Gut microbiota

[Music] [Sound] one of the most important topics that's been in the neuroscience of well-being is the research   the relationship between the gut and the brain

  that has been a profound revolution to   scientific level because of the implications that it has  for each one of us in our daily life   but also for the clinical implications  in the particular field of neurology of the   mental health and let's talk a little bit about what does it mean  means about the relationship between the gut and the   and the brain and we start by defining what the microbiota is

  microbiota the microbiota is the entire set of   microorganisms that live in our body  and when we refer to micro microorganisms   we are talking mainly about bacteria but also fungi viruses and  also fungi viruses and yeasts but we are also talking about   mainly bacteria and until very recently  10 years ago we thought that we were talking about bacteria

   that all those tiny little microorganisms  tiny little critters that live in our body   were either harmful because they were harmful to our health or they were just little parasites

   it was soon discovered that they have an absolutely vital function in our body for our health

   the synthesis of nutrients for the endocrine  endocrine system in particular but gradually it has been   that all these microorganisms are a fundamental part of the nervous system and all these microorganisms are a fundamental part of the   set of microorganisms that live in our body is what we call microbiota and   the microbiota is a little bit better understood  thanks to the hypothesis of eugene rosenberg in   israel who developed what was the oloviant hypothesis  hypothesis, and this is something that is quite   interesting and very beautiful because neuroscience or  science in general is starting to consider us more   than individuals that is to say isolated individual beings  it starts to consider us as oloviants and oloviants

   it means interaction of holographic lives means that we are one life containing many   lives that interact with each other and as he Rosenberg discovered it  Rosenberg discovered it as he was studying   the corals not the seafloor and he began to realize that the structure  to realize that the structure and the morphology   of those corals was symbiotically dependent on the amount of  amount of microorganisms that inhabited it

   gradually began to study the relationship  between the inquiline and the host as it is   that relationship between the one who is hosting a life and the one  that receives the one that is living inside another   life from then on we were considered as human beings as I say oloviants

  human beings as I say we are a   holistic holographic interaction which is also  is said of microorganisms when we speak of   the microbiota of the body as we normally  we refer to the intestinal microbiota but we are referring   we have microbiota all over the body there is a network of microbiota  of microbiota that is absolutely widespread that's in the   all over our skin especially in the folds of our body there is a tremendous  our body there is a microbiota that is tremendously   important as we'll see later which is the microbiota of the urogenital tract which is essential and fundamental in   the whole pregnancy but also at the time of the birth of the  the birth of the child that's going to regulate the   that is its immune and endocrine system we have  another fundamental microbiota in everything that is   the niche of the mouth the niches are the places  the different places where the microbiota lives   in our body the microbiota of the mouth is a very complex microbiota  a very complex microbiota and that nowadays   because it's being studied a lot from the neurological point of  neurological point of view for example there are researches no that relate the content, the quantity and the  composition of the bacteria of the microbiota the development of Alzheimer's disease and related to the microbiota that inhabits the entire mouth

   our oral cavity the oral microbiota is what is the  what is the microbiota that lives in our intestine   mainly in the large intestine 90% of the microbiota of our  microbiota of our body down to the intestine are   we would take all of those tiny little microscopic bugs that inhabit  microscopic little bugs that live inside of the   and we could gather them together we would get up to 2 kilos of microbiota have approximately more   almost 100 times more genetic content than human  human cells and it was recently discovered that   we have a genetic transfer that is not only vertical  is vertical that is to say the one that comes from our   parents to us but also horizontally that is to say  that is to say between species and from there we   has begun to think about the role that these bacteria have played  those bacteria throughout the evolution of the   human being but not only the evolution of our  body with all of its organisms and its   systems but what role the microbiota has played in the development of the brain  in the development of the brain in the development of our   cognitive capacities that is a whole subject of research that is  research that is awakening therefore results   absolutely interesting but as I say when we refer to the microbiota the relationship with the   microbiota normally we are talking about the intestinal microbiota  gut microbiota so lately we're talking about the   about about five years ago the neuroscience world started to get interested in the   microbiota that inhabits our gut because it was discovered  because it was discovered that there is a direct relationship   between the gut and the brain what we call  the gut-brain axis as studied by neuroscience

   well it's through biochemistry that is to say  we study it in a neuroscience lab

   which bacteria which types of bacteria fungi and yeasts  yeasts make up our microbiota and what role do they play in   in the different brain processes and that's why what we do in a laboratory  that's why what we do in a laboratory of   neuroscience is that we don't just measure with neuroimaging techniques what is  neuroimaging techniques what's going on in the brain of   a person as is their anatomy as is the function of the brain but also now what is being done   is to ask for a stool analysis from participants  to the volunteers who volunteer for an experiment

   of cognitive neuroscience and because by stool analysis is the only  stool analysis because it's the only way that we have to do it

   at the moment to know what is the content of the microbiota  the microbiota when you do experiments on   the university research experiments  because it is required that the experiments that the   procedure is absolutely non-invasive for the  the person can not be introduced because things that are not   you can alter is the structure of the person  so a stool sample is requested for this purpose   and then through an analysis of genetic sequencing  sequencing analysis what is done is to decipher what type of   of bugs, so to speak, what type of bacteria and in what concentration that  in what concentration that person has had in their   intestinal microbiota another field that's important within the  important within the microbiota and that affects the very much to the neuroscience of well-being is that it  influences the microbiota normally when   we are asked or we think about the microbiota this  microbiota the first thing that we think about is the diet   and it's true that it's one of the ingredients that most affects the microbiota that we eat because it makes us   some populations of bacteria feed against other populations  other populations to die, it generates a   balance favors the biodiversity in our microbiota  in our microbiota then the diet of course   is an ingredient that we're going to be looking at later on  but there are other factors that affect a lot   to the microbiota to study everything that affects  the microbiota is also to study everything that affects the   that affects our nervous system, our endocrine  endocrine system and our immune system

   so for example what is it that has been seen  that the intestinal microbiota is very much affected

   by pollution is very much affected by whether or not  a person smokes or doesn't smoke it is very much affected   by the amount of medications especially antibiotics that we  antibiotics that we consume we have to take into account   that the ingestion of an antibiotic can produce an imbalance in the  can produce an imbalance in the microbiota that can   can last from one month to people with almost a year of imbalance in the microbiota

   microbiota another factor that greatly affects  sex if you're a man or if you're a woman, if you're a man or if you're a man

   woman until very recently in scientific research  research because the studies were done with   a population of people today in any scientific  scientific journal to pass the criteria of the   scientific method you can't mix men and women  women because because the microbiota of a male   and a woman's microbiota is very different you can not  to make averages we have microbiota is that they are   very different and so it also depends on our endocrine system  on our endocrine system another one of the factors   that also affect the microbiota a lot is physical exercise

  physical exercise physical exercise favors   our microbiota studies that we've seen and  among others one of the studies in which I've   I've participated in has shown that people  who have considerable physical activity   regular in their life have a microbiota that has a much more diverse  much more diverse, but above all it is a microbiota that is   microbiota that is stronger in its equilibria  in the balance of competition and cooperation is   a microbiota therefore that is stronger in the face of attacks is more resistant  to attacks is more resistant has more capacity   to fight to favor cooperation between different bacteria  different bacteria to defend themselves against certain   organisms another one of the studies that is being seen now is the ability of the microbiota to   cope with resetting itself if we could say so when we do physical  so when we do a physical exercise that almost   we are driven to exhaustion by the physical exercise  because it's something that's very complex not only because of the   movement requires a lot of effort for the brain and to do physical exercise   favors the motility of our intestine and therefore  thus activates all the mechanisms of cooperation   and incompetence of the intestinal microbiota and  another factor that we will see later on that   microbiota is very much affected by the social interactions  interactions but there is one factor that is very important not that is being advocated lately and that I think has a lot of social relevance and that is that it's been seen   the importance of being born by childbirth  and not only by caesarean section this is essential   in some countries where according to  certain studies we abuse of cesarean sections when we   a child is born because it is considered that practically  their microbiota can be said to be more or less   sterile when it's born and it has to pass through the mother's birth canal

  the birth canal of the mother is the moment when the   child receives the microbiota at that moment it is soaked by a microbiota of a mother and this is also   important because it calls us to take care of the mother's  the health of the mother during the pregnancy to take care of   the anxiety levels to take care of the stress levels  stress levels and the rest that a mother may have already   that stress is one of the great alterators of our microbiota

  our microbiota so when a child has had a stressful   seen that when a child is born through the birth canal when it takes the  the mother's microbiota and not the mother's microbiota

   the microbiota of the clinical environment in which it was born  when born by cesarean section causes the microbiota to   your immune system is stronger and it's stronger not only at the time  not only at the moment when he does what he's been   has seen is that it's stronger in the first few  years of his life the same thing has been related to   breastfeeding the microbiota that we pass on through breastfeeding  through breastfeeding serves to reeducate your   immune system but also your endocrine system and your nervous system these discoveries by   example have given rise to practices that  it seems to me that it is one of the first   benefits that this research has had and  is that making children that have had to see the   born by cesarean section for some conditions when they are  they are born a gauze is put in the birth canal from   the mother so that she is soaked with the microbiota and  when the child is born it is impregnated with that microbiota

   and it's all over his face and his little body so that he gets that microbiota  that microbiota because it's like I say because it's going to   influence on his immune system especially and his development  development then look at what's been changed   in the last ten years is to consider the microbiota  microbiota as something that was threatening to our   health or a parasite, to completely change the paradigm  paradigm and consider that the microbiota is vital to our health

   for our health then we have extended  the functions that are now given to the microbiota

   microbiota not only that of extracting the nutrients from what we  nutrients from what we eat, but they have a   absolutely fundamental role in the endocrine  endocrine system, in the immune system, and in the   nervous system and I would stay with a phrase that said  hippocrates which is considered by many to be   the father of medicine who said let your food be your medicine and let your medicine be your food

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