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52
NOV / DEC 2014
I
Healthcare Journal of new orleans
The saying “you are what you eat” has been around for a long time, but
how the food we eat may be affecting our brain is largely unknown.
A collaborative team at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center
(Annadora J. Bruce-Keller, J. Michael Salbaum, and Hans-Rudolf
Berthoud – the project leader) and the LSU Health Sciences Center New
Orleans (David A. Welsh, Christopher M. Taylor, Luo Meng, and Eugene
Blanchard, IV) is getting a whole lot closer to answering this key question.
have become increasingly sedentary, more
people have begun strugglingwith obesity and
themental challenges that might stem from it,
including dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
Scientists have begun to study howourmicro-
biomes can affect our overall health, includ-
ing regulation of digestion and body weight,
allergies, auto-immune disorders, and even
the function of the brain.
These findings represent the first definitive
evidence that a high-fat diet can influence our
gut bacteria enough to disrupt how our brain
works, and they underscore the important
relationship between the gut and the brain—
something that could be a target for future
therapeutic intervention.
The research team isolated the gut micro-
biota from obese mice that were fed a high
fat diet and from healthy mice that were fed
a lower fat control diet. The gut microbiome
from the high fat diet was transplanted into
one group of young, healthymice (HFD), while
the microbiome from the control diet group
was transplanted into another identical group
of young, healthy mice (CD).
To ensure the quality of the test results, both
groups of mice receiving microbiome trans-
plants were fed the same standard laboratory
diet before and after they getting their new
gut bacteria.
After running a variety of behavioral tests
research
In a new study published online in
Bio-
logical Psychiatry
entitled “Obese-type Gut
Microbiota Induce Neurobehavioral Changes
in theAbsence of Obesity,” the research team
demonstrates that changes to the gut micro-
biome stemming from a high fat diet may be
bad for our brain. Our gut microbiome is the
ecological community of bacteria that literally
shares our body space.This study shows that
a microbiome shaped by an unhealthy, high
fat diet increases anxiety, decreases memory
and causes other cognitive changes.
“The changes in our diet—and subsequently
the bacteria that resides in our gut—have par-
alleled the rise in obesity,”said Bruce-Keller.As
we’ve watched our diets incorporatemore and
more processed foods, and as our lifestyles