Probiotics and resilience: relevance to 21st century consumers

corresponding

JOSEPH ANTONY, JANAKI IYER, NAJLA GUTHRIE, MALKANTHI EVANS* 
*Corresponding author
KGK Science Inc., London, Canada

Abstract

Resilience enables an individual to remain stable while exposed to and or to recover faster from a stressor. Recent advances in probiotic clinical trials have revealed that probiotics may help boost mood and cognitive function and lower stress and anxiety. This opinion article presents thoughts on evaluating clinically acceptable markers of resilience and focuses on probiotics as a potential effective intervention to promote resilience. Biomarker characteristics for identifying clinical relevance of a probiotic intervention for resilience via a Global Index is proposed.


Resilience is defined as thriving in the face of or the capacity to maintain homeostasis under adversity (1). Certainly, resilience has emerged as an important factor in navigating 21st century life in North America. Resilience enables an individual to remain stable while exposed to and or to recover faster from a stressor. The hypothalamic pituitary axis (HPA) is key in controlling the response to psychological stress and metabolic health (2). This re-directs us to “stress system resilience” in relationship to metabolism and the recognition of provision for maintenance of function despite perturbation. Adaptable psychological interventions have been considered in improving well-being and resilience in older adults (3).

Since human resilience, resistance and the ability to achieve homeostasis is a neurocognitive phenomenon, the ability of probiotics to influence the gut-brain axis to modulate emotion processing, emotion regulation and cognition control is not unexpected (Figure 1). The concept of resilience has been applied to the human gut ecosystem (4). While perturbations occur with illness and intake of antibiotics during child hood, th ...