Health Experts Say Food Rich in Probiotics Can Help Reduce Feeling of Depression and Anxiety
Probiotics are commonly used to help aid digestion and reduce bloating. They also improve bowel movement and prevent harmful bacteria from multiplying in the intestine. Health experts, however, may have found a new medical use for it. They say that it can be used as an anti-depressant.
Taking from previous studies suggesting a communication link between the microbiota environment in the intestines and the brain, researchers at McMaster University in Canada sought out to prove that bacteria in the gut can influence an individual's behavior.
They gathered 44 adults with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) who also had mild to moderate anxiety or depression. They were followed for 10 weeks with half of the group made to take probiotics everyday supplied by Nestlé, which funded the study. The other half was given a daily dose of placebo.
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Six weeks later, twice as many of those who took probiotics (64 percent) showed decreased depression scores compared to those who took placebo (32 percent). After 10 weeks, the participants exhibited improved depression scores under functional magnetic resonance imaging.
The results supported researchers' hypothesis that "probiotics have anti-depressive properties," which has no connection with the gut's condition. This is because there were no differences noted in inflammatory markers between the probiotics and the placebo group.
An earlier research drew the same conclusion from lab mice. Scientists at University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville found that a single strain of the probiotic bacteria lactobacillus is able to influence mood. The gut microbiome of mice were subjected to chronic stress.
During the procedure, researchers observed that mice with reduced levels of lactobacillus exhibited depression symptoms. After feeding them with probiotic bacteria, their mood returned to almost normal. Researchers learned that everytime lactobacillus in the gut is reduced, the level of metabolite kynurenine in the blood increased, which has been shown to drive depression.
