Can Probiotics for Gut Health Help Boost Your Mood, Too? Here's What New Research Says But experts say it's too soon to recommend probiotic supplements to boost mood
New research found that taking probiotics may reduce negative feelings
- A new study found that taking certain probiotics could reduce negative feelings day-to-day.
- Probiotics can support gut health, which may help brain health by extension.
- However, experts say more research is needed before recommending probiotics for mood.
Decades of evidence suggests that the trillions of microorganisms living in people’s guts, called the microbiome, can influence the brain. And now, new research says they might influence how people feel day-to-day, too.
A new study published last month in npj Mental Health Research found that participants who took supplemental probiotics—living microbes—saw an improvement in their mood over the course of a month. However, probiotics didn’t seem to have an effect on people’s mood as measured by 10 psychological questionnaires.
“We don’t know what exactly ‘negative feelings’ means to individuals,” study author Laura Steenbergen, PhD, an assistant professor in the clinical psychology unit at Leiden University in the Netherlands, told Health. “But that is also what makes this meaningful. This finding may signal that probiotics can help whatever is interpreted as a negative feeling by the individual: anxiety for some, depressed moods or tiredness for others.”
What Are Probiotics?
The food we eat is a major factor that determines which microbes thrive in the gut, and what they do.
As a result, companies and scientists have been developing supplements filled with microbes, called probiotics, to see if they could influence health. Probiotics contain strains of living microorganisms that, when ingested in adequate amounts, provide a health benefit. They're usually sold as capsules or pills.
These microbes are also found in certain fermented and non-fermented foods, including yogurt.
How Might Probiotics Affect Mood?
For this study, Steenbergen and her colleague recruited 88 healthy participants. Over the course of a month, half received a daily course of probiotics, while the other half received a placebo.
The probiotics were a mixture of nine different bacterial strains included in the Ecologic Barrier mixture produced by Winclove Probiotics, a company based in the Netherlands. To take the probiotics, the participants dissolved a sachet containing all nine bacteria strains in a glass of lukewarm water.
At the start and end of the study, participants completed 10 different psychological questionnaires measuring emotion and emotional processing, as well as one questionnaire about bowel complaints. Participants also rated how positive or negative they felt each day on a scale from 0 to 100 and recorded a stool assessment.
The results showed that both the placebo group and the probiotics group:
- Scored similarly on the psychological questionnaires
- Had similar daily positive mood scores
However, the group who took probiotics showed a reduction in negative mood after just two weeks.
This disconnect in results between daily mood scores and psychological evaluation scores could point to a need for testing that takes a more sensitive approach to measuring mood.
“[The study] does speak [to] an interesting concept: that we can’t use just standardized symptom screens to look at the effects of some of these compounds, and [that] looking day to day and asking people sort of more about how they feel they’re doing is important,” Valerie Taylor, MD, PhD, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Calgary Cumming School of Medicine, told Health.
A Need for More Research
Though the study±s findings are interesting, there are some limitations. For one, the participant pool was small.
Also, the study was short—just a four-week intervention. Taylor said a longer study might be needed to tease out more subtle effects of probiotics on mood.
The researchers also didn’t take fecal samples from participants, so it’s unclear how the probiotics actually affected participants’ gut microbiome (and whether the microbiome could be responsible for their decrease in negative mood).
For many people, the probiotic bacteria do not colonize the gut. But researchers also don’t know if that’s even necessary to see a beneficial effect, Taylor explained.
Another question has to do with the probiotics themselves: Can all probiotic supplements reduce negative feelings, or is there something specific about these nine bacteria included in the study? “We don’t know,” Steenbergen said. “But it does form a hypothesis for future research.”
Future studies that incorporate more sensitive measures of psychological health and mood, as well as assess the function of the microbiome, will help scientists figure out who could benefit from probiotics.
Probiotics and the Gut-Brain Connection
So far, the evidence on probiotics for brain health is mixed. Some studies found a small effect, while others saw no impact.
However, researchers do “know that the building blocks of the neurotransmitters, all the chemical messages in the brain, are mainly synthesized in the gut,” Rebecca Slykerman, PhD, researcher and senior lecturer in the department of psychological medicine at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, told Health.
The gut-brain connection might also be involved in sending messages through the body’s vagus nerve and influencing immune or stress responses, among other mechanisms.
Whether a healthy gut creates a healthy brain—and by extension, better mood—is still up in the air. However, there’s plenty of research linking prebiotics and probiotics to better mental health, mood, and cognitive function.
Should You Take Probiotics to Boost Your Mood?
For now, Slykerman and Taylor don’t necessarily recommend taking a probiotic supplement to feel better—the evidence just isn’t there.
“Certain probiotics will have a positive influence on certain aspects of mood, but I’m not sure that we know exactly which strains and which people have the desired effect,” Slykerman explained.
In fact, in some people, probiotics may cause more harm than good. These microbes have been linked to:
- Gastrointestinal side effects such as bloating, nausea, and diarrhea
- Brain fog
- Small intestine bacterial overgrowth
If you are interested in giving probiotics a try, Slykerman suggested going for a multi-species probiotic with a microbe count in the billions.
But importantly, regulation of probiotic supplements can differ between countries and regions, so it can be hard to tell if you’re buying a quality product. Even among products that say they’re scientifically tested, that doesn’t necessarily mean the study was done on humans, said Slykerman. “It’s really difficult for consumers to look at health claims,” she said.
In the end, there are often more simple ways to improve your gut health.
“A healthy diet with vegetables, fruits, fiber, grains, and low in processed food is the number one factor that will influence the health of your gut microbes,” Slykerman said. “Alongside that, we know that sleep and activity levels also influence the composition of the gut, and probably stress as well.”
Julia Landwehr
Julia is the associate news editor for Health, where she edits and publishes news articles on trending health and wellness topics. Her work has been featured in The Heights, an independent student newspaper at Boston College, and Minnesota Monthly.
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This story originally appeared on: Health News - Author:Simon Spichak
