Probiotic yogurt is famous for assisting intestinal health, but now researchers believe that it can also help treat depression. A novel study conducted on mice revealed that bacteria in the gut had a direct impact on the brains, which is also believed to be the case in human beings.
Previously bowel disorders have been associated with stress-related psychiatric disorders, which encouraged the researchers to study the connection further. While, trailing on mice, the researchers fed the mice a potage containing Lactobacillus rhamnosus JB-1; it is species that naturally lives in human digestive system.
It was found that mice that were fed the potage displayed few signs of stress, anxiety and depression in comparison to animals that fed plain potage. The mice were put in stressful conditions during the trail like being placed in a maze. In addition mice that eaten the bacteria-broth generated lower levels of the stress hormone corticostrone.
Whether brains of human beings are influenced in the same manner, researchers believe it could twig a horde of new ways to control depression and anxiety disorders. According to lead author and neuroscientist John Cryan from University College Cork in Ireland, by affecting gut bacteria, you can have very forceful and quite broad-spectrum effects on brain chemistry and behavior.
Without exaggerating things, this does bring in the notion that they could develop therapies that can treat psychiatric disorders by targeting the gut. You could take yoghurt with a probiotic in it as an alternative of an antidepressant. But Prof Cryan underlined that people suffering depression could not just go out and just buys any kind of yoghurt at their local supermarkets.
The effectiveness of yoghurt would depend on the strain of probiotic which is included in the food. The probiotics could give patients less side effects than other anti-anxiety drugs such as Valium. Despite testing this on mice, they are a long way off from trying this out on people, added Cryan. The study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.