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My gastroenterologist told me this 8 years ago after he found no physical problems with my intestinal tract.

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Yup. I got a full colonoscopy thst found nothing. Hilariously once I got out of college, my trigger foods dropped being triggers.

Whoa, are you me? Haha

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What were your trigger foods, and are they just gone from your diet? Or did they actually stop triggering you?

Most common ingredient I found was hydrolyzed soy protein. And milk. But now I can eat both with no issues.

My wife cured her irritable bowel syndrome using psychedelics. She suffered it for 30 years then we both tried ayahuasca, lsd and mushrooms and now she is cured.

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Does that include abdominal cramps so severe that ER visits are required with the only remedies being Fentanyl and Dilaudid? Which is finally administered after they are absolutely sure you aren't there just to fake it to get the good meds no matter they've never seen you before but thanks to previous jackholes now we're all suspect. Plus they've got to try other stuff such as that awful GI cocktail which numbs your throat and mouth but does nothing to stop those super painful abdominal cramps which btw could not be diagnosed? Word of warning - it would be advantageous to have a supply of adult diapers should this ever happen to you or someone you know has a similar experience. Screw the stigma of having to wear one of those because I can assure you that even when you think you can't produce any more liquids because you've either puked them out or expelled it another way cuz you may have been sitting on the toilet due to the intense cramping pushing down on your bladder causing uncontrollable leakage, I'm speaking from a womans POV mind you, having that protection spares you from embarrassing yourself while sitting in the ER. I can attest to what severe stress can do to a stomach. Seeing this validates more than I even thought. I hope none of you reading this ever has to go through those cramps.

I’m going to look into this, thanks. I need to make some life changes to limit my stress a bit but damn is it hard when jobs don’t give raises and prices keep going up and just.. people. I’m willing to try anything at this point though.

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My parents divorced when I was a kid and I had nothing but stomach issues for the whole school year, had a ton of tests including upper and lower GI that found nothing.

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This was also me, except mine turned out to be my job (low-level manager but lots of stress and responsibility).

I used to have at least one ‘attack’ a week, sometimes several, seriously affecting my social engagements (because - naturally - I was usually completely fine at work and it was only my personal life and relationships that suffered).

Once I was out of that environment it stopped pretty much straight away. Amazing and frustrating at the same time; I wish I’d realised sooner!

Edit: typo

I got out of the military and suddenly had no trigger foods. Now that I’m older, I do have acid reflux trigger foods. It was good while it lasted I guess.

It makes so much sense now! I've never had a consistent bowl mouvement, and sometimes even the coffee with a cigi wouldn't work in the morning, but I thought it was just my abnormal system. I was under a lot of stress.

Few months ago I changed jobs, and the new one is more relaxed and paid more money, so I was in a better mood and with less stress, and my bowl movement during those months was consistent and daily.

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That explains quite a bit!

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Anyone who read. Did they give advice on how to reverse the issue or just “less stress”.

How and where did she do this and was it legal?

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I had this and it was diagnosed as gastritis. Not sure what the differences are exactly but they are different.

As someone with C-PTSD, I feel very called out.

I’ve never heard of anyone dealing w what I do. Literally high dose of pain meds. Only thing that stops it - IV meds

Mine told me I'd become lactose intolerant. One day, I tried Costco probiotic out of desperation. It improved my condition by like 75%. I can leave the house again!! I don't want to, but now it's an option.

I was diagnosed with IBS but mine improved after I had surgery to fix an abdominal hernia with mesh. My GI symptoms improved to point of not needing any further follow up. I still have the occasional issue that’s worse than a normal person, but nothing close to like it was. I have a lot of family with IBD (Chrons and UC), so I was glad I’ve seemingly dodged that bullet. Doctor said it was first time he had encountered where hernia surgery basically fixed my IBS.

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I actually am studying this and want to research stress and the gut for a living. Your mood (and stress levels) have a bidirectional relationship with your gut via many mechanisms. Even one stressful event can alter the makeup of your gut.

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We live in México, I extensively studied psychedelics before trying them and when I did (I tried ayahuasca before her) I instantly knew that she would benefit from them and I was right. Now she is a different person, more spiritual and her anxiety and colitis vanished. Now she lives a normal and happy life, we still do psychedelics from time to time to keep growing our counsciousness.

It’s worth noting that the IBS-like symptoms are specifically diarrhea and this is just in a mouse model.

So it may extend to constipation as well in humans or not but if you’re experiencing constipation, this may be unrelated.

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Oh wow, that is amazing. Where was the hernia? Was it instant relief?

In my experience this has always been a chicken/egg issue.

As a sufferer; yes. There is a direct mental health to digestive health connection…is my hypothesis

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could be abdominal migraine. hardly understood and generally treated with old fashioned antihistamines that just knock you unconscious till it passes

I have been diagnosed with chrons disease so that’s where this comes from but when I have an attack. Straight to hospital. Pain that causes blacking out it’s so bad, they usually give me pain meds but for whatever reason my body takes lots. I always end up having to get more to dull it

Hey! These are my top two on the medical marijuana prescription.

Like I had a follow up with the surgeon first probably 3-4 weeks later and around that time I saw my GI doc and was like it’s been sooo much better since surgery - no incidents. So kinda instant I guess? But the hernia is on my lower left abdominal area. Only fatty infiltrate. Likely a surgical hernia from getting my appendix out - it was one of the original laparoscopic site areas.

Just got through this myself. Guessing it was caused by grief which is so fucked

I suffered from this as a child, and I knew exactly what it was from. Thanks, parents.

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Lived in Oklahoma for awhile had this crap that i called sulfer burps. Started in high school and got worse after I started working full time. The hear I left it was a monthly thing. Get the burps that just tasted sulfiric then ibs like syptoms for 3-5 days. Moved back to Oregon and it stopped. Mostly, had it a few times at one job took it as a sign to quit.

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Next: The sun is hot, water wets stuff.

Hydrolyzed soy protein is in so much stuff. If pops up where you least expect it, like, icing on cupcakes and dumb stuff like that.

Lsd and shrooms are illegal, also dmt but not the ayahuasca.

Mine told me that is how IBS is defined.

That’s nice, but can they explain what causes crohns?

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Didn’t this happen to Adriana in the Sopranos when she was forced to be an FBI informant?

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Is this what is known as a "pain in the ass?"

My mother in law is a gastroenterologist and she says two things that have stuck with me: (1) the micro biome in the gut affects health across a lot of different body systems, and (2) mentally healthy people don’t get IBS or similar conditions.

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Thank you for posting this. The stress of COVID, my work and my relationship has been especially painful the past 3 years. And coincidently I can no longer drink anything with caffine or milk in it without severe stomach pains. I've always found the timing odd and have always suspected the stress i'm going through had something to do with it.

Another thing to blame my lousy parents for!

Not going to lie, I chose a medical specialty that deals only with the critically ill because most of the common complaints of people who don’t need acute hospitalization are only curable by changing our society to be less stressful (or improving diet and exercising enough).

SIBO can cause IBS too and stress can cause SIBO

I started taking an anti-anxiety med for GAD and one day, it occurred to me that my GI problems were mostly gone! It was great until the side effects of the meds became too much for me to deal with and now I’m back to being SOL. Hoping to get one different meds here soonish but I was stunned with how much of a difference it made to remove at least some of the unnecessary stress.

H pylori takes advantage of a weak stomach lining caused from extreme stress.

Why are we wasting money studying something that is a commonly known thing?

THANK YOU for studying this. I swear a lot of people’s social anxiety could improve if they could stop having stomach pain and diarrhea before they go out.

I’ve often wondered…

Do I not want to go to a social event because I’m truly anxious about talking to people, OR am I simply trying to avoid my body’s involuntary reaction of feeling sick when I’m the slightest bit stressed?

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I have CPTSD, palmar-plantar hyperhidrosis, stress-related nausea which can be daily for long stretches, and a bunch of other symptoms of having a mildly damaged sympathetic nervous system. I had an extremely turbulent childhood full of emergency trips to the bathroom when something stressed me out. I am also lactose intolerant which nobody knew when I was a kid, so they would give me dairy and I would be sick, again.

There’s something else going on - ever since I was a toddler, I have not liked eating candy and sweets because they make my stomach hurt. My parents were proud that I would turn down cupcakes in favor of fruit but they never seemed interested in the reason. I think there’s something off about my gut biome. Idk if it’s a sensitivity to some kind of preservative used in sugary foods or what. Wish I could figure it out.

Hormonal changes (menstruation, pregnancy, perimenopause, etc.) can also cause IBS symptoms, as can connective tissue disorders, allergies, and migraine. So those symptoms are not always mental health related.

I was in the hospital 6x during my abusive marriage. Got gastroscopies, colonoscopy, several regiments of treatment....

A divorce and a few months later everything went away. Living without stomach pains has been incredible. Sleeping without cramps, eating without diarhea, actually eating dairy products and being fine after....

Emotional health is very important. It just took me 10 years of marriage to figure out.

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Yeap. Turns out I wasn’t gluten intolerant. I was with a toxic partner

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I say- turned my insides to water

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You can get the stuff aya is made of legally, it's the act of making it that is illegal. However, you can consume the things it is made of and experience it without ever making it

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As someone who suffers from this terribly I'm really happy to see this concept being studied and I am hopeful there will be methods to combat it in the future.

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Stress is cause of sickness.

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Every person I ever met with IBS (including myself) was in an unhappy marriage. Mine went away after we split up.

Seems like most of us have some anecdotal experience with this... Is this a newly researched phenomenon? Any other interesting findings in the study or suggestions as to how you can improve this without just "being less stressed" ?

Im 40 and have been dealing with cyclical vomiting syndrome for 10 years. Turns out it was stress and anxiety

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>(2) mentally healthy people don’t get IBS or similar conditions.

I don't see how this can be true because i've got bad ibs but i live quite a stress free life. I'm starting to think i could have developed lactose intolerance though because dairy is the only thing i know that sets me off

A good opportunity to bring attention to the family of Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders: https://iffgd.org/gi-disorders/functional-gi-disorders/

This explains why divorcing cheater x cured my IBS. He was a literal pain in the ass.

I can pretty much remember my stomach issues started presenting the same year standardized testing started in school. I've always thought that was it

...well that explains a lot.

I had the squirts for a decade then i got salmonella and I’ve been ok ever since.

I'd strongly suspect it would hold. For several years now, the treatment guidelines (specifically Rome IV) call for talk therapy and antidepressants as first-line treatment for IBS. I think this paper is just fleshing out the edges of what we already know.

ah so that's why all my actor friends have tummy problems

My colon is now at ease.

I developed Crohn's disease after a very stressful point of life. My personal bro science is that in some cases Crohn's and ibd is actually caused be damage to the nervous system in some way sue to stress or anxiety.

Yeah, had a DR tell me to stop stressing too much, uh bro, you read my chart.

Sometimes I feel like most food is basically just edible plastic

Don’t forget hormones. Hormonal gut can cause a sensation of bloating even if no gas comes out, decrease a person’s capacity to eat meaningful portions, and leads to dramatic weigh loss. Labs will be normal.

Source: I got it from August to around April this past year. Went from 166 to 137 before I stabilized (weight loss was sudden and dramatic, 30lbs in less than 3 months.) I felt so bloated that it pushed up into my diaphragm and made me short of breath, and I could only eat small 2-3oz portions of anything, felt starving all the time. All my labs came back completely normal. The problem went away on its own but even now, 8 months later, I haven’t gained any weight. My coworkers joke that I left my ass somewhere cuz it’s just a flat plane now.

This happened to me from hating my job so much

Just needed a hard reset.

The trick is to have anxiety about getting these ibs attacks in public and then you get a vicious cycle! Woo!

Ive seen a ton of dif “causes” for ibs and none are consistent.

Interesting article! Also I had fun sounding out this word: keishikashakuyakuto. Woo!

I’m sure she meant it as a generalization and not a hard rule. Of course there are other causes

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Yep. Gravy was a big one for me as it's used in those pot roasts in a box things. I think McDonalds in Canada also has it in their oil. Thankfully I was able to find alternatives for a while but oof. Rough couple years.

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You could look into EMDR as well!

Campbell’s Soup here in the states has it as well. Weirdly most store brands don’t so I end up buying those. He’ll even Stove Top stuffing has it.

I absolutely expect it to as well. It’s the diarrhea-only part that I find so interesting.

We think, after YEARS of struggling with severe bloating/distention, we’ve pinpointed my symptoms down to weightlifting.

I’ve been an avid powerlifter for years, and been taking some breaks since my son was born. During my time off I can eat just about anything and experience no symptoms. Start lifting and they start again.

So the stress can be physical as well. It’s like my body can’t repair muscle and digest food correctly at the same time.

It’s crazy to me how connected the two are. When my symptoms are non existent, I will tell my wife I feel serene. Like nothing in the world can bother me.

So thank you for your continued work!

When I was in college, I read a book on the topic called The Second Brain, that coveted in depth how serotonin levels in the nerve complex in the abdomen had major effects on overall mental health because of the imbalance on neurotransmitters there. Blew both my minds.

As a sufferer of anxiety and depression I can anecdotally confirm that it heavily affects my bowel health when I'm stressed.

So that’s why I had diarrhea the entire time I was studying for the bar exam!

The gut microbiome is one part. The relation between stress, the diaphragm, lower back and pelvic muscles, back pain and injury, obstipation, irritation of the bowels, chronic hyperventilation, gas, incontinence is another part. The combination of these can lead to serious but rather vague symptoms with a high impact on quality of life.

Thank you for studying this! I'm 23 and I've lived with IBS, eczema, and acne for the longest time and I've often felt that all three are linked to each other, as well as linked to stress as a general trigger. With recent studies linking a correlation between IBS and Eczema, then IBS and Eczema independently to stress, it's reassuring to think that we may soon find better ways to manage these chronic issues by addressing underlying mechanisms; which appear to be hormones and gut health.

This is part of the reason i decided to quit my job because the stress was making me poop every twenty minutes. The next day I was completely normal again

It also goes together because the nervous system slows down the nervous system during stress. I often have to go before doing something stressful and I’ll feel anxious at the same time. I think it’s a trauma response or my body learning that I’m about to have a period of time my body is activated with stress, so it better clear out while it can. So do I feel anxious because I am afraid, or am I feeling anxious because I’m actually having a gut reaction ahead of a stressful event. Probably both.

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I see this in the kids I teach. When they are stressed their tummy hurts more. My kid's stomach hurt during lockdown all the time, and after being in school for a year, it magically went away

Anybody know how to buy keishikashakuyakuto online?

I can't help but wonder if this helps explain why autistic people experience high rate of comorbid GI issues. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2013-3995

They are constantly under stress of dealing with intense sensory stimuli and navigating communicating with people without understanding verbal and nonverbal social cues. Stress is a beast, it can take such a massive toll on physical health.

Thanks for posting this OP.

https://www.tsumura.co.jp/english/products/ippan/014/index.html

This site sells it domestically in Japan, but not internationally.

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Cptsd due to being with a cluster b for almost ten years. Never had ibs before the relationship..

Isn't this common knowledge? The gut-brain axis and whatnot?

The gut is the primitive brain in a lot of ways. A lot of neurons, more than in the brain of a dog, are making serotonin and other neurotransmitters down there. The brain probably evolved as a way of feeding the gut. It makes total sense that anything that stresses the brain will impact the gut, and vice versa.

I was having diarrhea a lot during a particularly stressful couple weeks so naturally I assumed it was pancreatic cancer. I went to urgent care(because I was obviously dying) and my lab results said everything was fine. That was enough convince me I that it must be colon cancer so I scheduled a colonoscopy which I’m currently waiting on. Anyway this has all been great for my stress level.

Yeah. I can understand that choice.

Is this a new finding? I thought that stress, anxiety and GI issues were a well understood relationship.

That's what the drs finally told us when my daughter went through something similar a few years before my stress induced visits. Hers was as well but they didn't give her the good meds like I got and she didn't need a diaper. I don't recall if they gave her antihistamines. At one point in time, one lone dr thought maybe it was marijuana sickness but to stop that one just had to shower with hot water. There's no way my issue was going to get better with a simple shower. Hers finally stopped when she got away from the stressors.

Sounds like a feedback loop to me! I can relate with OCD and anxiety.

Same here. His first question after ruling out GI stuff was, "How are your anxiety levels?"

Yeah, they had me on the FODMAPS diet and it made no difference. Then, I started managing my OCD and anxiety better and whaddya know, my gut improved substantially.

This is interesting. Back in July I had a bout of gastroenteritis that lasted five days, followed by a week of constipation. However afterwards my appetite was out of whack, I would have some mornings with extreme bowel urgency that made driving to work a huge pain, and I would get full pretty easily when eating. I thought I had developed IBS or gastroparesis, but the symptoms weren't severe enough nor fit with the diagnosing criteria (I have had no bowel-related abdominal pain since my initial illness, and my bowel movements have been largely consistent). I had two instances of heartburn, but that went away months ago. I eventually saw a Gastroenterologist and my lab results all came back negative. He suggested it was merely the illness combined with it being the most stressful period in my life (I was in the process of buying a new house and moving, going back to graduate school, and having the busiest time at my job I've ever had).

However the elephant in the room was that after my initial illness I had basically stopped eating. First it was the worry over the diarrhea, then it was the constipation, then finally it was concerns over IBS or food intolerances. The end result was that in about a month and a half I lost roughly 21 pounds. The problem now is that I only feel sensations of hunger maybe once or twice a day and even then it's most commonly after 9 PM. Furthermore when eating I'll get a faint feeling in my lower left stomach that ranges from pinching to twitching to just vague discomfort, which usually subsides in 5-15 seconds.

I've since gained back 3-4 pounds, but I can't seem to get any further than that and it's been 6 months since I was sick. My doctors don't seem concerned, but it's been a real pain since I've had to buy new belts to fit into some clothes I bought two days before I was sick.

Did you have a bulge and everything? I've been having odd faint pains in my lower left shortly after eating sometimes, but I don't think I've strained enough to develop a hernia. Just not sure what the deal is.

Yes it was visually evident that something was awry. Like with anything health related, you should consult your doctor. There’s multiple different options to tell if something’s going on. Like I noted, it having an effect on my IBS was potentially coincidental/very “lucky” and not typical. As I also noted I still have issues from time to time but it’s controlled fine with OTC medicines (when needed). But yeah if I bent different ways it was quite evident that I had something wrong. You can get a hernia from sneezing, it’s not necessarily just straining. Good luck!

Yep! The spiritual folks (herbs, crystals, meditation, etc.) have been saying there is a correlation for a while!

Personal ancedote:

My parents are highly toxic people. Living in the house with them was a constant battleground, and screaming matches with Somebody would happen on a day to day basis. Or physical fights. Suffice to say it was a very high stress household.

About 8-9 months ago I began to experience bad digestive/stomach issues. Another symptom was these loud ass grumbles that were so embarrassing. I thought I developed an intolerance, and was restricting/testing with so many foods to figure out what. It was hell.

Around 2 months ago I moved in with my boyfriend. His house is very calm and peaceful in comparison. Unsettlingly so it sometimes feels. Still not quite used to it.

Last week I was thinking "oh huh the stomach grumbles haven't happened yet today.... wait... they haven't happened in weeks"

I think living with my parents was causing the digestive/stomach issues, and now that I'm out of that situation it's seemingly gone away.

I’ve been diagnosed with IBS-C totally can relate the two

I have IBS-C an cannot for the life of me figure out how to not be in pain 24/7 from extreme swelling. I look nine months pregnant half the time. I have bentyl for the pain but no answers how to get it under control. They said here’s the pills for when it hurts an nothing else.

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