Recent research has shown how fundamentally important the bacteria in our gut are to the rest of our mental and physical health, affecting everything from our appetite to our state of mind.
Now a new study suggests that our gut bacteria could even play a role in protecting us from brain damage, with an experiment involving mice showing that certain types of stomach microbes can actually help reduce the severity of strokes.
"Our experiment shows a new relationship between the brain and the intestine,"said neuroscientist Josef Anrather from the Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute at Cornell University. "The intestinal microbiota shape stroke outcome, which will have an impact [on] how the medical community views stroke and defines stroke risk."
Anrather and his colleagues analyed two groups of mice – one received a combination of antibiotics that tweaked their gut microbiota, and the other acted as a control group, with no alterations made to their gut microbiota over the course of the experiment.
Read more:
Tweaking Gut Bacteria Could help Prevent Brain Strokes
