Microbial communities in the gut can contribute to different health and disease states in the body because they have wide reaching effects it appears. I think microbial communities can influence brain and mental health states in a few different ways. I think they can indirectly influence the brain by causing problems in the gut that then cause problems throughout the entire body. This could happen through the microbial population wreaking havoc on the body and causing disease which ramps up the immune system making the brain slightly more susceptible to problems because it cannot mount as good of a defense as they could previously. I think they could also go through the blood brain barrier should something cause a huge shift in the dynamics of the blood-brain barrier in which case they can exert their influence on the brain directly which could cause more problems.
Brain and mental health states could influence microbial communities just as well as other health states do. I think that when you have mental health flairs it could lower the immune system which in turn allows the “bad” microbes to exert their influence and cause problems. I would think that if you were having great stress that your body would be more worried about alleviating the stress which dampens the immune response that you can mount and that would mean that the balance of good and bad would sway towards the bad side and make the health of the host decline. Again, if the brain and mental health states are decreased then the balance would sway towards the good and not the bad meaning that it would promote good health in the host. I think mental health and brain states have a major influence on the microbial populations in the gut which in turn affects the overall health of the host.
CATEGORIES: Uncategorized