Food, gut microbiota and gut-brain axis: how to choose the best diet
Chief Gastroenterologist, outpatient clinic, Clinical Hospital, University of São Paulo – Brazil
The search for the healthiest diet has been following humans since forever. The Mediterranean diet has been considered the example of the healthiest, but not always food will bring the same results for different individuals. There are several, for example, adverse reactions to food(1).
Diet can lead to various undesirable symptoms by different mechanisms. One of them, perhaps the most important, is the modification of the microbiota promoted by the ingestion of various foods, either by possible prebiotic effect, or by other mechanisms.
The diet clearly modifies the microbiota, but does so differently in different individuals, often being unpredictable what kind of change will happen(2).
The modification of the microbiota, can lead us to a state that we call dysbiosis, which translates into an increase in intestinal permeability, inflammation of the submucosa and alteration of the gut-brain axis. The microbiota and the food itself can also interact directly with enteroendocrine cells, responsible to produce more than 30 intestinal hormones and with the ability to modify the gut-brain axis directly. This axis is related to changes in the immune response of our organism, participating in the pathophysiology of various intestinal, neurological, psychiatric and immunomediated diseases, besides modulating the sleep-wake cycle(3, 4).
Conclusions: the diet that is most appropriate for us will depend on numerous intestinal and extra intestinal factors, and must be individualized so that we can have a happier and longer life.
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2. Johnson AJ, Vangay P, Al-Ghalith GA, Hillmann BM, Ward TL, Shields-Cutler RR, et al. Daily Sampling Reveals Personalized Diet-Microbiome Associations in Humans. Cell Host Microbe. 2019;25(6):789-802 e5.
3. Willing BP, Russell SL, Finlay BB. Shifting the balance: antibiotic effects on host-microbiota mutualism. Nat Rev Microbiol. 2011;9(4):233-43.
4. Fukui H, Xu X, Miwa H. Role of Gut Microbiota-Gut Hormone Axis in the Pathophysiology of Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders. J Neurogastroenterol Motil. 2018;24(3):367-86.