前期中間考査

What do you image its main functions may be?

Over the past several decades, few people paid much attention to the findings of researchers studying gut-brain interaction.

In recent years, however, the gut-brain connection has become a hot topic among scientists.

This shift came with the rapid growth of knowledge and data about the bacteria and viruses that live inside the gut.

These tiny organisms inhabiting our gut are called the gut microbiome.

Surprisingly, we are outnumbered by these invisible microorganisms.

There are 100,000 times more microbes in your gut alone than there are people on earth!

Dramatic technological changes have recently occurred in our ability to identify and characterize these microorganisms, and most of this progress has occurred in the last decade.

Presently, the topic of the gut microbiome has spread into almost every specialty of medicine, including psychiatry and surgery.

Invisible communities of microbes are everywhere in our world, including plants, animals, soils, deep-sea volcanic cracks, and the upper atmosphere, and thus the interest in the world of microorganisms has also spread to scientists studying oceans, the land, and forests.

The benefits derived from the gut microbiome have profound consequences for our health.

Some of the best-known benefits include

assistance in the digestion of food components our guts can't handle by themselves,

regulation of our bodies' metabolism,

processing and dealing with harmful chemicals that we ingest with our food,

training and regulation of the immune system,

and prevention of disease.

Conversely, disturbances in the gut microbiome are associated with a wide variety of diseases, such as bowel disease, diarrhea, and asthma, and they may even play a role in brain disorders like Parkinson's disease.

As the phrase "gut feeling" suggests, our mind is closely connected with our gut.

In fact, our gut and brain have bodily connections, and this link is assisted by biological communication signals carried throughout the bloodstream.

Let's take a closer look at what is meant by the "gut".

It is indeed your digestive system, but it is far more complex than a simple food-processing machine.

Your gut has capabilities that surpass all your other organs and even match your brain.

It has its own nervous system and is therefore often referred to as the "second brain".

This second brain is made up of 50-100 million nerve cells, as many as are contained in your spinal cord.

The immune cells residing in your gut make up the largest component of your body's immune system.

in other words, there are more immune cells living in the wall of your gut than circulating in the bloodstream.

And there is a good reason for the massing of these cells in this particular location,

Which may be visited by potentially lethal microorganisms coming from what we eat.

The gut-brain immune defense system can identify and destroy a single species of such invaders that enter our digestive system by accident.

The gut is also the largest storage facility for serotonin in our body.

Ninety-five percent of the body's serotonin is stored there.

Serotonin is a signaling molecule that plays a crucial role within the gut-brain connection.

It is not only essential for normal intestinal functions, such as moving food through our digestive system, but it also plays an important role in such vital functions as sleep, appetite, pain sensitivity, mood, and overall well-being.

The gut is connected to the brain through thick nerve cables that can transfer in both directions and through communication channels that use the bloodstream

hormones and signaling molecules (informing of invaders) produced by the gut signaling up to the brain, and hormones produced by the brain signaling down to the various cells in the gut.

Many of the gut signals reaching the brain will not only generate gut sensations, such as the fullness after a nice meal, nausea and discomfort, and feelings of well-being, but will also cause responses of the brain that it sends back to the gut.

And the brain doesn't forget about these feelings, either.

Gut feelings are stored in vast databases in the brain, which can later be accessed when making decisions.

What is revolutionary about the emerging science of gut-brain communication is that we are now grasping a new understanding of disease, health, and mental well-being, based on an ecological view of our bodies.