How Your Gut Bacteria Controls Your Mood

When you think about gut health, you probably think about what goes in your mouth and what comes out the other side of your body. But what you may not know is that the status of your gut health influences other factors in your overall health, like your immune system, your mood, including rates of anxiety or depression, as well as overall your cognitive function. So before we jump in, remember that what TCM doctors have said for thousands of years, that the road to health is paved with good intestines. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Hine, author of the health book Master of the Day and doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine. So before we jump in here, I've put together two very important links for you right below this video. The first is for a free guide, four daily rituals that could potentially help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine, and the second is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine, you can reach out to my private practice and clinic right below this video. So before we jump into the traditional Chinese medicine point of view of the gut and health connection, or the gut and mental status connection, what does the hardcore clinical research say? So check out this paper here. This paper is called Gut Microbiome and Depression, How Microbes Affect the Way That We Think. Now in particular, check out this one line that said that patients diagnosed with mental conditions including depression have demonstrated gut microbiome dysbiosis. So there's actual microbiome changes in the gut that are correlated with certain mental status changes like depression and even anxiety too. So that's shocking if you think about it because what that means is that what you eat every day potentially moves your body in one direction or the other. Less anxiety, less depression, or more. So shocking. You don't think about that when you're eating that cheeseburger, right? But check out this. In depression, there's also dysregulation of the neuroendocrine and neuroimmune pathways. For example, more than 20% of inflammatory bowel disease patients have sleep disturbances and depressed behaviors. Now the association between your gut bacteria and mental status is so strong that recent research and recent studies are finding that fecal transplants, where you take the feces of a person who doesn't have depression, let's say, and they transplant them into someone who suffers from it, can actually improve the symptoms of depression. So weird but true and shocking that swapping bacteria can make that big of a difference mentally for people. Now how does traditional Chinese medicine treat mood? Because I practice clinically, I see anxiety and depression all day long. But what's fascinating is that going back to one of the famous schools of traditional Chinese medicine led by the founder, a guy named Li Dongyuan. Now Li Dongyuan was a famous physician who had actually come up with what became the spleen and stomach school. And he believed that by treating the spleen and stomach, the digestive system, these two organs in particular, that was the way for people to generate lots of qi and blood, which is basically the resources for good health and for longevity. Now Li Dongyuan was also known as Li Gao. He lived from about 1180 to 1251. And he began his medical studies under one of the most famous physicians in Hubei province, Zhang Yuansu. Now it was during his studies that he began to develop his thesis that the etiology of most diseases was a result of injury to the digestive system. And the principal organs of the digestive system from a Chinese medical model are the stomach and spleen, slash pancreas. Now these are responsible for taking food and drink and transforming them into energy or qi for the body's core functions. Now Li Dongyuan's famous formulas primarily focus on digestive function, as opposed to all the other myriad functions in the body. And that became his claim to fame, you know, 800 years ago. Now the second thing is that the herbs and the formulas that we use to treat, let's say, anxiety or depression or mood disorders, or just fatigue, not only work on the digestive system, but they also work on the microbiome. So a famous modern formula called Liujunzitang, which is six gentlemen decoction, has an herb, ginseng, which we've talked about in other videos, has potent compounds called ginsenicides. Now they've been documented to have a profound effect on depression, for example. But what's fascinating is that these ginsenicides are not only this plant, renchen, the ginseng plant, but also the formula that it's in is primarily a digestive formula. For people with what we call spleen sheet deficiency, bloating, loose stools, lack of appetite, pale face, that kind of thing. But what's amazing is that it's very, very profoundly effective for anxiety and depression, if the person fits that specific pattern. So check this out. This particular paper, talking about herbal antidepressants, is called Traditional Chinese Medicine in Depression Treatment, from Molecules to Systems. Herbal antidepressants and their acting targets in the pathological systems in the brain, such as monoamine neurotransmissions, hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, HPA axis, we've talked about here before, or neurotrophic factor, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, BDNF. So often ginseng, the ginsenicides within the ginseng root, are working on these pathways as a mechanism of action to treat, for example, mood disorders. But what's fascinating, we mostly use ginseng for GI issues. So in TCM, a lot of these formulas treat a pattern, and for example, a pattern can include GI issues and agitation, or GI issues and sadness, or GI issues and anxiety, most commonly. So that's an interesting link between TCM formulas for GI health and the microbiome, as well as how they affect your mood. Before you guys go, check out these other related videos here, and don't forget to check out the link below for that free download.