"Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut" to be released April 26 on Netflix (2024)
Delve into the digestive system with this lighthearted and informative documentary that demystifies the role gut health plays in our overall well-being. Dr. Gupta provides expert commentary in this exciting new documentary.
Katie Couric Media (2024)
You’ve felt it before, when you get nervous, your stomach flutters or aches. You’ve been advised to trust this feeling and rely on it, but is your gut actually intuitive? It turns out, there’s evidence to support trusting your gut, literally. Your stomach and brain are directly connected — and can absolutely influence one another. Read Trust your gut: What to know about the stomach-brain connection
Newsweek and UCLA Health (2024)
A new UCLA Health study has found that women who perceive themselves to be lonely exhibited activity in regions of the brain associated with cravings and motivation towards eating, especially when shown pictures of high-calorie foods such as sugary foods. The same group of women also had unhealthy eating behaviors and poor mental health. Read “Feeding the lonely brain” in UCLA Health News & Insights andNewsweek
The new science on what ultra-processed food does to your brain (2024)
Ultra-processed foods may not only affect our bodies, but our brains too. New research suggests links between ultra-processed foods — such as chips, many cereals, and most packaged snacks at the grocery store — and changes in the way we learn, remember and feel. These foods can act like addictive substances, researchers say, and some scientists are proposing a new mental-health condition called “ultra-processed food use disorder.” Diets filled with such foods may raise the risk of mental health and sleep problems. Arpana Gupta, PhD, co-director of the Goodman-Luskin Microbiome Center, provided commentary in this Wall Street Journal article (subscription required)
Nature Mental Health highlights research by Arpana Gupta, PhD (2024)
Experiences of discrimination are associated with adverse health outcomes, including obesity. However, the mechanisms by which discrimination leads to obesity remain unclear. Utilizing multi-omics analyses of neuroimaging and fecal metabolites, researchers investigated the impact of discrimination exposure on brain reactivity to food images and associated dysregulations in the brain–gut–microbiome system. Read Discrimination Exposure Impacts Unhealthy Processing of Food Cues: Crosstalk Between the Brain and Gut.
2023
Discrimination alters brain-gut ‘crosstalk,’ prompting poor food choices and increased health risks (2023)
People frequently exposed to racial or ethnic discrimination may be more susceptible to obesity and related health risks in part because of a stress response that changes biological processes and how we process food cues. Arpana Gupta, PhD, co-director of the Goodman-Luskin Microbiome Center, was interviewed on the study that directly examined the effects of discrimination on responses to different types of food as influenced by the brain-gut microbiome system.
The association between disadvantaged neighborhoods and cortical microstructure and their relation to obesity (2023)
According to newly published research in Nature, living in a disadvantaged neighborhood can affect food choices, weight gain and even the microstructure of the brain. UCLA GI authors include Lisa A. Kilpatrick, PhD, associate researcher; Tien S. Dong, MD, PhD, assistant clinical professor of medicine; Jennifer S. Labus, PhD, adjunct professor of medicine; Bruce D. Naliboff, PhD, project scientist; Emeran A. Mayer, MD, director of the G. Oppenheimer Center for Neurobiology of Stress and Resilience; and Arpana Gupta, PhD, co-director of the Goodman-Luskin Microbiome Center.
You are what you eat: Diet may affect your mood and brain function (2023)
If you struggle with mood changes and other behavioral health issues, there’s a chance that your diet has something to do with it. Arpana Gupta, PhD, co-director of the Goodman-Luskin Microbiome Center, and Shelby Yaceczko, MS, RDN-AP, CNSC, CSSD, advanced practice dietitian, discuss what the gut-brain system is, and how diet can affect it. Read article in UCLA Hedalth News & Insights
Accepted into the JEDI UCLA Mentoring Program (2023)
Sex-specific brain signals drive obesity differently in men and women (2023)
According to new study. Dr. Arpana Gupta, co-director of the Goodman-Luskin Microbiome Center and senior author on the study, is interviewed on AirTalk podcast with Larry Mantle (1:07:35)
Brain scans show how different factors can influence obesity in men and women (2023)
Understanding the differences, researchers say, could have implications for more targeted approaches to weight loss. Dr. Arpana Gupta, co-director of the Goodman-Luskin Microbiome Center, provides expert commentary in this NBC article
Research on how advanced brain scans are revealing the differences in how men and women gain weight and how that can impacts our eating habits (2023)
"Discrimination is not just an issue for a person. It is not just an issue for a community or a racial or ethnic group. It is a public health issue.” Dr. Arpana Gupta is the co-director of the Goodman-Luskin Microbiome Center and Dr. Tien S. Dong is a health sciences assistant clinical professor of medicine.
Arpana Gupta, PhD, and Tien S. Dong, MD, PhD, publish new research in Biological Psychiatry on how stress, racism and discrimination impact biology.
UCLA Technology and Development Group (TDG) Innovation Fellowship: Sponsored by Startup UCLA, TDG, and the VCR, to help selected fellows at advancing entrepreneurial excellence and startup culture (PIs: Arpana Gupta, PhD/Tien S. Dong, MD, PhD) (2022)
We hope to use this opportunity to start our company ABioME, a company based on using select microbiome mixtures to develop supplements targeting the brain gut to help with specific disorders, behaviors and conditions.
Daily Bruin highlights our study on how childhood adversity can alter someone's biological makeup through interactions of the brain and gut microbiome, to increase vulnerability towards increased anxiety and depression (2021)
