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Gut Bacteria Exert Mind Control
sciencehabit writes "Hundreds of species of bacteria call the human gut their home. This gut 'microbiome' influences our physiology and health in ways that scientists are only beginning to understand. Now, a new study suggests that gut bacteria can even mess with the mind, altering brain chemistry and changing mood and behavior (abstract)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasites_Lost
No sooner do I get over one, then you put a better one right next to me. Bastards.
Or maybe the mice just felt good after having taken a really satisfying dump.
Brain: Are you pondering what I'm pondering?
Pinky: Uh, I think so, Brain, but burlap chafes me so. NARF!
I liked the bit where they cut the vagus nerve. Before I got to that point in TFA, I was thinking "Well sure, rats fed lactobacillus will have lower stress levels! Life isn't as stressful when you poop good!"
The assumption that I posses a mysterious "free will" that is somehow divorced from cause and effect(except in that it causes me to act) is simply too convenient to abandon!
There is far more serotonin present in your gut than in your skull.
but I just had this gut feeling that something bad would happen if I didn't.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
No, yes or no, no?
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
I think these are more like innerlords.
So the spleen is the seat of emotions after all?
http://altmedicine.about.com/cs/anxietydepression/a/EmotionsTCM.htm
Then forget the Zoloft, gimme my strawberry-banana yogursicle.
No, no. No?
Slashdot. Unreadable news to annoy nerds. - wonkey_monkey
There are millions of people every day dependent upon manufactured medications to maintain mental function, and millions more who are taking medication because someone else thinks they need mental function adjustement. Those medications are, for the most part, administered orally.
What, does it surprise anyone that a bacterium producing a mind altering compound in the gut would have that compound absorbed and transported via the bloodstream, when we depend on exactly that transport method for manufactured drugs?
When did /. become a tabloid? This has nothing to do with "mind control". Control implies intent and I am pretty sure that a bacteria in the digestive tract have no intent to "explore narrow walkways".
The bacteria makes the stomach feel better and the vagus nerve transmits this feeling to the brain thereby reducing stress. There is a funny thing about stress. The response to stress is not linear it is exponential. If someone under no stress has a little stress added they can deal with it. A person under a lot of stress has the same amount add it can push them over the edge. A good example of this is losing keys. If you are about to leave the house to go for a walk and cant find you keys it is not a problem; most people just delay the walk until they find their keys. Now lose your keys when you are trying to get to the airport with 4 excited children. That small stressor can drive you insane. Same stressor, different initial stress level, different response. So the stomach feeling good lowers stress levels and allows the rodent to handle added stress better. Animals under stress avoid stress.
Do bacteria in the digestive tract affect animals? Yes, by making them feel better and having less stress. Do bacteria in the digestive tract control the mind? No, that do not make animals do things they do not want to do.
This bacteria must interfere with possibly a combination of the Neuropeptides Y, S and CCK pathways. The CCK-4 neuropeptide is pretty nasty, it cause instant panic attack reliably at 75ug.
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
There are more bacteria in our intestines than cells in the body, by some estimates. I was disappointed by this comment:
The findings "open up very exciting speculation" about using probiotics to treat mood disorders in people, says Emeran Mayer, a gastroenterologist at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The types of bacteria in one's intestines are highly dependent on the substrates available. A person who eats a vegetable-rich diet every day - especially grated carrots with salt and vinegar or jerusalem artichokes (rich source of the prebiotic carbohydrate inulin) - will have a totally different types of bacteria in their intestines than those who survive on Big Macs, Fries and carbonated beverages, with or without the probiotic supplement.
It's sorta like... growing a garden. If your plants don't have nutrients, they won't grow very big... But add the right kind of fertilizer, and they'll really take off.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
I've always thought of Big Macs as being quite similar to fertilizer. Do you think they have some benefit?
"You don't believe in me," observed the Ghost.
"I don't." said Scrooge.
"What evidence would you have of my reality, beyond that of your senses?"
"I don't know," said Scrooge.
"Why do you doubt your senses?"
"Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"
My gut tells me this story is complete nonsense. Yep, nothing to see here. Move along.
sig: sauer
It's true that they've made some very insightful connections long ago. But so have the Europeans. It's just that it's the current fad to be into Chinese medicine. And from experience I've found a lot of it to be flat out wrong or at least misguided.
I mean, if they had it all figured out China should have the longest life expectancy on earth, and they don't. Although, I'm not discounting Chinese doctors either, because much of what they do is indeed effective. But I wouldn't be surprised if more Americans got acupuncture than Chinese did. The fact is that when someone in Asia gets sick, they go to a regular doctor like us and get prescribed the same kinds of medicine we get.
If anything, they medicate even more heavily than American doctors do. Get a cold here and the doctor tells you to take tylenol. In Asia you get a cold and they'll give you several different pills; aggressive fever reducers, sleeping pills, a couple of others for various symptoms and antibiotics for good measure
I think these are more like innerlords.
This too shall pass away.
--
Never let a computer or a cat know that you are in a hurry.
Yeah, yeah. Whatever.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
But what would they know compared to our few hundred years of research in Western medicine?
Not enough to know that there's no such thing as chi/ki/prana apparently. As for this mind-gut connection, enlighten me, does it say anything specific or relevant to anything related to gut flora? Or is it just that eating good food makes you feel better (which falls firmly into the no shit category), mixed with a heaping helping of nonsense about 'yin foods' and 'yang foods'? I'm not making that up; TCM practitioners actually believe that some foods have magical heating (yang) or cooling (yin) abilities, and that eating too much of the one or the other will screw you up. And before you say 'well yeah, cucumber is cool and pepper is hot' take note that the lychee (one of the best foods most westerners have never heard of, tastes kinda like a grape, but grows on a tree and has a hard red skin) is one of the yangiest foods (cherries and pineapples are also yang). Could there be a scientific basis behind it? Dunno, maybe a thousand years of anecdotes amounts to something. But given the complete lack of actual science to back those points, and the plethora of just plain stupid things TCM guys also believe in (ever seen the dried lizard/worm/wood/who-knows-what-else infusions they make?), I sure as hell don't buy it until someone gives me more than the Chinese equivalent of the four humors (which, I have no doubt, if some magical foreigners had invented, these morons would be buying that too, but since it's European then it is just dumb).
Funny you should mention those specifically. I remember hearing a story about Toxoplasma causing people to behave in higher-risk ways, like driving faster.
As for how that relates to how it makes mice (that may be harboring Toxoplasma) attracted to the urine of cats that will want to eat said mice (to aid its spread), I cannot imagine.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
This was very much my experience with Crohn's disease.
Well actually, it turned out not to be Crohn's, but a rare type of cancer called an gastronoma, but that's kind of an aside.
What I found is that the mind-gut connection is a two way street. ... your mind starts to react as if stress were the cause.
You know how your gut gets all twisted and you get the shits, nausea, etc when you are *really* stressed out?
Well if that shit happens (no pun intended) on the regular
I had almost no stress (other than the health stuff, which we didn't know was a big deal until the end -- just in time, actually). I just thought I had Crohn's disease, which I had medicine for and wasn't particularly stressed over, but my gut was twisting and wretching day in and day out, and I had this ill-defined sense of dread and anxiety. Couldn't tell you why, but I was definitely stressed about ... something ...
In any case, I believe it. Your moods, are very much intimately intertwined with how your digestive tract. More than people usually realize I think.
Indeed. Marvel in awe at their [China's] advanced political system.
Does it really make much difference? In Australia, we get a choice of two parties who are virtually identical. We can vote, but it won't make any difference to anything much. It's the same in the UK and, as far as i can tell, the same in the US.
As far as differences between countries go, Australia and the UK don't have capital punishment, China and the US do. Australia and the UK have good social security and universally available health systems, China and the US don't. The Chinese government censors the internet a lot, Australia and the UK censor it a bit, and in the US they use litigation to censor it. The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world at 743 per 100,000, UK: 150, Australia 133, China: 120.
And China's doing considerably better economically than either of the UK or the US!