You are what you eat

This report from the BBC puts a new face to that old expression. This in particular, about mice raised in a sterile environment with no gut bacteria compare to normal mice:

In studies of the animals' brains, they showed higher levels of a number of hormones, and even differences in the expression of over 170 genes.

So the gut bacteria effect hormones too. We've heard recently of fungi that infect ants and hotwire their brains to help spread the fungus, and suggestions that rats can be hotwired by Toxoplasma to let themselves be eaten by cats--and maybe the crazy cat ladies are infected too.

I wonder how much of the gut bacteria effect is simply reaction to irritation, and how much is from chemicals entering our systems directly. And there are bacteria in the nose, and ears... There's more to learn.

Whitman said "I am large, I contain multitudes."