Wednesday 6 December 2017

PTSD Doesn’t Only Reside in the Brain

a post by Philip Perry for the Big Think blog

In the US, 50% of men and 60% of women go through a traumatic event in their lifetime. Among them, about 7-8% experience PTSD. What experts have been wondering is, why do some people develop PTSD while others don’t?

Most of the studies surrounding the effects of trauma have focused on the brain. But there’s another body region that may play just as pivotal a role, the gastrointestinal tract. Where trauma is concerned, gut bacteria in the microbiome may play an important role in whether one develops PTSD or not. That’s according to a new study by researchers at Stellenbosch University in South Africa and colleagues at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Their results were published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.

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