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   Science of Us, Contributor   
   “Science of Us” is a smart but playful window into the latest science on   
   human behavior.   
      
   A Traumatic Experience Can Reshape Your Microbiome   
   06/02/2017 04:56 pm ET   
      
   PHOTO: CHRISCHRISW/GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO   
   By  Susie Neilson    
      
   I’m  not disputing the scientific soundness of the whole brain-gut    
   connection, but it really does sound a little bit like something out of a    
   science-fiction story. I mean, you’re telling me that the trillions of  tiny   
   organisms that live in my gut,    
   chomping up my food for me and  maintaining my digestive system, have an   
   impact on what I think and do  and say? That the content of my thoughts might   
   be at least partially  determined by the eggs I had for breakfast, or the   
   vitamin C I haven’t     
   consumed enough of? It boggles the mind (at least, a mind influenced by  my   
   microbiome, fueled almost exclusively by Sour Patch Kids).   
      
   Related: How Violence Warps Childhood Friendships in Chicago   
      
   Strange  as it may seem, though, it’s also a case of our science finally    
   catching up to our idioms. Without realizing it, we’ve been talking  about   
   the link between brain and gut for a long time: Ever had a  gut-wrenching car   
   ride, or a gut instinct    
   about someone, or butterflies  in your stomach? In less colorful terms, the   
   stomach and the mind really  do talk to one another; in one study, for   
   example, tentative mice that  received gut bacteria transplants from braver   
   ones became more fearless,     
   exploring a maze with less hesitation. So strong is the microbiome’s  impact   
   that some have deemed it the “second brain.” And recently, a team  of   
   researchers found that our guts may harbor evidence of difficult  life   
   experiences many years after    
   the fact, changing everything from how  we digest food to how we process   
   stress. In fact, these changes in our  “second brain” may substantially   
   alter the structure of our first,  creating a feedback loop between the two.   
      
   For the study, published last month in the journal Microbiome,  the authors   
   analyzed the microbiomes of a group of students with  irritable bowel   
   syndrome, or IBS, a fairly common chronic condition   marked by pain in the   
   stomach, gas, and indigestion. (   
   Though there are  ways to manage IBS, many of which involve reducing stress,   
   we don’t know  what causes the syndrome.) They did the same for a control   
   group of  healthy volunteers, and also collected brain scans, stool samples,   
   and  behavioral and    
   biographical information from participants in both  categories.   
      
   The  results were startling: Across the board, those in the IBS group were    
   far more likely to exhibit anxiety and depression. When the researchers    
   further divided IBS-afflicted subjects into two smaller groups — those  with   
   a microbiome    
   undistinguishable from that of a healthy control, and  those with noticeable   
   differences — they found that the subgroup with  different microbiomes also   
   had more history of early life trauma, and  their IBS symptoms lasted longer.   
   “It is possible,”    
   the authors wrote,  “that the signals the gut and its microbes get from the   
   brain of an  individual with a history of childhood trauma may lead to   
   lifelong  changes in the gut microbiome.”   
      
   Related: What Is the Connection Between Personality and Mental Illness?   
      
   It’s  also possible — or even probable — that the relationship isn’t    
   uni-directional. The researchers noticed that the people with altered    
   microbiomes had differently shaped brains, too, suggesting that the  impacted   
   gut may have doubled back    
   and impacted certain brain regions —  though they noted in the study that   
   they don’t have enough information  to be sure that’s the case, and   
   cautioned against leaping to  conclusions. Even more than the science of the   
   gut on its own, the  science    
   of what how it affects the brain is still in its infancy; rather  than   
   arriving at any firm conclusions, this study is meant to open up  the field   
   more, laying a foundation for future researchers to build on.   
      
   If  it’s true that the gut influences the brain just as the brain impacts    
   the gut, though, then these findings may have tremendous implications  for   
   both mental and physical health. It might be a stretch to say that  anxiety   
   meds could one day be    
   supplemented with kombucha, but it’s not  too wild to imagine a future where   
   treating ailments of the mind also  involves treating the digestive system, or   
   vice versa (already, some  people are using talk therapy  to ease IBS). For   
   now, it can’t hurt    
   to remember the connection between  the two, and do everything in your power   
   to live a life that gives you  peace of mind — because it’ll give you   
   peace of stomach, too.   
      
      
      
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