I am taking a break over the holidays. For the next four weeks, I will be republishing a few of my favourite blogs. We have always known that our mood affects our guts. My anxious patients complain of diarrhoea and my depressed patients of constipation. I could never have imagined how much of a role the gut microbiota plays in communicating with the brain and modulating behavior. I never took “gut feeling” literally! Our gut, the small intestine and the large intestine, is filled with over a kilogram of bacteria, the gut microbiota. That’s almost the weight of an average…
Going straight for the gut
We have always known that our mood affects our guts. My anxious patients complain of diarrhoea and my depressed patients of constipation. I could never have imagined how much of a role the gut microbiota plays in communicating with the brain and modulating behavior. I never took “gut feeling” literally! Our gut, the small intestine and the large intestine, is filled with over a kilogram of bacteria, the gut microbiota. That’s almost the weight of an average brain. These bacteria carry more than a hundred times the genes of the human genome. It is comprised of 150 common bacteria and…