Is IBS All In Your Head?

Can stress cause IBS?

Yes.

Can IBS cause stress?

Yes.

What do emotions and Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) have to do with each other?

A lot.

And the connection is so underrated when it comes to healing digestive issues.

 

Emotions & IBS

 

Let’s start with the physiology (how things work).

There is something in the body called the Gut Brain Axis.  And this Gut Brain Axis controls how the gut and the brain communicate together.

So what we are thinking in our mind can have an impact on what we are feeling in our gut.   ie Butterflies in our stomach.

And what’s going on in our gut can have an impact on what’s going on in our mind, ie an inflamed gut leading to an inflamed brain which can then manifest as depression.

Sometimes it’s a bit of the chicken and the egg scenario, which came first?  A stressed mind or a stressed gut?

Either way you are going to want to sort out both to feel really happy and healthy.

When you heal your body in a holistic way (ie getting to your root cause) both will resolve together.

..just as an fyi, I wrote another post on The Top 5 Causes of IBS

 

The Vagus Nerve

 

The human brain contains on average 86 billion neutrons (nerve cells).  Woah.   My absolute favourite nerve is the Vagus Nerve.  Aka Cranial Nerve X.

This Vagus Nerve (Vagus ~ “Wanderer”, so named as it wanders around the body) is the longest of all our nerves.

This Vagus nerve is really really important for, gosh everything to do with staying alive!

Starting with the heart.  If you think how important it is for our heart to work every minute of every day to keep us living.

And then think how important our digestive system must be if 80-90% of the nerve fibers in the vagus nerve are dedicated to communicating the state of not your heart, but your abdominal organs up to your brain.

Our heart needs to be pumping all. the. time.  Super important.  Otherwise everything else shuts down.  No nutrients to the cells, no oxygen to the brain.  Most people are technically “brain dead” after around 10 minutes of the heart stopping.

So the continuous functioning of the heart is crucial.   And only 10% of this very important nerve’s function is to keep that on track.

Just take a second for that.

10%-ish for the heart.

80-90% for digestion.

Our digestion is that important!

 

Enteric Nervous System

 

And then also, in the digestive system we have something called the Enteric Nervous System.

The term “enteric” means “of, or relating to the intestine.”

This enteric nervous system has lots and lots of nerves as well.   So if your nervous system, your whole body’s nervous system, is fried, the nerve endings in your digestive system are going to be overly sensitive as well.

Somedays you can handle large crowds of people, somedays you can’t?   Almost always the state of your nervous system determines that.

Know someone that needs a poop about half an hour after meals?

Could be due to over stimulated nerve endings in the enteric nervous system.

The bowel motion that comes out is not the food just eaten, it is what was sitting in there just before.  The nerve endings have been stimulated and start the cascade of events leading to peristalsis (muscle contractions) to push the stool out.

Look after the nervous system, and in turn you’ll decrease the sensitivity of the nerves in your gut.

 

Is it always about the food when healing the gut?

 

Nope.

It absolutely is important to look at all the physical components, but to really get to the next level of physical health we need to make sure we are looking after our mental and emotional health too.

My friend Conni and I talked quite a bit about this in our recent podcast interview “Healthy Gut, Healing IBS and Fasting with Kirsten Greene”.

Conni’s amazing.

She’s inspired me a lot in how open she is with the struggles she faces.    She’s all about the art of vulnerability.   My About Me page…and sharing my story there… that had been on my “list” for ages, her encouragement got it over the line.

Anyhoo, one of Conni’s struggles has been IBS.  Another depression.    You can read more about those and how she overcomes them on her site liveyourheartout.co

We’ve been working together to heal up her digestion (like me Conni also had SIBO (Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth)).

I helped Conni a lot with the physical side of things, ie dietary adjustments, herbal medicine and nutritional supplements.   She was a super star, nailed the SIBO protocol.

Conni helped herself a lot with working through emotions.   Daily meditation being one of the ways.   Amazing.

 

Breathing IBS Away??

 

There is a guy called Tim Harris who wrote a blog post called “Can you breathe your way out of SIBO“?.   And it talks about how the slow breath and the deep breath are so beneficial for our Vagus Nerve, and thus our digestion.

The slowing down of the breath will calm down the Sympathetic Nervous System (which controls stress response aka fight and flight) and also help to activate the Parasympathetic Nervous System (rest and digest).

When I was studying to be a Naturopath one of the first assignments we were given was to do 10 days of 10 deep breaths morning and night.

I LOVED my college, it was very much about “walking the talk” and encouraging us to experiment so we could experience things for ourselves before recommending them to our clients.   So many self experiments over the years!

Ten deep breaths in the morning.  Ten deep breaths at night.

And we were to record our stress levels beforehand, our stress levels after, our sleep quality, our energy levels, our mood…

E-v-e-r-y one of us felt better after the ten days.   Everyone felt positive benefits.     And that’s just ten deep breaths morning and night, maybe two to four minutes of the day tops.

Doing this before meals is a fabulous idea as well.

It helps you to be more present with your meal.

It’ll help you be more mindful about what you’re eating.

It’ll help to switch your body back into your parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest).

This in turn will help increase your digestive function, you’ll break down your food better, you’ll be able to absorb more nutrients, which will give you more energy for you and your cells.

 

How can stress cause IBS?

One last example of just how much of what goes on in our brain can affect our digestion.

Unfortunately I am often the end of the road for a lot of my really sick clients.

More often than not they’ve been dismissed by their GP(s) with a diagnosis of “just IBS”.

Some have even been told it’s “all in their head”.

Breaks my heart.

And, even IF it was all in someone’s head, it still needs addressing for the gut to heal.

I suffered with digestive issues pretty much since day dot out of the womb.   And because of these years and years of suffering I developed a bit of a stressful relationship with food.

But I didn’t know any different, that was just what it was.

When I ate my stomach puffed out.   I thought everyone was like that.  Just that they were better at dealing with it.   So I hid how much it affected me (and often avoided eating).

When you look at the example of Pavlov’s Dogs (the experiment that conditioned dogs to start salivating just at the sound of a bell, not being fed) you can see how someone might experience bloating even at just the thought of eating certain foods.

Our minds are powerful.

But just as they can harm us if we don’t manage them, they can also help us to heal.

 

Where to start harnessing the power of our minds?

I’m going to finish off with some resources for you to explore:

Another goodie Conni has put me onto, Joe Dispenza.  His meditations are epic!

Jon Gabriel, he does a lot with visualisations for weight loss with The Gabriel Method.

I have an amazing spiritual teacher I work with, Kirsty (something in a name?!).  Let me know if you’d like her details.

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.  First book they gave us as assigned reading when I was studying to be a Naturopath.   Also on the book list on my Yoga Teacher Training.

Another good book, The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton goes into the study of Epigenetics (the turning on or off of  our genes).

 

So yes, stress can cause IBS.  But you absolutely have the power to reverse it.

 

10 deep breaths anyone?

 

Lots of love,

Kirsten

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