Mood - breakthrough?

[TomsThoughts]

I've been taking probiotics for around 3 week and I guess I've been feeling a little happier.. Which is really astonishing on its own..

But last night before bed I forgot to take my probiotics.. So this morning I taken a double dose of what I would usually take and my mood has been sky high.. Not sure why but I felt great I was singing really loud and having a genuine laugh with my colleague.

But then I had some food well quite a lot of bad food .. I had a sausage role a pasty and 3 doughnuts (which was amazing) but then I started to feel tired and fatigued and my mood also dropped quite a bit where I started worrying about stupid things again.

So this is pretty evident to me that probiotics and gut bacteria most definitely effect your mood and eating 'crap' messes up your mood.

Probiotics guys.. I'm telling you. Gut bacteria and anxiety is the future

[Oosh]

Yeh I can get pretty deep into the mood/food link. What probiotics do you take ?

[almamatters]

Just going to ask the same thing. What kind of probiotics are they?

[TomsThoughts]

I always get supplements and stuff from Holland and Barrett because I live near one.. They're called acidophilus I get the strawberry chewable ones and the capsule ones too.

I take 1 of each morning and night.. But I suggest taking 2 of each, each morning.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Acidophilus are one of the larger ones and if I remember rightly, they have a positive impact on other strains too for some reason. Alma will need an idea of the strength too.

There are some interesting studies emerging about how healthy bacteria plays a role in mood as well as many other areas. Bacteria in the bowel is interesting and people with GI issues it's worth looking into.

The gut alone has been proven to create anxiety in rats/mice. The vagus nerve has a channel gut-to-brain and brain-to-gut. They severed the brain-to-gut channel and attempted to invoke fear in the rats/mice and found the gut was able to do just that and influence the brain via that channel.

It looks like a load of sugar was consumed and sugar spikes can cause you to crash. Eliminating sugar from your diet does just that until you work through that period.

It's interesting how the brain sends signals to crave sugar and fat. I think it craves fat when depressed but sugar when anxious (is that right, Oosh?).

I have read a few article in The New Scientist when in Tesco about how the volumes of specific strains of healthy bacteria in your body is being found to influence how you eat. They are working on manipulating this to see if it encourages healthier eating. The thing is though, how many people have you heard of that have eliminate sugar and now no longer crave it? In fact, they don't seem to even want to eat it anymore. Eating sugar influences the bad bacteria in the body so it sounds like these people may have shifted the balance in their bacteria...it's not like we used to get much sugar years ago when fruits were like buying a house.

I'm very interested in it all. I hope we get some good study progress that can help all of us on here. Given some are emerging specifically for anxiety & depression, it looks like they are on track to do this. It will annoy the drug companies though, eh? :winks: