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Enhancing gut-brain communication reversed cognitive decline in aging mice

med.stanford.edu

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Re: Enhancing gut-brain communication reversed cognitive decline in aging mice

#71

Post by bitexploder »

Fricken wrote: post #36

I got into bicycle touring a few years ago, and it’s an ultra-endurance activity which means burning 3- 4 times as many calories as I would on a sedentary day. My training rides were all local weekend overnighters in preparation for the big 1000 mile challenge ride, and they were no big deal. On the big ride, about 3 days in I started experiencing bouts of intestinal distress which would put me into some of the black…

What you experienced was the gut-brain axis failing under extreme metabolic stress in real time. 3-4x caloric demand and your enteric nervous system was under enormous strain dysregulation of serotonin production, inflammatory signaling flooding the vagus nerve upward into brainstem arousal states, directly degrading the prefrontal predictions that normally keep your self model coherent and future oriented. the nihilism wasn’t a psychological response to difficulty it was your predictive hierarchy collapsing from the bottom up, the higher level model of who you are and why this matters losing the competition against overwhelming lower level distress signals. The fact that it resolved when the intestinal distress subsided is actually clear indicator that mood and cognition are downstream of gut state more than we like to admit. our gut makes a like 80% of our serotonin or something

Re: Enhancing gut-brain communication reversed cognitive decline in aging mice

#72

Post by Aurornis »

theshrike79 wrote: post #44

"You" don't crave stuff, the microbiome in your intestine craves stuff. There are microbes in there that specialize in eating, say, sugar. You don't give them sugar, they send signals to your brain saying "yo, more sugar" This is why if you go on a sugar-free diet (just stop eating candy and sweets) the cravings just go away eventually. The microbes who keep shouting for more sugar either die away or go dormant.

If this was true, sugar cravings would disappear when taking antibiotics that kill those microbes.

The fact that this doesn’t happen should give you pause about this woo-woo theory of cravings.

The reason you crave sugar and fat and other tasty things is that they taste good. You evolved in a world where feeling rewarded and driven to consume more of these was beneficial to survival when food was scarce.

Re: Enhancing gut-brain communication reversed cognitive decline in aging mice

#73

Post by reverius42 »

throwawaytwit9 wrote: post #59
y-curious wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you do for heartburn? Just looking for ideas. I noticed reducing gluten helped me personally a lot

It may not work for you but I had years of chronic heartburn. While sick with covid in 2020, I stopped consuming coffee and alcohol. It took a few months and for the long covid symptoms to subside, and then no more heartburn. At all. I felt really dumb that I never connected it to coffee before. I didn’t experience direct symptoms from coffee and I didn’t consume an excess amount. But it definitely was the cause.

I'm a couple weeks into giving up coffee because of heartburn, and yeah, this tracks... unfortunately. I've replaced heartburn with heartache (having given up a beverage I've enjoyed daily for over 20 years).

Re: Enhancing gut-brain communication reversed cognitive decline in aging mice

#74

Post by owenpalmer »

theshrike79 wrote: post #44

"You" don't crave stuff, the microbiome in your intestine craves stuff. There are microbes in there that specialize in eating, say, sugar. You don't give them sugar, they send signals to your brain saying "yo, more sugar" This is why if you go on a sugar-free diet (just stop eating candy and sweets) the cravings just go away eventually. The microbes who keep shouting for more sugar either die away or go dormant.

> "You" don't crave stuff

False. We do crave stuff. The microbiome contributes to and influences cravings, but the way you're phrasing it is misleading.

Re: Enhancing gut-brain communication reversed cognitive decline in aging mice

#75

Post by InkCanon »

mustaphah wrote: post #14

Yeah, it's a mouse study, but there are tons of human studies backing the whole gut-brain connection. There are even a bunch of books on it [1][2]. What's really cool is that the paper used low-dose capsaicin (just 5 μg/kg injected), and it completely restored hippocampal FOS activity and memory in older mice. Basically, that's the same stuff you get in cayenne pepper supplements - pretty easy to get your hands on. […

I only have marginal knowledge about neuroscience, but one of my neuroscience professors in class would tell us

"You can cure anything in mice."

I don't know the mechanism why, but you can find tons of papers with incredibly strong results for curing of mitigating dementia, cognitive decline, addiction, etc in mice, but these almost never seen to work on people.

Re: Enhancing gut-brain communication reversed cognitive decline in aging mice

#76

Post by nofriend »

InkCanon wrote: post #75
mustaphah wrote: post #14

Yeah, it's a mouse study, but there are tons of human studies backing the whole gut-brain connection. There are even a bunch of books on it [1][2]. What's really cool is that the paper used low-dose capsaicin (just 5 μg/kg injected), and it completely restored hippocampal FOS activity and memory in older mice. Basically, that's the same stuff you get in cayenne pepper supplements - pretty easy to get your hands on. […

I only have marginal knowledge about neuroscience, but one of my neuroscience professors in class would tell us "You can cure anything in mice." I don't know the mechanism why, but you can find tons of papers with incredibly strong results for curing of mitigating dementia, cognitive decline, addiction, etc in mice, but these almost never seen to work on people.

They're human specific ailments. We create a fake version of them in mice, then we fix the fake version. The basic problem with these issues is we don't understand the root cause. So we can replicate the symptoms in a mouse model then fix the symptoms, but that doesn't work in humans because the root cause is still there.

Re: Enhancing gut-brain communication reversed cognitive decline in aging mice

#77

Post by mustaphah »

InkCanon wrote: post #75
mustaphah wrote: post #14

Yeah, it's a mouse study, but there are tons of human studies backing the whole gut-brain connection. There are even a bunch of books on it [1][2]. What's really cool is that the paper used low-dose capsaicin (just 5 μg/kg injected), and it completely restored hippocampal FOS activity and memory in older mice. Basically, that's the same stuff you get in cayenne pepper supplements - pretty easy to get your hands on. […

I only have marginal knowledge about neuroscience, but one of my neuroscience professors in class would tell us "You can cure anything in mice." I don't know the mechanism why, but you can find tons of papers with incredibly strong results for curing of mitigating dementia, cognitive decline, addiction, etc in mice, but these almost never seen to work on people.

I guess it's because most major disorders and diseases have so many pathways at play that figuring out which one's actually causing the problem at the individual level is just too tricky.

The other thing concerns how potent the effect is to be therapeutic. In many cases, the effect is just marginal to be meaningful.

Re: Enhancing gut-brain communication reversed cognitive decline in aging mice

#79

Post by idiotsecant »

hbcondo714 wrote: post #10
inanutshellus wrote: post #9

Everyone's "poo-pooing" the article because the title doesn't mention mice, but, FWIW, stories of gut biota affecting humans behavior have been documented for a while. Memory gain is noteworthy, which is the article's "wow" factor, but everyone's just knee-jerk smirking so ... here's a few random articles to gross you out about the wild world of trading microbiota and, for better or worse, changing your personality:…

I would recommend the site https://gutbrainaxistherapeutics.com for learning more about Microbiota Transplant Therapy (MTT) and its opportunities, especially for Autism and Pitt-Hopkins Syndrome.

There is zero evidence that poop transplants have any effect on autism, let's be clear here.

Re: Enhancing gut-brain communication reversed cognitive decline in aging mice

#80

Post by idiotsecant »

andrewl wrote: post #47
slibhb wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, gut microbiome stuff is massively overhyped. Here's a study that tried fecal transplants to treat mental illness (and found no effect): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41785480/ The pattern with this stuff is that, when a blinded study is carried out, there's usually no effect.

Replying to slibhb, while the research involving mental illness is not conclusive, fecal transplants are a known and accepted treatment for persistent C. diff ( Clostridioides difficile ) infection. Just for the record.

This seems like it makes way, way more sense
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