DEPRESSION, ANXIETY, STRESS & SLEEPLESSNESS — THE MICROBIOME
Our body's ability to relax, de-stress, recover, and sleep deeply is heavily determined by one area of our body overlooked more often than almost any other — our Microbiome.
This colony of trillions of bacteria living in our large intestine helps produce the calming, relaxing, cortisol-lowering, and sleep-giving neurotransmitters GABA and serotonin.
These bacteria have more to do with our overall health, calmness of mind, nerve function, ability to sleep, ability to burn fat and build muscle, and even our hormones than you might think.
This colony, made up of about 500 different species of bacteria, is called the Microbiome.
But these bacteria, while being fully separate from us, act as if they were an organ unto themselves within our bodies. And what they do, amongst each other and in coordination with the cells in the lining of our colon, is truly extraordinary.
While we’ve only scratched the surface as far as what we know about how these bacteria operate and interact, not just with one another, but with our own cells and nervous system, we do know a few key things:
First, there's no aspect of our health or bodily functions they don’t play a part in.
In fact, they’re so important they have been found to play a role in nearly every human disorder: They affect our sleep, our ability to relax or start up, our weight, our hormones, our energy levels, and even our mood.
Second, we will find in almost every case that if we have someone with a generally healthy microbiome, we have a generally healthy person. And if we have someone with an unhealthy microbiome, we have an unhealthy person with physical conditions, out of balance hormones, low energy, and high stress.
Third, the microbiome profiles of individuals suffering from acute depression and anxiety are quite different, in very exact ways, from individuals not suffering from this.
We can now spot key bacteria in the microbiome, and byproducts that they create, which are elevated in severely depressed individuals while being in normal ranges in non-depressed persons.
And lastly, the bacteria in our microbiome are inextricably linked to our nervous system, our brain, the ability for messages to pass up and down our nerves, and our mental alertness.
Our body would not function without them, and to the degree they’re suppressed or deficient, our body doesn’t.
And to understand how this works we need to look at the chemicals that allow for nerve and brain function, known as neurotransmitters.