Are You Suffering from Depression? Your Gut Microbiome May Be Unhealthy

“Depression is a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest. Also called major depressive disorder (MDD) or clinical depression, it affects how you feel, think and behave and can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems. You may have trouble doing normal day-to-day activities, and sometimes you may feel as if life isn’t worth living,” according to Mayo Clinic.

It’s not just a case of feeling the blues, which is easier to overcome than depression. You can make these feelings go away by relaxing, talking with people whose company you enjoy, listening to music, reading a funny book or watching a funny movie, and other activities that usually cheer your spirit.

But MDD is different. You can’t shake it off easily; it hounds you day and night and for a longer period of time. For some people, it happens just once in a lifetime, but for others, it’s a case of multiple episodes. The symptoms also vary depending on one’s age, with MDD also afflicting children and teenagers.

In Medscape, where news of a new significant study was published, MDD is further described to be associated with disruptions in energy and lipid metabolism that is possibly caused by the interplay of blood metabolome and the gut microbiome.

It was discovered that the disorder is marked by changes in the metabolites that were consistent with the variation in the diversity of the gut microbiota.

Some of the metabolites are even involved in the tricarboxylic acid cycle, which is a common metabolic pathway and located in the mitochondrial matrix in cells.

“As we wait to establish causal influences through clinical trials, clinicians should advise patients suffering from mood disorders to modify their diet by increasing the intake of fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, as these provide the required fuel/fiber to the gut microbiota for their enrichment, and more short-chain fatty acids are produced for the optimal functioning of the body,” study investigator Najaf Amin, PhD, DSc, and senior researcher at Nuffield Department of Population Health, Oxford University, United Kingdom, told Medscape Medical News.