My gut often tells me that I’m traversing a stressful patch before my brain catches up: A few late nights of work or a rough conversation with a friend, and like clockwork my intestines are turning inside out. As is the case for plenty of folks with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), stress is one of my main triggers.
That’s not to say IBS can be boiled down to a simple stress reaction or that the pain is less real in this scenario. Rather, it reflects the hardwired connection between the brain and the gut: They’re in constant comms, bouncing signals back and forth via neurotransmitters and hormones. Hence why a bout of stress can prompt an episode of diarrhea or constipation even in folks who don’t have IBS. It’s thought that, in IBS, the gut-brain connection is on the fritz, with one organ misinterpreting the other. Adding stress can just exacerbate things further, even if it isn’t the cause of the IBS.
Still, you can’t wipe hard things from your life—hell, IBS itself can spark distress. But you can learn to handle stress more constructively (and keep it from trickling down into gut problems) by tapping a few practices from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which involves changing how you think about and cope with problems. Read on to learn more about stress as an IBS trigger and how to lessen its impact on your brain and belly.
How stress can spark or worsen an IBS flare
The stress-to-GI-upset pipeline happens because of the body’s natural response to a threat, Kathryn N. Tomasino, PhD, associate professor of medicine and psychiatry and codirector of the Behavioral Medicine for Digestive Health program at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, tells SELF. It directs blood to your heart and lungs—so you can fight or flee—and, critically, away from your gut. That can futz with gut motility, speeding up or slowing down the passage of food or causing spasms. If you have IBS, your gut may overreact to these shifts or you could feel them more intensely—what doctors call visceral hypersensitivity. Cue: a surge of IBS symptoms, which can include abdominal pain, bloating, and typically either constipation, diarrhea, or both.
Certain kinds of stress can especially rile up your gut, like stewing over problems you can’t control, Jeffrey Lackner, PsyD, chief of the division of behavioral medicine at the University of Buffalo, tells SELF. This tendency prolongs your body’s stress response. What’s more, worrying about your GI symptoms themselves can also make you “hypervigilant to those uncomfortable sensations, which may lead you to perceive them as even worse,” Megan Riehl, PsyD, clinical director of the Michigan Medicine GI Behavioral Health Program and co-author of Mind Your Gut, tells SELF.
CBT techniques can help by “dampening down that tendency to ruminate about stuff in the future or perseverate on problems from the past,” Dr. Lackner explains. These therapeutic practices can also soften your response to an IBS flare. And by getting less caught up in the discomfort, your brain can learn to interpret these symptoms as less intense, Dr. Riehl says. It’s no wonder research has shown that CBT can bring about “moderate to substantial” improvements in GI troubles for a majority of folks with IBS.
5 tips to find relief from stress-induced IBS
1. Embrace a physically relaxing practice on the reg.
“I realize this is going to sound annoying. Everyone has told you to breathe your whole life,” Dr. Tomasino prefaces. But the truth is, diaphragmatic breathing (deep breaths that lead your belly to rise and fall) can physically pull your body out of fight-or-flight, which can be a game changer when you’re mentally spiraling. The breaths stimulate your vagus nerve, which flips on the opposite response: the aptly named rest and digest—which regulates both brain and gut. Progressive muscle relaxation (which involves tensing and releasing muscles in succession from your toes to your head) can have a similar effect.
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