Introducing our Gut Health Canvas
In this series, we dive into the links between the gut and various aspects of our mental and physical health.
Mental Health: Resilience

Can your gut improve your resilience?
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Resilience refers to the process of adapting and coping with stress and trauma. Some individuals show a greater degree of resilience than others.
- 🐭 When exposed to highly stressful situations, mice treated with Bifidobacterium showed increased resilience as compared to the controls which showed depression symptoms after exposure to a stressful event. Treatment with Lactobacillus rhamnosus also led to a reduction of anxiety-like behavior.
- Further human studies are needed to expand our understanding of the specific mechanisms linking resilience to the gut microbiome.
- Still, growing body of evidence shows that the balance of the gut microbiota is intimately involved in regulating the host's psychology, emotions, and cognition in response to stressful events.
- 👨 Studies have shown that patients with IBD are more susceptible to PTSD, and PTSD exacerbates IBD symptoms (Ke et al., 2023).
👨 Research done in humans
🐭 Research done in mice
Sources:
Wang et al. 2023Ke et al. 2023