{"id":3082,"date":"2025-06-18T09:00:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T16:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/magazine\/?p=3082"},"modified":"2025-06-27T12:18:36","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T19:18:36","slug":"gut-instinct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/magazine\/gut-instinct\/","title":{"rendered":"SNAPSHOT<\/span>
How Gut Health Affects Your Mood, Energy and Well-Being"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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\n\n \n (Photos: Misha Gravenor.)\n\n\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
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SNAPSHOT<\/span>
How Gut Health Affects Your Mood, Energy and Well-Being<\/h1>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n
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\n\n \n Discover how the gut-brain connection and trillions of microbes in your digestive system impact mental health, immunity and well-being.\n\n\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n By<\/span>Tomas Weber<\/strong>\n \n June 18, 2025<\/span>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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Early in his career, biological scientist Steven Finke<\/a>l taught students how to destroy what he now spends his days trying to understand.<\/p>\n

In the 1990s, during a postdoc at Harvard Medical School, future doctors were taught how the body works \u2014 from the circulatory system to the kidneys and the liver. But when it came to microbes, the message was simple: Destroy them. \u201cThe primary interest was to teach students how to kill them,\u201d says Finkel, \u201cbecause medicine considered them only as disease organisms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, thanks in part to Finkel\u2019s research into how microbes survive and thrive in environments including the gut, the scientific perspective has radically changed. We now recognize that the teeming worlds inside our bodies \u2014 simultaneously alien and intimately close \u2014 are crucial to our health and well-being.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone\u2019s digestive system has a unique resident community of hundreds of bacterial species,\u201d says Finkel, professor of biological sciences<\/a> and college dean of graduate and professional education. These trillions of microbes may influence everything from our weight to our mood. They not only provide essential vitamins and help train the immune system \u2014 some may even provide certain neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin, potentially influencing how we feel.<\/p>\n

Understanding the Gut Microbiome<\/h2>\n

Finkel suggests the gut microbiome may wield even more power over us than we realize. \u201cOur bodies are curating our microbiome,\u201d he says. \u201cBut our microbiome might also be curating us, by making us do certain things.\u201d For example, there is evidence that some bacteria in the gut can contribute to cravings for foods that are high in fat and sugar.<\/p>\n

As well as helping to shape our dietary preferences, the gut microbiome, when unbalanced, can make us ill. An unhealthy microbiome can trigger or exacerbate conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Yet, researchers still don\u2019t fully understand how this microbial universe operates. \u201cEveryone\u2019s gut is their own universe,\u201d says Finkel, \u201cand we are far from having a complete understanding of how bacteria in the gut interact with each other, and how they interact with each human host.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finkel\u2019s lab is working to uncover how microbial communities function \u2014 and sometimes fail. He and his team analyze stool samples, cultivate bacteria and study how microbes breathe, eat, grow and die. One of their more surprising discoveries: Gut microbes produce electricity. Bacteria might even communicate using electrical signals. These communication networks may be essential to microbiome health \u2014 and when disrupted, Finkel suggests, the resulting \u201cpower outages\u201d might contribute to disease.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew that electricity-producing microbes exist in natural environments and even in some sewage treatment plants,\u201d he says. \u201cBut no one had previously connected the dots and realized this phenomenon might also be occurring in the human gut.\u201d<\/p>\n

Understanding how gut microbiomes function could someday allow scientists to shape them for our benefit. Although the booming probiotic supplement industry promises such benefits, Finkel notes that, at present, more research will be required to make the supplements reliable. We still don\u2019t know enough, he says, to assess the state of someone\u2019s gut microbiome \u2014 let alone tailor individualized treatments.<\/p>\n

Improving our understanding of the gut microbiome\u2019s composition and activity could one day make personalized treatments possible. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be surprised if in five to 10 years,\u201d says Finkel, \u201cdiagnostics will enable us to assess the state of the gut microbiome and possibly correlate it with a particular disease or health outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steve Finkel photo caption: Recently elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science<\/a>, biological scientist Steven Finkel is exploring the teeming ecosystem inside our gut microbiome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n \n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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