Real stories from the gut-brain frontier
First-hand accounts of engineering the gut-brain axis. Moderated, human, honest. Not medical advice.
The 'low-mood signature' made me rethink my plate
I'd read that people with low mood tend to be depleted in butyrate-producing bugs like Coprococcus and Dialister. I'm not naive enough to th…
Chasing butyrate: what happened when I fed the fiber-fermenters
My report was low on the fiber-fermenting, butyrate-making crowd. Butyrate is the short-chain fatty acid that feeds the gut lining and shows…
A specific strain pair + a wind-down routine took the edge off mornings
My stress system runs hot — I'm the classic reactive type who wakes up already braced. I found the trial where a specific pairing of L. helv…
Rebuilding after antibiotics wrecked my head, not just my gut
After a rough course of antibiotics for a sinus infection, my gut went sideways and — the part nobody warned me about — so did my head. Flat…
The GABA angle: fermented foods and a calmer baseline
I went down the rabbit hole on GABA — the brain's main 'calm down' signal — and learned certain gut bacteria like Bacteroides actually produ…
Working with our clinician on my son's gut — carefully
GI trouble has shadowed my son for years, and the research linking the microbiome to autism is real but wildly overhyped by people selling t…
IBS and the two-way street: I had to treat the brain half too
IBS is literally classified as a disorder of gut-brain interaction, and once I stopped treating it as purely a gut problem, things moved. Th…