The problem is that you have to take them often to colonize your gut, so it becomes a bit expensive, and it won't work on everyone, depending on their gut (since scientists know too little about the gut).
Probiotics can support the effect of antidepressants
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Re: Probiotics can support the effect of antidepressants
#12How to find the best probiotics?
Re: Probiotics can support the effect of antidepressants
#13Note to mods: I 'editorialised' submission title slightly (Original is "Good bacteria to tackle depression") which seemed a bit click-baity
I appreciate your editorial take. Thanks for saying no to click-bait titles!
Re: Probiotics can support the effect of antidepressants
#14About 90% of serotonin is made in the gut [1]. This is one of those things that helps us with being happy and an unhealthy gut produces less. So, this makes sense. [1] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/22572-seroton...
Does this serotonin make its way to the brain?
Seratonin is produced in multiple places in the body (not just the brain, and apparently, most of the seratonin in your body is not produced in the brain), but doesn't appear to cross the blood-brain barrier.
I'm not a doctor but I think what that means is "seratonin in your gut probably doesn't make it's way to the brain; but, the rest of the body is already awash in seratonin, so additional production in the gut can help increase those levels, which may have some sort of yet-to-be-understood action that has an impact on depression"
Re: Probiotics can support the effect of antidepressants
#15I read this take somewhere that we are basically a vessel for our microbiome / gut Flora. Our moods, what food we crave, how social we are might all be impacted by them, in which case they do have some sort of control over not just how we feel, but how we behave. For instance if you eat a lot of sugar, you will crave more sugar, and the argument would be that it's the bacteria that have developed in your gut that are causing you to crave that sugar because that is what they consume (vs the more human-focused evolutionary argument of "sugar was rare and so humans have evolved to crave as much of it as they can get").
Reality is probably a mix of both (ie we are a complex system with wants/needs influenced by both our own body and the Flora that live within it).
Re: Probiotics can support the effect of antidepressants
#16I noticed when reading the Amazon reviews of probiotics recently that a lot of people claim they improved their mood a lot too.
I suppose there's also an inverse correlation with, let's say, "bathroom frequency"
Re: Probiotics can support the effect of antidepressants
#17About 90% of serotonin is made in the gut [1]. This is one of those things that helps us with being happy and an unhealthy gut produces less. So, this makes sense. [1] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/22572-seroton...
The serotonin in your brain doesn’t come from the gut.
Serotonin isn’t just a “happy chemical”. The body uses it in different places for different functions.
Re: Probiotics can support the effect of antidepressants
#18How to find the best probiotics?
The original study [1] uses Vivomixx in about double dose.
According to them it's because it is easily accessible and has multiple strains of bacteria in it (they were not trying to go for one strain in particular).
1 : chapter "Study intervention" of https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-022-01977-z
Re: Probiotics can support the effect of antidepressants
#19n=40, seems a bit small. But this fits into a lot of anecdotal accounts I've heard. Gut flora is very complex and not well understood.
I've also had anecdotal experience in agreement with this. There have been many studies on this but most of them have a similar small sample size. Wonder why it hasn't been conducted with a larger sample size yet, or maybe it has but didn't find anything so it's not being posted on HN ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Re: Probiotics can support the effect of antidepressants
#20When I think of probiotics I think of this song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnJM_jC7j_4
because probiotics are the "ones that mother gives you [that] don't do anything at all"
(Right up there with Vitamin D supplements. Everything good, like low blood pressure and your team winning the Superbowl seems to be associated with high vitamin D in the population and everything bad is associated with low vitamin D... But when you supplement Vitamin D seems to lower your blood pressure as much as it makes your team win the Superbowl.)