Researchers are looking into whether microorganisms that live in the gut may be linked to a person's physical and mental energy levels.
The intestines are home to thousands of species of microorganisms that make up the so-called intestinal microbiome. Scientists are studying the impact of this community of bacteria, fungi, protozoa and viruses on human health. Its connection with depression, obesity, Alzheimer's disease and other diseases is known.
The amount of each type of microorganism is determined by many factors, such as health, eating habits or level of physical activity. Scientists have wondered if there is any connection between the microbiome and a person's energy levels.
American researchers from Clarkson University decided to determine whether there are unique gut microbiomes associated with the following four characteristics — mental energy and mental fatigue, physical energy and physical fatigue.
What is a microbiome and why do we need to know about it. Read on MedPortal.
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Because a full study of this problem is too expensive, the researchers decided to conduct an initial study on a small sample of physically active adults. 39 young people who had previously also participated in a study of the intestinal microbiome were invited to the experiment.
First, participants completed an online survey that determined a person’s mental and physical state, his energy and fatigue. The young people were then asked to remember the foods they had eaten in the 24 hours before the experiment. Bacterial DNA was then extracted from their stool samples and analyzed to identify the microbes present. And then the scientists conducted a two-step analysis of the microbial community.
The results of the work confirmed that mental energy and mental fatigue, as well as physical energy and physical fatigue, are four different biological moods that may overlap. As scientists emphasize, a person can be both physically energetic and physically tired at the same time. In addition, it turned out that energy and fatigue are unique characteristics that are determined by individual bacterial communities and are not influenced by diet.
Experts also observed that bacteria and metabolomes responsible for metabolism were associated with either mental , or with physical energy, while bacteria responsible for inflammation in the gut were associated with mental or physical fatigue.
Gut metabolomes are small molecules (amino acids, enzymes, and others) that are produced by the gut microbiota.
“Because we are still learning about the gut microbiome, we don't know if by changing our personality we can see changes in the gut microbiome. “Conversely, by changing the microbiome, can we change our character,” emphasizes study author Ali Boulani from Clarkson University.
It was previously reported that features of the intestinal microbiota may be associated with the risk of a long and severe course of COVID-19.