smonster, I don't have time to read this whole article, but here's one on fecal transplants and mental health (as a PDF): [link] I'll try to read it tomorrow, if you need someone to parse the info in it.
t edit
This is a super-short editorial, but it refers to a study in mice, where mice who were bred to be anxious had a fecal transplant from mice who were bred to be calm, and the anxious mice because calm and confident: [link]
This 2013 article from Psychology Today refers to the same mouse study: [link]
My cousin is a microbiology professor who is fascinated by fecal transplants (and when she found out that I am, too, she shares links with me on FB), and I can ask her if she knows of any studies on its use in mental health. I'll shoot her an email right now.
Also, in a little bit of googling, you might want to also search on the term "psychobiotics." This article doesn't specifically mention fecal transplants, but it talks about the strong link between gut health and mental health, and addresses leaky gut syndrome, which is a real thing and a big problem: [link]
First off, I haven't read the articles, but is this essentially saying that one person's shit can change the way another person's brain works?
The articles about the biological implications of anxiety and depression I've seen lately have been really interesting.
I know I'm just anecdotal, but after I was gluten-free for about a year, I was able to go off my anti-depressants after being on them for years. I suspect that stopping eating gluten healed my gut enough that it helped my depression.
Again, anecdotal.
It sounds like just cutting back a lot on the refined sugars could help, too. I think I need to start there; I've been bingeing on red velvet oreos.
To clarify, I didn't mean that going off gluten will help everyone with depression/anxiety issues; I am not one of those "it worked for me, so it must be good for EVERYONE!!!" evangelists.
But it was apparently a cause, for *me*, of gut issues, and fixing the gut issues seems to have had a beneficial effect on my depression. I think for people who don't have an issue with gluten, then cutting it out would do no good, because it's not causing any problems.
(I have a friend who's a recent Paleo convert, and he will not shut UP about it, and how everyone should eat that way, and it fixed XYZ for him, so everyone should do it, etc. And I just don't want to be That Guy, because That Guy is annoying. And also incorrect; just because something worked for one person doesn't mean it'll work for someone else.)
I remember someone (Billytea?) posting that far more of the cells in our body were bacterial than human, and that most of them were in the lower digestive tract. We're just starting to understand the relationship between bacteria and our bodies. While I've seen more about poop transplants affecting IBS and obesity, I'm not entirely surprised that there are other potential applications.
