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How The Gut Contributes To Depression
24 Plays3 months ago
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Hosted by functional health practitioner and longevity author, Christian Yordanov, this podcast is dedicated to helping women struggling with gastrointestinal problems such as gas, bloating, constipation, and other digestive distress.
Whether you have a diagnosis such as IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), IBD (inflammatory bowel disease; Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis), SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth), GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease) or not, you will benefit from the insights we'll share.
Join us as we explore the intricate connections between gut health and overall well-being, addressing common issues like fatigue, poor sleep, hormonal imbalances, and anxiety.
Learn how stress impacts your digestive system and discover effective strategies to reduce inflammation, improve digestion, and enhance your quality of life.
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Transcript
Introduction to Gut Health
00:00:43
chrisyzen
Hey welcome back to the show Christian Jourdanov here. Today I'm gonna talk to you about how the gut can influence mood and depression more specifically is what we'll be touching on. So it's fairly well known nowadays, at least in functional circles,
00:01:03
chrisyzen
that the gut really influences just a lot of things not just ah the immune system but also cognition right so mood things like anxiety ah Brain fog diminished sort of mental capacities a lot very often these can have a Genesis in the gut and I'm gonna discuss a few of the mechanisms through which this happens just to give you an overview and Its core a lot of it has to do with inflammation, right?
00:01:45
chrisyzen
So when you have a gut
Inflammation and Gut Dysfunction
00:01:47
chrisyzen
imbalance, like this it's we call it dysbiosis and there's many different ways you can ah the gut can be disrupted in a way that can be sort of described as dysbiosis you can have.
00:02:02
chrisyzen
inflammatory dysbiosis where there's like bacteria or certain organisms overgrowing and contributing to this inflammatory environment there could be insufficiency dysbiosis is another ah example when there's not ah enough enzymes being produced, for example, that can then ah break down and and absorb the food. Obviously, if the intestinal cells are damaged, they won't be able to express the enzymes, and they may not but they may not be able to transport those broken down food molecules into into the bloodstream.
00:02:38
chrisyzen
And um that can then leave leave food to be partially undigested, that can be putrefied by bacteria in the gut, they can overgrow, then they can exude their chemicals which can be inflammatory, they can be damaging, they can damage our other microbiota, our regular microbiota. And this is where this sort of gut dysbiosis When there's inflammation, damage to the intestinal lining, this is where a lot of health problems begin. And I don't mean just physical health problems. Again, some a psychological issues can be triggered by gut dysbiosis, right?
00:03:24
chrisyzen
And when you have the damage to the intestinal lining, we have this concept of intestinal permeability, which we of course have covered before, but it's important to kind of keep reinforcing this knowledge so you you you internalize it and you really start to grasp these concepts, right?
00:03:40
chrisyzen
So you have intestinal permeability, which is where the gaps between the intestinal cells increase, also known as leaky gut. And then this is, this is what can cause these inflammatory molecules to enter the bloodstream. The big one that we've discussed before is lipopolysaccharides or endotoxin LPS. These are bits of the fragments in the cell walls of the gram negative bacteria.
00:04:11
chrisyzen
And when they get into the bloodstream, they ah get recognized by certain cells, for example, in the immune system. And the response by our body, by our immune system cells, is a lot of inflammation.
00:04:26
chrisyzen
And it's well known that chronic inflammation is a known contributor to the development of depression. but There was a study in 2008, Mays et al, the gut brain barrier, in it's called this this is what the study is called.
00:04:45
chrisyzen
the gut-brain barrier in major depression. Intestinal mucosal dysfunction with an increased translocation of LPS from gram-negative enterobacteria, leaky gut, plays a role in the inflammatory pathophysiology of depression.
00:05:04
chrisyzen
So what that means is intestinal mucosal dysfunction, that's when the the gut is leaky, right? When the gut is damaged, the the intestinal barrier. And then an increased translocation of LPS from gram-negative enterobacteria means the increased absorption of this endotoxin molecule, millions and millions of them. There's millions in each bacterial cell.
00:05:30
chrisyzen
ah plays a role in the inflammatory pathophysiology of depression, meaning it contributes to the way depression develops. That's that's kind of what the, and this was 2008, so more than 15 years ago they were talking about this stuff.
00:05:48
chrisyzen
um what else so we have so we have the obviously the inflammation and the immune system that's one way that a gut dysbiosis gut dysfunction can contribute to depression and other quote-unquote non-physical symptoms. Okay,
Impact of Gut Bacteria on Mood Disorders
00:06:09
chrisyzen
fatigue, it is a physical symptom, but you don't it's not like a pain that you have or like redness or like a rash. ah It's a little bit more of a nebulous term it's because it's more qualitative, right? We gauge ourselves how we feel in terms of energy levels and or fatigue levels.
00:06:26
chrisyzen
um But then again like trouble concentrating a lot of these things again remember if These inflammatory molecules get into the body They're causing inflammation and that inflammation those inflammatory molecules can get into the brain They can pass the blood-brain barrier and they can exert effects in the brain that can damage the brain, right? so that's one way the other one is that actually a the bacteria in the gut can produce quite a lot of different chemicals that are either neurotransmitters, neuropeptides or are neuroactive chemicals. So they may be similar
00:07:08
chrisyzen
Or they may or if they're if they don't wait like if they're not similar to like a neurotransmitter, they may inhibit or um interfere with either the production of a neurotransmitter or its degradation breakdown and a number of other things. right For example, when I was doing the research for my book on autism, um there was one compound that certain Clostridia bacteria can produce I was reading the research on that and that enzyme oh sorry that ah compound that was called for creosol it could actually inactivate the ah certain enzyme in the in the central nervous system dopamine beta hydroxylase which kind of ah turns dopamine into norepinephrine or not noradrenaline and
00:08:00
chrisyzen
that that compound gets jammed into the that DBH, that dopamine beta-hydroxylase enzyme, and it inactivated permanently. right So this is the kind of thing that can happen when molecules that are not ah produced by the body get into the into the systemic circulation they can come from bacteria that things bacteria produce or when they die oh the something that gets spilled from the bacterial cell it can also be stuff from the diet right so when you
00:08:37
chrisyzen
when you eat plant ah plant foods there's i don't know hundreds of thousands millions of different plant compounds right across the hundreds of thousands of different plant species ah there's at least thousands in every vegetable and and fruit right so some of these are gonna have effects They're going to resemble molecules that we produce. They're going to maybe interfere with certain metabolic functions. They could be beneficial in some ways, right? So this is where this gu the gut microbiota, some of these things that it produces like serotonin, certain other neurotransmitters like GABA, which is more an inhibitory relaxing type neurotransmitter.
00:09:26
chrisyzen
Gamma amino butyric acid, right? um So when you have dysbiosis It can in some cases at least lead to neurotransmitter imbalances associated with depression now. There's another thing um I started running neurotransmitter testing on some some clients recently and I noticed that in some folks you can have a really real sort of serious buildup of one neurotransmitter or multiple neurotransmitters and that can contribute to obviously to various things like ADHD type behaviors or hyperactivity you know this kind of stuff or ah anxiety and so on and a lot of those neurotransmitters are dependent on various B vitamins
00:10:12
chrisyzen
they
Nutrient Absorption and Mental Health
00:10:13
chrisyzen
are dependent on various ah minerals in terms of so there's enzymes and genes involved along the way that need to let's say break down something convert it to something else and if something is missing along the way like a mineral or a vitamin B let's say or vitamin C in the case of dopamine to noradrenaline then that can build that neurotransmitter up and then the thing that it was going to get converted to and there might not be enough of so that that can cause us issues right so that's another thing and and the thing is if the gut is dysfunctional and damaged and there's a lot of inflammation
00:10:51
chrisyzen
damaging the intestinal lining, you are at risk for malabsorption right of the various nutrients, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fats, so on.
00:11:05
chrisyzen
And over time that can lead to nutrient deficiencies and nutrient deficiencies are actually in in certain nutrient deficiencies are implicated in depression, right? So be a
Stress and Gut Health
00:11:16
chrisyzen
certain B vitamins, actually quite a few B vitamin deficiencies are um associated with neuropsychiatric conditions. So not just depression, but ah schizophrenia and I think bipolar disorder are kind of two that come ah top of mind.
00:11:34
chrisyzen
So that's another mechanism through which a disrupted gut or disrupted gut microbiome where the bacteria are imbalanced can contribute to mood dysregulation or even depression. And then we have the another mechanism It's called HPA axis dysregulation. So the HPA axis, that's the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis, right? So basically you have the hypothalamus
00:12:06
chrisyzen
and pituitary, these are glands in the brain and they can signal to the rest of the body to do certain things. For example, the pituitary, so the hypothalamus can trigger the pituitary to send out um ah signaling molecules that then stimulate our adrenals to produce cortisol, adrenaline, stuff like that. And i as I've covered previously, um stress, which is what triggers this HPA axis cascade,
00:12:43
chrisyzen
can cause obviously elevated cortisol levels, which are then associated with depression, and anxiety and a lot if not most ah other of and a lot if not most of all the other conditions and diseases okay and and then furthermore we also know that as I've covered previously, elevated cortisol levels can disrupt the intestinal barrier and they can contribute to leaky gut. So stress in and of itself can contribute to depression and anxiety, of course, because of the release of cortisol by the adrenal glands. But it's not just the psychological aspect of stress that is contributing to the depression and the anxiety.
00:13:38
chrisyzen
right it's also the fact that cortisol has this effect on the gut right and that can then increase the inflammation and all the other kind of stuff that we've already covered so far so that's another mechanism how where the gut dysbiosis and the inflammation can lead to chronic HPA access activation so you're chronically in a stress response and then of course if you're in a stress response you're gonna not feel amazing obviously but then there's stuff there's damage going on in the body right because cortisol
00:14:15
chrisyzen
It's, it's obviously needed to, we need it to survive. We need to, to, to live. The problem is that we need very little of it. And most people are, you either have enough just the right amount or way too much, you know, or too much. Uh, that's unfortunately the kind of, um, stressful lifestyles we live in, in the modern world, you know, constant, um, you know,
00:14:43
chrisyzen
exposure to various EMS radiation blue light just living in very densely populated cities traffic you know these jobs being online all the time constantly checking phones and social media bro having excuse me having to process a lot of information this makes a lot of us um puts us ah puts a lot of us into this sort of chronic stress response even even if it's a mild stress response even if we don't really become aware of it or we're not aware of it even if um we get used to it it's not really
00:15:26
chrisyzen
Being used to stress is not really optimal. the the The most optimal thing is to identify the stress and then mitigate it, eliminate it, ideally ameliorate its effects. This is why with
Brain-Gut Communication
00:15:41
chrisyzen
my clients, I sometimes tell them that I have a very aggressive approach to stress reduction, because you can see that stress can lead to disease. It can lead to depression, anything really, any disease you can think of stress will exacerbate it or contribute to it or outright cause it. Stress alone can cause diabetes just for example right or high blood pressure. And then we have another um less often talked about mechanism
00:16:16
chrisyzen
of how the gut can contribute to depression and various, you know, anxiety, mood, mood dysregulation type symptoms. That's the vagus nerve, right? So this, this is gaining a lot of traction in recent years. And it's basically this's this nerve that it's a bidirectional nerve. So it signals the brain can signal with it towards the gut and then it can then the the gut microbiota and the gut can then communicate back to the brain via the vagus nerve and that can affect mood, stress response and when we have a dysregulation in the signaling pathway to to a pathway
00:16:59
chrisyzen
um it can cause It can cause or contribute to, again, depression, anxiety, various sort of moods mood type issues where you would never think, or most people with this would never think that it could be something in the gut going on. you know But again, like i've I've written a whole book on autism back in 2020 is when I published it and I was researching it in 2019. And um yeah, there's already so much research showing that ah the gut state of the gut, the microbiome, potentially if there's um an overgrowth of inflammatory bacteria and organisms, that they have a huge effect on on mood cognition, appetite, concentration, sleep, ton of different things. In fact,
Diet, Dysbiosis, and Mood Disorders
00:17:49
chrisyzen
there there was a thing um ah that even things like if you have a very severe candida overgrowth,
00:17:57
chrisyzen
they can take they can ferment sugar into acetaldehyde which is a breakdown product of alcohol and they can actually make alcohol in the gut and with some children with autism where they like laugh on their own a lot that can be very a signal that there's a lot of candida overgrowth. But you know in in more recent years, I've kind of a a little bit, um i've kind of I'm starting to doubt whether sugar really feeds the Eastern candida so much, at least in in a normally functioning gut, because when you think about it, sugar or sugars from food, whether you know whether that's honey, fruit,
00:18:41
chrisyzen
whatever else that should be getting absorbed in the top part of the small intestine so it gets it gets into the small intestine through the stomach and it should be getting absorbed rather quickly now if there is got dysfunction damage to the intestine and something is preventing the the food that should be absorbed up top at the ah beginning of the small intestine and that food starts to make it down further and then into the large intestine, yes, then then um it it is likely to get fermented and putrefied by various heats and bacteria that can cause issues like gas, bloating and and inflammatory stuff to occur. But in in normal circumstances, there shouldn't be so much malabsorption over this entire course of the small intestine, which is very long.
00:19:35
chrisyzen
so that the um the sugar reaches a large intestine. Now theyre there is in more recent years, they've been talking about small intestinal fungal overgrowth. So some people may indeed have small intestinal bacterial and or fungal overgrowth. ah that That's when this can really become a problem. But I think in those cases, it's a little bit Easier to tell if a person has that because they're very likely to very quickly after a meal to start having like belching gas sort of ah Various, ah you know gas is being produced during the fermentation process causing like it could be like sulphury burbs or ah Depending on what's what's getting produced, you know, is it methane? ah
00:20:26
chrisyzen
What's the carbon not not carbon dioxide so the sulfur you want I forget the name of that one and hydrogen sulfide. So it it really depends. So that is possible, but I think it's a little bit rest less rare, right? So i'm I'm not really super sold anymore that sugar feeds candida. So don't eat sugar and don't eat carbohydrates and you'll be better because I think if you don't eat carbohydrates,
00:20:49
chrisyzen
or sufficient carbohydrates, especially for women, it can really just put them into this low metabolic state, which is very similar to hypothyroidism. And that's actually hypothyroidism. One of the major symptoms of it is constipation. So that can slow down the the motility of the digestive tract.
00:21:11
chrisyzen
that can further exacerbate problems especially think about it if you have this biosis and then you try to do like let's say you try to um starve the back everything with like a carnivore diet you know like some people are doing and that puts you in a hypothyroid state and you you start to like poop even less. um Well, all that dysbiosis, all of those inflammatory molecules that that are being created along the way, they will it will take longer for that to be excreted, right? And that can cause more of that to be
Inflammation's Impact on the Brain
00:21:46
chrisyzen
absorbed and cause further health problems. And I i have worked with women in the past where
00:21:51
chrisyzen
They've done this kind of stuff and then they report a lot of anxiety and just kind of being very sensitive to to supplements and stuff like that. So I really don't think that's the way to do it and and like skipping carbohydrates is really a bad idea um for long-term health.
00:22:07
chrisyzen
So yeah, the at the end of ah the end of the but the end of the day,
00:22:15
chrisyzen
inflammation has been just really over the over the past couple of decades has been recognized as a very significant contributor to develop to the development of depression and there's a number of different mechanisms a couple of them we've We've already discussed, so you have the HPA dysregulation that will you know increase the stress on the body that can increase further the intestinal permeability and that can cause further damage and inflammation. Then we have the neuroinflammation, right? So inflammatory processes in the brain, okay? So if you activate the brain's resident immune cells, they're called microglia.
00:22:55
chrisyzen
they That inflammation can then damage, you know, obviously neurons, brain cells, and it can disrupt a lot of different processes in in the brain. And that can cause not just mood dysregulation, but diminished cognitive function. That's why when we do intake with my clients and we do these metabolic function assessments where you score yourself on various self-reported symptoms, that's why brain fog is part of the, um, it's under the gut dysfunction category, right? Because brain fog is a symptom of gut dysfunction. Now it can be a symptom of of other things like hypothyroidism as well. So it's in multiple areas, but that's, that's a major one.
00:23:45
chrisyzen
And then of course we have other pathways, you know oxidative stress because inflammation is very sort of linked with oxidative stress, which can damage cells, their proteins, their organelles, the DNA, stuff like that. That's another thing that can
Holistic Healing and Gut Health
00:24:02
chrisyzen
that can impair brain function. And depending on what region of the brain it happens, it can cause various ah psychological or physical symptoms, right? So there's ah there's a lot of pathways, there's there's a lot of them that have been elucidated in the research in both you know animal studies and also there's been quite quite a lot of research where they look at like inflammatory markers and the they try to associate with various sort of so psychological ah type type ah symptoms and stuff like that. So the research is quite clear and the fact remains that if we improve gut function,
00:24:40
chrisyzen
very often, almost invariably, the I like to kind of term it, the body is the hardware, and then our mind are and, you know, all the all the sort of stuff you can like your, how you your brain functions, your mood, how you sleep, that's more the software, right? So the way I kind of like to talk about it is, if we improve the functioning of the hardware,
00:25:06
chrisyzen
the software will run better. So you know if if you're constipated and feeling sluggish and or you have gas and discomfort, already that alone, those symptoms alone will diminish you how well how well you feel and how perhaps how you interact with other people. you know it It does grind you down when it's chronic especially. So that alone is evidence that if you improve the gut and you already feel a bit lighter, you feel just more happy and it's easier to deal with other people and they're BS, you know what I mean? But then think about if you reduce the inflammation that's been, that you can't really sense that undercurrent of damage and inflammation that's triggering the immune system. If you get that sort of addressed, think of less inflammation getting to the brain, less triggering of the HPA axis or so, less sort of stress hormones getting released,
00:26:03
chrisyzen
um and driving anxiety and and other stuff, right? I think if you do that, how much better you will feel and then you'll sleep better and then when you sleep better, you will regenerate better, right?
00:26:16
chrisyzen
because you will be less stressed as well. You wake up, you you will it will be easier to make healthier choices. Your willpower will increase. And this is a very beautiful positive feedback loop, right? of It's a positive feed forward cycle where one good thing leads to another good thing and another good thing and another good thing. And then before you know it,
00:26:41
chrisyzen
you know your hormone balance is improved, so you know you you don't have these estrogen excess type symptoms that a lot of women get. ah That doesn't matter if they're menstruating or not. A lot of women, when they have these hot flashes or very sort of moods mood things, that is very often either cortisol or estrogen or both, right? So improving improving this aspect will improve that aspect because, ah ah as I've explained before,
00:27:08
chrisyzen
estrogen is detoxified in the liver and then it has to travel into the bile and the bile has to get out of you through the poop and if your um gut motility is slow there's there's more chance for that to be reabsorbed right for the the the toxins in the bile and the estrogens and the hormones in the bile there's a higher chance that that they will be recycled back right so there's so many things that will start improving for a person when the gut function is addressed so as they say all disease begins at the gut and all healing we really have to focus first on the gut right or it should be a massive part a massive piece of the puzzle if it's not the only piece for for many people
00:27:57
chrisyzen
um So yeah, I think that
Conclusion and Listener Appreciation
00:27:59
chrisyzen
covers what I wanted to discuss, the points I wanted to discuss. I hope that you found this informative and educational and I will see you on the next episode. Thanks for listening or watching.