Unexpected Discovery of Microbiome Inside Our Brains But Why Is It There?

okay so for me personally when it comes to trying to understand who we are it kind of blows my mind to know that for the most part inside our bodies there are physically more bacterial cells compared to the cells we're made out of in other words if you were to count all of the cells inside your body so like brain cells skin cells bone cells and so on and then compare this to bacteria living in for example inside our guts even though by mass our cells represent a much bigger amount in terms of physical numbers bacteria definitely win and in some of the previous videos I basically raised the simple question so who are we then are we basically just some kind of a carrier or some kind of a Generation ship for a lot of these types of bacteria living inside of us and actually physically affecting our Behavior our mood our personalities and so on you can learn about all of this and a lot of these mind-blowing discoveries in some of the videos in the description but in essence these questions have still not been answered all we know is that there are a lot of different microbes which include bacteria viruses fungi and even ARA living inside of us mostly inside the intestines and they seem to do a lot of different stuff that changes who we are what we think and of course who we become with time but in today's video I wanted to focus on some other additional discoveries that basically suggest that these bacteria don't just live in our intestines they've practically invaded everything and so whole on for person this is Anton let's discuss some of these additional discoveries including putting potential evidence for the bacteria living and working and doing all kinds of stuff inside our brains but I guess let's start with the obvious we still know so little about this topic so for the most part all of this is still speculation but speculation based on solid evidence with a lot of evidence basically suggesting that many of these bacteria play a super important role in basically providing everything for us and most importantly in maintaining our health with all of this technically discovered over 400 years ago here the story starts with a famous Dutch scientist antonian Luen hook who essentially back in the late 1600s decided to investigate inside his own mouth in the process discovering what he then referred to as animal cules tiny organisms that he wasn't sure how to explain but that he tried to do in a lot of his books technically making him the father of microbiology and this was of course the discovery that microbes live inside our mouths here they most likely aid in digestion by breaking down a lot of more complex carbohydrates into much simpler sugars at least that's one of many proposed functions that they seem to serve interestingly though like with so many other bacteria when things go out of control and when some kind of a misbalance is reached they also tend to form what's known as a bofilm one of the older videos in the description talks about this a little bit more but in essence they basically form really complex almost like bacterial cities where everything seems to function to support the growth of certain bacteria they basically create large communities and in our mouth or I guess on our teeth this is basically the reason for various cavities most dental problems are usually the result of some kind of bacterial misbalance which suddenly has them form these huge communities thriving communities that are maybe not so good for our mouth and turns out can also affect a lot of other body parts because all of this is kind of connected which takes us to the next part for many decades researchers always believe that lungs are basically sterile they have to be in order to support our body and in order to prevent serious disorders which do sometimes happen when lungs get infected but turns out that's not the case at all turns out lungs are never sterile and seem to always contain microbes and some of these microbes are potentially very similar to the ones we find inside the mouth and inside nasal cavities and so naturally some of them basically make their way into the lungs but some of them potentially interact with each other and kind of influence one another to some extent so basically there seems to be some kind of an interaction and potentially some kind of a interdependence between different types of microbes in different body parts a lot of these are actually relatively recent discoveries but these discoveries do suggest that microbes exist in many body parts where we thought they couldn't possibly exist and they also seem to play an extremely important role in various immune responses as a matter of fact there seems to be connection between things like asthma and once again misbalance of bacteria in the lungs some of this is explored more in the study you can find any description from 2017 but in a much more recent study from a couple of years ago researchers were able to even describe how these microbial communities can eventually lead to major problems once again forming bofilm eventually leading to what the researchers refer to as bacterial burden and interestingly by using genetic analysis of various bacteria they even kind of created a basic map of what kind of bacteria we can find in various locations and so as you can see here all of us have a lot of different co-inhabitants not to mention we also have a bunch of them on our skins maintaining skin Health with the imbalance usually leading to things like for example acne and well pretty much every single body part so far seems to have some bacteria but it was always believed to be not the brain a protection layer known as the blood brain barrier was always believed to be responsible for essentially protecting the brain from most most of the particles and most of the toxins with a lot of additional research even establishing that certain disorders such as for example dementia and Alzheimer's might actually be the result of some kind of a leak inside the blood brain barrier which sometimes lets harmful substances inside the brain with additional Alzheimer's research even eventually discovering potential bacterial fragments inside the brains of people with Alzheimer's and so there was basically a kind of a suggestion that even though the brain is sterile maybe bacteria are responsible for some of these problems we do have eventually especially as we get old but that was apparently maybe a somewhat primitive approach and possibly did not explain anything as a lot of recent studies started to suggest and the first such suggestion came in 2013 this was a study based on the microbial populations inside the brain of people with HIV essentially trying to figure out if HIV patients were possibly in danger of infection inside their brains and so here by comparing brain tissue of HIV patients with people who were not infected they did find signs of non-human genetic material from possibly 173 types of bacteria inside the brains of patients infected with HIV but this wasn't really the surprising part the surprise came from the brains of the control group or the healthy patients all brains from all groups seem to contain bacterial signs or at least signs of bacterial DNA because it's surprisingly difficult to confirm actual bacteria mostly due to various types of contamination nevertheless a more thorough investigation basically confirmed signs of bacteria and even fungi inside brains of healthy people but also viruses that infect bacteria and possibly ARA as well with further genetic analysis establishing that about 20% of them were genetically similar to bacteria inside the gods and also similar to a lot of other bacteria we usually find in certain other body parts but nevertheless there were more bacterial signs and more diverse bacteria inside brains of various patients so here we're talking about Alzheimer's or HIV which potentially implies that just like with for example a tooth decay maybe here they once again establish some kind of a bacterial colony and thus become pathogenic over time but that's just a suggestion right now because so far there's no actual pattern or any kind of evidence that certain bacteria cause disease and others don't it's just for example in brains of Alzheimer patients the bacterial DNA was a lot more diverse and though by itself a kind of I guess mind-blowing Discovery it doesn't really tell us what's happening here or more importantly how exactly these cells got inside the brain is this the result of the failure of the blood brain barrier or is there actually some kind of an entry point for various bacteria in order to help maintain the brain or essentially maybe bacteria inside the brain play a very similar role to for example bacteria in our guts in supporting brain health now obviously nobody knows what exactly is happening here but that's right now maybe one of the implications and interestingly at least one of the most recent studies from 2023 was actually able to find an interesting connection between Alzheimer's and bacteria inside our mouths here once again by looking at certain bacteria in the oral cavity or inside the mouth the researchers discovered that some bacteria such as ponas gingi valys the one that's occasional response responsible for different types of gum disease are also able to produce what's known as an ameloid essentially a collection of proteins folded in a very specific way that in many cases in human body usually results in different diseases but when it comes to the brain amids are very often associated with Alzheimer's at least when they start clumping and produce certain shapes and because this bacteria was also found inside the brain here the researchers are basically drawing a kind of a connection with a connection being that oral health and the sudden takeover of these types of bacteria producing oral cavities and gum disease might also find ways to enter the brain and do something very similar inside there as well which obviously if correct would be a huge implication for I guess oral health so yeah brush your teeth actually I have to go brush my teeth right now I'll be back okay I'll do it after the video but the main point here is really the idea of balance as long as there is balance and as long as B don't actually start forming these microfilms everything seems to be fine but as soon as we let them establish this it can potentially lead to additional problems inside other body parts especially if all of this starts to spread and some of them seem to even find ways to enter the brain and though naturally there are probably similar bacteria already in the brain doing a lot of good stuff for some reason for reasons we still don't understand sometimes they change and sometimes they become pathogenic but even more importantly all of this high highlights how little we know about our co-inhabitants and how big of a role they play in our health and of course in everything about us as I mentioned in that video from I guess a few months ago they even influence our personalities and the way we think and that's not even including the ones inside our brains all of this even comes from our guts from the bacteria living inside our intestines and so I guess the bottom line here is this is maybe one field we seem to know so little about and that seems to be so influential when it comes to human health and so hopefully in the next few years someone will finally be able to produce a much more comprehensive atlas of bacteria inside of us which can possibly help us understand how certain bacteria help us and how certain other bacteria might create problems but at least for now this field is still in its infancy so we barely know anything even though we know so much about microbiology outside of our bodies we know so little about what's inside us which means that we'll be talking more and more about this as new discoveries are made and as we learn more about how all of this influences Us in everyday lives until then check out previous videos about this topic in the description below thank you for watching subscribe share this with someone who loves R about space and Sciences come back tomorrow to learn something else support this showann on patreon by joining Channel membership or by buying the wonderful person t-shirt you can find in the description stay wonderful I'll see you tomorrow and as always bye-bye okay where's my toothbrush I'm going to go brush my [Music] [Music] teeth e

Channel: Anton Petrov

Views: 228,119

Keywords: bbb, blood brain barrier, brain, brain bacteria, bacterial contamination, anton petrov, science, physics, astrophysics, astronomy, universe, whatdamath, what da math, technology, steven universe, space engine, universe sandbox 2, cosmos, microcosm, gut bacteria, gut viruses, cells inside our body, bacteria inside of us, bacteriophage, difference in our gut biome, gut biome, microbiome, our bellies, our belly, gubaphage, cressphage

Id: 2qu1XV-yj_A

Length: 13min 43sec (823 seconds)

Published: Mon May 27 2024