In a new episode of the Well Enough podcast, microbiome scientist Dr Megan Rossi told host Emilie Lavinia that the “nocebo” effect tells us some very interesting things about how we understand food intolerances.
The episode, which unpacks big questions around gut health, mood, diet culture and food, shone a light on new research around mental health and food sensitivity, with guests Dr Rossi and chef and entrepreneur Gemma Ogston presenting the facts about the gut and our diets.
Dr Rossi describes what she calls the nocebo effect, something that she’s observed in her research and says is on the rise due to the sheer volume of nutrition advice we see on social media. Essentially, we’re all being led to believe that certain foods will cause bloating, weight gain and inflammation – wheat and dairy being the top two supposed offenders.
However, the gut and brain are linked so closely that simply believing a food will disagree with you could supposedly be enough to produce symptoms in the gut.
The impact of the brain on the gut is fascinating. Dr Rossi explains that, “if you follow a gut-nourishing diet, you can directly improve your mental health”. She says the clinical evidence for this lies in studies on the gut-brain axis.
“One in four of us are likely to have a mental health event every year, so mental health is such a big issue. There is some really fascinating research coming out around this gut-brain connection – which is essentially this two-way connection that occurs between your gut and your brain,” Dr Rossi adds.
“Your mental health can impact your gut because there’s literally hundreds of millions of nerves that innovate it – called the enteric nervous system. But also more early research is suggesting that the microbes can affect the brain. So again, for the sceptics out there, I like to describe the mechanisms so you can have this in your head.
“There are three ways in which our microbes are thought to impact our mental health. One is via what I call the ‘alarm system’ – so remember 70 per cent of our immune system lives along that nine-metre digestive tract – so they sense something is going on and the microbes activate the immune system and produce inflammatory markers that talk to our brain.
“The second one is via the vagus nerve – this communication highway which is part of the enteric nervous system – where the microbes again have an instant message up to the rest of the body including the brain. They call the brain, tell it something, ‘activate this hormone or do this.’
“The third one is where those microbes actually produce chemicals. So when they break down the fibre they produce those special chemicals and some of them get into the blood system and are thought to cross that blood-brain barrier. So that’s the science of how it’s all working and there is some really convincing clinical evidence out there.”
‘Good mood food’ is chef, entrepreneur and cookbook author Gemma Ogston’s reserve. She creates recipes and supplements intended to fuel the gut-brain axis and support a calmer nervous system and sharper brain.
However, she tells Well Enough host Emilie Lavinia, that she’s concerned about the relationship many people have with food, especially in the era of “skinnytok” and GLP1 drugs.
“I think it’s such a massive problem. As a mum, it’s your worst nightmare. The problem is that the influence of social media and what is being pushed – not only on social media, adverts on the tube, magazines, doctors surgeries, when you go into boots and you see ads for Ozempic, you can get it anywhere and it’s being pushed onto our young people everywhere.
“These crazy diets that are restricting anything in an extreme way are not healthy. Social media with teenagers is a whole other debate but they all have it. There should be laws around wellness influencers pushing extreme diets with no experience.
“As a perimenopausal women seeing so many people around me losing so much weight quickly. It’s tempting from a vanity point of view and it’s complex. These drugs can be really helpful if used in the right ways and if managed properly by health professionals but often people are going straight to them for rapidly losing weight.”
Ogston and Dr Rossi both took the opportunity to discuss the impact of GLP1s on gut health and discussed the types of foods that can support a healthy microbiome and form the foundation for a healthy gut-brain axis.
Listen to the episode here and watch the full episode here. Well Enough is available wherever you get your podcasts.
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