Gut Microbiome and Digestion

The Gut & Microbiome

• The inner sphincter muscle delivers leftover food to the inner part of the body.
• Sensory cells analyze the delivered material to determine if it is gaseous or solid.
• The brain is alerted when the need to use the bathroom arises and coordinates with the outer sphincter through nervous cells.
• The small intestine cleans up during digestion, causing stomach growls.
• During stress, the digestive system, at times, conserves energy by reducing its own resource consumption.
• 90% of information is channeled from the gut to the brain
• The gut functions as the largest sensory organ, collecting data on the immune system and hormones, and sends signals to areas of the brain involving morality and fear.
• The brain sympathizes with gut issues.
• Many bacteria are beneficial and aid in cleaning, necessitating a balance of good and bad bacteria for the immune system to recognize harmful ones.
• Bacteria types vary in different body regions, with each area having unique microbes.
• Bacterial composition exceeds the body's in terms of cells and DNA.
• The baby obtains beneficial microbes during natural birth through exposure to vaginal microbes.
• C-section babies are mostly exposed to skin microbes.
• Early antibiotic use in children can affect gut microbial community.
• Microbial diversity impacts digestion and disease resistance.
• Early childhood antibiotics can alter gut microbes, leading to obesity and health issues.
• Fecal transplants from donors show therapeutic potential for C.diff patients.

Human Microbiome Definition

• The human microbiota comprises bacteria, viruses, and microscopic organisms, with 95% residing in the gastrointestinal tract.
• The microbiome includes microbes, their genes, their environment, and their metabolic products.
• The human microbiome is linked to conditions, such as obesity, asthma, allergies, anxiety, depression, and autoimmune diseases like Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA).
• Microbiota assists in discerning between beneficial and harmful pathogens.
• Humans and microbiota share a symbiotic connection.

Gut Health & Diet

• Gut bacteria aids in breaking down indigestible food.
• Protects against harmful bacteria which supports the immune system.
• High-fiber foods, including nuts, fruits, and legumes, positively affect gut bacteria.
• The production of short-chain fatty acids is facilitated, which nurtures the gut barrier, bolsters immune function, and reduces inflammation.
• A research study involving diet swapping Western versus African diets, demonstrated inflammation in the colon when consuming a Western diet.
• Low fiber results in less fuel = bacterial diminishment resulting in low diversity.
• Sauteed, raw, or steamed vegetables are preferable to fried, and probiotics benefit the stomach.

Fiber, Microbiomes & Fermented Foods

• A high-fiber diet reduces colon inflammation and cancer risk.
• Polyphenol-rich foods like fruits, teas, and vegetables enhance gut bacterial diversity.
• Fermented foods with probiotics, including kimchi and yogurt, support gut microbiome diversity and traditional diets.

Health Psychology Definition & Scope

• Health psychology is a new field focused on understanding psychological influences on the maintenance of health, onset of illness, and response to illness.
• Considers the origins and implications of health policy and interventions.
• Health psychology researchers study habits, such as smoking, in order to inform smoking cessation intervention strategies.
• WHO defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being.
• Wellness relies on balancing physical, mental, and social health.
• Health promotion, developing good health habits, promoting regular exercise, and implementing effective media campaigns to improve diets are areas in which health psychologists focus.
• The mental facets regarding the prevention and treatment of illness are areas of interest.
• Successfully managing stress can be taught by Health psychologists.
• Etiology/ HP interests involve the causes of illness through behavioral factors.
• High blood pressure is an example of an objective sign that the body is not functioning properly.
• Pain and nausea are subjective symptoms of disease or injury.

Health & Disease

• Health status is impacted by medical care (10%), behaviors (40%), and genetics (20%).
• Promoting mental and physical Health is the concern.
• Prevention and treatment of illness is a focus of health psychologists.
• HP covers etiology and correlates of health, illness and dysfunction.
• Studying the impact of behavior from health institutions/ professionals.
• The educational scientific and professional benefits.
• Prevention of illness through understanding the causes and correlates of health and illness are key roles.

Health Psychology & Views of the Mind

• Philosophical positioning regards mind and body connection and how they operate, either as separate or indistinguishable systems.
• Guiding principle of health psychology = interconnectedness.
• Some previously held viewpoints included disease seen as - God's punishment, evil spirits, or imbalances of bodily fluids.
• Supernatural Belief results stemming from- sorcery, social taboos, object intrusion, supernatural possession, losing one's soul
• Treatments included confession, appeasing of gods, magical sucking, animal excrement and torture, and trephination.
• Diseases have historically been viewed as natural processes.
• The humoral theory suggests disease comes from imbalanced body fluids: black bile, blood and phlegm.
• Specific personality types may also be associated with bodily fluids impacting risk.
• Disease localization (anatomical pathology), tissue-specific disease (tissue pathology), and cell-specific conditions (cellular pathology) are beliefs.
• Infections are caused by unseen particles in the air (germ theory)
• Magic bullet = cure can be found.
• Health is impacted from interaction with mind, body, and environment(biopsychosocial model).

Psychoanalytic & Somatic Contributions

• Early work by Freud focused on conversion hysteria.
• Unconscious conflicts produced physical disturbances = repressed issues.
• Patients became free of anxiety through nervous system improvements.
• Profiles of psychosomatic disorders, like anxiety and stress-induced ulcers, were researched.
• Bodily issues may occur do to emotional conflicts.
• Psychosomatic medicine is related to health psychology.
• Examines psychological and somatic origins.
• Behavioral medicine includes body and mind interventions.
• Integrative approach involving biological science.
• Treatment impacted by patient-practitioner relationships.
• Good health is greatly based on good habits, culture and social support, and health resources.

Biopsychosocial Model & Health

• Physical and psychological well-being.
• Health issues interplay and impact from biological, social and psychological origins.
• All are involved in overall health and wellness.
• Aberrant somatic ( bodily) processes explains every illness which negates relevance of some psychological processes.
• Illness relies on somatic processes.

Disease & The Biological and Psychosocial models

• The biopsychosocial model of disease states that psychological components are related to all other origins.
• Biopsychosocial model of disease includes influences within physical/ physiological, intellectual, and spiritual influences along side emotional and cognitive interactions.
• The biopsychosocial model takes into account both micro and macro levels of wellness.
• Clinical Implications includes a variety of biological, physical, intellectual, social, and spiritual needs.

Early Heart Attack & Illness Models

• The treatment approach needs to be examined and tailored based on individual conditions.
• Family history of heart can lead to a medical approach relying administrative drugs.
• A biopsychosocial approach evaluates community integration and behavioral factors.
• Focuses on connecting socially with others.
• Rehabilitation goals include maintaining a healthy balance in order to decrease personal constraints.
• The acute disorders came into form in the early 20th century.
• The chronic disease impacts all the main contributions to disability and death that result to irreversibility, but is treatable with medication and management.

Health Psychology's Role

• Health Psychologists make an impact from many origins, based on the knowledge of technology and research.
• The amount that disease impacts wellness relies on the ability of technology, medicine, and physical support.
• Preventative medicine relies on providing wellness tools to help with overall health.

Body Systems

• Consists of the nervous system, The endocrine system, The cardiovascular system, and The immune system impacts the way the human responds with external factors.
• The function provides bodily needs and correlate with health and or the dysfunction.
• NS transmits message from rest of the body and sends messages from dendrites cells, axons and synaptic knobs, creating a electrical response.
• Promotes sympathetic NS by releasing catecholamines, epinephrine, and norepinephrine during high stimuli.
• Sympathetic responses are: Heart rate, respiration, blood pressure, pupils dilate, sweat, and vasconstriction.
• Spinal cord is where all the nerves exist and have their bodily functions.
• Efferent nerves are away from the brain and afferent nerves are toward.
• Autonomic actions are uncontrollable, and are conveyed from the spine from muscles.
• Sympathetic responses call response or mobilize emergency.
• Sympathetic or parasympathetic system maintains and monitors equilibrium.

Body Systems & Disease

• Parkinson's disease is an autoimmune condition that impact the ability function bodily movement while the nervous system creates disturbances to the movement.
• NS disorders impact several canadians and their daily conditions.
• Huntington's disease and paraplegia are conditions that impact the way movement happens.
• The endocrine function releases secretion which creates regulation that interact with functionality in the brain.
• Hypothalamus provides messages to bodily and the pituitary gland, providing and receiving signals that have impacts.
• Sympathetic energy gets released which causes hormone creation, and increased activity for both, bodily needs.

Medulla & Brain Functions

• The medulla releases sensory data for the brain, which results in breathing responses.
• There is the process of diencephalon and the cerebral cortex and the integration of their nervous system. Cerebral includes higher function and has emotional responses based in the system.

Understanding & Assessing Stress

• Stress is associated with - negative stimuli whether that's intellectual, mental to social and physiological.
• Response to a personal environment.
• The reactions to stress have physical side effects - blood pressure and hormone changes and can result in external changes - alcohol, dietary, sleeping change.
• Individual assessment determines ability to respond with stress.
• Organisms respond to stress with phases of- mobilization phase, resistance phase, and a potential for exhaustion.
• Selye believed the response was uniform to the conditions.
• People are seen and believed to have a response, but based on many conditions that have genetic and emotional responses.
• "befriending and tending" - social interaction provide self control and awareness.
• Personal assessment is also a factor which could lead internal or external, resulting in positive and or negative impacts in many ways.
• The factors associated with events include- external and or external, which effects future stress.
• Personal effects on intellectual thoughts.
• Physiological states last from the impacts of many reasons.
• High cholesterol can impact bodily results.
• Stress suppresses immune system.
• The way to relieve and manage stress is through social interaction, mindfulness.
• Reactivitiy relies on genetics and the predisposition in order to react during intense experiences.
• The reasons to develop and implement new ways to help the many reasons of stress is based on all of the combined factors.