Week 9: The microbiome and your personality

 

We did not have a speaker for this week, but I found an article to share that I thought was interesting: “Probiotic Escherichia coli Ameliorates Antibiotic-Associated Anxiety Responses in Mice”, by Kiwoong Park, Suhyeon Park, et Al., Nutrients 2021, 13(3), 811; https://doi.org/10.3390/nu13030811.

In the experiment they injected a chemical into mice that increased stress level and caused weight gain. Afterwards they infected the mice with a strain of E. coli. The E. coli was able to counteract the chemical,  reducing the stress level of the mice and stopping the weight gain. This supports the idea that our microbes not only impact our body, but our emotions as well. They have the power to change who we are, to a point.  

Here is a much older example. A few weeks ago in my Archeology class, we were discussing Otzi the ice man. 

Otzi is a 5300-year-old mummy that was discovered well preserved in the ice on top of the Alps. Doctors found that Otzi had been murdered, shot in the back with an arrow. They also found something else: he has the oldest known case of Lyme disease. Lyme disease is caused by an infection of a bacteria called Borrelia Burgdorferi. This infection not only causes physical problems, but can cause mental health issues as well, such as: schizophrenia, paranoia, dementia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and panic attacks. This begs the question, did the bacteria cause Otzi to act in a way that eventually led to his murder?

I will leave you with this to ponder: we can measure how much of your mass is made up of bacteria, but how much of your personality is really you, and how much of “you” is just the bacteria talking?