Is IBS physical or mental?

When doctors imply IBS or mysterious digestive issues are in your head, what do they mean?

Are they implying you are making it up?

The function of the gut is so complex, Western medicine is still trying to understand it fully. But doctors are taught in medical school about the nervous system connections between the gut and the brain. They are taught that the miscommunication or misfiring of signals between the brain and the gut is one of the main causes of IBS.

There’s trillions of bacteria in your gut that talk to your brain. And your brain is constantly sending messages to the gut through a nervous system information highway called the vagus nerve.

When digestive issues happen, no matter if they start in the brain (stress and trauma) or the gut (food poisoning, pathogens or toxin) both systems will be affected.

The medical system is not set up to figure out each person’s unique root cause. So doctors don’t do it. They are vague and they provide pharmaceutical support.

Healing yourself is possible, but you likely won’t get help to get your life back from doctors.

So where does IBS originate?

Is IBS originally a gut problem or a mental problem?

It’s both. One leads to the other and they antagonize each other.

Gut infections, food sensitivities and inflammation could be present but a dysregulated nervous from a panicked mind can also be contributing to symptoms and make healing more difficult.

Nervous system function is important, because it regulated digestion, motility, peristalsis, detoxification and inflammation.

So it may start with one cause. But it will develop into a loop between the brain and the gut. And will require working on both to recover.

My aim is not to overwhelm with this information. My experience is that when people start working with their brain, they don’t have to be as rigorous with their protocol for it to work. That’s the good news.

Here is how it works

Say the issue was caused by food poisoning. The damaged villi, bacteria or nerves in the intestine will send danger signals to the brain.

The brain will tell the nervous system to go into alarm (fight or flight mode) and for the immune system to inflame as a response.

Raised inflammation and nervous system alarm translate into symptoms like anxiety, depression, gut pain, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, headaches, rashes, reflux, brain fog or joint pain, etc.

Increased symptoms cause more fear, which leads to more nervous and immune system activation (inflammation/dysregulation).

That’s the cycle and the loop can be broken by calming the gut or the mind. It is often easier and faster to work on the mind, which changes and heals at a faster pace than the gut.

Now you understand how the physical affects the mental and the loop it creates.

So as you address and repair the gut you have to work on the mind also.

I see the physical manifestation of fear, anxiety or panic on my client’s GI Map.

There is a marker on this stool test called secretory IGA or Sig A. It measures gut immunity. And dictates how quickly and easily people will heal.

When the problem first starts Sig A is elevated as the immune system fights. Eventually Sig A drops when the issue is not resolved and the immune system becomes fatigued.

Often emotional and mental stress, driven by subconscious or conscious feelings and thoughts, inhibit the immune system’s ability to fight. Stress releases cortisol and cortisol surpasses the immune system’s inflammatory response.

When the nervous system is disrupted by stress, it affects organ function. This is diagnosed as IBS.

So if the problem originates in the head (from chronic stress or trauma) it will manifest in the body by lowering immunity and disrupting organ function.

This is why doctors recommend SSRIs and other brain calming drugs

This goal of calming the mind body loop is why doctors prescribe SSRIs and other anxiety meds. And why this works for some people. There are, however, lots of side effects.

By calming the fear response in the brain’s limbic system, we can improve stomach acid productions, enzyme release by the pancreas and liver bile production. These are the cornerstones of good digestion. And depends on good brain and nervous system function.

Your body knows how to heal, rebalance and regulate. We just need to turn the vicious cycle (brain gut loop) into a virtuous one. We get out of the way of the gut healing by calming the brain.

How to calm the brain?

Getting the nervous system back in a rest and digest state is essential.

There are many natural approaches to do this. Different things work for different people. It is important to find something that resonates with you. Don’t force anything you don’t like. You won’t stick with it. Consistency is key.

Some therapies that regulate the nervous system are somatic experiencing, EMDR, biofeedback, and guided meditations like hypnosis and yoga Nidra.

I can’t say enough about somatic experiencing therapy and hypnosis because these are the modalities that made a huge difference foe me after my struggles/trauma with mold exposure. I also love yoga Nidra. But find that it is slow to work.

Talk therapy never helped me very much. It just spun my brain in the same stress loops, by reexamining why I was feeling this way.

You can’t just examine your thoughts, you need to rewire the brain and its anxiety/fear response.

Googling and self educating can be useful but for many people it backfires.

There’s too much inflammatory, contradictory and alarming information out there. This sends the brain and nervous system deeper into a fear spiral.

Sometimes you don’t feel the fight or flight

Often people don’t even know that their brain is sending them into a fight or flight state because they can’t feel it.

That heightened state of fight or flight just feels normal because they’ve been in it for so long. I have to say that I too have experienced this. The constant stress starts to feel normal. Because true, deep relaxation is never accessible.

This is when working with the subconscious mind and limbic system can yield the biggest results.

Hypnosis and brain rewiring

My favorite way to work with both is though hypnosis.

Hypnosis slow down the speed of brainwaves to that it become less critical, fearful and judgmental and is more open to possibilities and suggestion. It become more fluid and less fixed.

In this state we can also access information that is usually not readily available to us.

Putting yourself in a hypnotic state daily while listening to personalized positive suggestions, will rewire the brain and rewrite old programming that no longer serves you.

So when you experience an old trigger, like a gut flare, it won’t start your automatic panic and fear response. Hypnosis is based on the principles of neuroscience and Nueroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to change its responses.

Your symptoms are real even if they come from the mind

Your stress is real. Your symptoms are real. There are solutions that can make the difference.

Now you understand the mind body connection and how working on the brain helps.

That is why subconscious rewiring, vagus nerve stimulation and limbic retraining are becoming hot topics now. And are a great compliment to testing, supplementation and diet/lifestyle changes.

This work makes the body less reactive, less sensitive, better able to respond and balance correctly.

By addressing body AND mind you get the best results.