Article: Traumatic Brain Injury Causes Intestinal Damage

Another of my "this looks kind of interesting" posts.

http://neurosciencenews.com/tbi-intestines-8137/

 

Its a mouse study. Sad face for: 1) the fate of the mice who experienced this barbarism; and 2) the lack of caution applied when extending this finding to human TBI.

 

I thought about the barbarism too. But, isn't there some common sense in this study too? If you have a TBI, signaling pathways can be disrupted (to the GI or other organs). When things don't run right in the GI, havoc can arise and potentially compound problems over time.

If there is a causal relationship, it wouldn't surprise me if many nurses and techs at brain injury rehab facilities have already intuitively inferred a link.

 

Agreed

Since it would be unethical to perform this type of experiment in humans we use animal surrogates, with the knowledge that the data may not hold species to species but in the hope there are parallels as there often are.
All that said i do not condone doing torturous treatments on animals

All that said there does seem to be a multitude of links from gut to brain, something worth researching but at this point firm conclusions are rather premature, or at least at an early level. For example severing the vagus nerve has been found to reduce the incidence of Parkinsons disease and its been found that alpha synuclein can travel from the gut to the brain (its clumping and killing brain cells being the dominant theory of the disease mechanism of Parkinsons).