（4）Week 4 reflection: Gut microbes and mental health
           After the lecture, I knew that gut microbes not only relates to physical health, but also our brain. I was amazed because I never thought that they are connected. Therefore, I searched more information about it in order to understand their relationship. 
           Gut microbes could affect our mental health and vice versa. They interact in many ways through metabolites or direct interaction with nerves. In addition to depression which mentioned in the lecture, some neurological disorders such as Parkinson's, autism, multiple sclerosis are also related to gut microbes. It shows that the balance of gut microbes is important to our mental health. 
           Regard to depression, it may be caused by stress. We are facing a lot of stress from different things such as examination, work, relationship with others. Worry and sadness that created by different things could lead to a stress response. It may last for weeks, months or years. Long-term stress would undermine the gut microbes. A hard life situation would reduce the diversity of gut microbes and increase the amount of bad microbes. It leads to the changes in our brain and increases the risk of brain disorder such as depression. This information shows that our responses and emotions towards stress would affect our gut microbes and our gut microbes affect our mental health. 
            I consider that another possible reason of why stress links to microbes and depression is loss of appetite under pressure. Since some people may lose appetite when they feel stressful, they eat less than usual. Therefore, they receive fewer microbes from diverse food. Their gut microbial diversity would be decreased and it causes the result which is higher risk of mental health as well. 
            To prevent mental diseases, I think that taking care of our diets and emotions are important. The ways that I mentioned in week 3 reflection, especially consuming the food contains probiotics is essential because they improve anxiety, depression and other symptoms that linked to neurological disorders. Besides, maintaining  healthy emotions is vital to improving our mental health. Therefore, we need to learn how to regulate our emotions when we are facing stress. There are many ways that we could regulate our unhealthy emotions. For example, listening to music, talking to our families and getting feedback from them to ease our anxiety. Actually, our emotions depends on how we view something. We could have healthy emotions as long as we view something positively.

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