December 2, 2021 • 46 mins
Your gut – not your spare tire, but your digestive tract – is deceptively smart. Not only does it handle processing food and nutrients, but the hundreds of trillions of bacteria that live in your gut may actually be telling your brain what to do too.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark and there's Charles w Chuck Brian over there, and
it's just the two of us who were flying solo.
Um and that's okay, we're gonna do this and this
(00:23):
is stuff you should know. Yeah, you know before we
get go in. We are the worst self promoters. And
we consistently forget to tell people that we have a
book in a board game for sale for Christmas. That's
a great, great point. And every once in a while
they'll say things like, you know, if you guys want
to mention this, did they say? I feel like every
(00:44):
now and then we get emails that say, hey, did
you forget that you have these things? I don't forget.
I just assumed like everybody doesn't want to hear about it,
you know. Oh I know. But we're just not good
at this. As we stumble through at another self promotion,
they have a book in the board game and they
both make great Christmas gifts. Please stop, this is making
(01:06):
me so uncomfortable. Oh, buy them, everybody. Yeah, they're actually
pretty good. We're proud of both of them. I mean
we like, like we wrote a book, and we also
um with our good buddy knows Parker, I should say,
and we also helped create a board game with our
good buddies over at Trivial Pursuit. So yeah, I'm very
proud of It's a it's a legacy kind of thing,
(01:26):
you know. That's right. So we might have a couple
of these reminders before Christmas because they do make great
gifts for this stuff. You should know, friend in your life. Absolutely,
So that was a great idea, Chuck, And it didn't
feel so bad after all. That's right. And now onto
our probably I think eighth episode. I think that culminates.
(01:50):
It's culminated in this after many many episodes dealing with
this stuff. Well, that's funny that you say that, because
I was gonna caveat this with this this will we
will surely do another episode on this down the road
within the next several years, I'm sure, because you're obsessed
with it. I'm obsessed with a number one. Absolutely, it's
(02:11):
one of the most interesting things because this kind of
stuff we're gonna talk about, the gut, brain, microbiome access
um and it reveals, Chuck, like how little we actually
know about our bodies and how they function, but it
also provides these tantalizing clues about how cool the stuff
(02:31):
we have left to understand is. You know what I mean,
one day we're gonna understand exactly how our bodies function
and it's going to be mind boggling. I'm just very
excited about it. So yes, I'm obsessed with it. But
the other reason why we'll surely do it again is
because the stuff that we're going to talk about, we've
got to disclaim this episode and that it's pioneering, like
(02:55):
like cutting edge research, not bleeding edge, cutting edge research,
so it's going to keep evolving. But that also means Charles,
that that that you and I can just be like gee,
whiz and wow at this point because this is all
like just very early study kind of stuff. That's right,
And if you want to really get ready for this one,
(03:16):
you could listen to episodes on digestion, vehicle transplants, the
microbio human human microbiome, project immune system, probiotics, and even
our old buddy Fight or Flight. Yeah, and then just
listen to the one on Pyromania for kicks. Did we
do one on Pyromania? Of course, man, we did. Funny,
(03:38):
I was looking through the list the other day for
for a very special thing we have coming up that
we can announce yet. It's more self promotion too, which
we're very excited about. But I was looking through all
of our episodes and boy, it's getting more and more around, like,
huh what really? Yeah, imagine somebody trying to wade into
(03:58):
this stuff and just encountering it now, you know. Yeah.
It was at one point though, I was like, was
I abducted For a few years, I don't remember a
lot of these. Yeah, I have the same same thing
going on. But also, Chuck, now that you mentioned the list,
I want to give a huge hat tip again to
our Minister of Stats, Jill Hurley just doggedly and tirelessly
(04:20):
chronicles every single episode we've ever done. There's a Google
sheet out there that's open access that has every single
episode in order, including the selects or when they ran
as a select. Just it's just an amazing thing that
she's doing for free, for the love of it. I'm
guessing she still loves it. I hope Uh, well, Hurls
if nothing else is uh stubborn, she won't quit even
(04:44):
if so, let's talk about the gut brain microbiome access chuck,
because there's a couple of ways to look at it.
And the first way is the way that you would
expect that you do things like digest food. Um. Your
gut lining is produced mu gus um. You poop things
out after you eat them, you even swallow, and your
(05:05):
brain has a lot of other stuff to do than
to just micro manage that. So you have an entirely
different secondary central nervous system that's dedicated exclusively to um eating,
digesting and harvesting nutrients from your food. And that's called
the enteric nervous system. That's right, uh, And this is
(05:28):
definitely when we hit on in the digestion episode, but
they handle it all in the enteric nervous system. The
e n S is really um similar in a lot
of ways to our own central nervous system, and that
it's made up of uh nerves and neurons and neurotransmitters,
and it kind of does its own thing for the
(05:48):
most part as far as controlling that stuff without the
central nervous system lording over it. Saying you forgot this part.
You might want to move this through the intestine a
little quicker it and it does its own thing. But
this gut brain sort of connection that we're talking about
is really a connection between the e n S and
(06:09):
the CNS because they have figured that these two systems
talked to each other, and they talked to each other
from the gut to the brain, which is the really
surprising part. We've kind of always known that the brain
talks to the gut, but now we're learning, Hey, it
looks like the gut is actually sending messages to the brain,
and a lot of the stuff we thought was a
(06:29):
certain way could be actually backwards. Like ib S. Yeah,
Like we've thought for a very long time that people
with IBS UM, which is basically your your lower parts
aren't working at full um, full steam. Either you're pooping
too much and you've got really thin, watery poops, or
you're pooping too little you're constipated. Either way, you have
(06:52):
irritable bow. It's one of the most appropriately named syndromes
there is, right, And of course everybody's walking around knowing
that anybody who has ib s is UM suffering from
like stress or anxiety, and so it's bringing on like
digestive issues. Well, this is what this this is why
this stuff is so mind blowing? Is this the field
of research that investigates the gut brain microbiome access is saying, Actually,
(07:16):
it's like Chuck just said, it might go both ways.
You might have stress and anxiety not because of your
your job or you know, like you're there's some something
stressing you out. The guy down the block keeps looking
at you, weird, That's not why you're stressed out or anxious.
It's because you have IBS. That's causing your your stress
and anxiety. We may have have had it backwards all
(07:38):
this time. Yeah, And to be specific, like you can
get anxiety obviously because you have IBS. But what they're
saying is is that it's a chicken in the egg thing.
Is the origin of this is actually in the gut
and not like, oh, I have ib S because I'm anxious, right,
And the reason why they're saying that this is even
(07:59):
possible is because is that cross talk goes both ways,
Like there's a We're starting to find more and more
evidence of just how the gut could possibly speak to
the brain and send its own signals, and one of
the main ones is the vegas nerve, which made a
starring appearance in our episode on what happens in the
brain during an orgasm. The vegas nerve is all about that,
(08:20):
but the vegas nerve also has a lot to do
with connecting the enteric nervous system with the central nervous
system as well. Yeah, I mean we've known for a
long time. Uh, And we talked about this sum in
our Fight or Flight episode that you know, Let's say
you're out in the woods and you're camping and you
have to go to the potty, and you go and
you you squat down in the middle of nowhere. You're
(08:43):
enjoying your time, you're about to do your business, and
a bear pops his head up your your body. Well,
the bear is like, I know what that means, but
I'm here to interrupt that. The bears and I poop
in the woods too, that's right. Uh, that bear like
you will go on an immediate sphincter lock. And it's
(09:03):
not just because um, it's not just a physical reaction
you and you have like you choose to do like, oh,
I better stop what I'm doing because there's a bear.
Like your body goes into fight or flight and it
sends your brain sends a signal to your body saying,
whatever else you're doing, shut it down now, because the
most important thing going on right now is this barre
(09:25):
in front of you. Yeah, like the FBI guy and
die Hard, shut it down now. But that's what man,
because the brain is saying, we've got, um, we've got
much better things to do with the energy that you're
using to digest that food right now. So of course
the brain can talk to the to the enteric nervous
system when it's fight or flight time. And at this point, Chuck,
(09:46):
I want to give another huge hat tip to our
own Dave Rouse, who helped us with this one bang
up job. He came up with an entirely new phrase
for fight or flight battle or skitaddle. It's so good
that I wrote an email just calling that one out
to him, saying like this was a priceless term. He said,
(10:07):
that was all mine, so hopefully figure out a way
to copyright that one he made up for Bruce Springstein,
that's right. So um, so, yes, we know that the
brain can talk to the e N S, but the
e N S can talk to the brain via the
vegas nerve as well. And what they're figuring out is
that it communicates in a number of different ways with
(10:28):
the vegas nerve um specifically, uh those the and this
is why they call it the um gut brain microbiota
or microbiome access because what we're figuring out is, yes,
you have cells that lying your your intestines, your guts
that are neurons, You have neural cells, you have sensory cells,
(10:49):
you have a lot of the same cells that um
your brain uses to make sense of the world. Where
your gut has those same cells too. But we're figuring
out that the bacteria that lives in your gut is
actually communicating to your brain and saying, hey, change this behavior,
Hey try this instead. Hey have you considered a red sweater?
(11:11):
Greens just not your color, Like, the bacteria that live
in our gut are telling our brains what to do.
In some ways, it's pretty remarkable. This is why we
keep talking about this chuck. The bacteria. In addition to
doing all the other great things they do, they produce metabolites,
(11:32):
and these metabolites actually do function as neurotransmitters. And one
of the big examples that Dave dug up and this
is it's a big part of kind of one of
the cruxes of this communication with the gut in the
brain or these short chain fatty acids s f c
A s. They are byproducts, are natural byproducts of fermentation
(11:54):
when you're digesting this dietary fiber, if you're hopefully eating
enough dietary fiber, something I've had to do a lot
more lately. It's so good for you, it's crazy. It
seems like the key to health. It is. And I
don't want to get to uh gross here, but I've
been on a lot of high fiber and I have
been more gassy than I've ever been in my life.
(12:18):
And it's not even stinky gassy. It's just it's almost
just like air. Very lucky. Yeah, because those are saying my, my,
my toots don't stink anymore at all ever, But these
like fiber toots don't really stink. That is really bizarre,
because cruciferous vegetable toots can really clear room. I guess
(12:40):
there is a way to put it. That's your blessed, chuck,
your hashtag blessed. Oh well, my family's blessed, I guess.
But because I don't really care, but you're like, I
kind of miss it. But where were we short chain
fatty acids. Um, they are, like I said, natural byproducts,
and they play a really big role in the digestive track.
(13:02):
And they're sending there one of the things sending these
signals to your e n s and they're saying, hey,
maybe you should make more mucus. Maybe I can get
the gut a little less inflamed um, maybe I can
stop a little leakage from happening. And so so the
short chain fatty acids themselves, they're they're they're involved in neurotransmitters,
(13:26):
but apparently they can talk to the brain themselves to right,
like they don't have to convert into anything else, I think,
so like just through through the vegas nerve. Right, yes,
and so so here's where we're at. Yes, they go
through the vegas nerve. That's the key here, um. And
we've recently found a new kind of cell that line
the the gut that are actually connected. They connect the
(13:49):
gut to the vegas nerve. They're called neuropods cells. And
that's how they think that the gut is actually communicating
with the brain through the vegas nerve. They think they
found kind of like the smoking gun to the missing
link or whatever. But um, that's how these short chain
fatty acids would travel up the nerve, they would send
their signal up the nerve, or they would travel through
(14:09):
the circulatory system, which is another way that they figured
out the gut can actually impact the brain. Is so
you get the vagus, nerve um, and then you have
the circulatory system. And if all of those metabolites that
are being produced by your bacteria, they're fermenting in different
bacteria ferment create different metabolites as they ferment your food
(14:30):
and your dietary fiber, and those metabolites, like you said,
sometimes they're short chain fatty acids sometimes which can be
like a precursor to neurotransmitters or possibly a neuro transmitter itself.
They actually build actual neurotransmitters to like seratonin, UM, dopamine, GABBA,
(14:50):
nor adrenaline. All these things are actually constructed by the
bacteria in your gut as well. And we know for
a fact that those things can make it through the
circulatory system to the brain and they definitely have an
impact on the brain and what the brain does. All right,
maybe we should take a break, all right, take a
pause for the cause I'm just gonna keep talking through
(15:13):
the ad break. I'm too excited, all right, We'll be
back right after this. I skate, all right. So when
(15:46):
we left, we were talking about a lot of stuff
that sounds pretty amazing and that we're just figuring out,
one of which is that, uh, the short chain fatty
acids are actually able to stimulate that vegas nerve that
we were talking about that stimulates nerrow the production of neurotransmitters.
But here's sort of the the headline is some of
(16:08):
these neurotransmitters can actually play a role in mood disorders.
So we're not just talking about um a two way
street with things like fight or flight. We're talking about
potentially autism, Parkinson's depression, anxiety like we were talking about
with IBS. And they know this because they took in
these poor little mice that they're always, you know, doing
(16:32):
the hard work on mice, but they've taken mice. They've
severed the vegas nerve in mice to see what happened.
And what they observed was that this gut bacteria had
a real effect on brain chemistry because when they shut
it down, they found big time reduction in stress hormone levels.
Like they completely went away in these mice, right would
(16:54):
you would think they're stress hormones would go up having
their vegus nerves ever, that would be a really stressful thing.
But now, um so that but that that's really like
a good illustration of the point that we're at in research.
We there's there's not been a thing where it's like, oh,
this is exactly how this happens. This is how your
gut microbiota affects you know, your your your brain and
(17:16):
your brain chemistry. We're not there yet. We just know
that there is a definite correlation, not just in my studies, Chuck,
but also in um human studies, which we'll talk about later.
Like there's plenty of human diseases that we've long known
if you have this disease, you also have like irritable
but irritable bowel syndrome or constipation is a hallmark of
(17:36):
this neurological disorder that um that you wouldn't expect. We've
known that they're connected, and that's it's all kind of correlative.
Now we're trying to figure out the causes of it.
That's right, and it's not just like this communication isn't
only happening through the vegus nerve. Uh. You kind of
briefly mentioned before the break. But there are all kinds
(17:57):
of ways that they're communicating that we're founding out. One
of them is through the circulatory system. We used to
think that the brain was just sort of shut down
from behind the blood brain barrier. But now they're they're
showing that, like hormones are getting through there, other things
are passing through. We've known about grellin. We've talked about
grellin for a while, the hunger hormone that basically the
(18:19):
stomach produces. It sends a message to the brain that
says I'm hungry. So we've known that can pass through.
But now they're learning things Like you mentioned serotonin to me.
This is one of the facts of the show of
our Serantonin is actually produced by gut bacteria. Yeah, and um,
I mean the brain also can produce serotonin, It can
(18:40):
produce its own, But it appears that right that the serotonin,
a lot of the serotonin that the brain uses comes
from the gut, comes from bacteria fermenting food and producing
as a biproduct of metabolism. It just so happens to
produce this neurotransmitter. And I don't think I don't think
(19:01):
anybody who's looking into this is saying it just so happens,
like we appear to have co evolved to take advantage
of this, Like these bacteria started colonizing our guts producing
serotonin so much that our bodies found a way to
really use serotonin in all sorts of different ways, including
our brain to regulate mood and stuff like that. And
(19:23):
that's like one of the one of the huge underlying
messages of this is that our microbiome, the bacteria that
live inside of us, they have way more genes than
we have. We have something like to genes in the
human genome, but our microbiome typically has something like two
million combined genes. And with those genes, with all those
(19:43):
extra genes that we don't have, all that bacteria can
produce stuff that we can't even produce, like vitamins and
neurotransmitters that we wouldn't necessarily be able to produce on
our own, and yet we rely on to function correctly.
That's that's like, that's the most amazing example of symbiosis
I've ever heard in my life. But the idea that
(20:05):
bacteria fermenting food in your gut chuck affects your mood
or your outlook or whether you have a um a
cognitive disorder. Like that's really substantial. It's super it's super substantial.
I know, I feel like I could have come up
with a better descriptor than really substantial, But I'm just
(20:26):
to agog. Should we talk about the study of college students? Yea,
as far as you know, trying to provide a link
between stretch, like a two way street between stress and
our gut. Uh. They said, well, there's no better place
to go than to college students who are prepping for exams.
And they said, if we're going to find out what's
(20:48):
going on down there, we need to look at their stools.
And they tested the stools during exam week and found
that their feces had a lot less lactobacilly, which is
one of the good back tier. Is then during the
first week week of class when they're just getting to
know each other and partying and stuff like that. The
(21:08):
same when they studied monkeys, little infant monkeys, And it's
one of those tests that's a little bit sad. No
one's dying here, but they're stressing out mama monkeys on purpose.
So they've got these mama monkeys and they'll play these
loud noises while they're pregnant to kind of like shock them.
And with the mothers who had to say, what, I
(21:28):
gotta stop you. I'm sorry, you just made a shock
the Monkey joke without even intending. Yes, I could not
let that walk by. Congratulations on the monkey Monkey great song.
Did you know I gotta shut the monkey? Do? Dude?
(21:49):
Do dude? Um? I wonder if they just walk around
singing that constantly? He was. Probably there's no way they don't.
And then they get home at night and they're like, oh,
and they feel a little get about it because they
remember why they're singing shock the Monkey, because they're actually
shocking monkeys for a living. Or and we mean shocking
with loud noises, not shocking with electricity. Right, Well, yeah,
(22:10):
that's what I guess. Peter Gabriel men too, But no,
I think about I don't know, maybe he was talking
about with electricity or I wonder if there's just one
person like the person who runs the lab on their
way out says, you know, because they probably do it
in their sleep there so you remember you got to
shock the monkey tonight, and they everyone else just rolls
their eyes and they have to They have to put
(22:31):
up with Marty where the lab yeah, and where's the
piano keyboard? Tie? Every day. But they're different ones too,
because some of them have red backgrounds. You can tell
they're a little different alright. So, uh so they make
these loud noises and then the monkey, the mama monkeys
who were shocked, uh by these sounds, they had gut
(22:53):
microbiomes with a lot lower levels of this good bacteria
of lactobacilly and boy bifi doughe bacteria, bacteria that's like
stuff in yogurt, I think both of those, which we'll
get to all right there. But they had a despotic
(23:14):
disbiotic microbiome. Is the upshot of it, right, You get
unbalanced basically because of these stress noises that they hear, right, So,
but it goes the other way too, that they're figuring
out that if your gut microbiome gets out of balance,
then that can make you stressed out right, that can
that can actually lead to mood disorders that they're they're
connecting like a really poor diet. It's very low and
(23:36):
like dietary fiber, because again, that's what your microbiome likes
to crunch on and produces really important things like serotonin
and dope. I mean from that, if you don't eat
very well, it's possible your mood might not be as great,
or your outlook on life, or your mental health might
not be as great as it could be if you
actually did have a much healthier diet. That is very
(23:59):
sub stanchel it is, and I think that kind of
stuff kind of feeds on each other. It becomes this
circular loop. Yeah, well that was something that was that
Dave pointed out to that they're starting to realize that
your CNS, your central nervous system, and your entire nervous
system are probably in communication constantly. They're just sharing information
back and forth because there's no it doesn't make any
(24:21):
evolutionary sense for your bacteria to just be running the
show and telling your brain what to do. That's one
of the grimmest things I can possibly imagine, is that
we're actually just puppets for bacteria and our guts. But
at the same time, it doesn't make sense for your
brain to be controlling your e n S. Your e
n S is a semi autonomous nervous system, so they're
not bossing each other around. They're just sharing information and
(24:43):
then making adjustments accordingly. But they can also affect one
another and impact one another negatively when things are out
of whack, whether you're stressed out, it can affect your gut,
or if your gut's not doing well, it can stress
you out. That's what we're trying. And that is so
substantial is that the second time he said that third third,
(25:05):
I don't think you picked up the second one. That's
all right, and this is like the reason this is
big stuff. And if you're wondering, like, yeah, but where
is this all leading, We're about to tell you because
if you have uh, I mean it's not just ib S,
if you have Parkinson's, or if you or a family
member is on the autism spectrum disorder. They're not saying
(25:27):
that they can cure this stuff, but they are finding
out very promising tests and studies that things like Parkinson's
and autism can be um can be mitigated somewhat with
the use of certain probiotics and maybe in the future
fecal transplants. Yeah, I don't think anybody credible is saying like, oh,
(25:47):
we can cure autism spectrum disorder with um, you know,
probiotics or something like that. But there's a lot of
mounting evidence that you can alleviate a lot of the symptoms,
including things like UM uh like behavior that like social
avoidance UM or not being interested in social novelty, UM,
A lot of the classic symptoms that as associated with
(26:10):
autism spectrum to sword that in my studies at least,
do they clear up a little bit, they adjust, They
actually kind of go away in some cases when you
adjust the gut microbiota of these mice who have the
mice analogy of autism. Yeah, and you know g I
(26:30):
problems are UM not always, but pretty much synonymous with
autism spectrum disorder. Uh. If you have Parkinson's, you probably
also have constipation. This has been true from the very
first patients that were diagnosed by by Dr Parkinson himself.
He realized that you also have constipation back then. This
(26:53):
is sort of in the age where I can't remember
one of the recent episodes where he used to sort
of have colonics and enemas for almost everything. Well, that
was probably the Kellogg's episode. Now we referenced the it
was like a couple of weeks ago. Okay. I don't
know why we talked about colonics and animals a lot
in this show. I think it was maybe we're talking
(27:15):
about the bleeders the barber's. Uh, yeah, that was it,
because they used to give people animals for everything. But
they may have been onto something a little bit. Is
like kind of quacky as it sounded back in the
day where if you had Parkinson's and constipation, they would
give you a colonic or something or an enema and
it would kind of help your Parkinson's out. And people
(27:35):
dismiss that a long time ago, but they may have
actually been onto something a little bit there. Yeah. The
idea is that this is the current understanding of why
Parkinson's and um and and gut issues may be related,
is that they actually think it might start with gut issues.
That you have a certain type of E. Coli that's
producing a protein called curly su r l i, and
(27:58):
that curly has an effect in causing other proteins to misfold,
which makes it a pre on. Remember those. Yeah, So
this pre on curly causes misfolding of proteins in your gut. Uh,
they end up clumping, which ends up constipating you. And
this process starts a good twenty years before you show
the classic symptoms of Parkinson's. This is amazing, right, But
(28:21):
the point is is that by this time, after twenty years,
your curly production has gotten so good that it starts
to travel up to the brain where it starts misfolding
proteins up there, and then you start to have the
classic symptoms of Parkinson's like tremors and shaking and eventually
possibly even hallucinations and things like that. Um that that
is all that, but that it all starts in your
(28:43):
gut with these um the E coli that that is
colonized your gut miss creating this curly protein pre on. Yeah,
and this is one of those where like research is
gonna help hopefully yield some uh if not cure some
things that and help mitigate some of the effects of Parkinson's.
But what it really could do is service and an
(29:04):
early warning system. That's not to say that if you
have constipation, you're gonna get Parkinson's in twenty years, but
if you have chronic constipation, and it could be one
of those things that they then look out and say, hey,
this is something we might need to watch out for, right.
And that's actually I've seen somebody proposing a paper from
(29:25):
I think this year, UM, that you that that you
use the bio markers of what's called leaky gut UM
as a early diagnosis of autism, because autism is usually
diagnosed after a few years of age UM I think
maybe three or five or something like that, that they
don't typically diagnose it before then, but that you would
(29:49):
have leaky gut like long before this, and you could
you know, find it and possibly treat it because so
leaky gut is this idea where your your your gut
lining is meant to be semi permeable, where only the
stuff your gut wants to make it through, like nutrients
and neurotransmitters and stuff like that UM, are able to
pass through. Leaky gut is where you have basically holes
(30:12):
and cracks and that that that lining and so unwanted
stuff like toxins and bogs and um partially digestive food
can make it through your gut and causes inflammation and
then there's this whole cascading problem. And that that is
why UM leaky gut is associated with things like autism
and I think even rhuma, toy arthritis, and a whole
(30:34):
host of other other diseases. So they're saying, if we
look for leaky gut and we find it, there's a
good chance. I think, like people on the autism spectrum
have leaky gut as well, UM, that that would be
a pretty good indication of autism diagnosis later in life. Yeah.
I talked to uh one of my really good friends
has a son with autism, and I was texting him
(30:56):
about this, and it's like, man, there's a lot of
really interesting research. And asked him about his son having
g I issues and he said since day one, literally,
And you know, I was like, you're gonna really dig this.
He's a listener to so it's like, you're gonna really
dig this episode. I said. There, they've come a long way,
I said, and you know that the future looks bright
for you know, helping to mitigate maybe some symptoms. Yeah,
(31:18):
there seems to be treatable. Leaky gut seems to be
a treatable thing where it's probably the result of UH
dis biotic um microbiota um and that if you you know,
introduce certain kinds of um of bacteria that you want
that's missing. It may actually alleviate symptoms. Um. Again, I
(31:41):
don't think anybody's saying like you can cure autism just
with probiotics, but it's possible that that probiotics could really change, um,
somebody with autisms life for the better in a lot
of ways just from a probiotics supplement. And so there's
a bunch of companies apparently, uh, they're just growing. Vential
capitalists are just throwing money at any company working on
(32:03):
this right now. They're called psychobiotics. Um. This idea that
you can create like a probiotic cocktail to treat something
like autism or multiple sc sclerosis or or rheumatoid arthritis,
and that you don't have to use pharmaceuticals or drugs
that function in ways we don't really understand that what
you're doing is going to the bacteria and saying here,
(32:25):
live here and do your natural thing and produce this
stuff that this patient isn't producing on their own, won't you?
And that's just the most substantial way you can think
of to treat something like that. Super substantial, super substantial.
All right, Well, let's take our second break and we
(32:46):
will come back and wrap this puppy upright after this
kind of huge sk So back to the autism spectrum disorder. Uh.
(33:21):
They have found that this is about ten years ago.
They found a correlation between mothers who had a high
uh sort of long term, prolonged fever during pregnancy that
they were seven times more likely to give birth to
a baby who had symptoms of a s D. Again
correlation uh. And then again the mice come into play.
(33:43):
They got these pregnant mice, they infected them with a
flu virus. Uh, it's just poor mice, and they caused
a spiking fever and they gave birth to babies. And
they can't test baby mice for autism, but what they
can do is study their patterns and their behaviors. And
they did find that they had limited social interactions, they
(34:06):
had decreased vocalizations, they were doing repeated behaviors, they had
leaky bowels, some of the things that you might experience
on the autism spectrum disorder. Right, So they kind of
trace that to this idea, this theory, and there's a
bunch of theories about how people might develop autism, but
this idea that um, when the mom has a fever UH,
(34:29):
an immune response is activated by a gut micro a
particular one called segmented filamentous bacteria, and that it gets
uh T cells and cytokines active. Remember we talked about
cytokines in the m r n A episode and they
are helpful, but they can also overblow things quite a
bit because they run around activating all sorts of other
(34:50):
immune cells UM and basically say go, go go. And
so the idea is that this triggers inflammation, and inflammation
seems to a huge problem for all sorts of things,
everything from neurological disorders to um to arthritis, to UH
irritable bowel syndrome to to basically anything that can be
wrong with you seems to have some sort of basis
(35:13):
and inflammation, like your body's mounting in immune response and
you're suffering as a result. And so that's what the
idea is with this, that these UM cytokines actually travel
through the placenta and have an impact on the neurodevelopment
of the fetus, and that that is what causes autism UM.
So that it's traced back to this the to the
(35:34):
guts ability to trigger the immune system, which is another
whole thing that has you know, it has even wider
implications than UM than autism spectrum disorder to like, it
can trigger all sorts of other problems. UM. It might
not even have to do with the developing fetus. It
can happen within you, like it can cause UM cytokines
(35:56):
to to travel up to your brain and produce neurological disorders,
and you as well mental health issues. And you as
well that that the gut and inflammation happening in a
bad combo is is nade good for the average human.
They're finding, that's right. You mentioned psychobiotics before the break.
(36:16):
This is the idea that you can again use something
like probiotics to treat anxiety or depression. And uh they
have had a little bit of um good fortune with
with the results here, and it looks like, I mean,
they're doing some of this on humans, a lot of
those in rats. I think in two thousand eleven they
(36:37):
studied both rats and humans and they gave them uh
strains of bacteria for about thirty days, lacto Bacillus helveticus
and UH Beefidobe that's the same one from before the
feto Bacterium long hum. They should just name these, Yeah,
(36:58):
exactly this column by their pet name, like Lacto and Biff,
those two old friends. It's right, they really are too.
They seem to. They pop up a lot where it's like, no,
this is what you want. Like if you look at
probiotic supplements almost across the board, you're gonna find Lacto
and Biff in there. Yeah, Lacto and Biff, the two,
the two we love to eat. But they've then put
(37:19):
these people and mice through stress test and found a
quote significant reduction and anxiety like behavior in the rats
and actual psychological UM distress was being alleviated in humans
as well. Yeah, I mean there's that there. This is
where we're we're what we're moving towards now is treating
mood disorders, neurological disorders, mental health issues, UM, a whole
(37:43):
host of physical maladies, chronic diseases UM with with probiotics.
If you can figure out what's missing in these patients,
then you can grow that bacteria and put them in
the person through like pills, and it's possible they'll clear
it up. Another UM theory of where autism comes from
(38:03):
is that there's a depleted gut where there's there's bacteria
that's missing from the person. And they found in my
studies they are able to produce germ free mice chuck
and they they those germ free mice tend to exhibit
the autistic um uh symptoms. Um that when they treat
them with with probiotics, that those autistic symptoms tend to
(38:24):
clear up, which is pretty amazing. Yeah, it almost it
doesn't almost seem like like what is definitely happening. As
science has progressed over the years, it feels like it's
become way way less segmented. Um, it's like, here's here's
your brain, and here's your nervous system, and here's your
organs and here's this stuff, and it's all compartmentalized, and
(38:46):
it just seems like through our own research over the years,
everything is linked together. It seems like, yeah, there's a
whole um, a whole field called functional medicine that's developing
that gets super poop pooed by skeptics, and um, it's understandable.
It's a very early field and there are plenty of
practitioners who overdo it in in what they say that
(39:06):
that can be accomplished, But the the whole idea behind
it is is it's integrated with another name for it
is integrative medicine. Where, um, you you don't like one
of the first things you would do when somebody came
in with a problem, no matter what it was, adjust
their diet to a healthier diet and start there. Because
this idea of like the there's your part of a big,
(39:28):
interconnected whole, that that's how our bodies function. Um, it
seems intuitive to me now, you know. Yeah, I mean
Emily goes to a functional medicine doctor, uh, in addition
to our our regular m d um. It's it's sort
of it doesn't have to be a one or the
other thing. Ideally, I don't ideally they worked not together together,
but they won't even speak to one another. But as
(39:50):
a patient, ideally they worked. You can work with both,
is what I'm saying. Yeah, you just don't tell them
about each other. She is as as you know, is uh,
suffering through lime right now. I didn't know that. Oh no, oh,
I didn't tell you that. No, man, that's terrible. Yeah,
it's been a bad scene at the house for a while. Uh,
(40:11):
but her her diet is one of the big She's
on this crazy weird awful diet, nothing but goat milk. No,
but lots of weird like forest floor tea and just
stuff that you know, not able to eat. I mean
you name it. Man, So many things that she can't
(40:32):
have right now. Uh, to try and help it out
because you know, the antibiotics they put her on, we're
wrecking her. Well. Yeah, that's another thing too, is they're
figuring out that antibiotics to treat just you know rando
stuff or like the flu or something like that, that
that can have a huge, terrible effect on your gut
chemistry and can have cascading effects down the road. There's there.
(40:55):
That's say, another thing that they're just kind of in
the initial studies of it. It's not not in any
shade on antibio aotics. They basically have saved more lives
than can be possibly counted, but that but we have
tended to kind of lean toward prescribing them willy nilly,
and people don't finish their their prescription anyway. So there's
all sorts of problems with it. But they're finding like
there's a lot of less less than obvious problems that
(41:17):
can come about from killing off your gut microbiome. Totally.
So there's one last thing I want to end with
real quick, Chuck. One of the guys, the guy who
actually um along with it, a guy named Ted Deanan,
coined the term psychobiotics and psychobiome, which is a description
of how your microbiome produces neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine
and all that that. Um. His his name is John Crying,
(41:40):
and he has a theory of why, uh, we would
have evolved to have a microbiome that would impact whether
we're social or not, because it's weird if you think
about it. Why would your your gut microbio biome b
being off like this biotic have any impact done social socialization? Right? Yeah,
(42:03):
I mean this is super interesting. And the Ted talk
is uh, it's a Ted med It's it's awesome if
you have time to go watch it. A little heavy,
but good stuff. Um. His theory he basically studied the
same germ free mice that you were talking about that
have they basically don't have a microbioma of their own.
Very sad uh, and he's he found out that these
germ free mice showed a lot of social impairment, especially
(42:27):
the male mice, and He compared that to the uh
GERM free mice two symptoms of a s D and
found that it also affected males. So again that got
him thinking kind of like what's going on with this stuff?
So he said, I wonder if like having a healthy,
sociable human is dependent on that gut bacteria, with the
(42:49):
idea being that we're all hanging out together in groups,
you know, tuk tuk in the gang, and we're trading
bacteria with one another. We're in close contact with one
and other and swapp and spit with one another, so
our bacteria is more varied basically, and that's how it's
selecting that as a positive trade. Yeah, And from the
bacteria standpoint, the more humans there are around, the more
(43:12):
hosts you have to colonize, the more the bacteria species thrives. Right,
So it's like, uh, it's beneficial either way. Like we
actually get a lot out of being social, Like we
have longer lifespans, we have a better outlook on life,
the more like close friends and support network we have.
It's just been documented over and over again, and it
(43:33):
seems to be like the more we look into the
microbiome and the psychobiome that that is driven by bacteria
that seem to make us more social through their byproducts
that they make that travel to our brain. Is that
circular loop again? Yeah? Yeah, so win win is another
way to put it, and I love them. Uh, you
(43:53):
got anything else for now? Nothing that's super significant? Okay, Well,
if you want to know more about the psychobiomego why
John Crying's Ted med Talk and also UM check out
on Science the Journal Sciences website, Meet the psycho Biome.
It's a really good introduction to UM. And since I
said it's a really good introduction too, it's time for
(44:14):
a listener mail. I'm gonna call this from listeners in
the in their seventies. We love to hear from our
listeners that are even older than me. It makes me
feel good. Hey, guys, my wife and I love your podcast,
and this I think is just a bit of a
reminder for us. I've been listening UM for years now
(44:35):
every afternoon while playing Spite and Malice. Do you know
what that is? It sounded really familiar and I didn't
have time to look it up because that emails just
came in right. Yeah, this is hot off the precess.
We're both in our seventies and love learning things we
still don't know. But this email is to mention to
both of you lately that your childhood vocal or religious
(44:56):
vocabulary his upticks some just reminding you that young people
around the world are listening and the word use brain
framing is occurring bigly. We suggest for your consideration to
stay with secular language like CE for the current era. Uh.
We used, we used to DeVault the CE. I guess
(45:17):
we kind of have flap back a little bit. Heavin'tly.
I hadn't noticed. I wonder if we didn't in the
folklore episode because they were just referenced folklore and we
just ran the folklore select recently, so maybe they're maybe
they're thinking, like that's a current episode. Oh that's my guess. Okay,
it's your guess, is that we're on it. I feel
(45:38):
like we're on it. I didn't. I hadn't noticed anything
like that. I feel like we've said BC recently. I
think you're talking about the headache powder, Okay, which I love.
We suggest you use secular language like CE for this
current era. For example, and explaining historical timelines and science
miracles or humicles as we call them. Uh, and science
(46:01):
is miraculous in its own right, with all credits to the
the amazing human beings who discover the actuality of our
natural universe. Thanks for what you do, keep them coming.
This is from Andre and Meredith Ryland in Pensacola, Florida.
Thanks a lot, Andrea and Meredith. We appreciate you guys
writing in and if you want to be like those
two and write in yourself, well we want to hear it.
(46:22):
Send us an email to Stuff podcast at i heeart
radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark and there's Charles w Chuck Brian over there, and
it's just the two of us who were flying solo.
Um and that's okay, we're gonna do this and this
(00:23):
is stuff you should know. Yeah, you know before we
get go in. We are the worst self promoters. And
we consistently forget to tell people that we have a
book in a board game for sale for Christmas. That's
a great, great point. And every once in a while
they'll say things like, you know, if you guys want
to mention this, did they say? I feel like every
(00:44):
now and then we get emails that say, hey, did
you forget that you have these things? I don't forget.
I just assumed like everybody doesn't want to hear about it,
you know. Oh I know. But we're just not good
at this. As we stumble through at another self promotion,
they have a book in the board game and they
both make great Christmas gifts. Please stop, this is making
(01:06):
me so uncomfortable. Oh, buy them, everybody. Yeah, they're actually
pretty good. We're proud of both of them. I mean
we like, like we wrote a book, and we also
um with our good buddy knows Parker, I should say,
and we also helped create a board game with our
good buddies over at Trivial Pursuit. So yeah, I'm very
proud of It's a it's a legacy kind of thing,
(01:26):
you know. That's right. So we might have a couple
of these reminders before Christmas because they do make great
gifts for this stuff. You should know, friend in your life. Absolutely,
So that was a great idea, Chuck, And it didn't
feel so bad after all. That's right. And now onto
our probably I think eighth episode. I think that culminates.
(01:50):
It's culminated in this after many many episodes dealing with
this stuff. Well, that's funny that you say that, because
I was gonna caveat this with this this will we
will surely do another episode on this down the road
within the next several years, I'm sure, because you're obsessed
with it. I'm obsessed with a number one. Absolutely, it's
(02:11):
one of the most interesting things because this kind of
stuff we're gonna talk about, the gut, brain, microbiome access
um and it reveals, Chuck, like how little we actually
know about our bodies and how they function, but it
also provides these tantalizing clues about how cool the stuff
(02:31):
we have left to understand is. You know what I mean,
one day we're gonna understand exactly how our bodies function
and it's going to be mind boggling. I'm just very
excited about it. So yes, I'm obsessed with it. But
the other reason why we'll surely do it again is
because the stuff that we're going to talk about, we've
got to disclaim this episode and that it's pioneering, like
(02:55):
like cutting edge research, not bleeding edge, cutting edge research,
so it's going to keep evolving. But that also means Charles,
that that that you and I can just be like gee,
whiz and wow at this point because this is all
like just very early study kind of stuff. That's right,
And if you want to really get ready for this one,
(03:16):
you could listen to episodes on digestion, vehicle transplants, the
microbio human human microbiome, project immune system, probiotics, and even
our old buddy Fight or Flight. Yeah, and then just
listen to the one on Pyromania for kicks. Did we
do one on Pyromania? Of course, man, we did. Funny,
(03:38):
I was looking through the list the other day for
for a very special thing we have coming up that
we can announce yet. It's more self promotion too, which
we're very excited about. But I was looking through all
of our episodes and boy, it's getting more and more around, like,
huh what really? Yeah, imagine somebody trying to wade into
(03:58):
this stuff and just encountering it now, you know. Yeah.
It was at one point though, I was like, was
I abducted For a few years, I don't remember a
lot of these. Yeah, I have the same same thing
going on. But also, Chuck, now that you mentioned the list,
I want to give a huge hat tip again to
our Minister of Stats, Jill Hurley just doggedly and tirelessly
(04:20):
chronicles every single episode we've ever done. There's a Google
sheet out there that's open access that has every single
episode in order, including the selects or when they ran
as a select. Just it's just an amazing thing that
she's doing for free, for the love of it. I'm
guessing she still loves it. I hope Uh, well, Hurls
if nothing else is uh stubborn, she won't quit even
(04:44):
if so, let's talk about the gut brain microbiome access chuck,
because there's a couple of ways to look at it.
And the first way is the way that you would
expect that you do things like digest food. Um. Your
gut lining is produced mu gus um. You poop things
out after you eat them, you even swallow, and your
(05:05):
brain has a lot of other stuff to do than
to just micro manage that. So you have an entirely
different secondary central nervous system that's dedicated exclusively to um eating,
digesting and harvesting nutrients from your food. And that's called
the enteric nervous system. That's right, uh, And this is
(05:28):
definitely when we hit on in the digestion episode, but
they handle it all in the enteric nervous system. The
e n S is really um similar in a lot
of ways to our own central nervous system, and that
it's made up of uh nerves and neurons and neurotransmitters,
and it kind of does its own thing for the
(05:48):
most part as far as controlling that stuff without the
central nervous system lording over it. Saying you forgot this part.
You might want to move this through the intestine a
little quicker it and it does its own thing. But
this gut brain sort of connection that we're talking about
is really a connection between the e n S and
(06:09):
the CNS because they have figured that these two systems
talked to each other, and they talked to each other
from the gut to the brain, which is the really
surprising part. We've kind of always known that the brain
talks to the gut, but now we're learning, Hey, it
looks like the gut is actually sending messages to the brain,
and a lot of the stuff we thought was a
(06:29):
certain way could be actually backwards. Like ib S. Yeah,
Like we've thought for a very long time that people
with IBS UM, which is basically your your lower parts
aren't working at full um, full steam. Either you're pooping
too much and you've got really thin, watery poops, or
you're pooping too little you're constipated. Either way, you have
(06:52):
irritable bow. It's one of the most appropriately named syndromes
there is, right, And of course everybody's walking around knowing
that anybody who has ib s is UM suffering from
like stress or anxiety, and so it's bringing on like
digestive issues. Well, this is what this this is why
this stuff is so mind blowing? Is this the field
of research that investigates the gut brain microbiome access is saying, Actually,
(07:16):
it's like Chuck just said, it might go both ways.
You might have stress and anxiety not because of your
your job or you know, like you're there's some something
stressing you out. The guy down the block keeps looking
at you, weird, That's not why you're stressed out or anxious.
It's because you have IBS. That's causing your your stress
and anxiety. We may have have had it backwards all
(07:38):
this time. Yeah, And to be specific, like you can
get anxiety obviously because you have IBS. But what they're
saying is is that it's a chicken in the egg thing.
Is the origin of this is actually in the gut
and not like, oh, I have ib S because I'm anxious, right,
And the reason why they're saying that this is even
(07:59):
possible is because is that cross talk goes both ways,
Like there's a We're starting to find more and more
evidence of just how the gut could possibly speak to
the brain and send its own signals, and one of
the main ones is the vegas nerve, which made a
starring appearance in our episode on what happens in the
brain during an orgasm. The vegas nerve is all about that,
(08:20):
but the vegas nerve also has a lot to do
with connecting the enteric nervous system with the central nervous
system as well. Yeah, I mean we've known for a
long time. Uh, And we talked about this sum in
our Fight or Flight episode that you know, Let's say
you're out in the woods and you're camping and you
have to go to the potty, and you go and
you you squat down in the middle of nowhere. You're
(08:43):
enjoying your time, you're about to do your business, and
a bear pops his head up your your body. Well,
the bear is like, I know what that means, but
I'm here to interrupt that. The bears and I poop
in the woods too, that's right. Uh, that bear like
you will go on an immediate sphincter lock. And it's
(09:03):
not just because um, it's not just a physical reaction
you and you have like you choose to do like, oh,
I better stop what I'm doing because there's a bear.
Like your body goes into fight or flight and it
sends your brain sends a signal to your body saying,
whatever else you're doing, shut it down now, because the
most important thing going on right now is this barre
(09:25):
in front of you. Yeah, like the FBI guy and
die Hard, shut it down now. But that's what man,
because the brain is saying, we've got, um, we've got
much better things to do with the energy that you're
using to digest that food right now. So of course
the brain can talk to the to the enteric nervous
system when it's fight or flight time. And at this point, Chuck,
(09:46):
I want to give another huge hat tip to our
own Dave Rouse, who helped us with this one bang
up job. He came up with an entirely new phrase
for fight or flight battle or skitaddle. It's so good
that I wrote an email just calling that one out
to him, saying like this was a priceless term. He said,
(10:07):
that was all mine, so hopefully figure out a way
to copyright that one he made up for Bruce Springstein,
that's right. So um, so, yes, we know that the
brain can talk to the e N S, but the
e N S can talk to the brain via the
vegas nerve as well. And what they're figuring out is
that it communicates in a number of different ways with
(10:28):
the vegas nerve um specifically, uh those the and this
is why they call it the um gut brain microbiota
or microbiome access because what we're figuring out is, yes,
you have cells that lying your your intestines, your guts
that are neurons, You have neural cells, you have sensory cells,
(10:49):
you have a lot of the same cells that um
your brain uses to make sense of the world. Where
your gut has those same cells too. But we're figuring
out that the bacteria that lives in your gut is
actually communicating to your brain and saying, hey, change this behavior,
Hey try this instead. Hey have you considered a red sweater?
(11:11):
Greens just not your color, Like, the bacteria that live
in our gut are telling our brains what to do.
In some ways, it's pretty remarkable. This is why we
keep talking about this chuck. The bacteria. In addition to
doing all the other great things they do, they produce metabolites,
(11:32):
and these metabolites actually do function as neurotransmitters. And one
of the big examples that Dave dug up and this
is it's a big part of kind of one of
the cruxes of this communication with the gut in the
brain or these short chain fatty acids s f c
A s. They are byproducts, are natural byproducts of fermentation
(11:54):
when you're digesting this dietary fiber, if you're hopefully eating
enough dietary fiber, something I've had to do a lot
more lately. It's so good for you, it's crazy. It
seems like the key to health. It is. And I
don't want to get to uh gross here, but I've
been on a lot of high fiber and I have
been more gassy than I've ever been in my life.
(12:18):
And it's not even stinky gassy. It's just it's almost
just like air. Very lucky. Yeah, because those are saying my, my,
my toots don't stink anymore at all ever, But these
like fiber toots don't really stink. That is really bizarre,
because cruciferous vegetable toots can really clear room. I guess
(12:40):
there is a way to put it. That's your blessed, chuck,
your hashtag blessed. Oh well, my family's blessed, I guess.
But because I don't really care, but you're like, I
kind of miss it. But where were we short chain
fatty acids. Um, they are, like I said, natural byproducts,
and they play a really big role in the digestive track.
(13:02):
And they're sending there one of the things sending these
signals to your e n s and they're saying, hey,
maybe you should make more mucus. Maybe I can get
the gut a little less inflamed um, maybe I can
stop a little leakage from happening. And so so the
short chain fatty acids themselves, they're they're they're involved in neurotransmitters,
(13:26):
but apparently they can talk to the brain themselves to right,
like they don't have to convert into anything else, I think,
so like just through through the vegas nerve. Right, yes,
and so so here's where we're at. Yes, they go
through the vegas nerve. That's the key here, um. And
we've recently found a new kind of cell that line
the the gut that are actually connected. They connect the
(13:49):
gut to the vegas nerve. They're called neuropods cells. And
that's how they think that the gut is actually communicating
with the brain through the vegas nerve. They think they
found kind of like the smoking gun to the missing
link or whatever. But um, that's how these short chain
fatty acids would travel up the nerve, they would send
their signal up the nerve, or they would travel through
(14:09):
the circulatory system, which is another way that they figured
out the gut can actually impact the brain. Is so
you get the vagus, nerve um, and then you have
the circulatory system. And if all of those metabolites that
are being produced by your bacteria, they're fermenting in different
bacteria ferment create different metabolites as they ferment your food
(14:30):
and your dietary fiber, and those metabolites, like you said,
sometimes they're short chain fatty acids sometimes which can be
like a precursor to neurotransmitters or possibly a neuro transmitter itself.
They actually build actual neurotransmitters to like seratonin, UM, dopamine, GABBA,
(14:50):
nor adrenaline. All these things are actually constructed by the
bacteria in your gut as well. And we know for
a fact that those things can make it through the
circulatory system to the brain and they definitely have an
impact on the brain and what the brain does. All right,
maybe we should take a break, all right, take a
pause for the cause I'm just gonna keep talking through
(15:13):
the ad break. I'm too excited, all right, We'll be
back right after this. I skate, all right. So when
(15:46):
we left, we were talking about a lot of stuff
that sounds pretty amazing and that we're just figuring out,
one of which is that, uh, the short chain fatty
acids are actually able to stimulate that vegas nerve that
we were talking about that stimulates nerrow the production of neurotransmitters.
But here's sort of the the headline is some of
(16:08):
these neurotransmitters can actually play a role in mood disorders.
So we're not just talking about um a two way
street with things like fight or flight. We're talking about
potentially autism, Parkinson's depression, anxiety like we were talking about
with IBS. And they know this because they took in
these poor little mice that they're always, you know, doing
(16:32):
the hard work on mice, but they've taken mice. They've
severed the vegas nerve in mice to see what happened.
And what they observed was that this gut bacteria had
a real effect on brain chemistry because when they shut
it down, they found big time reduction in stress hormone levels.
Like they completely went away in these mice, right would
(16:54):
you would think they're stress hormones would go up having
their vegus nerves ever, that would be a really stressful thing.
But now, um so that but that that's really like
a good illustration of the point that we're at in research.
We there's there's not been a thing where it's like, oh,
this is exactly how this happens. This is how your
gut microbiota affects you know, your your your brain and
(17:16):
your brain chemistry. We're not there yet. We just know
that there is a definite correlation, not just in my studies, Chuck,
but also in um human studies, which we'll talk about later.
Like there's plenty of human diseases that we've long known
if you have this disease, you also have like irritable
but irritable bowel syndrome or constipation is a hallmark of
(17:36):
this neurological disorder that um that you wouldn't expect. We've
known that they're connected, and that's it's all kind of correlative.
Now we're trying to figure out the causes of it.
That's right, and it's not just like this communication isn't
only happening through the vegus nerve. Uh. You kind of
briefly mentioned before the break. But there are all kinds
(17:57):
of ways that they're communicating that we're founding out. One
of them is through the circulatory system. We used to
think that the brain was just sort of shut down
from behind the blood brain barrier. But now they're they're
showing that, like hormones are getting through there, other things
are passing through. We've known about grellin. We've talked about
grellin for a while, the hunger hormone that basically the
(18:19):
stomach produces. It sends a message to the brain that
says I'm hungry. So we've known that can pass through.
But now they're learning things Like you mentioned serotonin to me.
This is one of the facts of the show of
our Serantonin is actually produced by gut bacteria. Yeah, and um,
I mean the brain also can produce serotonin, It can
(18:40):
produce its own, But it appears that right that the serotonin,
a lot of the serotonin that the brain uses comes
from the gut, comes from bacteria fermenting food and producing
as a biproduct of metabolism. It just so happens to
produce this neurotransmitter. And I don't think I don't think
(19:01):
anybody who's looking into this is saying it just so happens,
like we appear to have co evolved to take advantage
of this, Like these bacteria started colonizing our guts producing
serotonin so much that our bodies found a way to
really use serotonin in all sorts of different ways, including
our brain to regulate mood and stuff like that. And
(19:23):
that's like one of the one of the huge underlying
messages of this is that our microbiome, the bacteria that
live inside of us, they have way more genes than
we have. We have something like to genes in the
human genome, but our microbiome typically has something like two
million combined genes. And with those genes, with all those
(19:43):
extra genes that we don't have, all that bacteria can
produce stuff that we can't even produce, like vitamins and
neurotransmitters that we wouldn't necessarily be able to produce on
our own, and yet we rely on to function correctly.
That's that's like, that's the most amazing example of symbiosis
I've ever heard in my life. But the idea that
(20:05):
bacteria fermenting food in your gut chuck affects your mood
or your outlook or whether you have a um a
cognitive disorder. Like that's really substantial. It's super it's super substantial.
I know, I feel like I could have come up
with a better descriptor than really substantial, But I'm just
(20:26):
to agog. Should we talk about the study of college students? Yea,
as far as you know, trying to provide a link
between stretch, like a two way street between stress and
our gut. Uh. They said, well, there's no better place
to go than to college students who are prepping for exams.
And they said, if we're going to find out what's
(20:48):
going on down there, we need to look at their stools.
And they tested the stools during exam week and found
that their feces had a lot less lactobacilly, which is
one of the good back tier. Is then during the
first week week of class when they're just getting to
know each other and partying and stuff like that. The
(21:08):
same when they studied monkeys, little infant monkeys, And it's
one of those tests that's a little bit sad. No
one's dying here, but they're stressing out mama monkeys on purpose.
So they've got these mama monkeys and they'll play these
loud noises while they're pregnant to kind of like shock them.
And with the mothers who had to say, what, I
(21:28):
gotta stop you. I'm sorry, you just made a shock
the Monkey joke without even intending. Yes, I could not
let that walk by. Congratulations on the monkey Monkey great song.
Did you know I gotta shut the monkey? Do? Dude?
(21:49):
Do dude? Um? I wonder if they just walk around
singing that constantly? He was. Probably there's no way they don't.
And then they get home at night and they're like, oh,
and they feel a little get about it because they
remember why they're singing shock the Monkey, because they're actually
shocking monkeys for a living. Or and we mean shocking
with loud noises, not shocking with electricity. Right, Well, yeah,
(22:10):
that's what I guess. Peter Gabriel men too, But no,
I think about I don't know, maybe he was talking
about with electricity or I wonder if there's just one
person like the person who runs the lab on their
way out says, you know, because they probably do it
in their sleep there so you remember you got to
shock the monkey tonight, and they everyone else just rolls
their eyes and they have to They have to put
(22:31):
up with Marty where the lab yeah, and where's the
piano keyboard? Tie? Every day. But they're different ones too,
because some of them have red backgrounds. You can tell
they're a little different alright. So, uh so they make
these loud noises and then the monkey, the mama monkeys
who were shocked, uh by these sounds, they had gut
(22:53):
microbiomes with a lot lower levels of this good bacteria
of lactobacilly and boy bifi doughe bacteria, bacteria that's like
stuff in yogurt, I think both of those, which we'll
get to all right there. But they had a despotic
(23:14):
disbiotic microbiome. Is the upshot of it, right, You get
unbalanced basically because of these stress noises that they hear, right, So,
but it goes the other way too, that they're figuring
out that if your gut microbiome gets out of balance,
then that can make you stressed out right, that can
that can actually lead to mood disorders that they're they're
connecting like a really poor diet. It's very low and
(23:36):
like dietary fiber, because again, that's what your microbiome likes
to crunch on and produces really important things like serotonin
and dope. I mean from that, if you don't eat
very well, it's possible your mood might not be as great,
or your outlook on life, or your mental health might
not be as great as it could be if you
actually did have a much healthier diet. That is very
(23:59):
sub stanchel it is, and I think that kind of
stuff kind of feeds on each other. It becomes this
circular loop. Yeah, well that was something that was that
Dave pointed out to that they're starting to realize that
your CNS, your central nervous system, and your entire nervous
system are probably in communication constantly. They're just sharing information
back and forth because there's no it doesn't make any
(24:21):
evolutionary sense for your bacteria to just be running the
show and telling your brain what to do. That's one
of the grimmest things I can possibly imagine, is that
we're actually just puppets for bacteria and our guts. But
at the same time, it doesn't make sense for your
brain to be controlling your e n S. Your e
n S is a semi autonomous nervous system, so they're
not bossing each other around. They're just sharing information and
(24:43):
then making adjustments accordingly. But they can also affect one
another and impact one another negatively when things are out
of whack, whether you're stressed out, it can affect your gut,
or if your gut's not doing well, it can stress
you out. That's what we're trying. And that is so
substantial is that the second time he said that third third,
(25:05):
I don't think you picked up the second one. That's
all right, and this is like the reason this is
big stuff. And if you're wondering, like, yeah, but where
is this all leading, We're about to tell you because
if you have uh, I mean it's not just ib S,
if you have Parkinson's, or if you or a family
member is on the autism spectrum disorder. They're not saying
(25:27):
that they can cure this stuff, but they are finding
out very promising tests and studies that things like Parkinson's
and autism can be um can be mitigated somewhat with
the use of certain probiotics and maybe in the future
fecal transplants. Yeah, I don't think anybody credible is saying like, oh,
(25:47):
we can cure autism spectrum disorder with um, you know,
probiotics or something like that. But there's a lot of
mounting evidence that you can alleviate a lot of the symptoms,
including things like UM uh like behavior that like social
avoidance UM or not being interested in social novelty, UM,
A lot of the classic symptoms that as associated with
(26:10):
autism spectrum to sword that in my studies at least,
do they clear up a little bit, they adjust, They
actually kind of go away in some cases when you
adjust the gut microbiota of these mice who have the
mice analogy of autism. Yeah, and you know g I
(26:30):
problems are UM not always, but pretty much synonymous with
autism spectrum disorder. Uh. If you have Parkinson's, you probably
also have constipation. This has been true from the very
first patients that were diagnosed by by Dr Parkinson himself.
He realized that you also have constipation back then. This
(26:53):
is sort of in the age where I can't remember
one of the recent episodes where he used to sort
of have colonics and enemas for almost everything. Well, that
was probably the Kellogg's episode. Now we referenced the it
was like a couple of weeks ago. Okay. I don't
know why we talked about colonics and animals a lot
in this show. I think it was maybe we're talking
(27:15):
about the bleeders the barber's. Uh, yeah, that was it,
because they used to give people animals for everything. But
they may have been onto something a little bit. Is
like kind of quacky as it sounded back in the
day where if you had Parkinson's and constipation, they would
give you a colonic or something or an enema and
it would kind of help your Parkinson's out. And people
(27:35):
dismiss that a long time ago, but they may have
actually been onto something a little bit there. Yeah. The
idea is that this is the current understanding of why
Parkinson's and um and and gut issues may be related,
is that they actually think it might start with gut issues.
That you have a certain type of E. Coli that's
producing a protein called curly su r l i, and
(27:58):
that curly has an effect in causing other proteins to misfold,
which makes it a pre on. Remember those. Yeah, So
this pre on curly causes misfolding of proteins in your gut. Uh,
they end up clumping, which ends up constipating you. And
this process starts a good twenty years before you show
the classic symptoms of Parkinson's. This is amazing, right, But
(28:21):
the point is is that by this time, after twenty years,
your curly production has gotten so good that it starts
to travel up to the brain where it starts misfolding
proteins up there, and then you start to have the
classic symptoms of Parkinson's like tremors and shaking and eventually
possibly even hallucinations and things like that. Um that that
is all that, but that it all starts in your
(28:43):
gut with these um the E coli that that is
colonized your gut miss creating this curly protein pre on. Yeah,
and this is one of those where like research is
gonna help hopefully yield some uh if not cure some
things that and help mitigate some of the effects of Parkinson's.
But what it really could do is service and an
(29:04):
early warning system. That's not to say that if you
have constipation, you're gonna get Parkinson's in twenty years, but
if you have chronic constipation, and it could be one
of those things that they then look out and say, hey,
this is something we might need to watch out for, right.
And that's actually I've seen somebody proposing a paper from
(29:25):
I think this year, UM, that you that that you
use the bio markers of what's called leaky gut UM
as a early diagnosis of autism, because autism is usually
diagnosed after a few years of age UM I think
maybe three or five or something like that, that they
don't typically diagnose it before then, but that you would
(29:49):
have leaky gut like long before this, and you could
you know, find it and possibly treat it because so
leaky gut is this idea where your your your gut
lining is meant to be semi permeable, where only the
stuff your gut wants to make it through, like nutrients
and neurotransmitters and stuff like that UM, are able to
pass through. Leaky gut is where you have basically holes
(30:12):
and cracks and that that that lining and so unwanted
stuff like toxins and bogs and um partially digestive food
can make it through your gut and causes inflammation and
then there's this whole cascading problem. And that that is
why UM leaky gut is associated with things like autism
and I think even rhuma, toy arthritis, and a whole
(30:34):
host of other other diseases. So they're saying, if we
look for leaky gut and we find it, there's a
good chance. I think, like people on the autism spectrum
have leaky gut as well, UM, that that would be
a pretty good indication of autism diagnosis later in life. Yeah.
I talked to uh one of my really good friends
has a son with autism, and I was texting him
(30:56):
about this, and it's like, man, there's a lot of
really interesting research. And asked him about his son having
g I issues and he said since day one, literally,
And you know, I was like, you're gonna really dig this.
He's a listener to so it's like, you're gonna really
dig this episode. I said. There, they've come a long way,
I said, and you know that the future looks bright
for you know, helping to mitigate maybe some symptoms. Yeah,
(31:18):
there seems to be treatable. Leaky gut seems to be
a treatable thing where it's probably the result of UH
dis biotic um microbiota um and that if you you know,
introduce certain kinds of um of bacteria that you want
that's missing. It may actually alleviate symptoms. Um. Again, I
(31:41):
don't think anybody's saying like you can cure autism just
with probiotics, but it's possible that that probiotics could really change, um,
somebody with autisms life for the better in a lot
of ways just from a probiotics supplement. And so there's
a bunch of companies apparently, uh, they're just growing. Vential
capitalists are just throwing money at any company working on
(32:03):
this right now. They're called psychobiotics. Um. This idea that
you can create like a probiotic cocktail to treat something
like autism or multiple sc sclerosis or or rheumatoid arthritis,
and that you don't have to use pharmaceuticals or drugs
that function in ways we don't really understand that what
you're doing is going to the bacteria and saying here,
(32:25):
live here and do your natural thing and produce this
stuff that this patient isn't producing on their own, won't you?
And that's just the most substantial way you can think
of to treat something like that. Super substantial, super substantial.
All right, Well, let's take our second break and we
(32:46):
will come back and wrap this puppy upright after this
kind of huge sk So back to the autism spectrum disorder. Uh.
(33:21):
They have found that this is about ten years ago.
They found a correlation between mothers who had a high
uh sort of long term, prolonged fever during pregnancy that
they were seven times more likely to give birth to
a baby who had symptoms of a s D. Again
correlation uh. And then again the mice come into play.
(33:43):
They got these pregnant mice, they infected them with a
flu virus. Uh, it's just poor mice, and they caused
a spiking fever and they gave birth to babies. And
they can't test baby mice for autism, but what they
can do is study their patterns and their behaviors. And
they did find that they had limited social interactions, they
(34:06):
had decreased vocalizations, they were doing repeated behaviors, they had
leaky bowels, some of the things that you might experience
on the autism spectrum disorder. Right, So they kind of
trace that to this idea, this theory, and there's a
bunch of theories about how people might develop autism, but
this idea that um, when the mom has a fever UH,
(34:29):
an immune response is activated by a gut micro a
particular one called segmented filamentous bacteria, and that it gets
uh T cells and cytokines active. Remember we talked about
cytokines in the m r n A episode and they
are helpful, but they can also overblow things quite a
bit because they run around activating all sorts of other
(34:50):
immune cells UM and basically say go, go go. And
so the idea is that this triggers inflammation, and inflammation
seems to a huge problem for all sorts of things,
everything from neurological disorders to um to arthritis, to UH
irritable bowel syndrome to to basically anything that can be
wrong with you seems to have some sort of basis
(35:13):
and inflammation, like your body's mounting in immune response and
you're suffering as a result. And so that's what the
idea is with this, that these UM cytokines actually travel
through the placenta and have an impact on the neurodevelopment
of the fetus, and that that is what causes autism UM.
So that it's traced back to this the to the
(35:34):
guts ability to trigger the immune system, which is another
whole thing that has you know, it has even wider
implications than UM than autism spectrum disorder to like, it
can trigger all sorts of other problems. UM. It might
not even have to do with the developing fetus. It
can happen within you, like it can cause UM cytokines
(35:56):
to to travel up to your brain and produce neurological disorders,
and you as well mental health issues. And you as
well that that the gut and inflammation happening in a
bad combo is is nade good for the average human.
They're finding, that's right. You mentioned psychobiotics before the break.
(36:16):
This is the idea that you can again use something
like probiotics to treat anxiety or depression. And uh they
have had a little bit of um good fortune with
with the results here, and it looks like, I mean,
they're doing some of this on humans, a lot of
those in rats. I think in two thousand eleven they
(36:37):
studied both rats and humans and they gave them uh
strains of bacteria for about thirty days, lacto Bacillus helveticus
and UH Beefidobe that's the same one from before the
feto Bacterium long hum. They should just name these, Yeah,
(36:58):
exactly this column by their pet name, like Lacto and Biff,
those two old friends. It's right, they really are too.
They seem to. They pop up a lot where it's like, no,
this is what you want. Like if you look at
probiotic supplements almost across the board, you're gonna find Lacto
and Biff in there. Yeah, Lacto and Biff, the two,
the two we love to eat. But they've then put
(37:19):
these people and mice through stress test and found a
quote significant reduction and anxiety like behavior in the rats
and actual psychological UM distress was being alleviated in humans
as well. Yeah, I mean there's that there. This is
where we're we're what we're moving towards now is treating
mood disorders, neurological disorders, mental health issues, UM, a whole
(37:43):
host of physical maladies, chronic diseases UM with with probiotics.
If you can figure out what's missing in these patients,
then you can grow that bacteria and put them in
the person through like pills, and it's possible they'll clear
it up. Another UM theory of where autism comes from
(38:03):
is that there's a depleted gut where there's there's bacteria
that's missing from the person. And they found in my
studies they are able to produce germ free mice chuck
and they they those germ free mice tend to exhibit
the autistic um uh symptoms. Um that when they treat
them with with probiotics, that those autistic symptoms tend to
(38:24):
clear up, which is pretty amazing. Yeah, it almost it
doesn't almost seem like like what is definitely happening. As
science has progressed over the years, it feels like it's
become way way less segmented. Um, it's like, here's here's
your brain, and here's your nervous system, and here's your
organs and here's this stuff, and it's all compartmentalized, and
(38:46):
it just seems like through our own research over the years,
everything is linked together. It seems like, yeah, there's a
whole um, a whole field called functional medicine that's developing
that gets super poop pooed by skeptics, and um, it's understandable.
It's a very early field and there are plenty of
practitioners who overdo it in in what they say that
(39:06):
that can be accomplished, But the the whole idea behind
it is is it's integrated with another name for it
is integrative medicine. Where, um, you you don't like one
of the first things you would do when somebody came
in with a problem, no matter what it was, adjust
their diet to a healthier diet and start there. Because
this idea of like the there's your part of a big,
(39:28):
interconnected whole, that that's how our bodies function. Um, it
seems intuitive to me now, you know. Yeah, I mean
Emily goes to a functional medicine doctor, uh, in addition
to our our regular m d um. It's it's sort
of it doesn't have to be a one or the
other thing. Ideally, I don't ideally they worked not together together,
but they won't even speak to one another. But as
(39:50):
a patient, ideally they worked. You can work with both,
is what I'm saying. Yeah, you just don't tell them
about each other. She is as as you know, is uh,
suffering through lime right now. I didn't know that. Oh no, oh,
I didn't tell you that. No, man, that's terrible. Yeah,
it's been a bad scene at the house for a while. Uh,
(40:11):
but her her diet is one of the big She's
on this crazy weird awful diet, nothing but goat milk. No,
but lots of weird like forest floor tea and just
stuff that you know, not able to eat. I mean
you name it. Man, So many things that she can't
(40:32):
have right now. Uh, to try and help it out
because you know, the antibiotics they put her on, we're
wrecking her. Well. Yeah, that's another thing too, is they're
figuring out that antibiotics to treat just you know rando
stuff or like the flu or something like that, that
that can have a huge, terrible effect on your gut
chemistry and can have cascading effects down the road. There's there.
(40:55):
That's say, another thing that they're just kind of in
the initial studies of it. It's not not in any
shade on antibio aotics. They basically have saved more lives
than can be possibly counted, but that but we have
tended to kind of lean toward prescribing them willy nilly,
and people don't finish their their prescription anyway. So there's
all sorts of problems with it. But they're finding like
there's a lot of less less than obvious problems that
(41:17):
can come about from killing off your gut microbiome. Totally.
So there's one last thing I want to end with
real quick, Chuck. One of the guys, the guy who
actually um along with it, a guy named Ted Deanan,
coined the term psychobiotics and psychobiome, which is a description
of how your microbiome produces neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine
and all that that. Um. His his name is John Crying,
(41:40):
and he has a theory of why, uh, we would
have evolved to have a microbiome that would impact whether
we're social or not, because it's weird if you think
about it. Why would your your gut microbio biome b
being off like this biotic have any impact done social socialization? Right? Yeah,
(42:03):
I mean this is super interesting. And the Ted talk
is uh, it's a Ted med It's it's awesome if
you have time to go watch it. A little heavy,
but good stuff. Um. His theory he basically studied the
same germ free mice that you were talking about that
have they basically don't have a microbioma of their own.
Very sad uh, and he's he found out that these
germ free mice showed a lot of social impairment, especially
(42:27):
the male mice, and He compared that to the uh
GERM free mice two symptoms of a s D and
found that it also affected males. So again that got
him thinking kind of like what's going on with this stuff?
So he said, I wonder if like having a healthy,
sociable human is dependent on that gut bacteria, with the
(42:49):
idea being that we're all hanging out together in groups,
you know, tuk tuk in the gang, and we're trading
bacteria with one another. We're in close contact with one
and other and swapp and spit with one another, so
our bacteria is more varied basically, and that's how it's
selecting that as a positive trade. Yeah, And from the
bacteria standpoint, the more humans there are around, the more
(43:12):
hosts you have to colonize, the more the bacteria species thrives. Right,
So it's like, uh, it's beneficial either way. Like we
actually get a lot out of being social, Like we
have longer lifespans, we have a better outlook on life,
the more like close friends and support network we have.
It's just been documented over and over again, and it
(43:33):
seems to be like the more we look into the
microbiome and the psychobiome that that is driven by bacteria
that seem to make us more social through their byproducts
that they make that travel to our brain. Is that
circular loop again? Yeah? Yeah, so win win is another
way to put it, and I love them. Uh, you
(43:53):
got anything else for now? Nothing that's super significant? Okay, Well,
if you want to know more about the psychobiomego why
John Crying's Ted med Talk and also UM check out
on Science the Journal Sciences website, Meet the psycho Biome.
It's a really good introduction to UM. And since I
said it's a really good introduction too, it's time for
(44:14):
a listener mail. I'm gonna call this from listeners in
the in their seventies. We love to hear from our
listeners that are even older than me. It makes me
feel good. Hey, guys, my wife and I love your podcast,
and this I think is just a bit of a
reminder for us. I've been listening UM for years now
(44:35):
every afternoon while playing Spite and Malice. Do you know
what that is? It sounded really familiar and I didn't
have time to look it up because that emails just
came in right. Yeah, this is hot off the precess.
We're both in our seventies and love learning things we
still don't know. But this email is to mention to
both of you lately that your childhood vocal or religious
(44:56):
vocabulary his upticks some just reminding you that young people
around the world are listening and the word use brain
framing is occurring bigly. We suggest for your consideration to
stay with secular language like CE for the current era. Uh.
We used, we used to DeVault the CE. I guess
(45:17):
we kind of have flap back a little bit. Heavin'tly.
I hadn't noticed. I wonder if we didn't in the
folklore episode because they were just referenced folklore and we
just ran the folklore select recently, so maybe they're maybe
they're thinking, like that's a current episode. Oh that's my guess. Okay,
it's your guess, is that we're on it. I feel
(45:38):
like we're on it. I didn't. I hadn't noticed anything
like that. I feel like we've said BC recently. I
think you're talking about the headache powder, Okay, which I love.
We suggest you use secular language like CE for this
current era. For example, and explaining historical timelines and science
miracles or humicles as we call them. Uh, and science
(46:01):
is miraculous in its own right, with all credits to the
the amazing human beings who discover the actuality of our
natural universe. Thanks for what you do, keep them coming.
This is from Andre and Meredith Ryland in Pensacola, Florida.
Thanks a lot, Andrea and Meredith. We appreciate you guys
writing in and if you want to be like those
two and write in yourself, well we want to hear it.
(46:22):
Send us an email to Stuff podcast at i heeart
radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
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