Could your gut be causing your anxiety and stress? Sometimes when you’re anxious, your gut feels unsettled. You may feel queasy, have abdominal pain or even develop diarrhea. But could it be the other way around too?
Is an imbalanced gut causing your anxiety?
Richard Lui out of Brown University indicates that imbalances in gut bacteria have a bidirectional relationship with some cognitive and psychological disfunction, anxiety being one.
In fact, many people may be caught in a vicious cycle of stress and anxiety that is regulated by the gut and not know it. In other words, if stress creates dysregulation in the gut microbiome, specifically the enteric microbiota (which accounts for most bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract), and this dysregulation in the microbiota further creates anxiety and depression, we have a situation that may be harder to cure than we thought.
How do anxiety and stress affect your gut?
Think of our intestinal track as the hard drive of a computer. It essentially runs the show.
Like a hard drive, the gut is connected to other systems in the body that make it run smoothly or not. With regard to stress, anxiety and depression, the gut mediates brain functioning through neurological, endicronal and immunological pathways, otherwise known as the Gut-Brain Axis or GBA.
It appears that psychosocial stress, such as relationship conflict or academic pressure, can decrease good bacteria in the gut, making us vulnerable to a gut that is skewed in the direction of bad bacteria.
For example, a study conducted in 2008 by Knowles, Nelson and Palombo found decreased levels of the good bacteria, lactobacilli (which is often found in yogurt) in students who were studying for exams. The idea here is that the stress of exams may have been creating gut imbalance. Furthermore, Lui (2017) cites the numerous studies that have shown an association between early life stressors and long-term changes in the gut microbiome.
How does your gut affect stress and anxiety?
Looking in the other direction of gut to brain, it appears that imbalances in the gut microbiome can trigger the production of inflammatory proteins (cytokines).
This is especially dangerous as proinflammatory cytokines cause disfunction of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis which is the part of the brain that regulates stress hormones.
When this HPA axis is damaged, it cannot respond properly to stress, and depression or anxiety can manifest. Furthermore, the gut also seems to adversely affect the vagus nerve (the biggest nerve in the body connecting the gut to the heart to the brain and more).
When an individual has good “vagal tone” (a healthy vagus nerve) he seems to be calmer. This is because the vagus nerve activates the parasympathetic nervous system which is the part of the nervous system responsible for calming us after a stressful event.
Good vagal tone means a calmer mind and body. Bad gut bacteria seem to damage vagal tone via this inflammatory process, thus affecting our ability to calm ourselves in the face of stress.
So, if you are tempted to give your friend the advice to “just chill” when they seem overly wound up about something, think twice. It is possible that her body is having an adverse effect on her ability to regulate anxiety. While many accept the idea that the mind can negatively affect the body, giving us immense opportunity to improve physical health via a calm mind, fewer realize that the body, more specifically the gut, can adversely affect the mind.
Could probiotics be the new anti-anxiety medication?
Researchers are looking hard at this connection, but only preliminary conclusions have been drawn, indicating that such a treatment may be effective with some people but not with others. In other words, it depends.
More studies need to be done as most have been conducted using rodents. The research could be ground-breaking in that if we find that probiotics can actually aid in treating depression and anxiety, we can relieve ourselves of the unwanted side effects and addictive qualities of these psychopharmalogical medications.
More important, however, is the fact that we seem to feel better, both physically and psychologically, when our guts are balanced. Perhaps the answer also lies in prevention.
In order to maintain a healthy balance in the enteric microbiota keep stress low (stress hormones affect gut balance) , use antibiotics minimally (they kill good gut bacteria), eat a low sugar diet (sugar feeds bad bacteria) and take probiotics (which may increase the regulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis that regulates our stress hormones and improve vagal nerve tone which has an anxiolytic effect).
In other words, take care of your gut. It appears that it plays a pretty big role in our overall well-being.
- Nature as a Stress-Reliever
- Can Positive Events Cause Stress?
- Plagued With Anxiety? A Simple Intervention
Dr. Van Deusen received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology in Los Angeles in 1992. She has cultivated deep knowledge of attachment theory and stress and has worked with various populations over her two and a half decade career. Her practice is in Seattle, Washington. Buy her book Stressed in the U.S.: 12 Tools to Tackle Anxiety, Loneliness, Tech-Addiction and More here