For women, digestive problems can be not only painful but also embarrassing. Here’s how changing your thinking can change how you feel.
If you’ve ever had butterflies in your stomach as you waited to make a speech or if you’ve sprinted to the bathroom before a job interview, then you understand how powerful—and at times uncomfortable—the brain-gut connection can be. “About 70 percent of us react to challenges by having some kind of GI symptom,” says Brenda B. Toner, PhD, professor of psychiatry and head of the Women’s Mental Health Program at the University of Toronto and cohead of Social Equity and Health Research at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction & Mental Health.
But lately scientists have discovered that the mind-gut interplay can also work the other way: to calm your stomach rather than upset it. You already know that the central nervous system of your body consists of your brain and spinal cord. What may be news is that you also have the enteric nervous system, which is located in your gut and controls digestion.
This is often referred to as the “little brain” because it has more nerve endings than the spinal cord and manufactures some 90 percent of the body’s serotonin. It trades messages with the “big brain” in the skull.
Although scientists are just beginning to study exactly how the two brains interact, it appears that signals between them can speed up or slow down the passage of food through the digestive system, prompt an amplified pain response to normal bowel contractions or trigger the release of stress hormones.
Such reactions are common, if unpleasant. But for some people, digestive snafus become a chronic condition: An estimated 20 percent of American adults—one and a half times more women than men—suffer from the painful symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), including recurring bouts of diarrhea, constipation, gas and bloating. And while stress is not the primary cause of the syndrome—some sufferers may be genetically predisposed to hypersensitivity in the gut, while others develop IBS after a bacterial stomach infection—anxiety or other intense feelings can worsen symptoms.
Since there is no pharmaceutical or dietary fix that works consistently, especially for people with more severe IBS, there is growing interest in working to exploit the brain-gut connection through psychotherapy. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), in particular, has shown good results, and its techniques may also benefit those who suffer from milder digestive turmoil.
