Just Thrive and microbiologist Kiran Krishnan were honored to be featured on a recent Healing Quest Radio podcast about probiotics and mood/memory. Below is the outline of the interview.
Read along...
Judy Brooks: Hi, and welcome back to Healing Quest. I'm Judy Brooks.
Roy Walkenhorst: And I'm Roy Walkenhorst. If you're just joining us, our focus is holistic wellness and the latest in natural ways to help us all live healthier, happier, and longer.
Roy Walkenhorst: But one of the big natural health discoveries in recent years has been what's known as the gut-brain connection, all the ways in which our digestive tract affects our brain. One of those ways is something I doubt many of us know much about because it turns out that our digestive tract can have a big impact on our stress, our mood, and our memory.
Judy Brooks: So we've asked microbiologist Kiran Krishnan from Just Thrive Probiotics to join us today to make sure we're doing all we can to keep our GI tract healthy. So, Kiran, thanks for joining us today.
Kiran Krishnan: My pleasure, as always, to be involved in this. This is one of my favorite topics to talk about.
Judy Brooks: Well, this is a hot topic. To people, it seems like our digestive tract is a long way, let's say, physically from our brain. So how does this so called gut-brain connection really work?
Kiran Krishnan: Yeah. In fact, as it turns out, there is a communication mechanism between the gut and the brain that circumvents virtually everything else in the body. There's something called the vagus nerve which is a nerve that directly connects the gut to the brain. And it's a two-way connection, so the brain can talk to the gut and then the gut can talk to the brain.
Kiran Krishnan: And, of course, what's in control of the gut? It's your bacteria. So all of the trillions of bacteria that live in your gut have direct access to your brain and can cause lots of beneficial things but can also cause a lot of problems, depending on the type of bacteria that you add.
Roy Walkenhorst: So if the bacteria's having a bad day, you might feel it.
Kiran Krishnan: Exactly. You're going to pay for it. Or that cupcake you couldn't resist eating. That is caused by bacteria in your gut, or even fungus, creating neurotransmitters that make you crave these types of foods.
Judy Brooks: Wow. So that gut-brain connection could have a lot to do with addictive behavior as well, I would imagine.
Kiran Krishnan: Absolutely. Yeah. A huge function of people who have a propensity for addictive behavior, whether it's food addiction, drugs, whatever behaviors it is, is a dysfunction in dopamine. Dopamine is an hormone that affects the reward centers of your brain. And that's what kind of gives us the reward and the pat on the back biologically when we do things that are good for us.
Kiran Krishnan: People that have a dysfunction in dopamine are always seeking more dopamine release by getting into these addictive behaviors, and a lot of times this is food. When we eat food, we naturally release some dopamine because from an evolutionary perspective, our body wanted to reward us when we did the smart thing of eating. But that was during a time when food was scarce and it took a lot of work to go and find it. So we needed the reward in order to be able to motivate ourselves to have to do it. But nowadays we use food as an addiction, as something that upregulates dopamine if our gut is not producing enough of it.
Judy Brooks: So the probiotics make a huge difference in that? I mean, what exactly happens? I mean, when you take the probiotic does it calm down the bad bacteria in the gut?
Kiran Krishnan: Yeah, that's exactly it. Issues in the gut with regards to the bacteria are ecological issues. No different than if you have a garden that has too many weeds in it and not enough healthy plants. The ability t