We all experience emotional stress at some point, if not many times, in our lives. And chronic stress is worse. We also know there is a connection between stress and our health, but how is that? Well, as THE Microbiome Expert, I have a one-track mind, and so I’ll give you the perspective from the microbiome.
In the video dedicated to this topic, I spend time highlighting three very interesting angles. First, is the stress response in the gut resulting via the immune system. Studies show that emotional stress results in immediate gut permeability. For more on that topic, watch my video entitled, “Gut permeability – The Link Between Gut Dysbiosis and Systemic Disease.”
But these are studies of one-off incidents of stress. What I’m more concerned about is chronic stress and an altering of the microbiome for the worse. And a huge part of your fight-or-flight response is what are called the catecholamines. Adrenaline (epinephrine) is probably the best known of these. And there are two key catecholamine-driven events favoring pathogens, one is that of iron liberation.
Iron is a key component of life, and especially so for a pathogen who wants to increase and increase its abundance. Under normal conditions, the healthy body works very hard to sequester – or keep locked away – iron stores from hungry pathogens. And it does a pretty good job of it. Iron is found in a number of locations, but we’ll focus on the most relevant two for the purposes of this conversation, transferrin and lactoferrin. This whole relationship is well-established. It’s simply a known fact that pathogenic bacteria crave iron for growth and virulence, and the body works hard to sequester its stores. Many studies show massive increases in pathogens with iron exposure. And these bacteria have several mechanisms to try to steal away the body’s iron, but in general they aren’t very successful.
One of these mechanisms are via the production of what are called siderophores. Approximately 500 siderophores have been characterized. They are extracellular ferric chelators, and their role is to deliver liberated iron to the bacterium. However, under normal conditions these siderophores aren’t particularly effective in liberating iron on the own. But under stressful conditions, with the high production and spillover of catecholamines, the dopamine, norepinephrine and epinephrine form complexes and inhibit the binding ability of lactoferrin and transferrin to iron, rendering them susceptible to bacterial ‘theft’ by siderophores.
If you thought the iron liberation story was interesting, this is perhaps even more so. The other catecholamine-driven mechanism to support pathogen growth and virulence is literally via the sensing of catecholamines on the cells of various bacteria. To date, a small family of these receptors have been identified. Basically, bacteria to bacteria sensing similarities allow them to basically read our emotions. These sensors, and similar ones have been found in E coli, S enterica, and E faecalis, all bad actors. This plugging results in the production of virulence factors.
So think about how interesting this is. Norepinephrine and epinephrine plug into a special communication sensor on bacteria and kick off upregulation of virulence factors. We know that the more stress you have, the more catecholamines you produce, the more that you can upregulate virulence in the bacteria in your gut. It’s fascinating to think that evolution has resulted in bacteria able to listen in on thoughts, to a degree, and just wait for an opportune time to become opportunistic.
As the former director of medical education for a microbiome firm, and now with my own platform, I have helped many people over the years. And now, I bring this knowledge directly to you. In our world as it is, we all now have to be our own health advocates. With a broken government, food and medical system, you need to take charge of your healthcare. So, educate yourself, as best you can. This is why I’ve launched my educational platform. You can find my presentation entitled, “Emotional Stress and its Effects on the Microbiome” in my Microbiome University tab, and also on my YouTube channel. If you have a condition or disease that you think would be well served by addressing your microbiome, you can visit the Protocols tab on my website where you can find a science-based protocol which may dramatically improve your quality of life, as they have done for many others (see my testimonials)
