Mental illnesses are gripping the world more and more with each passing day. Depression, stress, insomnia, anxiety etc. are more common among people than we may know of. Several studies have proved that food plays a big part in wiring our brain and mind. A recent study went further and proved that probiotic and prebiotic foods like yogurt, cheese and sour cream, may greatly help people struggling with depression and related issues. The study results were published in the journal in BMJ Nutrition Prevention & Health.

It is a known fact that there is a certain link between brain and digestive tract, which is usually called gut-brain tract. The researchers at University of Brighton, UK, decided to explore further and studied relevant studies published in between the years 2003 and 2019, which looked at the potential therapeutic contribution of pre-and probiotics in adults with depression or anxiety disorders.

Almost every study revealed a significant reduction or improvement in anxiety symptoms or depression with probiotic alone or a combination of probiotics and prebiotic foods. Probiotics may help reduce the production of inflammatory chemicals or they may help direct the action of tryptophan, a chemical thought to be important in the gut-brain axis in psychiatric disorders.

One of the authors, Sanjay Noonan, said “Purely from the information gathered for this review, it is valid to suggest that, for patients with clinically recognised depression: isolate, or adjuvant prebiotic therapy is unlikely to affect an individual’s experience of their condition in a quantitatively evident way; and that isolate or adjuvant, probiotic/combined prebiotic-probiotic therapy may offer a quantitatively measurable improvement in parameters relating to depression.”