How to Know When To Put the Fork Down

Health Editor’s Note: It has been previously thought that communication between your intestines and stomach and your brain is handled by hormones.  Communication that tells you that you should stop eating because you are full, or you need to eat because you are low on blood sugar and are hungry or should feel hunger. Now it appears that these organ systems communicate by neural or nerve connections as well. As with any nerve connection, the message will travel instantaneously.  Hormones are released into the blood stream and travel in a much slower fashion to the intended organs that will react to them. How I think this information could be very important and helpful for keeping a healthy weight, is that for those who tend to over eat due to the fact that their hormones, that should tell them to stop eating, are not as time efficient. Perhaps this is a more scientific and effective way for loosing weight and then maintaining that healthy weight…….Carol   

Gut Communicates Directly with Brain

By Sharon Reynolds

At a Glance

In mouse studies, researchers discovered direct neural connections between the gut and the brain that can exchange information in fractions of a second.

The findings, which challenge conventional wisdom on how these organs communicate, could lead to a better understanding of appetite and gut health.

The gut has long been known to communicate with the brain. The stomach and intestines can send information about hunger or feeling full, or about the presence of dangerous microbes. However, scientists thought that this communication only happened through hormones released into the bloodstream. Hormones move relatively slowly, taking minutes or longer to reach their targets.

Scientists have recently wondered if more direct connections exist between the gut and the brain. Several years ago, researchers led by Dr. Diego Bohórquez of Duke University found synapses in a rare type of gut cell. Synapses are the junctions between neurons (nerve cells) that pass chemical messengers called neurotransmitters.

Bohórquez and his colleagues wanted to better understand what these synapses in the gut were doing. They used mice to investigate how information moves from these gut cells, called enteroendocrine cells, to the brain. The research was funded in part by NIH’s National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) and Office of the Director (OD). Results were published on September 21, 2018, in Science.

The team first used a labeled version of the rabies virus to trace the neural circuit connected with enteroendocrine cells in mice. (Rabies usually spreads through the body’s neurons by way of the synapses.) They saw that the virus could spread directly from enteroendocrine cells in the gut to neurons in the vagus nerve, which stretches from the brain all the way to the intestines.

The researchers next grew vagal neurons in culture with enteroendocrine cells. Synapses formed between the cell types, and adding sugar caused the neurons to fire as they would when communicating a message. This communication wasn’t seen when sugar was added to vagal neurons alone, suggesting that the message originated from the enteroendocrine cells. The speed of communication between the gut cells and vagal neurons was between 60 to 800 milliseconds.

In follow-up experiments in mice, the researchers showed that enteroendocrine cells can detect the presence of sugar in the gut and transmit the signal to vagal neurons within milliseconds. Further work showed that the chemical glutamate is the neurotransmitter involved in passing the sensory information from gut to brain.

“Scientists talk about appetite in terms of minutes to hours. Here we are talking about seconds,” Bohórquez says. “That has profound implications for our understanding of appetite.” The researchers plan to do further experiments to understand how this system transmits specific information about the nutrient and caloric content of food.

Carol Duff, MSN, BA, RN

Carol graduated from Riverside White Cross School of Nursing in Columbus, Ohio and received her diploma as a registered nurse. She attended Bowling Green State University where she received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in History and Literature. She attended the University of Toledo, College of Nursing, and received a Master’s of Nursing Science Degree as an Educator.

She has traveled extensively, is a photographer, and writes on medical issues. Carol has three children RJ, Katherine, and Stephen – one daughter-in-law; Katie – two granddaughters; Isabella Marianna and Zoe Olivia – and one grandson, Alexander Paul. She also shares her life with her husband Gordon Duff, many cats, and two rescues.

• Carol’s Archives 2009-2013