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Stress has negative effects on mental states, it alters behavior and damages gut and brain. Eating high fiber foods like lentils, cereal and fruit may reduce the effects of stress on gut and reduce stress. New research from the University College Cork in Ireland suggests that a high-fiber diet could offer an easy and effective way to treat stress and its effects on the gut.
Foods like grains, legumes and vegetables, contain high levels of fiber and stimulate the production of a sort of cellular super food in the form of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) in the gut. Prolonged stress can weaken the wall of the gut. Undigested food particles, bacteria and germs will pass through the leaky gut wall into the blood and cause persistent inflammation.
Treating the condition with the SCFAs can reverse gut ‘leakiness, researchers fed SCFAs to mice, then put simulated stressful situations for the animals and watched them for anxious or depressive-like behavior, cognition, social behavior and how smoothly their digestive systems were functioning. Anxiety and depression symptoms subsided in the rodents who were fed the SCFA diet, and their guts stopped leaking.
Stress can make the gut leaky, and treating the leaky gut with high-fiber foods can in turn help to reduce stress, though it’s not yet clear why. Developing dietary treatments which target these bacteria may be important for treating stress-related disorders. The study involved feeding mice the main SCFAs normally produced by the gut bacteria and then subjecting them to stress.