Have you ever felt butterflies or knots in your stomach when you were nervous or excited? When you think about what prompted these feelings, it makes sense that your brain and your gut are connected in some way.
In fact, your brain and your gut communicate with each other all the time. And that helps explain why stress, anxiety, and other strong emotions can trigger digestive symptoms like:
- Diarrhea
- Bloating
- Cramping
- Nausea
As a gastroenterologist, I think everyone should know how a healthy lifestyle can support the brain-gut connection. But first, let’s dive deeper into the gut to see how it communicates.
Pathways between your gut and your brain
The brain and gut are connected through nerves, hormones, and gut bacteria.
Your digestive tract has hundreds of millions of nerve cells (neurons). This enteric nervous system (ENS), which controls digestive functions, can communicate with your brain via a large nerve called the vagus nerve.
Like the brain, the gut makes neurotransmitters, including serotonin and dopamine. These chemical messengers help nerve cells talk to each other and regulate digestion. They can also affect your mood. The trillions of bacteria that live in the gut — known as the gut microbiome — don’t just help with digestion; they help produce these neurotransmitters and play a role in regulating your mood.
The gut also makes up to 20 types of hormones, including melatonin, which affects the body’s sleep cycle, and ghrelin, which helps regulate hunger.
How stress upsets your gut
The connection between your brain and your gut serves some important purposes, like letting your brain know when you’re hungry or full. But it also allows your mood and stress level to affect your digestion.
Stress and anxiety trigger the brain’s fight-or-flight response. That response prepares your whole body to respond to a threat, flooding the system with hormones that can cause food to move too quickly or too slowly through the digestive tract.
The result: diarrhea or constipation, or even nausea or pain.
That process can trigger painful muscle spasms and make it harder for your gut to digest and absorb nutrients from food. And stress can also disrupt the gut microbiome.
Stress-induced digestive issues are often temporary. They should pass when the stress ends.
But stress can also affect digestive health in more disruptive ways — for instance, by worsening a chronic digestive disorder like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or functional dyspepsia.
The brain-gut feedback loop
Because your brain and gut send signals back and forth, your gut also can affect your brain. If your gut isn’t healthy, the signals it sends to your brain can disrupt your mood and cause stress. And that stress may make your digestive issues worse.
Stress can disrupt the balance of bacteria in the gut which may trigger depression, anxiety, and digestive symptoms. To break out of this cycle, I often advise my patients to take steps to address their stress or other mental health concerns. Communication between the brain and gut goes both ways, so soothing the mind can also help support a healthy digestive system.
Calm your mind and your gut
There are things you can do to stop stress from upsetting your stomach. Here are a few ideas I suggest to many of my patients:
Eat well
Aim for a well-balanced diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole-grain foods. Including fiber and probiotic foods, like yogurt, can help to maintain a healthy balance of gut bacteria.
Manage stress
Here are some things you can try:
- Be active. Exercise lifts your spirits and lowers stress. Choose activities you enjoy.
- Get enough sleep. Aim for 7 to 9 hours per night. Keep your bedroom comfortable and quiet.
- Try a relaxation exercise. Deep breathing is one way to relax. Close your eyes and take several deep breaths, in through your nose and out your mouth.
- Find some fun. Do something that makes you happy every day, whether that’s spending time on a hobby or listening to music.
- Find a good listener. Talking with a friend about your feelings may help.
- Get outside. Fresh air and nature can improve mood and diversify your microbiome.
- Consider counseling. Cognitive behavioral therapy may help to ease the symptoms of a digestive disorder like IBS or functional dyspepsia by using the brain-gut connection to the patient’s advantage. Because the brain and digestive system interact so closely, treating the brain may be another way to treat the gut.
Get great care for your gut
If you’re living with digestive problems or stomach pain, it may be time to seek expert advice. The physicians at Temple Health’s Digestive Disease Center can help you with all kinds of digestive health problems, from the common to the complex. To make an appointment with a Temple gastroenterologist, call 800-TEMPLE-MED (800-836-7536) or schedule an appointment online.
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