The Damage Stress Does To The Microbiome

By Becky Plotner On November 2, 2016

“Stress is a great strainer. It consumes nutrients at an alarming rate. Many people get ill after a stressful time. Go back to intro. They will get all the necessary nutrients on the second stage of the diet,” Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride said in Session Two at the Weston A. Price Annual Convention in 2015.

The National Institute of Mental Health says continual stress causes nerve chemicals which deplete and suppresses immunity. This negatively impacts the digestive tract, the excretory system and the reproduction system. Sometimes the stress causes them to stop normal function altogether. They say, “Problems occur if the stress response goes on too long, such as when the source of stress is constant, or if the response continues after the danger has subsided.”

We live in a time like no other where financial stress, job security, health insurance, health issues, interest rates, retirement plans, college costs, automobile costs, autism rates, Alzheimer’s in the family and the overall high cost of living is overwhelming and suffocating. The stress burden creates great demand on the body.

To add gasoline on the fire our food supply is tainted with chemicals and toxic additives that damage the microbiome further.

The Annals of Gastroenterology, a publication on in the intestinal tract and its function, says, “Stressors impact the microbiota.”

This change in the microbiome impacts us in a negative fashion causing an overgrowth of pathogenic flora.

The publication found two hours of stress negatively impacts the microbiome community in such a way that the phylum is changed. The pathogenic flora propagate. It changes the mucus secretions. In dogs, stress changed the function of the migrating motor complex, a sweeping broom that travels through the small intestine nightly sweeping the pathogens from the small intestine into the large intestines. Stress also slowed the time it took to empty the bowel.

This means that stress causes great alterations of our gut flora. It depletes beneficial strains and allows pathogenic strains to take hold. Stress damages the function of the intestines.

Beneficial Microbes reported a study done with college students during final exams. Stress levels, sleep, diarrhea related symptoms and body mass index were recorded. Some students were administered antibiotics and probiotics during this stressful time of draining test taking.

Those who used a probiotic with Bifidobacterium bifidum showed less impact from the stressful time. Bifidobacterium longum ssp. infantis showed the same beneficial results. Those who took antibiotics along with B. bifdum or B. infantis shows no negative impact from the antibiotics.

We can not really control the stress that happens in our lives but we can control how we respond to it. Relaxing techniques such as tapping, deep breathing and meditation are all effective methods of calming the system. Taking a therapeutic dose of clean probiotics, which do not contain ingedients which feed the pathogens, it necessary. Click here for a clean list.

Photo courtesy of tiverylucky at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

*Nourishing Plot is written by Becky Plotner, ND, traditional naturopath, GAPS who sees clients in Rossville, Georgia. She works as a Certified GAPS Practitioner who sees clients in her office, Skype and phone. Since her son was delivered from the effects of autism (Asperger’s syndrome), ADHD, bipolar disorder/manic depression, hypoglycemia and dyslexia through food she continued her education specializing “in Leaky Gut” and parasitology through Duke University, finishing with distinction. This is not a news article published by a paper trying to make money.

This blog is put out by a mom who sees first hand the effects of nourishing food versus food-ish items. No company pays her for writing these blogs, she considers this a form of missionary work. It is her desire to scream it from the rooftops so that others don’t suffer from the damaging effect of today’s “food”.

“GAPS™ and Gut and Psychology Syndrome™ are the trademark and copyright of Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride. The right of Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Patent and Designs Act 1988.

Psychological stress can cause changes in the gut bacteria. 🙁

Believe it or not, the integrity and happiness of our gut is extremely important to the efficient and serene workings of our noggin. Much of the neural output of the brain is directed down the vagus nerve to the stomach and intestines, and there’s a lot of back talk the other direction. This communication between the gut and brain is poorly understood, but good communication and a healthy gut is vital to good health, both mental and physical. Not only can an unhealthy gut affect the brain and mood (what is your mood when you are nauseated or constipated?), but mood can also affect the gut (remember your stomach churning when it came to taking that important but difficult exam, or just before the last job interview?)

Recently, researchers have begun to explore the gut-brain interaction more seriously, beginning with our rodent friends. Earlier this year, a paper about stress and mice and the gut microbes came out that was a jaw-dropper, and certainly worth a closer look. “Exposure to a social stressor alters the structure of the intestinal microbiota: Implications for stressor-induced immunomodulation. (link is external)“

The associated editorial (link is external)is worth a read as well, if you have access. Also, the journal it comes from, Brain, Behavior, and Immunity (link is external) is my favorite academic journal by far. If inflammation itself is truly behind the pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders (and there is a lot of data suggesting this is the case), then somewhere in the archives or future of this publication will be the holy grail linking inflammation via diet and lifestyle to actual brain pathology.

This paper is a nice start. First some fun facts. The external surfaces of the body (that includes the gut, by the way, as we are a funny tube within a tube) are populated with microbes. So populated, in fact, that 90% of the cells that make up the roving bacteria party + human host are the commensal microbiome. 90% of you (by cell number) is them. Most of these colonizers and symbiotes live in the intestine, especially the large intestine. In the Matrix world of commensal species, the large intestine is Zion.

Here’s the crazy thing – we know very little about these species. Mostly because the vast majority seem to be absolutely dependent upon us (as we turn out to be symbiotically dependent on them). They can’t be cultured without the host in a lab. They need a living working gut, where they flourish, but are difficult to study.

That means we didn’t have the capability even to catalog the species of gut bacteria until we could practically and relatively cheaply sequence DNA in large amounts, so not until the last seven years or so.

The beasties live in a “largely stable climax community” in our guts as the result of natural selection for species best adapted to our habits and personal nooks and crannies. Fortunately, the beastie community is pretty resilient, but factors such as a change in diet and antibiotics will obviously transiently affect the population. In addition, exposure to stress also changes the population of beasties, the details of which are more clearly elucidated by the work in this paper.

The beasties do all sorts of nice things for us, really. They make vitamin K, several B vitamins, and eat up carcinogens and other nasties. Their health and composition are definitely related to the pathology of obesity and of diabetes (at least in mice). And, not surprisingly, these bacteria impact the immune system.

Germ-free animals raised in sterile environments without commensal microbiota have a different sort of intestinal immune system, with a lower amount of intestinal antibodies and fewer immune cells. Colonizing these sterile mice will result in normalization of the gut immune system. Alterations in the intestinal microbiota has been linked to asthma in animals and humans, suggesting that the beasties modulate adaptive and innate immunity.

It is well known that some of those cytokines and immune system chemicals that are produced in the process of inflammation are known to be elevated in the case of depressive disorders. Chemicals with names like IL-6, TNF alpha, and interferon gamma. Interferon gamma is known to actually cause depression. Who cares? Well, translocation of gut bacteria through the gut lining into the comparatively sterile body interior results in a systemic increase in IL-6 and the other cytokines. We talked about that a little bit in relation to depression (link is external) and chronic fatigue (link is external) in previous posts. Psychological stress in humans, such as caring for a sick relative or chronic work stress, is associated with elevated cytokines IL-6 and TNF alpha. So the question asked by these researchers (and subsequently answered) is – does psychologic stress change the microbiota population, and is that related to a cytokine change within the body?

The experiment itself was complex and consisted of several different arms, and many mice made the ultimate sacrifice (along with their gazillion commensal microbiota). In short, some mice were mostly left alone, others were given antibiotics and stress, others just exposed to mean “aggressive mice,” others were restrained, and others given antibiotics and restrained…

So what happened to the microbiota and the levels of cytokines in these various experiments? Well, the mice exposed to stress had definite changes in internal beastie populations. In general, exposure to stress (the mean mouse, or restraint) led to “a reduction in microbial diversity and richness.”

In addition, exposure to the stressor led to a significant increase in IL-6 levels. Interestingly, the specific genus of the population of microbiota were significantly related to the generation of IL-6. TNF-alpha and INFgamma were also increased in stressed mice, but not significantly.

In the antibiotic-treated mice (with a pummeled microbiota), the IL-6 did not increase in response to stress. Antibiotics reduced the amount of bacteria about 100-fold, so while it didn’t eliminate the commensal bacteria by any extent, it made a good dent in the population.

Taken together, these results tell us that stress affects our gut bacteria, which affect our immune system and cytokines. We know those increases are related to changes in psychological states.

The editorial quote of note:

The strength of implementing a truly integrative systems approach when studying stress physiology has never been clearer than in the work by Michael Bailey and his colleagues in this issue of the journal. These scientists investigated the impact of stressor exposure on multiple physiologic symptoms, including the intestinal microbiota and the immune system. These data reveal dynamic interaction between these systems when orchestrating the innate immunological stress response.

So yes, they control your brain (well, at least a mouse’s brain, but I don’t have a compelling reason to think that humans are immune from the general principle). To some extent. Kept the beasties happy. Fermented foods (such as sauerkraut, kefir, kimchi, and yogurt), probiotics, and avoiding too much alcohol, sugar, and processed food can help quite a bit. Have a happy holiday season!

Please Note: Currently, there is no evidence that stress is a direct cause of cancer. But evidence is accumulating that there is some link between stress and developing certain kinds of cancer, as well as how the disease progresses.

SO often in the past: I have watch Your Health Tv with Dr. Richard Becker and for all the callers calling in to ask him for ask. I noticed the major part of the body he attacked for everything was the gut with the same supplements always>

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/02/04/stress-linked-to-cancer.aspx

Preview What You Don’t Know About Stress and Cancer