A Diet Rich In Probitics Can Help You Fight Depression

Having a diet rich in probiotics helps in keeping your gut healthy at all times. But probiotics, or good and helpful bacteria, do more than just keeping your gut strong. They help in fighting depression! This was discovered through a mice study. Living bacteria and yeasts, the probiotics, are beneficial for your health, especially the digestive system of your body. Results showed that rats living only on a fatty diet developed a depression-like behavior. However, rats who were given the probiotic-rich water continued to have a neutral behavior.

However, rats who did not receive probiotics showed an increased number of WBCs in their brain which could signal chronic inflammation and could be seen in fatty tissues and livers of diabetics and obese people. However, lower levels of these cells were seen in the brain of rats who received the probiotic-enriched water.

"This may indicate that one of the things the probiotics do is work to reprogramme the immune system. In this study, the rats offset the consequences of the fatty diet with the help of probiotics, so that they were on par with their peers in the control group," Anders Abildgaard, researcher at the Aarhus University in Denmark.

RELATED STORIES

Nutritionist Shares Do's And Dont's For Women Suffering From PCOS

In her latest Instagram post, nutritionist Lovneet Batra answers some frequently asked questions about PCOS.

Here's How Stress, Depression Are Affecting Your Overall Health

Let's explore how stress, depression influences your body and what you can do to address them.

"This is a fascinating discovery that supports the conclusion that probiotics, which primarily work in the intestines, also affect the brain. That makes the result interesting for the treatment of depression," Abildgaard added.

The study published in the Brain, Behavior, and Immunity journal, was where the rats were divided in two groups where one group was fed a high-fat and fibrous diet and the other was given probiotic water.

12 weeks later, researchers observed that rats that were given the fatty foods with no probiotics showed signs of depression when given a swimming test. Though it is difficult to judge if it will have the same impact on humans or not, it is possible to think of depressed people benefitting from probiotic consumption, Abildgaard said.

Top 10 probiotic foods you must have: