BLUE GENES BABY: Anxious and Stressful Thinking Wrecks Havoc on the Microbiome

Research has shown that stress - both real and psychological - instructs our cells to change the expression of our genes to increase inflammation and dampen our immune system. Given the pandemic currently sweeping the globe, learning how we can regain control over this physiological response has never been more essential.

Let me be the first to say it’s a weird time for all of us right now. Toilet paper shortages, homemade hand sanitizers, and hundred dollar bidding wars over masks. The 24 hour news cycle and the incessant “breaking news” headlines plastered across our televisions can quickly cause us to stress out about the littlest of things that never would have crossed our minds before this pandemic hit. If you're like me, this once in a lifetime phenomenon can easily conjure up many old and conditioned anxious beliefs. I'm gonna get real with you for a minute...For me, this pandemic initially struck certain nerves within me that were reminiscent of my childhood fears of sickness and death. I became aware of the chance that I may have been exposed (turns out, I wasn't!) through contact with another individual, and that frightened me - rightfully so. On the day that I learned of this news, I immediately forgot about all of the work I have done over the years to improve my mindset and move out of a state of constant fear. A fear of the worst kind - fear of the unknown, of something you cannot see and therefore cannot predict.

Growing up in the era of the 24 hour news cycle and war on terror, it was engrained in my subconscious, like may of my other fellow millennials, that disaster is lurking around every corner, and in order to avoid this impending doom, caution must be taken with every action. In my experience, I rarely had sleepovers at friends houses and I never stepped foot outside of my comfort zone. I would have rather stayed in my small hometown for the rest of my life than even think about flying in an airplane which, in my mind, was destined to crash. It wasn't until I began my freshmen year of college at a school that I didn't like - one that I chose simply because it made me feel safe - that I realized I wasn't alone. Research has shown that millennials, those individuals born between 1978 and 1999, form the most anxious and depressed generation seen thus far. Having grown up during times of political and economic uncertainty - the global warming crisis, rapid technological change, and the war on terror - our formative years were marked by a shared notion; that we should be prepared for and fearful of the outside world if we want to be safe. If we can expect the worst, the likelihood of us being taken off guard diminishes. A basic survival instinct, yes, but one that has little to no merit in our modern world with all of the protection and safety we are granted. Knowing that many people, not even just millennials, are deeply consumed in worry right now, I felt it important to switch gears a bit and focus on stress, the impact it has on our bodies, and how we can appropriately handle it. I know I'm not the only one with a childhood experience like this, and if it wasn't for some of the mind-body practices I will soon talk about, I wouldn't be able to say that I have successfully moved past my anxiety - both in terms of our current circumstances and every day life BC (before corona). That being said, let's see what our bodies look like on stress...here's a hint, it changes your gene expression and harms your microbiome...

Your Body on Stress

Speaking to our current situation, stress is often defined as an actual or perceived challenge to our physiology. Right now, seeing that many of us are staying indoors for the majority of the day, this stress does not appear as a tiger trying to eat you like it may have for our hunting and gathering ancestors. No, in modern times it comes up as frustration directed towards your family members whom you’re spending just way too much time with, fear of the air that permeates the world lying just outside of our front doors, or defeat from struggling to keep up with the now unimaginable conditions of the healthcare workplace. While the stress experienced on part of these situations is warranted to the N-th degree, its important to realize that we as humans do have a level of control over how this stress impacts us at even the most biochemical of levels.

When we perceive stress such as those instances described above, our body shifts into a sympathetic nervous system state, more popularly known as “fight or flight”. This evolutionarily advantageous fight or flight response does not differ in magnitude or effect when its triggered by an external, real threat to your biological being, or that transmuted to you through the televised news cycle. Even further, in response to psychological stress, this pro-inflammatory fight or flight response continues to be activated even past the point at which the brain logically determines that no immediate threat to one’s life is present. Bottom line: our bodies react the exact same way under both circumstances - running away from a predator and worrying about an impeding illness. So, that leads us to ask, what does this look like?

"During times of stress and relaxation, the body’s physiological pillars undergo epigenetic modifications that result in a decrease or increase in inflammatory gene expression."

Under prolonged periods of stress, our bodies fail to produce adequate amounts of glucocorticoids, powerful hormones that are released by our bodies to work alongside the immune system in fighting inflammation and treating illness. In individuals experiencing anxiety and depression, both acute and chronic in nature, methylation of glucocorticoid promoting genes ramps up. Recalling the fundamentals of nutrigenomics, methylation typically silences the expression of a gene which, in this case, means the body does not produce optimal amount of these beneficial glucocorticoid hormones. Like the impact stress has on the immune system, it also, at the same time, elicits epigenetic changes in your microbiome. Lymphoid tissues – those which generate and house disease-fighting cells of the immune system – are located adjacent to places where the body interfaces with the external environment as these are areas in which pathogens often initially invade the body. Seeing that the gut is one of these areas interfaced with the external environment (via its connection to the mouth) the microbiome is in close proximity to these lymphoid tissues, communicating information to and from the immune system.

Your Microbiome on Stress

Proinflammatory compounds, known as cytokines, released in response to stress interact with the nerves of the gut (otherwise known as enteric nerves) ultimately stimulating the secretion stress hormones locally. These stress hormones instruct specific cells of our immune systems, called mast cells, to degranulate or release its contents. In doing so, this degranulation of mast cells causes to release of chymase – a substance which degrades the tight junctions that form the wall that separates your gut from the rest of your body. When this occurs, molecules like pathogens, which would otherwise be localized to your intestines, are then able to escape the gut barrier and spread throughout the body via the bloodstream. The imbalance of beneficial to pathogenic bacteria present in your gut as a result of this now leaky gut barrier causes the microbiome to adjust to this change, undergoing DNA mutations. Since bacterial evolution is exceptionally faster than human evolution due to their comparatively miniscule lifespan, these newly mutated genes are passed on and replicated as new microbial cells in as little as 20 minutes; aka prolonged periods of stress, especially those characteristic of anxiety and depression, can change the concentration of microbial species in your microbiome to contain higher amounts of inflammatory bacteria in as little as 20 mins.

Taken together, all of this information goes to show that, by believing that we live in a dark world full of fear, our body perpetually closes itself down through a protective response that ultimately hinders our health and increases our susceptibility to disease. Knowing this, we can choose to utilize mind-body techniques to train our bodies and reprogram our beliefs to mirror that of prosperity. By partaking in such activities, we remove ourselves, even if momentarily, from fear-based scarcity mindset that is consuming our world. Considering that these relaxation techniques are free and accessible no matter where you are, I couldn't think of a better time to care for ourselves and our minds in this way than during this #stayathome period. Stay tuned for the next post to learn more about these practices I am referring to and their ability to de-stress your genes.

Resources:

Househam, A. M., Peterson, C. T., Mills, P. J., & Chopra, D. (n.d.). The Effects of Stress and Meditation on the Immune System, Human Microbiota, and Epigenetics. 16.

Tang, Y.-Y., Hölzel, B. K., & Posner, M. I. (2015). The neuroscience of mindfulness meditation. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 16(4), 213–225. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3916