Anxiety and gastrointestinal disorders: connections between the brain and the intestine
“There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom” Friedrich Nietzsche
It may happen that in times of stress and changes one can express one’s discomfort through the body, but if this becomes a habitual way of reacting to difficulties or to some daily situations, the quality of life could be significantly reduced.
Very often people who have anxiety disorders also report disorders affecting the digestive system : abdominal swelling, stomach pain, constipation, dysentery, stomach closure and lack of appetite, difficulty tolerating the sense of hunger, dyspepsia, nausea and vomiting.
From various scientific researches by Michael D. Gershon1 of Columbia University in New York, it emerged that the brain and the intestine are two closely connected organs , in fact they are defined respectively big brain ( big brain ) and small brain ( little brain ) , as if they were two different ways that our body has to make decisions: as if to validate popular idioms “make a choice of belly” or even the saying “having butterflies in the stomach”. The brain serves as the seat for rational choices, while the intestine for the more unconscious and emotional ones.
Furthermore, it seems that the intestine contains millions of cells and neuronal fibers that constitute a real autonomic nervous system capable of integrating and processing external and internal stimuli received by the body, interacting with the central nervous system through a mediated exchange of information. from the psychoneuroimmunoendocrine system (release of hormones, vagus nerve, immune system). This means that the two brains influence each other , determining our state of psycho-physical well-being.
These two nervous systems also interact with each other through the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems . The sympathetic is what is activated during danger, it is what the English call “ fight or flight “, while the parasympathetic system is used when we are in a state of relaxation and the digestive system must perform its functions. . So if we are calm the digestive system works well, while if we are faced with a potential danger, real or presumed, we can run into a state of anxiety: the stomach freezes, the intestine…
