How Your Gut Influences Your Brain (stanford.edu)
- Reference: 0176655899
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/03/09/0513235/how-your-gut-influences-your-brain
- Source link: https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2025/03/06/gut-brain-connection-long-covid-anxiety-parkinsons/
> It affects your mood, your sleep, even your [2]motivation to exercise . There's [3]convincing evidence that it's the starting point for Parkinson's disease and [4]could be responsible for long COVID's cognitive effects. And it sits about 2 feet below your brain. The gut plays an obvious role in our health by digesting what we eat and extracting nutrients. But there's a growing appreciation among scientists that our digestive systems affect our general well-being in a much broader fashion.
>
> One fascinating aspect of the gut's widespread impact on health is its direct influence on and communication with the brain, a conduit known as the gut-brain axis. Through direct signals from the vagus nerve, [which] connects the brain and the gut, as well as through molecules secreted into the bloodstream from our gut microbes and immune cells that traffic from the gut to the rest of the body, our brains and our digestive tracts are in constant communication. And when that communication goes off the rails, diseases and disorders can result. The gut-brain connection is a key part of how the brain forms a picture of the rest of the body, a phenomenon known as interoception, explained Christoph Thaiss, PhD, an assistant professor of pathology at Stanford Medicine...
>
> The gut also contains the largest number of neurons outside the brain of any structure in the body — more than 100 million neurons line the human digestive tract, from the esophagus to the anus. These cells make up what is known as the enteric nervous system, which some scientists refer to as a "second brain." The enteric nervous system is more brain-like than other peripheral nerves because it consists of lots of different types of neurons that communicate with each other, while other peripheral nerves primarily serve to communicate between the brain and the body, said Julia Kaltschmidt, PhD, the Firmenich Next Generation Faculty Scholar and an associate professor of neurosurgery. In fact, the gut's nervous system can act alone. Scientists have found that if they remove an animal's gut and bathe it in a special fluid designed to keep neurons alive, the gut continues to contract, pushing its contents from top to bottom.
[1] https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2025/03/06/gut-brain-connection-long-covid-anxiety-parkinsons/
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05525-z
[3] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2823250
[4] https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(23)01034-6
So this graduated from quack science after all? (Score:3)
If you go back in time on the web sites that promote raw milk they have been writing about this for a decade or more. Also Mercola.
Although I started drinking raw milk (reliable source) and seemed to get some benefit from it, I never bought into all the new-agey "here's the study that shows" type of hype that the fan base cultivates. It is sort of interesting to see this go mainstream.
Re: (Score:2)
> If you go back in time on the web sites that promote raw milk they have been writing about this for a decade or more. Also Mercola.
> Although I started drinking raw milk (reliable source) and seemed to get some benefit from it, I never bought into all the new-agey "here's the study that shows" type of hype that the fan base cultivates. It is sort of interesting to see this go mainstream.
Drinking raw milk is like eating raw steak. If you have a taste for it then that’s great, but eventually statistics catches up and it comes time to pay the price. Despite being very careful I get food poisoning once every few years, it’s very easy to feel like a bus ran your intestines over. It can be days before you feel better or even be fatal. Because of that I’m in favor of restrictions and warnings so that people have to obviously brush them aside and take things into their own ha
Re: (Score:2)
Morons stumbling onto something with a scientific reality behind it does not somehow validate their dumbshit views.
Drinking raw milk is stupid. Don't do it. It's going to kill you some day. The placebo effect you derive from it isn't worth your fucking life- find better ways to trigger it. Crystals are pretty benign, I imagine.
What is this fluid? (Score:2)
I want some of this neuron preserving fluid... Seems like something we should be working on ...
mens sana in corpore sano (Juvenal) (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing here really seems to be news. The critical question is what you can actually do to positively affect the situation. The gut microbiome is tremendously complex and very poorly understood.
We discovered electrons before atomic energy (Score:2)
> Nothing here really seems to be news. The critical question is what you can actually do to positively affect the situation. The gut microbiome is tremendously complex and very poorly understood.
The microbiome was not well understood even 20 years ago when I was in grad school for biochemistry. It's come a long way and as you said, it's complex and underappreciated until recently.
With science, yeah, a few trailblazers pave a way and the wide industry eventually follows. It doesn't move as fast as the software industry in silicon valley, for example. However, that's obvious because some caffeinated and motivated engineers can come up with an idea and have it in beta within 6 months, whereas a
Gut thought? (Score:2)
"which some scientists refer to as a "second brain." " So gut feelings are actually real thoughts?
Maybe things have changed (Score:2)
I used to be very reliably able to detect the cranks by their saying "gut" vs. "digestive system".
External organisms aren't your digestive system (Score:2)
> I used to be very reliably able to detect the cranks by their saying "gut" vs. "digestive system".
The digestive system are the parts your body made. Your gut includes the bacteria inside them. So stomach/intestines?...digestive system...the flora of bacteria inside the intestines?....gut.
Re: (Score:2)
With no desire to trigger defensiveness in someone who at least claims to be a grad school attendee in biochemistry, I've always understood gut to be a synonym for "digestive system", and I'm not seeing any definition even in scientific literature that disagrees with that.
If gut really did mean "digestive system + flora of bacteria", it seems to me that terms like "gut microbiota" would be inventions of the Department of Redundancy Department.
I'm pretty sure it's just a synonym for your digestive tract.
Re: (Score:2)
Frankly, I call bullshit on the digestive system not including the... well, wouldn't it be fauna? Bacteria aren't plants, are they?
I don't think our digestive system would digest much without the bacteria, would it?
What I want to know... (Score:2)
...is how to make my gut understand that it's being a pain in the arse, both literally and figuratively, and to please stop.
here at /. the experts know better (Score:2)
The /. experts will all tell you that weight management is merely a reflection of your worth as a person, that overwieght people are simply inferior. That can't be this "gut-brain connection" because that would contradict their appearance of superiority. Right, SuperKendalll?
Re: (Score:3)
You don't have to be a /. expert to understand that carrying around an extra 50, let alone 100 pounds, is prematurely aging every bone, joint and muscle in your body.