Sunday, April 6, 2014

More on the Gut-Brain Connection

I'm still in the midst of reviewing a ton of literature on psychobiotics in time for the APA Annual Meeting in New York City this year. Our Evolutionary Psychiatry talk has been moved from two to three pm on Monday May 5th, as the Vice President will be speaking at 2pm. (Attendees can watch the VP on close caption so you can run to our room to beat the crowds ;-)

Anyway, I've written a layperson's version of my portion of the talk on the Gut and Brain, probiotics, etc. which I just put up over at Psychology Today. My academic talk will have a lot more details about the immunological effects, cytokines, hormonal regulation, etc.

New Music: Cherub: Doses and Mimosas (not exactly my usual style, but catchy, particularly the chorus.)

Head of a pinworm, major immune system regulator. From wikimedia commons.

5 comments:

  1. Don't know if you subscribe to Science or not but there may be two articles of interest to you in the March 28 edition - a commentary and the accompanying research article:

    1: Aychek T, Jung S. Immunology. The axis of tolerance. Science. 2014 Mar 28;343(6178):1439-40. doi: 10.1126/science.1252785. PubMed PMID: 24675941.

    2. Mortha A, Chudnovskiy A, Hashimoto D, Bogunovic M, Spencer SP, Belkaid Y, Merad M. Microbiota-dependent crosstalk between macrophages and ILC3 promotes intestinal homeostasis. Science. 2014 Mar 28;343(6178):1249288. doi: 10.1126/science.1249288. Epub 2014 Mar 13. PubMed PMID: 24625929.

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24625929

    The second may be available free online.

    Good luck with your presentation.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I came across something you might enjoy, the next time you are reminded of correlation is not causation....

    http://kim.oyhus.no/CorrelationAndCausation.html

    Correlation is evidence of causation...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi,

    Just a couple of days ago I realized that it is free glutamic acid in foods that triggers my symptoms of depression and OCD, I find it incredible that something you eat can influence your behaviour so strongly,

    I wanted to take NAC, I suppose that I have too much glutamate in my brain, if eating foods with free glutamic acid is a problem, but then by coincidence I found this article about mercury detox and avoiding NAC if one has mercury poisoning,

    http://www.livingnetwork.co.za/chelationnetwork/food/high-sulfur-sulphur-food-list/

    What is your opinion on this theory by Dr. Cutler?

    Must all mercury poisoned people avoid NAC and the foods/supplements he lists, or must only the people having elevated plasma cysteine levels avoid NAC?

    Or do you disapprove of this theory?

    I will receive fecal transplant treatments soon and hope that my free glutamate sensitivity will disappear, if not I might try a ketosis diet, I also read your article about ketosis and glutamate, that gave me some hope!

    Would you recommend trying Riluzole also?

    Thank you for a lot of interesting articles ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dr. Dean, have you ever heard of gut issues or nutrient deficiencies as contributing factors to Cotard's Syndrome in an elderly person with the attendant mental health issues AND dementia?

    ReplyDelete

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