separate bowls

Mind your gut for a beautiful mind

Digestive Health, Mental Health / By @drHoberman

There is a strong connection between the brain and the gut. Researchers claim there lies a brain in the gut with its own neural network.

The Enteric Nervous System ( ENS ) has a robust system that manages the hormones, emotions, and neurotransmitters, which communicate with the brain. Serotonin, dopamine and gamma-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) are all neurotransmitters that play a role in the intestines and the central nervous system. They can be transmitted to the brain through the blood or the vagus nerve.

There are trillions of gut microbiota residing in the gut that can directly impact our mental state. Sometimes when we are anxious or depressed it can in part be due to an unhealthy balance of the intestinal bacteria (dysbiosis). Among women who suffer from depression, anxiety and GI difficulties, study results suggest a link to the gut rather than the brain.

5 Ways to Manage a Better Gut for a Better Mind

Managing the gut can result in benefits for the mind, including a better harmony between the gut and mind. Here are five ways that can create that powerful force within your body.

1. Diet

Diet is the core of every change in the body. The proverbial you are what you eat stands true in this case. The fuel you use to energize your body provides the essential nutrients and has a strong effect on every activity in the body.

Certain diets elicit a healthier bacterial balance. A diet rich in whole, unprocessed, unadulterated, and non-genetically modified foods helps to maintain a proper balance of the gut bacteria. Eliminating foods that are processed and choosing fresh and real foods is the key to providing the gut with healthy bacteria.

2. Lower Your Sugar Intake

Sugar brings about a lull in the body. It slows down the body. Sugar and carbohydrates affect the system by nurturing the pathogenic bacteria.

In a recent study, researchers fed a group of mice a diet high in sugar and then tested their mental and physical function. The sugar diet negatively impacted the mice’s gut microbiota, impaired their cognitive flexibility, and ability to efficiently adapt to changing situations. The change in gut bacteria also adversely affected the mice’s long-term and short-term memory.

Sugar affects adaptability. The sugar spike in blood levels makes the body work harder. It also leads to gut inflammation. Consuming less sugar can be beneficial for the gut and the brain.

3. Add a Probiotic

Healthy foods such as lacto fermented kimchi, pickles, sauerkraut, and other traditional vegetables have microbes that have a positive effect on our gut. A common ancestral practice to consume fermented foods rich in probiotics is quite interesting. Healthy fermented foods are filled with probiotics that allow all the healthy fauna to settle in the gut and flourish.

In a 2013 study in Gastroenterology, 12 out of the 25 healthy women ate a cup of yogurt twice a day for four weeks. The rest of the women ingested no yogurt. All women had pre and post brain scans while being asked to respond to a series of images depicting different facial expressions. Results indicated that the women who ate yogurt were calmer when shown various emotions than the control group. The results revealed that the yogurt changed the subjects’ gut microbiota, which also modified their brain chemistry.

Consuming good probiotics are one great way to keep the gut healthy. Alive organisms when ingested in adequate amounts, produces a health benefit in patients suffering from psychiatric illness.” A review by Dinan et al encompasses the clinical basis for the use of probiotics in mental health with reference to animal studies in which behavioral changes resulted from exposure to bacterial strains such as Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus. In placebo-controlled trials in humans, measures of anxiety, chronic fatigue, depression and anxiety are associated with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). IBS is felt to be due to an imbalance or dysbiosis of the gut microbiota.

Besides foods, a good probiotic supplement with a number of strains can be very helpful for the gut.

4. Exercise Regularly

Exercise releases the good hormones in our bodies. These hormones help to stimulate growth and make us feel happy. All the chemicals and hormones released during exercise benefit the body, and eventually the gut. Regular exercise stimulates better bowel movements and leads to more water consumption. All these affect the gut, keeping it healthy and strong.

Exercise can be the best therapy for a weak gut. So whenever you feel low, experience anxiety or have a stressful meeting coming up, go for a run, hit the gym and take a probiotic like EndoMune Advanced.

5. Relax and De-stress

A stressful mind releases harmful hormones like cortisol. A rise in cortisol affects the gut making the cholesterol level higher, and even triggers depression.

A relaxed mind can induce hormones that promote relaxation, which also affect the gut. Studies have shown stress puts us at risk for dysbiosis, a shift away from healthy gut diversity.

In a 2015 study from Harvard University affiliates, forty-eight patients with either IBS or Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) took a 9-week session that included meditation training. The results showed reduced pain, improved symptoms, stress reduction, and a decrease in inflammatory processes.

Practicing mindful techniques of relaxing the mind, and breathing more deeply to oxygenate the body lead to a less distressed mind and gut. The best way to develop a beautiful mind is to cultivate a healthy and happy gut.

To learn more about your gut/brain connection, talk to your health care provider and ask if adding a probiotic like EndoMune Advanced Capsules to your daily regimen will help issues likes anxiety and depression.

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What you eat may harm your gut-brain axis

Digestive Health, Mental Health / By @drHoberman

There may be a problem with your gut-brain axis — the biological connection linking the gut, emotions and brain as one — when eating a diet rich in fats and sugars. These chemicals may cause shifts in mood and cognitive behaviors.

A recent study by Oregon State University (OSU) featured in the medical journal Neuroscience, linking gut health changes caused by following poor diets to serious problems related to cognitive flexibility, the ability to adapt quickly to new and unexpected situations.

“The impairment of cognitive flexibility in this study was pretty strong,” says Dr. Kathy Magnusson of the Linus Pauling Institute at OSU in a press release. “Think about driving home on a route that’s very familiar to you, something you’re used to doing. Then one day that road is closed and you suddenly have to find a new way home.”

Researchers came to that conclusion after feeding mice either high-fat or high-sugar diets, then monitoring their physical and mental performances with an array of physical tests alongside their gut health.

Compared to mice that ate a normal diet, animals that were prescribed high-fat or high-sugar diets began to perform poorly on physical tests after only four weeks. The lack of cognitive flexibility stood out to researchers as one of the most obvious problems.

Young mice with physically stronger and healthier bodies were used in the study because they had more dynamic biological systems. In theory, the stronger mice could better resist the effects of a poor diet, Magnusson says.

On its own merit, the study provided more evidence of how Western diets — high in saturated fats, carbohydrates, refined sugars, processed foods and red meat — forced the gut to adapt by reducing the diversity of bacteria, leaving our bodies vulnerable to many diseases, most of which are preventable.

“We’ve known for a while, too much fat and sugar are not good for you,” Magnusson says. “This work suggests fat and sugar are altering your healthy bacterial systems, and it is one of the reasons those foods aren’t good for you. It’s not just the food that could be influencing your brain, but an interaction between the food and microbial changes.”

One easy way to give your gut microbiota a healthy, natural boost and assist in preventing damage to your gut-brain axis is to take a probiotic with multiple species of beneficial bacteria. These bacteria can treat a variety of conditions related to your gut health.

Unlike many probiotics you’ll find at your health food shop or grocery store, EndoMune Advanced Probiotic contains 10 strains of beneficial bacteria, plus the prebiotic fructooligosaccharide that feeds the good gut bacteria already living in your gut.

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Beat Depressing Thoughts with Probiotics

Mental Health, Probiotics / By @drHoberman

Reflecting on life’s lessons about a difficult time in your life can be beneficial, and even instructive.

Looking back, however, can become unhealthy if your mind gets stuck ruminating, and replaying the same situation over and over again, causing you to focus more on what you might’ve done rather than how to solve the issue or avoid it.

When taken to an extreme, according to the American Psychological Association, ruminating doesn’t offer new insights at all. Instead, it can feed depression and make it harder for you to shake negativity.

There are lots of strategies you can use to beat the rumination cycle, using cognitive skills you can learn on your own, or with the help of a licensed therapist or a trusted friend.

A new study appearing in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity identified a familiar weapon — multi-species probiotics — which can also be helpful in breaking the depression-rumination cycle too.

Psychologists at the Leiden Institute of Brain and Cognition (located in the Netherlands) tested the effect of probiotics containing proprietary strains of various beneficial bacteria, including Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus lactis, Lactobacillus casei, Bifidobacterium bifidum and Bifidobacterium lactis on 40 healthy patients.

(These five strains represent half of the beneficial bacteria contained in EndoMune Advanced Probiotic.)

Half of the patients received a drink made of lukewarm water or milk containing probiotics or a placebo for four weeks. At the beginning and end of the study, patients completed questionnaires that measured their sensitivity to depression.

Patients who were given the multi-strain probiotic experienced significantly fewer ruminative thoughts, compared to those assigned the placebo.

“Even if preliminary, these results provide the first evidence that the intake of probiotics may help reduce negative thoughts associated with sad mood,” says Dr. Lorenza Colezato, co-researcher of the study in a press release.

“As such, our findings shed an interesting new light on the potential of probiotics to serve as adjuvant or preventive therapy for depression.”

Considering the results of a recent study that identified specific beneficial bacteria in your gut responsible for the production of serotonin, as well as more evidence of the gut-brain axis, these results were not unexpected.

In addition to multiple species of beneficial bacteria, EndoMune Advanced Probiotic and EndoMune Jr. contain no artificial colorings, sugar, dairy products, preservatives or gluten and both are certified kosher.

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Could a high-fat diet harm your gut-brain axis?

Diet, Mental Health / By @drHoberman

Choosing high-fat foods impacts your physical health, making you more vulnerable to obesity, diabetes and a host of other issues related to metabolic syndrome. The biological connection that links your intestines, brain and emotions as one — better known as the gut-brain axis — may be harmed too.

Although researchers at Louisiana State University didn’t specifically mention the gut-brain axis in their recently published study in Biological Psychiatry, the implication was certainly present in the results. They concluded that eating a high-fat diet may increase your risks for behavioral problems, including depression.

Scientists tested their theory by transplanting gut bacteria of mice, fed either a high-fat diet or a control diet, into non-obese adult mice. The mice were then evaluated for signs of behavioral changes.

The mice exposed to gut bacteria fed by a high-fat diet displayed numerous changes, both mentally and physically.

On the mental health side, the mice experienced impaired memory, greater anxiety and repetitive behaviors. Physically, the mice displayed signs of inflammation and increased intestinal permeability.

According to researchers, the connection between the gut-brain axis, behavioral disruptions, and high-fat diets could also indicate inflammation in the brain.

“This paper suggests that high-fat diets impair brain health, in part, by disrupting the symbiotic relationship between humans and the microorganisms that occupy our gastrointestinal tracts,” Dr. John Krystal, editor of Biological Psychiatry, commented in a press release.

Fortunately, probiotics can help prevent the negative effect of a high-fat diet.

How probiotics can help

Unfortunately, high-fat diets are just one variable that disrupts the healthy balance of bacteria in your gut. Relying too often on antibiotics can be a big problem, leaving you vulnerable to hazardous infections like Clostridium difficile, which can be severe and, on occasion, deadly.

Protecting the diversity of your gut bacteria can be tricky with our hectic lifestyles that encourage us to eat high-fat, high-calorie meals because they are quick and simple.

Spending a little more time every day to eat a healthier diet richer in fiber and cutting out extra calories does your body a world of good.

Taking a multi-species probiotic like EndoMune Advanced Probiotic that contains 10 different strains of beneficial bacteria plus the prebiotic FOS (fructooligosaccharide) can be the boost your health needs to protect your gut and brain.

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Boost Your Serotonin without Medication

Digestive Health, Mental Health / By @drHoberman

Protecting your body’s gut-brain axis—the connection linking your brain, emotions and intestines—is very important to your good physical and emotional well-being.

Taking a multi-strain probiotic can serve as a vital step to enhance the diversity of beneficial bacteria in your gut.

Guarding that diversity and your gut-brain axis is critical for your body’s production of serotonin, a chemical that works as a neurotransmitter to send messages from one part of the brain to another. In fact, scientists estimate that 80-90 percent of the body’s serotonin may be produced in the gut.

Important research by Caltech scientists, published in the medical journal Cell, has linked the production of peripheral serotonin in the gut by enterochromaffin (EC) cells to specific bacteria.

Specific gut bacteria connected to serotonin production

First, researchers investigated whether gut bacteria affected serotonin by comparing its production in normal and germ-free mice. No surprise, EC cells from germ-free animals produced some 60 percent less serotonin versus normal mice.

When gut bacteria was taken from normal mice and transplanted into germ-free mice, serotonin levels of germ-free animals rebounded.

Then, scientists tested gut bacteria (single species and groups) to determine which species work with EC cells to produce serotonin. They identified some 20 species of spore-forming bacteria that boosted levels of serotonin in germ-free mice.

Also, normal mice treated with these species experienced improved gastrointestinal motility and alterations in the activation of blood platelets (they use serotonin to promote clotting too).

“EC cells are rich sources of serotonin in the gut. What we saw in this experiment is that they appear to depend on microbes to make serotonin, or at least a large portion of it,” said Jessica Yano, one of the study’s authors in a press release.

Previously, research has concluded some strains of bacteria were solely responsible for producing serotonin, but this study saw things differently. Instead, specific bacteria normally present in the gut interact with intestinal cells to generate serotonin, said Yano.

These interactions between gut bacteria and intestinal cells may not be limited to producing serotonin, said Dr. Elaine Hsiao, research assistant professor of biology and biological engineering and senior author of the study.

“We identified a group of bacteria that, aside from increasing serotonin, likely has other effects yet to be explored. Also, there are conditions where an excess of peripheral serotonin appears to be detrimental.”

More natural serotonin boosters

Boost your levels of serotonin without depression medication, here’s four steps that can help without taking a drug:

Exposing your body to bright light every day, a treatment for seasonal affective disorder in the winter, may be a worthwhile alternative to treat depression year-round.
Get your body moving with daily exercise.
Modify your diet by cutting back on caffeine and foods made of simple carbs (white bread, white rice and sweets), and eating more protein and brightly colored veggies every day.
A recent University of Michigan study cited probiotics as a way to reduce stress by reversing intestinal inflammation.

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Good gut health allows chocolate to sharpen your brain

Diet, Mental Health / By @drHoberman

Earlier this year, you learned how eating polyphenol-rich dark chocolate can benefit your health and why your gut plays an important role in that process.

In fact, the presence of Bifidobacteria, one of 10 beneficial strains contained in EndoMune Advanced Probiotic and EndoMune Advanced Junior (for kids), and lactic acid bacteria is the primary reason eating dark chocolate produces healthy, anti-inflammatory compounds.

These same beneficial microbes also create the opportunity for healthy older folks to reverse age-related declines in memory, according to a recent study published by Nature Neuroscience.

An important thing to note: The declines in memory due to age that are being discussed here are far different than those experienced by folks who suffer more serious health challenges due to Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia that destroys neurons throughout the brain.

On the other hand, age-related declines in memory—forgetting a phone number or where you parked a car—usually start in early adulthood, becoming more noticeable as people approach their 50s or 60s.

Scientists at Columbia University Medical Center studied the effects of consuming dietary cocoa flavanols to confirm that age-related declines in memory were located in the portion of the brain known as the dentate gyrus (inside the hippocampus).

For the study, 37 healthy participants ranging in age from 50-69 received either a low flavanol drink (10 mg.) or a high flavanol drink (900 mg.) daily for three months. Before and after the study, patients were given memory tests, and their brains were scanned to measure the amount of blood in and the type of memories controlled by the dentate gyrus.

Patients who were given the high flavanol drink experienced terrific results compared to those receiving the low flavanol mixture.

“If a participant had the memory of a typical 60-year-old at the beginning of the study, after three months, that person on average had the memory of a typical 30- or 40-year-old,” said Dr. Scott Small, according to a press release.

Interestingly, the high flavanol product used in this study, produced by global confectionary manufacturer Mars, isn’t the same as chocolate, which is why researchers caution people not to increase their chocolate intake to replicate the effect.

In fact, attempting to eat that much chocolate rich in epicatechin (a healthy flavanol also found in tea and grapes), you’d have to eat at least 300 grams of dark chocolate a day, amounting to seven average bars.

Also, scientists reported no additional activity in the entorhinal cortex, another region in the hippocampus that’s affected early in the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.

For this high flavanol drink to work so well in these experiments, it has to be “processed” by intestinal bacteria so that the active agents are absorbed and work to improve the brain’s ability to retain memories.

The real story “behind” the study: To enjoy these chocolatey benefits, ensure that you have a healthy gut by taking a quality multi-species probiotic like EndoMune Advanced.

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Autism and the gut health connection

Disease, Mental Health / By @drHoberman

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is one of the most challenging developmental disabilities an individual can experience. While the origins of autism are still misunderstood, research suggests it is linked to genetic and environmental factors that trigger deficits in social communication and cognition.

The abilities of ASD patients can vary from the severely challenged to the gifted, depending on the individual and the causes.

One thing autistic children across the spectrum often share is a struggle with gastrointestinal problems that last until adulthood. “Studies have shown that when we manage these problems, their behavior improves dramatically,” says Dr. Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown, a researcher at Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute.

Although there’s no cure for ASD, a pair of recent medical studies have discovered new links to gut health that better pinpoint this disease and, perhaps, how to treat it.

Signs of autism appear in the gut

With gut health being linked to a growing number of diverse conditions — tooth health to the immune system — it’s not surprising to learn ASD is linked to the gut, too.

After comparing gut flora from fecal samples taken from 20 autistic patients and an equal number of healthy children, scientists discovered a similar lack of microbial diversity among ASD patients previously noted in studies dealing with obesity and heart health.

Children with ASD had lesser amounts of three important kinds of carbohydrate-degrading bacteria: Prevotella, Coprococcus and Veillonellaceae. Of this trio, Prevotella — a common genus seen in healthy children with greater gut diversity — was found in conspicuously low levels in ASD patients.

Hopefully, the Arizona State study results will now guide new autism treatment studies that would modify the composition of bacteria in the gut.

Probiotics may improve ASD behaviors

Caltech scientists have discovered physical evidence that shows how probiotics help ASD patients by paying closer attention to leaky gut, a disorder in which a breakdown in the intestinal wall allows matter to pass through to the bloodstream.

After replicating biological conditions that trigger autism symptoms in the offspring of mice, researchers found the gastrointestinal tracts of these young animals were “leaking.”

To determine if these leaks influenced autism-like behaviors, Caltech scientists treated the mice with Bacteroides fragilis (B. fragilis), a bacterium used previously as an experimental probiotic therapy in animal research.

Not only did the leaky guts of the test animals heal, their behaviors improved greatly (the mice communicated better, felt less anxiety and were less likely to engage in repetitive behaviors). These results aren’t surprising if you consider the gut-brain axis that connects your intestines, brain and emotions.

Important note: The brains of mice and men are vastly different, with the human brain being more complex in terms of gyrification, which plays a great role in connectivity and species intellegence.

How will science use probiotics to treat ASD?

The next step for researchers will be an initial trial within the next two years to test the effectiveness of probiotics on human autism patients.

“In this study, we can provide a treatment after the offspring have been born that can help improve certain behaviors,” says Paul Patterson, a professor of biological sciences at Caltech. ”I think that’s a powerful part of the story.”

The tricky part about developing an effective probiotic: ASD is activated by genetic and environmental factors and their previous mouse model only replicated symptoms created only from environmental triggers, scientists say.

Nevertheless, scientists sound thrilled that probiotics may soon offer a safe, healthy alternative to treating ASD. “I think our results may someday transform the way people view possible causes and potential treatments for autism,” says Sarkis Mazmanian, Caltech professor of biology.

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