Gut feelings. Trust your gut. Gut instincts.
We can talk as though our guts can “feel” and even “think” things, but conventional wisdom is that feelings and thoughts are controlled by the brain. That’s true, isn’t it?
There is no doubt that mental and physical health are intimately linked, but when it comes to thinking about the mind, scientific research has tended to focus on the brain to the neglect of the rest of the body.
Thankfully this is changing, and scientific thought seems to be becoming more in-step with people’s real-life experiences.
The link between feelings and the body goes beyond the brain.
It has always been known that some conditions in the body, such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), appear to become worse when our mental health is affected. In such cases, profound and prolonged stress can lead to painful and distressing disease flare-ups.
So how can our feelings make our physical conditions worse?
When we are stressed, we release powerful stress hormones into our bodies. We’re not sure why, but these stress hormones seem to make the immune system to go into over-drive and cause inflammation.
The immune system is designed to protect us from things that make us ill, like bacteria and viruses – inflammation is one of the ways that the immune system does this.
Immune cells that cause inflammation make more blood flow to the area that needs protecting (such as the gut), causing swelling and increasing heat. Typical IBD symptoms can include a red and swollen gut, ulcers, pain and bleeding, and many other painful and distressing symptoms.
Feelings do seem to affect physical health and this involves the whole body, not just the brain.
The brain senses the stress, which leads to the release of stress hormones, which then drives inflammation in the gut, causing all the symptoms of IBD.
And it’s not just IBD, stress can lead to flare-ups of other physical conditions that related to the immune system. These include skin conditions such as acne and eczema and arthritis.
One of the ways to manage a condition like IBD is using anti-inflammatory drugs, to stop the inflammation.
But another key step is to help manage the stress that triggers the flare-up in the first place.
Science is reaching a situation now where we are starting to understand how your mental health can affect your physical health, but one thing is very clear.
It’s not all in your head – your mental health does affect your physical health. By taking care of your mental health, you will be helping your physical health too.
The London Therapist 