Dietary Advice Based on the Bacteria in Your Gut

Companies say the microbiome varies from person to person—and so should the most effective diet.

 How Stress Wreaks Havoc on Your Gut – and What to Do about It

The gut is especially vulnerable to the presence of chronic (and even acute) stress, demonstrating stress-induced changes in gastric secretion, gut motility, mucosal permeability and barrier function, visceral sensitivity and mucosal blood flow.

 Just Eat More Fiber

Diets can be overwhelming, but one small change can do a lot. The best part about this health advice is that it doesn’t involve eating something you don’t like. Fiber is in almost every fruit, vegetable, and whole grain. You could eat more apples and celery, sure, but there’s also fiber in things like corn tortillas, beans, grainy bread, and some types of breakfast cereal.

Stomach and mood disorders: how your gut may be playing with your mind

Our gastrointestinal tract, or gut, is sometimes described as our “second brain”. This is because it is controlled by its own complex nervous system comprising hundreds of millions of neurons – more than all the nerves in your spinal cord. The gut and brain talk to each other through nerve signals, the release of gut or stress hormones, and other pathways. We have long known that emotions can directly alter gut function.

The brain and the gut talk to each other: how fixing one could help the other

It’s widely recognised that emotions can directly affect stomach function. As early as 1915, influential physiologist Walter Cannon noted that stomach functions are changed in animals when frightened. The same is true for humans. Those who stress a lot often report diarrhoea or stomach pain.

Are Gut Bacteria Driving Your Cravings?

Think about what you ate for lunch today. Did it feel like something you wanted, something you chose? Or was it something that the Lactobacilli in your digestive tract was actually jonesing for? A new study in fruit flies suggests that the latter idea might not be so outlandish.

Digestive Enzymes: Help or Hype?

In considering whether taking supplemental digestive enzymes may be beneficial, one should recognize that the term "digestive enzymes" is a catchall that includes a variety of compounds with different purposes–similar to "vitamins" or "probiotics." Just as we can't draw sweeping generalizations about whether taking vitamins is beneficial (it would depend on which vitamin in which individual), so too with digestive enzymes: It depends on which enzyme and in what population.

Do Probiotics Work? Marketing Mania Tramples Science

Several times a week, I am queried on my view of probiotics, which are bacteria that confer health benefits on the human who ingests them. If you were to survey the public, I suspect that a majority would express that probiotics promote health and are effective in treating or preventing various maladies.

Do You Have Leaky Gut Syndrome?

Because it is something of a mystery disease that can show itself as a bewildering array of other conditions, you could have Leaky Gut Syndrome and not even realize it. The reason is that Leaky Gut Syndrome is one of the many concepts in medicine that cuts across the boundary lines of specific diseases. It is a major example of an important medical phenomenon: distress in one organ causes disease in another. That is why it is vital to look beyond the symptoms and discover the root cause of illness.

Findings from the Gut—New Insights into the Human Microbiome

A preference for dark versus milk chocolate, among other things, shows up in the kinds of healthy germs found in the gut.

Gut feelings: the future of psychiatry may be inside your stomach

The right combination of stomach microbes could be crucial for a healthy mind.

How Disrupting Your Gut’s Rhythm Affects Your Health

New research sheds light on how eating and sleeping habits can contribute to disease by disrupting the bacteria in the digestive tract.

Is your gut microbiome the key to health and happiness?

Research suggests the vast ecosystem of organisms that lives in our digestive systems might be as complex and influential as our genes in everything from mental health to athleticism and obesity. But is ‘poop doping’ really the way ahead?

Mental Health May Depend on Creatures in the Gut

The microbiome may yield a new class of psychobiotics for the treatment of anxiety, depression and other mood disorders.

Norovirus Is Coming

And you can’t stave it off by guzzling grape juice.

Probiotics: What They Are and What They Can Do for You

Although probiotics have been around for generations - think of the "live active cultures" in several brands of yogurt - the sheer number of products with probiotics now available may overwhelm even the most conscientious of shoppers. In some respects, the industry has grown faster than the research and scientists and doctors are calling for more studies to help determine which probiotics are beneficial and which might be a waste of money.

Seeking a ‘Happy Gut’ for Better Health

A happy gut is a gut that is able to do all of the work of digestion. It has a healthy microbiome, it’s able to extract all the nutrients you need from your food without causing any pain, discomfort, bloating or distress, and it creates a bowel movement at least once a day.

Taking Antibiotics Can Change the Gut Microbiome for Up to a Year

A new study illuminates the problems antibiotic overuse could cause for individual patients.

What's Living in Your Digestive System

If you think intestinal parasites only lead to gut disturbances such as upset stomach and diarrhea, think again. Because problems that happen in your stomach don't stay in your stomach.