Recent research declares that probiotics found in yogurt would help in amplifying a person's mood as they affect functioning of brain.

Earlier studies have revealed that benign bacteria affected the brains of rats, but none of the  research analysis have confirmed that the same happened in human brains.

Analysis states that those who consume yoghurt twice daily for a month exhibited change in  functioning of brain. Change was observed in resting brain activity and also in response to an 'emotional attention task', which was accomplished to monitor how the brain reciprocated to certain emotions, reports sourced from dailymail.co.uk.  

It is familiar that the brain sends signals to the (stomach) gut, due to which stress and other emotions can add to gastrointestinal symptoms.

Kirsten Tillisch of the University of California - Los Angeles's School of Medicine, who conveyed the study said that the observations  indicate that  some of the elements of yogurt  actually alter the way our brain responds to the environment.

Tillisch added that, if we consider the conclusion of this work, the ancient sayings 'you are what you eat' and 'gut feelings' convey a new meaning.

She further adds, we constantly hear from patients that they never felt anxious or depressed until they began to experience problems with their gut. The analysis also represents that the gut-brain contact is like a two-way street.

36 women aged between 18 to 53 were being recruited by Tillisch's team for the study.

These woman were assigned to one of three groups. One group were selected to eat yogurt with live bacterial cultures which included probiotic strains twice a day for almost one month. Other group was selected to eat a dairy product which does not contain living bacteria, and the third group was not assigned any of the dairy products.

The outcome exhibited  that women who consumed the probiotic yoghurt were found to have  reduced activity in the part of the brain that manages aspects of cognition and emotion, while woman who consumed  non-probiotic yoghurt or no dairy products  resulted in  either an increase, or  no change in activity.

Emeran Mayer, another member in the team, revealed that what we consume changes the way our stomach bacteria splits the food particles.

He further suggested that specific probiotic strains in yogurt additionally includes some health benefit facts such as stress, relieving anxiety, and other mood symptoms.

He also added that changing the composition of gut bacteria would lay path to treatments for chronic pain disorders and also to symptoms of brain conditions such as Parkinson's,  autism,  and Alzheimer's disease

(AW:Chitra)