[www.bbc.com]

"I have some startling news: you are not human. At least, by some counts. While you are indeed made up of billions of human cells working in remarkable concert, these are easily outnumbered by the bacterial cells that live on and in you – your microbiome. There are ten of them for every one of your own cells, and they add an extra two kilograms (4.4lbs) to your body.

Far from being freeloading passengers, many of these microbes actively help digest food and prevent infection. And now evidence is emerging that these tiny organisms may also have a profound impact on the brain too. They are a living augmentation of your body – and like any enhancement, this means they could, in principle, be upgraded. So, could you hack your microbiome to make yourself healthier, happier, and smarter too?"

Definitely in my opinion, we are starting to see more and more research linking disturbances in the gut flora with behaviour and mental disorders such as anxiety and depression.

Prescript-Assist Soil Based Organisms Probiotic is one, if not the best probiotic/prebiotic formulation on the market. Has 29 different SBO strains compared to other soil based organism probiotics. Also has double blind placebo controlled studies backing its effectiveness at restoring the gut micro flora and treating the likes of irritable bowel syndrome.

[nutritionfacts.org]

"Before Thorazine was invented in 1950, mental illness was often treated surgically. In fact in 1949 the inventor of the lobotomy was awared the Nobel Prize, but before tens of thousands were lobotomized, colectomy was all the rage. There was this theory that bad bacteria in the gut, intestinal putrefaction was the cause of mental illness, so the cure, was to just surgically remove the colon. Yes, the surgery killed about one in three, but when they didn't die surgeons bragged that, for example, when he resected the colons of school children as a preventive measure, there was a cessation of abnormal sex practices, such as masturbation, which was viewed at the time as a precursor for mental illness later in life.

There were others, though, that took a less drastic approach, suggesting one could instead treat this intestinal putrefaction by changing the intestinal flora. So over a century ago there were reports of successfully treating psychiatric illnesses like depression with a dietary regimen that included probiotics. Doctors percieved a connection between depression and feces deficient in quantity and moisture and very offensive in odour. And so they gave patients probiotics and not only did people feel better psychologically, but their "feces increase in quantity, become softer, and of regular consistency, and the offensive smell diminishes." Concurrent with the probiotics, however, all patients were started on a vegetarian diet, so it may not have been the probiotics at all.

This field of inquiry remained dormant for about a hundred years, but a new discipline has recently emerged known as enteric—meaning intestinal---neuroscience. Our enteric nervous system, the collection of nerves in our gut has been referred to as our "second brain given it's size, complexity and similarity. We've got as many nerves in our gut as in our spinal cord. And it kinda makes sense. The size and complexity of our gut brain is not surprising when considering the challenges posed by the interface…with our largest body surface. We have a hundred times more contact with the outside world through our gut than through our skin. And we also have to deal our 100 trillion little friends down there. Takes a lot of processing power.

Now anyone who's ever gotten butterflies in their stomach knows that our mental state can affect our gut. In fact every day stresses can affect the integrity of our gut flora. This innovative study looked at feces scraped from used toilet paper in undergrads during exam week. This is how many bacteria they had in their feces before the exam, but look what happened on exam day and in fact lasted the whole week. So our mental state can affect our gut, but can our gut affect our mental state? We didn't know until recently.

For example, "many suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome complain of gut dysfunction, so researchers tried giving people probiotics to see if their mental and emotional state could be improved, and it indeed appeared to help. What about for healthy people though? This is the study that really rocked the scientific establishment. An assessment of the psychotropic properties of probiotics. One month of probiotics was found to significantly decrease symptoms of anxiety, depression, anger and hostility. How is that possible? Well, a variety of medchanisms have been proposed for how intestinal bacteria may be communicating with our brain.

Until that study was published, the idea that probiotic bacteria administered to the intestine could influence the brain seemed almost surreal. Like science fiction. Well, science yes, but fiction no. Likely, organisms already inside us carry out some degree of influence on our mental well-being. So might people suffering from certain forms of mental health problems benefit from a fecal transplant from someone with more happy go lucky bacteria? We don't know, but this ability of probiotics to affect brain processes is perhaps one of the most exciting recent developments in probiotic research"