Dr. Joseph Mercola - Take Control of Your Health Is Stress Messing With Your Stomach? The Link to IBS - AI Podcast
May 5, 2025
Discover how stress is intricately linked to irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and its disruptive symptoms. Recent findings show that psychological stress misleads the body into perceiving harmless foods as threats. This triggers heightened gut sensitivity and immune responses, leading to pain and discomfort. Chronic stress can further damage gut health, complicating digestion and worsening IBS. Learn effective strategies for managing stress, improving sleep, and adopting a gut-friendly diet to help alleviate symptoms.
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IBS: A Functional Disorder
- IBS is labeled a functional disorder because the gut appears normal on scans but has signaling misfires.
- Symptoms arise from immune and nerve input changes, not from visible tissue damage.
Stress Rewires Gut Immune Memory
- Psychological stress causes the gut's immune cells to tag harmless food as dangerous.
- This immune memory triggers pain on later exposures even without stress.
Mouse Study Links Stress and Gut Pain
- Researchers fed mice a protein while stressing them for 10 days, then reintroduced protein later without stress.
- Only stressed mice developed gut hypersensitivity and pain, showing stress-protein pairing rewires the gut.