I hate wars, I cannot understand people that volunteer to go fight in (someone else’s) wars and I cannot possibly fathom research that is being sponsored to help people who get PTSD because they volunteered to go to war and come back totally traumatized (what did they expect?).

But..

There are lots of people who suffer from PTSD who have not volunteered to encounter such inhumane practices and may have undergone other traumatic experiences. Obviously these people deserve to be helped and it is for those people that I included this short post.

In order to investigate whether probiotics could be beneficial in those suffering from PTSD,  an animal study was conducted in mice. In these animals, PTSD was mimicked by exposing small mice to more aggressive ones for 10 consecutive days. Investigators found that the microbiome of the mice with PTSD became less diverse, compared to that of calm (non-exposed) mice, indicating lower resilience of their bodies. Subsequent feeding with probiotics, resulted in a dramatic improvement, which continued for several weeks afterwards.

A next step in their research is to perform fecal transplantation from calm to stressed mice, and -eventually- replicate that procedure in their human counterparts.

(Afternote: Unfortunately the research is also being used to optimize fighter performance, something which I personally do not support at all..)

Source: http://www.neuroscientistnews.com/research-news/gut-feeling-research-examines-link-between-stomach-bacteria-ptsd