Butyrate, neuroepigenetics and the gut microbiome: Can a high fiber diet improve brain health?

If there is any hope that this could help your recovery your doctors should do everything in their power to create diet protocols on this. But that won't occur, you are once again completely on your own without any medical guidance. But then, I'm not medically trained so you can't listen to me.  

Butyrate, neuroepigenetics and the gut microbiome: Can a high fiber diet improve brain health?

Author links open overlay panelMegan W.Bourassa^abIshraqAlim^abScott J.Bultman^cRajiv R.Ratan^ab

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2016.02.009Get rights and content

Under a Creative Commons license

open access

Highlights

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Interest in how diet influences brain function via the gut microbiome is growing.

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Butyrate can protect the brain and enhance plasticity in neurological disease models.

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Gut microbiota produce butyrate by fermenting carbohydrates in a high fiber diet.

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Hypothesis: A high fiber diet can elevate butyrate to prevent/treat brain disorders.

Abstract

As interest in the gut microbiome has grown in recent years, attention has turned to the impact of our diet on our brain. The benefits of a high fiber diet in the colon have been well documented in epidemiological studies, but its potential impact on the brain has largely been understudied. Here, we will review evidence that butyrate, a short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) produced by bacterial fermentation of fiber in the colon, can improve brain health. Butyrate has been extensively studied as a histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor but also functions as a ligand for a subset of G protein-coupled receptors and as an energy metabolite. These diverse modes of action make it well suited for solving the wide array of imbalances frequently encountered in neurological disorders. In this review, we will integrate evidence from the disparate fields of gastroenterology and neuroscience to hypothesize that the metabolism of a high fiber diet in the gut can alter gene expression in the brain to prevent neurodegeneration and promote regeneration.

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Keywords

Gut-brain axis

Neuroepigenetics

Butyrate

High fiber diet

Gut microbiome

1. Introduction

The relationship between our gut microbiota and nervous system is a large part of the gut-brain axis that has attracted increasing interest in recent years. It is estimated that 90% of the cells in the human body are of microbial origin, and the vast majority of these microbiota are comprised of 15,000–36,000 species of commensal and symbiotic bacteria that reside within the lumen of the gut [1], [2]. A diverse microbial community is crucial for our health and disease prevention based on microbiome studies (i.e., metagenomic sequence analyses) and perturbed energy homeostasis that has been observed in germ free mice [3]. Although it is not yet clear how gut microbiota positively and negatively affect brain function, multiple mechanisms are likely to be involved. Gut bacteria, have a prodigious metabolic capacity and some microbe-derived metabolites enter the circulation and can cross the blood-brain barrier. There is growing evidence that these microbes produce neurotransmitters, such as GABA and serotonin, modulate the immune system, alter epigenetic markers and produce bioactive food components and energy metabolites [2], [4], [5]. Thus, dietary manipulation to achieve a symbiosis that can improve the health of the microbiome and our brains is an attractive idea currently under investigation.

In this review, we will focus on the short chain fatty acid (SCFA), butyrate, which is most commonly produced by bacteria in the colon, and its role as a potential therapeutic for neurological diseases. Butyrate is an attractive therapeutic molecule because of its wide array of biological functions, such as its ability to serve as a histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor, an energy metabolite to produce ATP and a G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) activator. Pharmacologically, butyrate has had a profoundly beneficial effect on brain disorders ranging from neurodegenerative diseases to psychological disorders. In this review, we will discuss how butyrate is made and the pharmacological effects of butyrate in neurological disorders. Finally, we will summarize the current evidence that high fiber, butyrate-producing diets are capable of improving the health of our brains.

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