Stress Can Make You Sick!

Stress often starts in your head with a worry or a fear, but those feelings of anxiety, and perhaps even panic, don’t stay there. When you feel stressed, your body ramps up production of the stress hormones cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine.

This triggers the start of the stress response, and, like a snowball rolling down a mountain, it gains traction and speed until you’re ready for the proverbial attack.

Adrenaline, for instance, increases your heart rate, causing your heart to beat faster and ultimately raising blood pressure. Cortisol can interfere with the function of the inner lining of your blood vessels, triggering plaque buildup in your arteries, and increasing your risk of heart disease and stroke.

Meanwhile, you brain communicates with your gut, sending the news that you’re stressed, and your gut responds in suit, altering what it would normally be doing so your body can collectively work to fight off this imminent stressor (whether it’s really an imminent stressor or not).

This stress response can be quite beneficial if you need to run from a predator, or even quickly cram for a big exam. Things get messy, however, when you feel stressed all or most of the time.

While an occasional stress response is normal and even healthy, ongoing, constant stress is not. On the contrary, it’s the recipe for sickness, from chronic diseases to acute infections.

Your Gut and Your Brain Are in Constant Communication

One reason why your mental stress can be detrimental to your gut is because your gut and your brain are in regular communication.

In addition to the brain in your head, embedded in the wall of your gut is your enteric nervous system (ENS), which works both independently of and in conjunction with the brain in your head.

This communication between your "two brains" runs both ways, and is the pathway for how foods affect your mood or why anxiety can make you sick to your stomach, for instance.

Jane Foster, PhD, an associate professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at McMaster University, described to Medicine Net the multiple ways your gut microbes communicate with your brain – and the role that stress can play.

“…Gut bacteria can alter how the immune system works, which can affect the brain. The gut bacteria are involved in digestion, too, and the substances they make when they break down food can affect the brain.

And under certain conditions, such as stress or infection, potentially disease-causing gut bacteria, or bad bugs, can leak through the bowel wall and enter the bloodstream, enabling them and the chemicals they make to talk with the brain through cells in blood vessel walls.

Bacteria could also communicate directly with cells in certain regions of the brain, including those located near areas involved in stress and mood …”

In Health, 

Dr. Brad Niewierowski 

Source: How Stress Makes You Sick

December 17, 2015   Mercola.com