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Probiotics are not just good for your digestive system, they can be good for your mental well being too. Probiotics constitute “good” bacteria.
New research suggests that probiotics also have an affect on the brain. A study at Aarhus University has shown that these beneficial bacteria may also protect against depression. In the animal study at the Department of Clinical Medicine, rats were fed with an extra fatty and fiberless compound feed. Some of the rats simultaneously received a mix of micro-organisms, mostly in the form of lactic acid bacteria, in their drinking water.
While the rats that lived solely on the fatty diet developed behaviour similar to depression, rats receiving the probiotics-enriched drinking water remained neutral in their behaviour. In other words, the probiotics offset the consequences of the unhealthy diet, explains medical doctor and PhD Anders Abildgaard. The study has been published in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity.
This is a fascinating discovery which supports the conclusion that probiotics, which normally do good in the intestines, also affect the brain.
The rats that did not receive probiotics turned out to have an increased number of white blood cells in their brain tissues, which can be a sign of chronic inflammation and is also seen in the fatty tissues and liver of people who are overweight and in diabetics. The researchers did not find the elevated amounts of white blood cells in the brains of the rats with probiotics in their drinking water.
“This may indicate that one of the things the probiotics do is work to reprogramme the immune system. Specifically in this study, the rats offset the consequences of the fatty diet with the help of probiotics, so that they were on a par with their peers in the control group. This is a fascinating discovery which supports the conclusion that probiotics, which normally do good in the intestines, also affect the brain. That makes the result interesting for the treatment of depression,” says Anders Abildgaard.
“Rats cannot suffer a depression in a clinical sense like people can, but they become passive and unable to cope with stressful situations. We interpret this as depressive-like behaviour,” he added.
It is difficult to say whether the results can be transferred to people with depression, since animals obviously do not behave like humans. But Anders Abildgaard thinks it is possible to imagine some of the people wo suffer from depression benefiting from probiotics.
