Otherways- Fiction Fanatics

There’s nothing like having a civilized adult conversation about something as elevated and cheerful as gut bacteria. Honestly though, the darn things are pretty interesting, if you can get past the ick factor. The one most people know best is the ubiquitous E. coli, although for most it’s the nasty bug that infects everything from spinach to hamburger and makes you sick.

While I am all for food handlers washing their hands, that’s really not all that E. coli can do. In fact, there are large numbers of them living happily in your insides right now. The idea may be slightly unsettling, but the reality is we couldn’t do without the many tiny creatures that live within us.

Even at the most basic level of our lives, the single cell, we owe our ability to create energy to the mitochondria. Mitochondria were once free living single celled creatures, but now they form the power plant of every one of our cells. Bacteria like E. coli break food in the digestive system, giving us access to nutrients we’d not be able to utilize otherwise.

It turns out that may not be all the microbes are doing down there. The newest thing in psychological research is determining the effect that these miniature lodgers have on our moods. For example, we have studied depression for years. They’ve known that many things can help to alleviate the symptoms of depression, like exercise, sunshine, and physical labor. Gardening has had especially high results in improving overall mood, and it has always been assumed that this was due to the fact that it combined sunshine, physical labor, and producing a tangible result.

The actual answer may be a little weirder. There are microbes in the soil, ones that a gardener will pick up even with gloves on simply by breathing. Hold on, don’t go for the can of Lysol yet, this is a very good thing. These microbes are tied to elevated levels of everything from vitamin B to an enhanced ability to produce serotonin, the chemical that signals our brains something is pleasurable.

The Laureate Institute for Brain Research in Tulsa, Oklahoma is doing a very broad study that includes how the microbes present in our bodies affect our perceived moods, and what role their presence or absence may play in mental disorders like depression, anxiety and addiction. The study is called T-1000, T for Tulsa, and 1000 for the number of participants.

I’m not sure what number I am, but since I found the subject fascinating, I signed up to be a control. That means brain scans, blood tests, swabs for cultures, and a lot of questions, but over the course of the year that these 1000 people are studied, I’m hopeful we’ll find something that sheds real light on these issues.

I think we will, call it a gut feeling.

Cheers,

Michelle