Call for partners | OH MY GUT - Nutrition, gut health and stress

Stress complaints on the rise

In our fast-paced society, stress is a becoming a common experience for most people in everyday life. In addition, Covid has pushed stress levels to new heights. Stress is related to an increased risk for a variety of physical and mental health problems, including anxiety, depression, digestive issues, weight gain, high blood pressure, and sleep problems. Identifying links between stress, diet and gut health (microbiome and intestinal barrier function) and providing people with self-monitoring strategies, can be the key to unlocking improvements in this area.

Finding stress reducing strategies

The goal of this project is to investigate how nutrition and self-monitoring strategies with sensors and biomarkers can help people with effective stress management. This project will focus on the following aspects:

• In silico data analysis to identify links between stress, diet & gut microbiome and potential routes for intervention using data from a gut-brain cohort (Healthy Brain Study).
• Observational study to investigate the power of non- or minimally invasive measurement techniques for gut health (e.g. smart toilet, easy diagnostics, wearables) and identify the link with common stress markers (e.g. cortisol, heart rate, etc.) in a relevant target group
• Consumer study to evaluate the potential stress-reducing effects of food or food ingredients (e.g. prebiotics, probiotics) on sleep, liking, mood, stress levels, etc.
• Explore the applicability of (digital) personalized dietary advice to manage stress by integration of all data
• Human intervention study as validation of the findings

Excited to join?

Food and food ingredient companies interested in targeting the gut-brain axis and gut health benefits to reduce stress, technological companies with stress monitoring devices or stress-related diagnostics.