How Your Microbiome Affects Mood and Mental Health

There is a third nervous system in your gut with more nerves than your spinal cord

Feeling anxious or depressed? There could be a problem with your the brain in your stomach. Pixabay

The microbiome—the collection of microorganisms that live in the human body—is composed of a mind-blowing number of incredibly minute organisms that have an enormous impact on your health, including your mood and mental health. Exactly how do these bacteria, fungi, viruses, and other microbes affect us?

You may think your brain does most of the talking, sending messages to your gut where a significant number of your microbes reside, but it is actually the other way around. Your gut transmits far more information to the brain. Those messages travel along the vagus nerve, an internal highway that runs from the brain stem to the colon—the brain-gut axis.