What came first - Stress or Indigestion?
Written By Barb Beavis | February 17, 2023
You are a better communicator than you realize! Did you know that your brain is in constant communication with – of all things – your gut? That’s why an uncomfortable conversation can induce butterflies or loose bowel movements and why you might not feel like your usual perky self when your stomach is off.
With all the neurotransmitters running up and down the ‘gut-brain axis’, a super highway for messages between the two, it can be difficult sometimes to assess where it all went wrong. It can often be a classic ‘which came first’ question: is it stress and anxiety triggering indigestion and other gut issues, or is gastrointestinal inflammation causing anxiety and increasing our stress level?
And how does one even affect the other?
Think about how your body reacts to a stressful event, like slamming on the brakes to narrowly avoid a car accident – or telling a toddler their favorite stuffy is MIA. Your brain recognizes the danger, and those stress signals travel to your gut and releases stress hormones like cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine. The overproduction of those hormones can wreak havoc on the gut and cause diarrhea, discomfort, and a host of other symptoms. Stress can also alter levels of ghrelin and leptin, hormones that impact your appetite. So if you can’t eat – or can’t stop eating – due to a stressful situation, that mind-body connection might be the culprit.
Now that we know how stress can affect our gut, let’s consider the opposite scenario. Can our gut health really play a role in our mental health? You have a microbiome full of all kinds of things, like bacteria, viruses, and fungi – all mostly healthy – and your microbiome is a primary producer of some important mental health hormones, including serotonin.
Serotonin has a pretty sweet reputation as the ‘happy hormone’ and it plays a starring role in regulating mood, learning, and memory. And when the microbiome gets out of balance, and the serotonin is in short supply, that can lead to sadness or even depression, anxiety, and plain old stress.
What makes all this even more complex is how unique every body is. Your body responds differently to stress than mine does. My brain reacts to stress differently than yours. We don’t have the same diet or exercise in the same way, so our needs – when it comes to stress and gut health – may be quite different.
Acute stress, like the traffic jam or the toddler’s tantrum, should pass without any long-lasting effects on mood or microbiome. But chronic stress is different and can manifest in our bodies in any number of ways. The most obvious indications that something in the gut-brain axis needs to be addressed are digestive issues like gas, bloating, irregular bowel movements, and changes in appetite. You should also look out for unexplained mood swings and exhaustion, chronic fatigue, or insomnia.
These symptoms, along with any other chronic pain or discomfort, can be addressed by a holistic health provider to find the root cause and optimal treatment plan for your unique body. At Holistic Physiotherapy & Wellness, our team is trained to look at both your stress levels and your gut symptoms so we can work with you on a customized treatment plan.
If chronic stress is the primary driver of discomfort, we work on ways to address it through massage therapy, therapeutic yoga, and other stress reduction techniques. If an imbalance in the gut is really to blame, we use naturopathic and lifestyle medicine and examine possible adjustments to what you put in your body.
The only way to know for sure whether the chicken or the egg (the stress or the indigestion) came first is to look at your health holistically. We see you as a whole person in need of care, and we won’t rest until we find the root cause of whatever it is that ails you.
Barb Beavis
Functional Nutritionist