Moody Microbes

How are you feeling right now? Happy or sad? Angry or content? The microbes living inside of you, particularly those in your large intestine, are partially responsible for your state of mind right now.

Bacteria from the genus Lactobacillus, a genus of bacteria often found in the intestine.
A creative commons image. Source.  

Microbes—tiny creatures that aren’t even part of the human body—influence the brain?

Yes, intestinal bacteria, and the food we feed them, play critical roles in how we feel. 

Diagram of the large intestine, where our gut bacteria live,
 A creative commons image. Source: Blausen.com staff (2014). "Medical gallery of Blausen Medical 2014". WikiJournal of Medicine 1 (2). DOI:10.15347/wjm/2014.010. ISSN 2002-4436

Here’s how bacteria and diet influence the brain:

Microbes talk to the brain through the immune system. Dendritic cells—immune system cells in gut lining—constantly monitor microbes for misbehavior. If the dendritic cells sense that the intestinal bacteria are acting up, they trigger the release of cytokines—compounds that cause gut inflammation.

Cytokines communicate with the brain in two ways: as hormones and as signals sent via the vagus nerve—a thick nerve connecting the gut to the brain. These hormonal and nervous system signals make the brain reduce energy levels, and increase pain sensitivity. Cytokines can even induce feelings of sadness often felt during a stomach ache or gut infection.

It doesn’t require a full-blown gut infection to induce gut inflammation—simply eating a diet high in animal fat can cause the release of cytokines—and the subsequent mood drop.

Bacteria from the genus Klebsiella, a genus often found living in the gut.
A creative commons image. Source.

Microbes also signal the brain through metabolites—byproducts of microbial digestion. The metabolites microbes produce change based on what food we feed them. Metabolites travel through the bloodstream and act as hormones in the brain to influence our moods.

Bacteria from the genus Lactobacillus, a genus of bacteria often found in the intestine.
A creative commons image. Source.

 Generally, food that is good for humans also is good for our bacteria and causes them to release beneficial metabolites. Some metabolites, like those released after eating whole grains and vegetables, trigger release of serotonin, a neurotransmitter which is linked to improved mood. Fatty, unhealthy food on the other hand is likely to cause gut inflammation and the depressed mood that comes with that condition.

Illustration of a human brain. A public domain image. Source.

Gut microbes are so vital to our emotional state and thought process that scientists are starting to think of the gut, the brain, and the human microbiome as a connected system rather than separate entities. This system is often called the gut/brain/microbiome axis. Next time you are in a good mood remember to thank your intestinal microbes!

Check out a previous post I wrote on microbes, We Need Bacteria, to read about the connection between microbes and food allergies.

Sources.

It's Alive! The Sourdough Experiment Part Two

Here’s a jar of flour and water, also known as my sourdough starter. It’s pale, bubbly, and sour-smelling. 

Photo by blog author.

My sourdough starter, like every sourdough starter, contains a unique combination of yeasts—which make sourdough bread rise—and lactic acid bacteria—which make sourdough bread sour. The external environment, the temperature, and the type of flour used influence which specific types of yeast and lactic acid bacteria are present in a sourdough starter. Each sourdough microbiome produces a distinctively flavored sourdough bread. The bread made with my starter tastes different than the bread made with any other starter, but the process for making all sourdough starters is basically the same.

Inside of a sourdough starter both yeasts and lactic acid bacteria break down carbohydrates in the flour for fuel. (To learn more about this process see my last post.)

Do yeasts and lactic acid bacteria compete with each other for resources in the starter or do they work together?

Well, they do a little bit of both.

Yeast and lactic acid bacteria do compete with each other for resources like carbohydrates, and nitrogen, used to make proteins.  But, despite occasional skirmishes, yeast and lactic acid bacteria work together to successfully survive in the sourdough starter.

We know that yeast and lactic acid bacteria both break down carbohydrates in flour. What I did not mention yet is that there are different types for carbohydrates in flour, like maltose, glucose, fructose, and sucrose. Yeast can digest some of these carbohydrates and lactic acid bacteria can digest others. Yeast and lactic acid bacteria collaborate to consume all these carbohydrates. Here’s an example of how the common sourdough yeast species Saccharomyces exigus and lactic acid bacteria cooperate.

 

Image by blog author

While the yeasts are digesting carbohydrates, they also release amino acids lactic acid bacteria need to survive.

But what do all these microbial interactions mean for us, the ones eating the sourdough?

While breaking down carbohydrates for their own fuel, yeasts and lactic acid bacteria make these carbohydrates easier for us to digest. Because of this, eating sourdough bread does not cause abrupt spikes and drops in blood sugar levels like eating bread made with packaged yeast does.

Sourdough yeasts also help us absorb minerals more easily. Here’s how:

Image by blog author.

In addition to being healthy, well-made sourdough tastes great! Yeasts and lactic acid bacteria in the sourdough starter produce lots of tasty compounds, like buttery diacetyls, and sour organic acids. Just think—most of the flavor and microbial complexities in sourdough bread originated in a jar of flour and water.

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It's Alive! The Sourdough Experiment Part One

 The first loaf of sourdough bread I made tasted good covered in melted cheese—in the way I imagine cardboard would taste good covered in melted cheese. My sourdough bread was dry, crumbly, flavorless, and barely edible.

The dry, crumbly bread. Photo by blog author.

What went wrong? I have a few ideas, but before I share my hypothesis for the Great Bread Failure, let me explain what exactly sourdough bread is.

Bread is leavened with yeast—a microscopic fungus which breaks down carbohydrates in flour and releases carbon dioxide and ethanol as byproducts. The carbon dioxide released by the yeast fills the bread dough with gas and makes the dough rise, giving the bread the fluffy texture we expect.

Dry packaged baker's yeast. Photo by blog author.

Most bread we make and eat today is leavened with dried baker’s yeast—Saccharomyces cerevisiae—a yeast species specifically bred for its leavening capability. S. cerevisiae isn’t the only yeast that can leaven bread. Wild yeasts growing on food and on practically every other surface can also be used to make bread—if we can catch them.

A sourdough starter, simply made of flour and water, is the way people harnessed the power of wild yeasts for centuries. This starter is used in place of dry yeast to make bread. Or, I should say dry yeast is used in place of a sourdough starter, as dry yeast is a fairly recent invention and originally all breads were sourdough.

My bubbling sourdough starter. The bubbles are carbon dioxide being released by the yeast.
Photo by blog author.

The water in the sourdough starter prompts flour enzymes to break down starches in the flour into carbohydrates that yeasts can digest. The yeast naturally found in the flour begin to ferment these carbohydrates and release carbon dioxide, ethanol, and a variety of other byproducts, including B vitamins and organic acids.

The yeasts in the sourdough starter are joined by lactic acid bacteria, a type of beneficial bacteria which lives on food and in soil. The lactic acid bacteria also ferment carbohydrates in the flour, but the main byproducts they produce are lactic and acetic acid. Lactic acid bacteria are responsible for the “sour” in sourdough. (To learn more about lactic acid bacteria check out my blog post on vegetable fermentation.) 

Once a sourdough ferments for about a week, it is ready to be used to make delicious sour bread.

Or in my case, not-so-delicious bread. My sourdough didn’t even taste sour!

The sourdough recipe I used called for baking soda, another leavening agent mainly used in quick breads. Baking soda reacts with acid to release the carbon dioxide which allows the bread to rise, but during the reaction the acid is neutralized. When I mixed baking soda with my sourdough starter, it fizzed like a baking-soda-and-vinegar volcano releasing copious amounts of carbon dioxide. While the baking soda helped my bread rise faster, it also neutralized all the tasty lactic and acetic acid in the dough, leaving my concoction decidedly un-sour and un-tasty.

Baking Soda. Photo by blog author.

Sourdough starters contain yeast, and baking soda is not needed to leaven the bread. However, sourdough breads take a very long time to rise, which is why some recipes call for baking soda to speed along the rising process. But baking soda destroys the sourdough’s flavor, and I don’t think the faster leavening time is worth it.

The baking soda explains why my bread wasn’t sour, but not why it was so dry and crumbly.

When I was making my sourdough, I got a little carried away with adding whole-wheat flour. Whole-wheat flour is very healthy, but the bran in it soaks up lots of water—more water than I accounted for. Since I didn’t add enough water to the dough I ended up with dehydrated and unappetizing bread.

Despite my struggle with my first sourdough attempt, I was determined to try again, and sourdough take two turned out wonderfully! I did not use baking soda and I used a mixture of both whole-wheat and white flour to avoid the dehydration problem.

The tasty sourdough bread! Photo by blog author.

Why was I so determined to repeat the sourdough experiment? One reason is because well-done sourdough is delicious and has many health benefits, but the reason I really am interested in sourdough is the dynamic and little-known relationship between the yeast and lactic acid bacteria in the sourdough starter. More on that relationship in my next post!

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We Need Bacteria

Food allergies are on the rise. If we can eradicate smallpox, why are people becoming fatally ill when exposed to food that’s supposed to be good for them? Are we forgetting about some vital aspect of human health?

I learned from Dr. Jack Gilbert at the American Museum of Natural History’s Teen SciCafe, that yes we are neglecting an important aspect of human health.

Well, it’s not exactly human health that we’re forgetting about but the health of the millions of microbes that cover our skin and inhabit every organ of our bodies except the brain. Yes, bacteria are everywhere, and yes they are good for us.

Peanut butter toast and milk, standard snack or a potential hazard?

In our society we are taught that bacteria are bad and we must kill them with soap. While this is true about some bacteria, there are many other microbes that we need to survive.

 Dr. Jack Gilbert and his colleagues have studied differences in sterile mice (mice never exposed to any bacteria) and normal mice (teeming with bacteria). They found sterile mice’s organs wouldn’t develop properly, they had no fight or flight response to stressful situations, and these mice had severe food allergies. When these sterile mice were treated with good bacteria, they regained their fight or flight response and became tolerant of foods that once poisoned them.

Bacteria are amazing, they’ve been on earth for 3.8 billion years, far longer than we have. We evolved to live with and depend on bacteria. Each of us have our own unique microbe colony which influences many bodily functions from weight gain, to food tolerance, to mental health.

Okay, now we know there’s a link between bacteria and health, now what do we do?

Can we use our knowledge to help decrease risk of food allergies? According to Dr. Gilbert the answer is yes, but we might have to change the way the medical field functions. The nature of our modern, western, medical field is one-size-fits-all. We want easy treatments that work the same way on everyone. But, everyone has a unique microbe colony. Treatments that work for me based off my microbe colony might not work for you. Now that we can figure out people’s microbiomes and understand what they mean, it might be time to go back to personalized medicine.

Dr. Gilbert and his colleagues have worked with more personalized microbe therapy for children with food allergies by introducing butyrate-producing bacteria to their intestines. The bacteria helped the children to handle trigger foods better and reduced the severity of the children’s reactions, or even ended the reactions all together.

Bacteria aren’t the cure-all but it’s about time they get attention. At the Teen SciCafe hosted by American Museum of Natural History, microbes were put in the spotlight thanks to Dr. Gilbert’s lecture. We also got to try out a new student designed card game called Gutsy all about microbes in the gut. The card game was the perfect way to set the mood for microbe talk. Now I’m very excited about bacteria! Improving microbial health can have big impacts, such as reducing risk of food allergies, but doesn’t have to be complicated, just spending more time outdoors and eating food rich in good bacteria can improve your microbiome. (Sauerkraut anyone?)