Most people struggle with depression and anxiety at times. On the surface this appears to be a simple consequence of our high stress lifestyles in this day and age. Life is happening faster and faster. We process progressively more information every year. We are literally bombarded with a huge diversity of data through our phones, computers, work environments, everywhere. This would not be such a challenge if the information was just optional interest data, stuff we did not need to have a relationship with. But today we are expected and demanded to have a personal position and relationship with everyone and everything. This requires a lot of work psychologically. We don’t get to hide in our own private little world any more. We have to figure out how to participate with a diversity of perspectives, attitudes, and beliefs on every front. It can be exhausting.
It sounds like we have a good reason to feel anxious. The overwhelm can put us into depression simply because we can’t keep up. At least that is what we tell ourselves. But what if there was another bigger reason for how we feel, one we are not even aware of? What if something is taking control of our feelings and making us feel bad? Well there is, and science is just starting to uncover these hidden reasons for many of our feelings of anxiety and depression.
What is the source of this negative influence on how we feel? It is some of the 100 trillion gut bacteria we carry around inside of us. Some are good guys, and some are bad guys. Some of them help mellow our feelings, moderate our stress, and make us stronger. Others however can make us feel anxious or depressed. A lot of how we feel is really about just what specific gut bacteria we have growing inside us. This is fast becoming a whole new field of psychiatry, the microbiota gut-brain impact on mental health. These little critters produce neurotransmitters, hormones, inflammatory proteins, cytokines, short-chain fatty acids, vitamins, and who knows how many other things that affect us. Their actions coupled with the nervous system in the gut area known as the enteric nervous system, can hijack our brain feeling states.
So how can gut bugs way down in our intestines affect our brain? The answer is a relatively new discovery. The main nerve from the brain that travels down to communicate instructions to the gut is the vagus nerve. This nerve also talks to the heart, lungs, pancreas, spleen, stomach, and colon. Until recently physiologists thought this was a one way communication, brain to guts. But now they have discovered that not only does information travel backwards to the brain, but all kinds of neurotransmitters, hormones, cytokines, inflammatory proteins, and even viruses and endo-toxins travel up to the brain through the vagus nerve. Usually the brain is protected from this stuff by the blood brain barrier, but the vagus nerve provides a backdoor for these inflammatory chemicals to get into the brain and create havoc. This is the main way that gut bacteria are able to take over our brain feeling processes. A secondary method is by the bacteria or by poor food choices creating a leaky gut. When this happens, protein fragments of bad bacteria pass through the gut lining and get into the blood stream. This nasty stuff fools the body into thinking that you have a systemic bacterial infection, so your immune system goes crazy producing tons of inflammatory chemicals. These target your brain as well.
Your enteric nervous system has been called your second brain. There are more nerve endings in your gut than in your spinal cord. We don’t notice this because these nerves operate automatically. You have no conscious control over these nerves. Ninety percent of the neurotransmitter serotonin is created in your gut. This is the stuff modern psych drugs try to increase in your brain to make you happy. The bacteria in our gut is vital for our health. They produce numerous nutrients we need to be healthy and modify our immune system to help us ward off viruses and other illnesses. At least this is true if we have the right gut bugs living inside us. There are thousands of types of gut bugs and the average healthy person has a mix of about 500 of them. One of the key signs of aging is that the variety and number of gut bugs decreases as we age.
The big key to this whole story, is that we need to have a highly diversified colony of good guy gut bugs. The problem is that when our diet does not feed the good guys, but instead feeds bad bugs, nasty things start happening. Anxiety and depression is one of those things. They are symptoms of an unhealthy microbiome. Yes, life events can also trigger these symptoms, but more often than not, an unhealthy microbiome is the cause of the feelings and when we feel bad our life gets messed up.
What kinds of things create an unhealthy microbiome? The top of the list these days is sugar and fried foods. Heat damaged oils, grains, and sugar are favorite foods for the bad bugs in our gut. Now realize that any starch, no matter how healthy it may be on your plate, turns into sugar in your mouth and small intestine. Also poorly digested proteins due to over eating, poor HCl or digestive enzyme production, the use of antacid drugs, or eating while stressed or on the run produces food for the bad guys. A lot of the food additives support the overgrowth of bad guy bugs by suppressing the good guys.
What prompted this article was a question by three different patients concerning why they craved junk food and sugary foods. The old simple answer was that these foods act as drugs to help block your bad feelings. Junk food craving is a form of self medicating. Well the newer answer is that the bad feelings are being created by the bad guy bugs to prompt you to eat these bad foods because these are the foods that they want to eat. Our crap diet may just be because our minds are being controlled by a bunch of low life bacteria in our guts. Yes we all have issues, but it seems like we wallow in those issues much more these days than our grandparents did. Back in those days people seemed to be much more stoic, much more accepting of life as it is. Could part of our modern obsession with how we feel really be due to the impact of junk food fueled overgrowths of bad bacteria in our guts?
I remember back when I was in Chiropractic school, some of the nutritionists I was learning from would often say that at least half, if not 90% of mental hospital patients could be released if we just got them off sugar and junk food.
So what do we do about this? Our gut lining can be thought of like our front lawn. What is the best way to keep our lawn beautiful? Feeding the lawn correctly to support the grass we want strengthens the good grass enough to choke out the weeds. If the lawn is weak, then we can spend endless hours trying to pull out the weeds and using weed poisons. This is the hard way. Our gut is just like this. There are lots of protocols and fancy supplements to try to kill off the bad guys, but the easiest and quickest way to repair the gut microbiome is simply to feed the good guys really well and stop feeding the bad guys. We have already talked about what foods the bad guys like so stop eating those. Now what the good guys like is digestible fibers. They like salads, non-starchy vegetables, connective tissue from meats, nuts, seeds, properly prepared legumes, certain fruits, stems, leaves, and roots. Proteins need to be well digested so quantities need to be small and lightly cooked. Polyunsaturated oils should never be heated – only eaten raw. Limit cooking of fats to saturated and mono-saturated fats.
So this is just an idea. If you suffer from depression or anxiety, a major change in your diet has a good chance of clearing up a major portion of those unpleasant feelings. Stop feeding the bad guy bugs in your gut that want to hijack your brain and make you feel bad so you will eat the bad foods they want. What I am suggesting is the basis for health anyway, so why not give it a try.