Stress and IBS
IBS is a disorder of gut/brain communication and stress is thought to be one of the most important things the brain and the gut talk about. ​Stress and IBS are a bit of a chicken and egg situation. Unmanaged stress can worsen symptoms of IBS and IBS symptoms can up your stress levels! ​​
To find out more about the impact stress can have on your IBS symptoms...
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Watch the video
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Click on the links in the white box
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Just scroll down!
What is Stress?
Stress is the natural reaction your body has when challenges, threats or changes occur in your life. Stress responses can be physical, emotional, cognitive (thoughts) and behavioural. Everyone experiences stress to some degree. The way you respond to stress, however, makes a big difference to your overall health.
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​Stress affects both your mind and your body. A little bit of stress is good and can help you avoid danger or perform daily activities. Too much stress or unmanaged stress can cause physical and mental health problems. Learning how to cope with stress can help you feel less overwhelmed and supports both your mental and physical well-being.
The "Normal" Stress Response
To understand how stress can interfere with digestion and cause symptoms of IBS, let's look first at the nervous system and a "normal" physiological stress response.
The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is the one to focus on here. It controls processes in your body that you have little control over, including digestion.
Normal Stress Response
You have a problem or emergency...
Sympathetic nervous system (SNS) takes over
Activates flight, fight or freeze response
Hormone cortisol is released causing...
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Muscle tightness
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Increased heart rate and blood pressure
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Stress signals travel along gut-brain axis
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Energy and blood flow directed away from gut to brain and muscles
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Digestion slows or shuts down
The PNS calms and relaxes the body...
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Muscles relax
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Breathing returns to normal
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Decreases heart rate and blood pressure
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Body sends resources back to the gut
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Digestion continues
Activates rest and digest response
Parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) takes over
Problem solved or emergency passes...
Stress is not always a bad thing. The SNS motivates you and makes you perform better. When you’ve dealt with the problem, your PNS takes over and you relax and continue with digestion.
This balance between the SNS and the PNS is a good and normal stress response for the short term.
Chronic Stress
Some stress in your life can be a good thing in the short term. It becomes problematic when you have too much stress in your life or you are not managing your stress well. Your brain stays in emergency mode and your sympathetic nervous system stays activated, making you feel constantly tense, anxious or overwhelmed. This is known as chronic stress.
Your body's stress response gives you the strength and energy to respond to physical danger and emergencies, which is important for survival. If you are constantly in physical danger or a state of emergency, stress can become chronic. Unfortunately, some of these situations may be beyond your control.
However, your body is not very good at telling the difference between emotional and physical safety, so negative emotions could cause a stress response even if you aren’t actually in physical danger. Thoughts are also very powerful, so the way you think about a situation could impact stress levels. Imagining or reliving stressful events may have a similar effect to actually being in the situation. Stress can be stored in the body and create habitual holding patterns. Or sometimes you just fill your life with stressors that aren't serving you.
Negative emotions or thoughts, stress held in the body and decluttering your life of unnecessary stressors are often the targets of stress management.​​
The Effects of Chronic Stress
​Chronic, unmanaged stress can affect practically every system in your body.
It may cause difficulties with concentration, headaches or other body pains, an upset stomach, loss of appetite, over eating or trouble sleeping.
Chronic stress can worsen pre-existing health problems like high blood pressure and diabetes and negatively affect your gut bacteria. It may increase use of alcohol, tobacco and other substances if they are used as coping mechanisms.
Stressful situations can also impact your mental health, most commonly anxiety and depression.
Stress and IBS
IBS is a disorder of gut/brain interaction and chronic stress can impact IBS symptoms in a number of ways, so it's very important to learn to manage stress if you have IBS. Which is easier said than done, because IBS can be very stressful!
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Studies have found higher than normal levels of anxiety and depression in people with IBS. It may be that gut symptoms negatively influence what is happening in the brain in terms of anxiety and depression or it could work from the top down and psychological factors like stress and anxiety could impact the gut.
Digestion
Ongoing feelings of stress, worry, anxiety or fear can cause energy and blood flow to continually be directed away from the gut. This interferes with digestion of food and absorption of nutrients.
Inflammation
Blood flow sending resources away from the gut can also interfere with the production of mucus that protects the walls of the GI tract. If the walls are damaged the immune system could be activated, causing inflammation and pain.
Motility
Stress can slow down or speed up gut motility, the movement of the muscles in your GI tract. Muscles in your gut may react by tightening up or spasming, causing constipation, diarrhea or both.
Visceral Hypersensitivity
Evidence suggests that chronic stress can increase your perception of pain and trigger a pain response that wouldn't be considered painful under normal conditions. In the case of IBS chronic stress could make the gut more sensitive, causing pain.
Gut Microbiome
Unmanaged stress can also be bad news for the good bacteria that live in your gut. If the gut is not a nice place to be, they may die out and be replaced by bad bacteria. This could affect communication between your gut and your brain.
