Dr. Rhonda Patrick

That affects the brain.

There are studies showing that if you inject LPS into a normal healthy person,

or a placebo saline control, they get inflammation in their brain, they get depressive symptoms, they get, you know, their cognitive function is depressed, all coming from the gut, right?

LPS is coming from the gut.

So it does affect, you know, inflammation in the brain, which then leads to Alzheimer's disease.

And then the gut microbiome itself, which was specifically what you're asking about, is also, there's a direct line, you know, there's like neurons actually in the gut.

And so there's like this vagal nerve that's connected to

you know, from the brain all the way to the gut.

And the bacteria in your gut communicate with that, with the brain through this vagus nerve.

And so the different types of bacteria also seem to play a role.

Like certain types of bacteria in the gut can cause more anxiety.

And there's all these studies that have been done in animals where you can take a mouse that's more of anxious phenotype mouse and take their gut bacteria and transplant it into a mouse that doesn't have anxiety

And you can cause them to have anxiety, right?

And then vice versa, you can take bacteria from a really robust stealth, like they don't have that anxiety and put it into a mouse with anxiety and lower their anxiety.

And that all comes down to, you know, there's neurotransmitters that are being stimulated with respect to the types of bacteria in your gut.

Um, that's an emerging field.

So there are a variety of tests that are consumer available out there.

I would say that those tests are, it's hard to know what to do with that data.

So, so you can get a test done and get some data back and then some, you know, you might think you need to eat a certain diet or whatever.

I would say we're in our infancy of really truly accurately being able to do a test at home on the individual level and figure out like what to do with that data.