Scanderson Labs

Stress Eating and the Microbiome Stress eating changes your gut microbes, which increases stress in a vicious cycle. By fixing your microbiome, you become more resilient, making it easier to gain back control.

Gut microbes play a role in stress-eating, which means you may be able to get your life back.
www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/mo...

I Don’t Want to Write This! I hate politics, and I want to write about science. But…

Trump and Musk shut down the NIH and the NSF because they might be studying something woke.
scottcanderson.substack.com/p/i-dont-wan...

Do You Have the Guts to be Resilient? A healthy microbiome can help us be more resilient to modern-day stresses.

Amazingly, there’s a microbial fingerprint that can identify resilient people.
scottcanderson.substack.com/p/do-you-hav...

A Bizarre Consequence of Childhood Appendectomy Appendectomies are not benign. They can compromise a healthy gut and raise the risk of psychiatric disorders. Fortunately, there are alternatives.

How appendectomies can mess with your mind.
www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mood...

A Surprising Fix for a Personality-Changing Liver Disease Hepatic encephalopathy is a liver disease that affects the brain. Learn how a new treatment can treat the disease and prevent recurrence.

A liver disease that can erase your personality is reversed with a surprising tactic.
www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/mo...

A Simple Way to Fight Teen Depression Give this technique a try to reduce depression in teens and adults alike.

Half of all chronic mental health issues develop before our 18th birthday. That means to treat adult depression, we ought to pay better attention to teen depression.
scottcanderson.substack.com/p/a-simple-w...

A Surprisingly Simple Hack for a Healthy Gut An easy dietary practice works to block pathogens and keep your gut microbes happy.

A Surprisingly Simple Hack for a Healthy Gut
scottcanderson.substack.com/p/a-surprisi...

A Microbial Signature of Dementia People with cognitive impairments have fewer gut microbes and less microbial diversity. That’s good news because we can improve our microbiome with diet and exercise. Here’s how.

@scottcanderson.bsky.social
People with fewer and less-diverse gut microbes are more likely to have cognitive impairment, including dementia and Alzheimer’s. That’s good news…
www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mood...

Does Alzheimer’s Start in the Gut? Part 2 Maintaining a healthy and diverse microbiota may help prevent the development of Alzheimer's.

Diet contributes to the current high rates of Alzheimer’s. Over the last 75 years, the consumption of ultra-processed foods has gone from essentially zero to 60 percent of our diet today. Today’s foods are more manufactured than grown.
scottcanderson.substack.com/p/does-alzhe...

Does Alzheimer’s Start in the Gut? Part 1 A new study shows that gut microbes may lead to Alzheimer's disease.

A recent study from a group of researchers at University College Cork (UCC), in Ireland, has found that symptoms of Alzheimer’s can be transferred by gut microbes.
scottcanderson.substack.com/p/does-alzhe...

This Is Your Brain on Junk Food Diet influences mood and cognition, for better or for worse.

Many highly processed foods are potentially dangerous, partly because they disregard the fate of gut microbes. It is pure folly to ignore those microbes, especially since they are so crucial to our physical and mental health.
scottcanderson.substack.com/p/this-is-yo...

A Brief History of Psychobiotics, Part 2 Psychobiotics are real, and here are some examples.

Gut and oral microbes have been found to be associated with many conditions over the past decade, including chronic fatigue syndrome, binge drinking, long covid, dementia, Parkinson’s, ALS, sleep disturbance, and antibiotic recovery.
scottcanderson.substack.com/p/a-brief-hi...

A Brief History of Psychobiotics, Part 1 Psychobiotic studies are only ten years old, but they’re already producing results.

In 2013, John Cryan and Ted Dinan coined the term psychobiotic to refer to microbes that could improve mood. Later, my wife and I met with them to pop a bottle of Champagne to celebrate our agreement to write a book called The Psychobiotic Revolution.
scottcanderson.substack.com/p/a-brief-hi...

Watch Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut | Netflix Official Site Delve into the digestive system with this lighthearted and informative documentary that demystifies the role gut health plays in our overall well-being.

Check out this playful, joyful documentary on the emerging science behind how our gut microbes influence how we respond to food, directed by the brilliant Anjali Nayar, out today on Netflix

www.netflix.com/title/81436688

How the Psychobiotic Diet Can Reduce Stress A psychobiotic diet includes a variety of foods to encourage the growth of a diverse microbiota, making us more resilient to stress.

Scientists recommend that we eat 30 different vegetables a week, which is concerning to those of us who only know of five vegetables to begin with—and the only ones we eat are potatoes and onions. The other three vegetables that we know about, we avoid.
www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mood...

How to Recover from Antibiotics Antibiotics are lifesavers, but they can also wreak havoc on your gut microbes.

Probiotics are not normal gut residents, but they may gain a foothold after antibiotic treatments and delay the return of indigenous gut microbes. In other words, probiotics can make recovery worse.
scottcanderson.substack.com/p/how-to-rec...

Six Secrets of Nutritional Psychiatry, Part 2 Some simple food hacks can change your life.

In 2004, Nobuyuki Sudo found that germ-free mice behaved differently than their normal germy cousins. It was a weird connection between gut microbes and behavior that offered an early peek into the gut-brain axis.
scottcanderson.substack.com/p/six-secret...

Six Secrets of Nutritional Psychiatry, Part 1 A quality diet can improve the gut microbiome and, thus, brain health.

At the dawn of the 21st century, it was hard to find a psychiatrist who didn’t work solely from the neck up. But, in the early 2000s, there started to be some rumbles about the involvement of the rest of the body, especially the immune system.
scottcanderson.substack.com/p/six-secret...

Getting the Guts to Be Resilient There is a distinct microbial signature for people who are more resilient. Their brains are wired differently as well. Intriguingly, there is a connection between the two.

What we swallow can change the entire ecosystem of our personal collection of microbes, called our microbiome. This suggests that we might be able to improve our resilience to the bombast of modern life with simple changes in what we eat.
www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/mo...

Is Addiction Driven by the Gut Microbiome? Research finds an astonishing connection between gut microbes and addiction.

A recent study from Tel Aviv University suggests that our microbiome may drive addiction. The existence of the gut-brain axis makes the connection entirely plausible.
scottcanderson.substack.com/p/is-addicti...

The Microbiome Conundrum, Part 2 Microbes and immunity have a complex relationship

Biology is complex because the world is full of novelty, and much of it would like to eat you. There are no guarantees in life, but a diet designed to keep your gut microbes happy is a healthy start.
scottcanderson.substack.com/p/the-microb...

Sweeteners and the Gut–Brain Axis, Part 3 Some sweeteners are actually good for us, and may even improve our mood.

@scandersonlabs.bsky.social
Everybody’s got their poison, and mine is sugar.
scottcanderson.substack.com/p/sweeteners...

Sweeteners and the Gut–Brain Axis, Part 2 How sweeteners affect your mental state via the gut-brain axis.

A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs.
scottcanderson.substack.com/p/sweeteners...

Sweeteners and the Gut–Brain Axis, Part 1 All sweeteners are not created equal.

@scottcanderson.bsky.social
Up to half of Americans consume artificial sweeteners (the most widely used food additives in the world), specifically to regulate weight and lower their blood sugar levels.
scottcanderson.substack.com/p/sweeteners...

Fiber is meant for your gut microbes, not you. Eliminating fiber may be the worst thing that has happened to the American diet over the last 70 years. As a result, the microbial composition of our guts is changing, and some species are even becoming extinct.

www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/...

How a Mediterranean Diet Can Help Fight Teen Depression Good food leads to a good mood, in teens and adults alike.

Half of all chronic mental health issues develop before our 18th birthday. That means to treat adult depression, we ought to pay better attention to teen depression.
www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mood...