It’s hard to argue against being open-minded. Yet it’s just as hard to argue with Richard Dawkins, the well-known British evolutionary biologist and author, when he warns against being “so open-minded that our brains drop out.”

While that imagine might make you smile, those words might also cause you to reflect and ultimately doubt yourself. To question if you really know the best times to open and close your mind.

I have that question, too, and have no answer, sad to say, to it for you.

I do know this, though. Keeping your mind totally open to a new concept or idea temporarily incapacitates you.

So it may help to treat your mind in the same manner I hope you treat your stomach. To feed it mostly healthy stuff and then give it time to digest.

Think of this column as the post-meal walk we take together as part of that last step. During this particular stroll, let me remind you that chronic stress is a significant problem for many people today and suggest something that could create — if you are open-minded and fear what Richard Dawkins does — the dreaded brain drop out.

That you actually gain resiliency, the ability to favorably respond to and recover from stress, by having a healthy gut microbiome.

What makes your gut microbiome healthy to a great extent is the degree to which you believe and follow health and fitness’s holy trinity: To eat well, exercise enough, and get sufficient sleep. And according to a recent study from UCLA’s Goodman-Luskin Microbiome Center published in the June 2024 issue of Nature Mental Health, one result of good microbiome health is that positive messages are then sent from the gut to the brain.

More on the hows and whys of that will come later, because just as important is the clarifying effect the UCLA study has on a few prior ones.

Like one performed at the University of Technology Sydney and published in the April 2022 issue of Nature Communications. In this study, researchers had depressed young men between the ages of 19 and 25 follow a Mediterranean diet and found it lessened their depression.

What the researchers could not say for sure, however, is how the Med diet and depression were linked together.

A December 2022 paper also published in Nature Communication, though, offered an answer, albeit a hypothetical one. That 13 types of bacteria found in the gut microbiome can send negative signals to the brain that can lead to depressive symptoms.

While depression and stress should not be confused, they do share this in common. Too much of either can be overwhelming to you.

The research performed as part of the UCLA study suggests that whether each becomes too much or not resides in your gut.

The researchers there had 116 people answer the 25 questions that comprise the complete Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale. It’s designed to measure how well one is equipped to bounce back after stressful events, tragedies, or traumas.

The researchers also had the subjects submit stool samples and undergo brain scans.

The big news from all this work is nicely surmised in a Medical News Today article. That the stool samples of the individuals found to be more resilient according to the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale “had less inflammatory bacteria” — something that only occurs if you’re eating mostly healthy stuff.

Moreover, these same individuals “exhibited signs of robust integrity” in a specific area of the gut microbiome known as the gut barrier.

There’s good reason why you want to have a healthy gut barrier, by the way. For if yours is not, there’s a good chance your gut will leak what it’s supposed to hold.

Which can lead to the sort of inflammation outside the gut that causes, according to a paper published in the August 2019 issue of Gut, the following “minor problems”: cramps, bloating, fatigue, food allergies and insensitivities, gas, and headaches. As well as a few “major ones”: autoimmune conditions, depression and other mood disorders, diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, and multiple sclerosis.

Based on the results of the UCLA study, stress should be added to both lists. It’s further proof that eating well does such significant good that it truly is part of the health and fitness’s holy trinity — and that my use of that phrase is far from hyperbole.

But you’ve read something like that here before, so here’s something you haven’t — something that requires an open mind to contemplate. It’s from Casey Means, MD, and found in her book, Bad Energy (Avery, 2024).

“The microbiome is like our soul: it’s invisible, lives inside of us, and determines the quality and quantity of our life and what we think and do. . . Mistreat or misfeed [it], and our lives will suffer in unbelievable ways. . .

Care for the microbiome, and ‘poof’: our life magically becomes easier.”

Which means less stressful, right?