this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2026
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More than 90% of the serotonin in your body is produced in your gut in a process that is regulated by bacteria. This serotonin not only aids in digestion, but interacts with nerves that communicate with the central nervous system to alter mood and mental health
If you experience severe depression under antibiotics, you might try to take some probiotic supplements that have strains including Lactobacillus and Streptococcus along with a helping of some soluble fiber.
The serotonin in your gut can't pass through the gut-blood barrier, and therefore never reaches your brain, so it has no effect whatsoever on your ability to feel happy.
Unripe bananas are full of serotonin (which breaks down to melotonin as they ripen), but the only effect that has on your body is to give you diarrhoea.
I didn't claim that it passed through the gut-blood barrier or directly influenced your cns. I said that it interacts with nerves that communicate with your central nervous system, this two way system is called the gut-brain axis.
I mean, this is just incorrect .
Sorry, I wasn't trying to claim that your gut biome doesn't effect your mood, just that the serotonin in your gut isn't making it's easy to the serotonin receptors in your brain that make you feel happy
The serotonin in your gut doesn't "directly" affect the serotonin receptors in your brain, but it does directly stimulate the vagus neve which does influence serotonin receptors in the brain. The microbacteria in the gut are also responsible for metabolizing and producing tryptophan, which the brain requires to produce its own serotonin.
So it kinda depends on how you define directly. There is an ongoing debate in medicine on how artificial the delineation between the central nervous system and peripheral nervus system really is, and whether they should even be partitioned into different sub systems for educational purposes.
Doing so is kinda a artifact of the past and has led to a lot of people attempting to define the brain as some kind of computer for the body, when in reality the functionality of the brain is really inseparable from the body.