Dr. Will Bulsiewicz

There is tremendous overlap between digestive health,

and mood.

And we see this represented in a powerful way in this particular condition, irritable bowel syndrome, because yes, the criteria are not based upon your mood.

The criteria are based upon your gut, based upon your gut symptoms.

But the issue is that a huge percentage of these people simultaneously are dealing with mood issues.

So it's roughly 50% of people that have irritable bowel syndrome that actually can be diagnosed with

major depression or generalized anxiety disorder or both.

Up to 50%.

At a minimum, 50% are suffering in a way where if you were to measure their mood, compare that to normal people, at a minimum, they're in a depressed mood relative to other people.

But it is a very large percentage of people that are potentially...

able to be diagnosed with one of these two conditions or both, which are mood disorders.

So there's this overlap between irritable bowel syndrome and these disorders of our mood.

And the question that has come up is like sort of a chicken or egg thing, right?

What causes what?

And in the past, like in the very beginning, Jonathan, when they first started studying this, they thought that actually started in the brain and that these people had mood issues.

They were depressed.

And because they were depressed, they were feeling it in their gut.

But then we actually lined up studies where we took a group of people that don't have any of these symptoms and we track them.

You know, you take 5,000 people, track them and see what comes first.

And it's actually quite fascinating.