Can You Treat Anxiety With... Yoghurt?

To nutrition-conscious foodies, the mind-gut connection is nothing new. But a growing strand of neuroscience called psychobiotics is exploring the ways that feeding your microbiome could hold the key to combating mental illness

- Nikki Osman

In the dark depths of my underwear drawer, behind the date-night bra and the grippy socks, sits a pack of pills. Popping one with my coffee is as much a part of my morning routine as the double snooze – it’s muscle memory. They’re an antidepressant I take for anxiety that, for the past few years, has made itself known whenever I’ve been looking the other way. I have no shame in the contents of my top drawer, but I’m becoming increasingly curious about the recent raft of research that’s exploring a new alternative, the likes of which I might find in my fridge.

Turns out the latest frontier of neuroscience isn’t really about the brain. It’s all about the gut. In exciting news, the gut microbiome is now thought to be just as influential as our genes in determining who we are, and the study of psychobiotics – broadly defined as any intervention that affects the brain through the triggering of gut bacteria – is piquing the interest of all those clever folks in white lab coats.

“We’ve seen this area of research evolve so much over the past five years, driven not only by advances in technology but also strong public interest,” says Professor John Cryan, principal investigator at APC Microbiome Ireland and co-author of The Psychobiotic Revolution (he’s basically the CEO of psychobiotics). “There’s huge excitement: people want to know what they can do with this information about how the gut influences the brain, and we’re struggling to keep up,” he adds.