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We understand that hardcore neuroscience and holistic nutrition may seem like an unlikely pair. But together, they are a dynamic duo! At NeuroTrition, our goal is to combine them in a way that transforms the brain science of nutrition into a simple, achievable format, so the knowledge you need is not lost in translation.

We are dedicated to going beyond the Band-Aid for brain and mental health, and to getting this important information to the public. And that’s why we’ve proudly partnered with Botanica to go on a gut-brain loving tour!

Neuroscience and psychiatry are facing a serious shift in their paradigms as the gut microbiome becomes poised to be the next big thing in brain and mental healthcare.

Can you imagine … probiotics as the next antidepressant or anxiolytic medication?

We’re here to share the latest research on your microbiome, how it plays a role in stress and inflammation, and on how it communicates directly with your brain. We’re also here to introduce you to the fascinating world of psychobiotics, and teach you about prebiotics (food for your probiotics!). We’re going to outline what the science is saying about the gut-brain link in various mental health conditions and how it can help you with mood, stress and energy. Most importantly, you will leave armed with the five key rituals that form the core of our NeuroTrition Rx for happy, healthy guts and brains.

So in the name of our gut microbiomes helping build our best brains, let’s bring neuroscience and nutrition to the table. Together.

Orsha Magyar, MSc, BSc, CHN Founder & CEO, NeuroTrition Inc.

02. Your Gut Garden

02. “Gut, please meet Brain”

03. Breaking Down The Barriers

03. I’m healthy, do I need probiotics?

04. Psychobiotics: More Than Just Psychobabble

04. Nutritional Psychiatry: Going Beyond The Band-Aid

05. Ritual 1: Probiotics

06. Ritual 2: Prebiotics

07. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: Gut, Stress & Inflammation

07. Ritual 3: Anti-Inflammatory Eating

08. Ritual 4: Healthy Fats

09. Be Mindful of Your Brain & Gut

09. Ritual 5: Mindfulness

10. References

NeuroTrition Inc.

www.neurotrition.ca [email protected] 403.998.1211

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The Gut Brain Connection5 RITUALS TO FEED YOUR GUT & FUEL YOUR BRAIN

The Gut Brain Connection | neurotrition.ca 02

DID YOU KNOW?

This concept of our gut influencing our brain has existed for almost two centuries. It has even been widely integrated into our everyday vernacular:

“gut feelings, gut instinct, gutted, gutsy, it takes guts, butterflies in our tummy, sick to my stomach”

However, it was not until the advent of brain imaging that neuroscien-tists really began to appreciate the influence of our gut-brain axis on our brain and mental health.

The gut stands proudly with the brain in every client’s NeuroTrition Rx. Because science tells us your gut influences how you feel, think and behave:

+ Poor Memory + Brain Fog + High Stress + Depression + Anxiety

+ Fatigue + Insomnia + Poor Concentration

Your Gut GardenYour gut microbiome is like a lush tropical garden home to trillions of microbes, comprising approximately 1800 different phyla and 40,000 bacterial species—this is 1.3 to 10 times the number of human cells!

The various species of bacteria, your microbiota, interact with the rest of your body and affect various bodily functions.

Now, if you’ve ever had that “gut feeling” that your gut talked to your brain, and influenced how you felt, thought or behaved … you were right (so always listen to your gut, seriously!)

“Gut, please meet Brain”Your gut and brain do literally talk to each other, and the gut microbiota is now seen as a key regulator of the gut-brain axis.

Scientists are studying just how exactly our microbiome communicates with our central nervous system (including the brain). Here’s what they know so far::

1 Immune Responses

2 Vagus Nerve

3 Short Chain Fatty Acids

4 Enteric Nervous System

5 Tryptophan Metabolism

A Gut Feeling


Breaking Down The Barriers Like with all relationships, the gut-brain one is all about communication.

So when this communication breaks down … you see where this is headed. It’s not good.

Gut Barrier —> Leaky Gut

Blood Brain Barrier —> Leaky Brain

“I’m healthy, do I need probiotics?”Evidence suggests that probiotics can help three of the MOST common issues we deal with.

Mood:

+ elevated mood

+ declines in self-reported mood & distress

+ reductions in reactivity to sad mood

+ lowered brain reactivity to fearful faces

Stress

+ decreases in urinary cortisol (stress hormone)

+ reductions in plasma cortisol

+ reduced natural killer cells post-exercise

+ normalization of inflammatory status

+ *prebiotics are shown to normalize cortisol responses*

Energy

+ alleviation of fatigue

DID YOU KNOW?

Leaky gut, until a few years ago, was considered a joke by the Western medical profession. But now, it is recognized as a legitimate condition — although it tends to be called “intestinal permeability syndrome” by the less holistically inclined.

Leaky gut is thought to be one cause of adult onset allergies (environmental and food), as well as a contributor to autoimmune diseases.

Is there a pill for Leaky Gut? At NeuroTrition, in addition to working with psychobiotic therapy, we work on leaky gut with daily rituals to rebuild gut health & reduce stress + inflammation.

Whether you take your probiotic with or without food tends to depend on the research you read — both have been reported.

What we know for a fact is you don’t want to take them with a really hot beverage. At NeuroTrition we recommend taking your probiotic before bed, or, obviously, as directed on the label.


DID YOU KNOW?

The preclinical (rodent) work is corroborating pretty nicely with the clinical (human) work on autism, depression and schizophrenia. What’s more, preclinical work is finding some cool stuff out about anxiety, ALS and Alzheimer’s:

Alzhiemer’s: Prebiotics improve cognitive function and reduce pro-inflammatory cytokines.

Anxiety: Prebiotics reduce pro- inflammatory cytokines.

ALS: Probiotics reduce motor neu-ron death, reduce muscular atrophy, increase serum folate, increase vitamin B12, reduce homocysteine.

Psychobiotics: More Than Just PsychobabbleTargeting the brain via the microbiome is a massive paradigm shift in neuroscience and psychiatry, and has led to the concept of psychobiotics.

Psychobiotics = Live bacteria (probiotics) which, when ingested, have mental health benefits AND prebiotics, which enhance the growth of beneficial gut bacteria.

Probiotics = Your good gut bugs (pro=helpful, bio=alive). They’re alive inside you, and they’re helpful.

Prebiotics = The FOOD for your probiotics (pre = before; I know, scientists are just so creative in their naming, right?)

Nutritional Psychiatry: Going Beyond The Band-AidThere is considerable evidence to suggest a role for your microbiota in neuropsychiatric conditions.

Autism Spectrum Disorders

+ 90% of children with ASD have gut issues, including constipation, diarrhea, abdominal pain, and poor nutritional absorption.

+ Gastrointestinal disorders in autism are associated with dysregulation of the gut microbiota, and the extent of gut issues can predict the severity of autistic behaviour.

+ Levels of certain gut bugs are altered in faecal samples from autistic children, and they show greater faecal microbiota diversity than healthy children.

Depression

+ The gut microbiota are capable of regulating the hypothalamus-pituitary axis and the immune system.

+ There is evidence of dysregulated microbiota in depression.

+ Increased circulating levels of antibodies against bad gut bugs in de-pressed patients, suggesting bacteria moving from gut to blood stream.


DID YOU KNOW?

Your brain is influenced by gut bugs throughout your entire life!

Early Life: Babies are initially exposed to microbes from the mother via how they are born and this influences the very first seeding of their microbiome.

Then whether they are breast-or bottle-fed further impacts develop-ment of their microbiota.

Early life stress and antibiotics may profoundly alter how our gut and brain talk to one another.

Adolescence: There’s a role for the microbiota in anxiety and cognitive behaviours at this developmental time window.

Aging: As we age, our microbiota diversify and there is increased inflammatory tone in the brain, ultimately resulting in malfunction and damage of brain cells.

Schizophrenia

+ Chronic gastrointestinal symptoms, such as gastritis and colitis, often accompany schizophrenia.

+ There is an association between birth by caesarean section and the risk of developing psychosis.

+ There is increased urinary excretion of bad gut bug metabolites in schizophrenic patients.

Ritual 1: ProbioticsClearly, we love bugs at NeuroTrition. Gut bugs, that is.

We love them so much that we prescribe daily probiotic-rich foods to our clients (anywhere from 1 to 3 times a day).

Our Fav Probiotics:

+ miso

+ tempeh

+ kimchi

+ yogurt

+ real sourdough bread

+ raw sauerkraut (and other fermented veggies)

+ kefir

+ kombucha

+ raw, fermented salsa

Supplement: A probiotic that starts with real, whole foods and is delivered in fermented (ideally for a really long time) form.


DID YOU KNOW?

There are three criteria a food must meet to be called a “prebiotic”:

1. It would need to go through most of your gastrointestinal system, reaching your colon intact;

2. It would be fermented by those intestinal microbes; and finally,

3. It would stimulate the “good” microbes associated with health.

The more of these prebiotics we eat, the more healthy probiotics will grow in our gastrointestinal system. This is known as the “prebiotic effect” and it can be used to increase the number of “good” microbes, decrease the number and activity of the “bad” ones.

Your gut bugs love carbs (but the good ones, at least!)

The main foods that your microbiota really like to eat are carbohydrates, mostly in the forms of special fibre and resistant starch (a type of starch that is thought to help you get thinner, healthier, and even smarter because it is not digested in the stomach or small intestine and reaches the colon intact).

Ritual 2: PrebioticsWe respect our “symbiotic” relationship with our gut bugs, in that if we help them (by feeding them what they need), they in turn help us.

So we add prebiotics to the NeuroTrition Rx for brain and mental health!

Our NeuroTeam’s Fav Prebiotics:

+ sweet potato

+ kale

+ blueberries

+ avocado

+ hemp & chia seeds

+ walnuts

+ quinoa

+ cacao

Other foods rich in prebiotics that didn’t make it on our NeuroTeam’s Favs (but are super foods for your gut bugs) are:

+ cooked onion

+ raw onion

+ raw jerusalem artichoke

+ raw asparagus

+ raw dandelion greens

+ raw garlic

+ raw leek

+ cruciferous vegetables (eg. broccoli, cauliflower)

+ beans

Supplement: Your standard added FOS can be tough to stomach, so choose a probiotic that has whole food prebiotics in it, naturally.


DID YOU KNOW?

Our ability to deal with stress is governed by a pathway linking three important areas: 1) Hypothalamus, 2) Pituitary, 3) Adrenals

Too much stress, especially if it’s chronic, can really impair your HPA-axis and ability to respond appropriately to stress. Certain really high stress professions like airline pilots and crew have been linked to a shrunken HPA axis (scary!)

We now know that the micro-biome helps regulate stress by activating the HPA-axis, which results in the release of be-haviour-influencing chemicals. We also know that too much or too little HPA-axis activation results in and is often seen in many diseases.

Science has taught us that our microbiota play a key role in the maturation, morphology and function of microglia, special brain cells that control neuroinflammation. Research shows that neuro-inflammation is a core part of brain and mental health imbalances. So. When the gut garden isn’t thriving, you need some extra stress-busting & anti-inflammatory support.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: Gut, Stress & InflammationStress and inflammation are the two big silent killers in our society. They contribute to and exacerbate most, if not all, chronic health conditions.

Lightbulb moment: A pivotal study found that mice raised in sterile environments, and thus with no microbiome, were way more reactive to stress — and the mice calmed down when given probiotics.

Ritual 3: Anti-Inflammatory EatingWe prescribe anti-inflammatory foods, herbs & spices to our clients, and de-prescribe inflammatory foods & non-foods.

Our Fav Anti-Inflammatory Foods:

+ green leafy vegetables

+ brightly coloured fruit

+ raw nuts & seeds

+ plant-based milks

+ fatty fish

+ game meats

+ herbs & spices

+ healthy fats

Supplement: We recommend a turmeric that delivers the whole root plus extra anti-inflammatory support — minus inflammatory sugar, artificial sweeteners or anything else.


DID YOU KNOW?

Research on healthy omega-3 fats was quite possibly THE reason neuroscience gave nutrition some respect!?!

Back in the late 80’s scientists first started observing that people in parts of the world who ate more fish had less depression. Upon testing people’s blood, they learned that the lower omega-3s were, the worse peoples’ depressive symptoms were!

“I said you’re the good kind of fat!”

If you haven’t yet, it’s time to squash your fear of fat — healthy fats won’t make you fat. Science says healthy fats can even fight back against stress & inflammation.

Ritual 4: Healthy FatsWe prescribe healthy fats to our clients while de-prescribing inflammatory fats & oils.

Our NeuroTeam’s Fav Fats & Oils

+ coconut oil

+ extra virgin olive oil

+ unsalted butter & ghee

+ flax, hemp & chia seed oils

Supplement: We encourage a sustainable, hypoallergenic fish oil provid-ing therapeutic EPA & DHA in an emulsified form for superior absorption (minus fishy burps and loose bowels).


DID YOU KNOW?

Did you know that taking 10 deep, slow breaths can actually shift us out of our sympathetic “fight or flight” nervous system, and into our parasympathetic “rest and digest” nervous system?

So we recommend you practice this simple mindful exercise before every meal!

Be Mindful of Your Brain & Gut

Yes! Mindfulness rewires your brain, literally:

+ Prefrontal cortex: Planning, Problem Solving, Decision Making, Productivity

+ Hippocampus: Learning, Memory, Healthy Aging

+ Amygdala: Attention, Concentration, Focus, Engagement

New science is saying it can also change the gut!

Ritual 5: Mindfulness

A healthy microbiome and gut-brain axis are just one more reason to make mindfulness a daily ritual. So we prescribe getting more mindful:

1 Connect with your breath

2 Eat mindfully

3 Walk mindfully

4 Observe your thoughts & emotions

5 Pause before you act

6 Get lost (in the flow)

For some gut-brain-loving recipes, visit:

www.botanicahealth.com/recipe


1 Coury, DL., Ashwood, P., Fasano, A., Fuchs, G., Geraghty, M, Kaul A, et al. (2012). Gastrointestinal conditions in children with autism spectrum disorder: developing a research agenda. Pediatrics, 130(Supplement):S160–168.

2 Cryan, JF. (2016). Stress and the Microbiota- Gut-Brain Axis: An Evolving Concept in Psychiatry. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 61(4), 201-203.

3 Finegold, SM., Downes, J. & Summanen, PH. (2012). Microbiology of regressive autism. Anaerobe,18(2), 260–262.

4 Finegold, SM., Dowd, SE., Gontcharova, V., Liu, C., Henley, KE., Wolcott, RD, et al. (2010). Pyrosequencing study of fecal microflora of autistic and control children. Anaerobe,16(4), 444–453.

5 Jia, S. et al. (2016). Chitosan oligosaccharides alleviate cognitive deficits in an amyloid-b 1-42- induced rat model of Alzheimer disease. International Journal of Biological Macromolecules, 83, 416–425.

6 Jiang, H., Ling, Z., Zhang, Y., Mao, H., Ma, Z., Yin, Y., et al. (2015). Altered fecal microbiota compo-sition in patients with major depressive disorder. Brain, Behavior and Immunity, 48, 186–194

7 Kato-Kataoka, A. et al. (2016). Fermented milk containing Lacto-bacillus casei strain Shirota preserves the diversity of the gut microbiota and relieves abdominal dysfunction in healthy medical students exposed to academic stress. Appl. Environ. Microbiology, 82, 3649–3658.

8 Kelly, JR, Kennedy, PJ, Cryan, JF, Dinan, TG, Clarke, G. & Hyland, NP. (2016). Breaking down the barriers:the gut microbiome, intestinal permeability and stress-related psychiatric disorders. Frotneirs in Cellular Neuroscience, 9, 392.

9 Maes, M., Kubera, M., Leunis, JC. & Berk, M. (2012). Increased IgA and IgM responses against gut commensals in chronic depression: further evidence for increased bacterial translocation or leaky gut. Journal of Affective Disorders, 141(1), 55–62.

10 O’Neill, SM., Curran, EA., Dalman, C., Kenny, LC., Kearney, PM., Clarke, G, et al. (2016). Birth by caesarean section and the risk of adult psychosis: a population-based cohort study. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 42(3), 633–641.

11 Rea, K., Dinan, TG & Cryan, JF. (2016). The microbiome: A key regulator of stress and neuroinflammation. Neurobiology of Stress, 4, 23, e33.

References


12 Tomova, A., Husarova, V., Lakatosova, S., Bakos, J., Vlkova, B., Babinska, K., et al. (2015). Gastrointestinal microbiota in children with autism in Slovakia. Physiology and Behavior, 138, 179–187.

13 Sarkar, A., Lehto, S.M., Harty, S., Dinan, T.G., Cryan, J.F & Burnet PWJ. (2016). Psychobiotics and the Manipulation of Bacteria–Gut–Brain Signals. Trends in Neurosciences, 39, 11.

14 Savignac, H.M. et al. (2016). Prebiotic administration normalizes lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced anxiety and cortical 5-HT2A receptor and IL1-b levels in male mice. Brain, Behavior and Immunity. 52, 120–131.

15 Schmidt, K. et al. (2015). Prebiotic intake reduces the waking cortisol response and alters emotional bias in healthy volunteers. Psychopharmacology (Berl), 232, 1793–1801.

16 Severance, EG., Prandovszky, E., Castiglione, J. & Yolken RH. (2015). Gastroenterology issues in schizophrenia: why the gut matters. Current Psychiatry Reports, 17(5), 1–10.

17 Severance, EG., Yolken, RH. & Eaton, WW. (2014). Autoimmune diseases, gastrointestinal disorders and the microbiome in schizophrenia: more than a gut feeling. Schizophrenia Research, 176(1), 23-35.

18 Shaw, W. (2010). Increased urinary excretion of a 3-(3-hydroxyphenyl)-3-hydroxypropionic acid (HPHPA), an abnormal phenylalanine metabolite of Clostridia spp. in the gastrointestinal tract, in urine samples from patients with autism and schizophrenia. Nutritional Neuroscience, 13(3), 135–143.

19 Sherwin, E.,,Sandhu, KV, Dinan, TG., Cryan, JF. (2016). May the Force Be With You: The Light and Dark Sides of the Microbiota–Gut–Brain Axis in Neuropsychiatry. CNS Drugs, 30, 1019–1041.

20 Song, L. et al. (2013). Galactooligosaccharide improves the animal survival and alleviates motor neuron death in SOD1 G93A mouse model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Neuroscience, 246, 281–290.

21 Wang, L., Conlon, MA., Christophersen, CT, Sorich, MJ. & Angley MT. (2014). Gastrointestinal microbiota and metabolite biomarkers in children with autism spectrum disorders. Biomarkers in Medicine, 8(3), 331–344.

References


At NeuroTrition, we boldly bring leading neuroscience

research and holistic nutrition together to help you

build your happiest, healthiest brain.

With an expertise in mental health and wellness, we share powerful but practical ways you can use nutrition to completely re-engineer the way you think and feel.

We custom-design programs for corporate clients, health practitioners, students and the public, with services that include:

+ Corporate and Public Wellness Assessments & Programs

+ Private and Roundtable Mentorship Programs

+ Workshops, Seminars and Lunch n’ Learns

+ Private Individual Consulting

Happy, healthy brains can be built – and we give you the best building blocks.

Connect with us to start building today!

www.neurotrition.ca

NeuroTrition Inc.

www.neurotrition.ca [email protected] 403.998.1211

twitter.com/neurotritioninstagram.com/neurotritionfacebook.com/NeuroTrition

NeuroTrition: REAL FOOD . FOR THOUGHT

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