DR MICHAEL MOSLEY: How ‘bad’ gut bacteria could make you mean and aggressive
You are what you eat is far from a new idea. But would you be surprised to hear that there is a link between our diet and how aggressive we are? And supplementing prisoners’ diets with vitamins and minerals has been shown to reduce violence and bad behavior?
The idea that a poor diet can make people more aggressive is also not entirely new.
In the 1940s, a maverick scientist named Dr. Hugh Sinclair (who was one of the first people to demonstrate the health benefits of eating oily fish) urged the wartime British government to give children free cod liver oil and orange juice, on the grounds that, among other things, poor diet can lead to antisocial behavior.
I also remember reading a book in the 1970s, Nutrition And Your Mind, by the American psychologist Dr George Watson, in which he argued that if you get people to eat more nutritious, fiber-rich foods and more ‘good’ bacteria (in the form of yogurt), this will not only improve their intestinal health, but also their behavior.
In the 1970s people didn’t know much about gut bacteria, so he was clearly ahead of his time.
You are what you eat is far from a new idea. But would you be surprised to hear that there is a link between our diet and how aggressive we are?
DR. MICHAEL MOSLEY: How ‘bad’ gut bacteria can make you mean and aggressive
These claims – that you could improve people’s behavior by changing their diet – were largely ignored until researchers at the University of Oxford decided to conduct a nutritional study at a nearby prison in 1998.
At the time, prisoners were fed a cheap and starchy diet, consisting largely of grains, white bread, and ultra-processed foods such as mass-produced meat pies. (According to a friend of mine who works in a prison, little has changed in prison catering.)
For the study, the Oxford researchers randomly assigned 231 male prisoners to take a pill containing vitamins, minerals and omega 3 (a fatty acid that you mainly get from consuming oily fish), or a placebo.
Neither group knew what they were taking, and both groups took their pills every day for just over four months.
During this time, researchers monitored the inmates’ behavior through “the Governor’s Reports,” a record of all actions involving intimidation or violence.
At the end of the study, which was published in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2002, researchers found that there was a notable 37 percent reduction in reports of violence in the group given the supplements, while there was no significant change was in the behavior of the prisoners who took the placebo.
A similar study was conducted later in 2021 by California State University in the US, among 450 young offenders, who were given a vitamin and mineral supplement, with added omega 3 – this led to a 39 percent reduction in violent attacks on staff and others prisoners.
The researchers pointed out that giving prisoners supplements would be a cost-effective way to not only reduce the level of aggression in prisons, as committing violent acts leads to more time in prison, but also to more absenteeism and burn -out among prison staff. , but also save money (according to the Ministry of Justice it costs more than £47,000 a year to house one prisoner – so spending a small amount of money on improving their diet seems like a good investment to me).
And of course it’s not just prisoners. A 2016 University of Pittsburgh study among aggressive children aged 11 to 12 years old found that taking vitamin, mineral and omega-3 supplements for three months led to a significant decrease in aggressive behavior. Unfortunately, when the children stopped taking the supplements, the bad behavior returned. So why does taking supplements have this effect?
Well, anyone who eats a largely junk food diet is almost certainly deficient in key nutrients, and we know from countless studies that getting an adequate supply of the right vitamins and minerals, throughout your life, is essential for proper functioning of your brain. and central nervous system.
And that, in turn, can have a great effect on impulse control, helping you keep your feelings of anger and aggression in check.
There’s also the impact a poor diet has on your gut microbiome: the microbes that live in our gut and influence our health in so many different ways.
In a recent study in mice, yet to be published, scientists from Bar-Ilan University in Israel showed that they can make mice more or less aggressive by simply manipulating their microbiome. The less diverse their microbiome and the more ‘bad’ insects they harbored, the more aggressive the mice behaved.
It’s not clear why, but it could be because the bad bugs produce chemicals that cause inflammation, and those chemicals can travel to the brain through our blood supply.
Conversely, if you have lots of ‘good’ bacteria in your gut, they help produce feel-good hormones like dopamine.
Furthermore, the scientists showed that altering the mice’s microbiome led to turning on or off genes related to aggression in their brains.
I’m not sure all this means we can say, ‘It wasn’t my fault, my gut bacteria made me do it’ – but there seems little doubt that taking care of your gut bacteria can help improve the mood to keep stable.
You know the drill: eat a healthy, Mediterranean diet with lots of vegetables, nuts and oily fish, and consume fermented foods like sauerkraut and yogurt.
It may seem like ages ago, but as you lay on the beach soaking up the sun last summer, what actually happened was that your body was busy producing melanin, a chemical that protects our skin from the sun’s UV light. . Now, researchers at Northwestern University have developed a cream containing a synthetic version of melanin, which not only protects skin from sun damage, but also heals skin already damaged by sun or chemical burns.
The hope is that in the future it can be used in sunscreens and for patients about to undergo radiation therapy.
The future for donor patients?
Stock photo of an anatomical model of a human
I have long been fascinated by the variety of things surgeons can transplant. I have filmed people undergoing kidney transplants, heart transplants, lung transplants and even a hand transplant.
The latter was particularly strange because the donor arm, which had been grafted to a man, actually came from a woman; and because it was a different size, it looked out of place. But the important thing is that it worked.
That’s why I was excited when I read in the Mail that Aaron James, a US veteran, recently underwent the world’s first full eye transplant, along with a partial face transplant, after surviving a 7,200-volt electric shock.
The major disadvantage of transplants is that you normally have to take immune-suppressing medications for life, and these have significant side effects. So much so that one patient who had an arm transplant stopped taking the drugs after three years and lost the arm.
But this could all change: In a recent study from the University of Pittsburgh in the US, patients about to undergo a liver transplant were infused with dendritic cells from the donor. Dendritic cells roam your body identifying anything they think is ‘foreign’ and passing it on to the immune system to destroy it.
But adding dendritic cells before the liver transplant “taught” the recipient’s immune system to tolerate the new organ, so immune-suppressing drugs were not necessary.
If further trials are successful, it could revolutionize transplants.
Embrace the cold to live longer
You may be able to lower your biological age with mild hypothermia (stock photo)
How old are you really? Not how many birthdays you’ve had, but deep down, on a cellular level?
As part of a recent series I did on super-agers (people in their 70s and older who look and act decades younger), I went to the Clock Foundation in California, where they’re doing cutting-edge research into longevity.
They have developed a biological age test – based on work from the University of California, Los Angeles – that measures certain chemical changes in DNA that occur over time. The test is also called the ‘Death Clock’ because it is a much better predictor of how long you have left than the number of candles on your birthday cake. To my relief, the test showed that although I am 66, my biological age is only 61.
Being biologically younger than your age can make a difference: new research published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry has found that if your biological age is five years older than your actual age, you have a 40 percent higher risk of developing dementia or dementia to develop. a stroke.
But you can lower your biological age. Research shows that more exercise, good sleep and a healthy microbiome all help, as does mild hypothermia (i.e. feeling cold). That’s a good thing now that we are heading into the cold months.