Everyday experiences of racism can impact your brain-gut microbiome

It's proven that experiencing systematic racism negatively affects one's mental health.

But it can also lead to diseases associated with inflammation, such as rheumatoid arthritis and autoimmune inflammatory disease, according to a new study published in Biological Psychiatry.

It's one of the few studies that considers how environment, not just genetics or hereditary traits, affect biology, says Aparna Gupta an associate professor at University of California, Los Angeles who co-authored the study. Gupta is also the co-director of the UCLA Microbiome Center and her research focuses on how the brain-gut microbiome system is influenced by adversity. 
"How we treat people and how we are interacted with has huge impacts on how it affects your biology," she says. "Those interpersonal relationships can have huge impacts all the way down to your microbiome."

View the full story from CNBC.

This study was supported in part by a UCLA CTSI & CURE Pilot and Feasibility Study Award. 

Image caption: Ekaterina Goncharova | Moment | Getty Images

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