Stress & Its Impact on Gut Health | VITAE Health Coaching

Let’s get into some health stuff, shall we…

One of the topics I'll cover quite a bit on here is gut health. The gut is considered your second brain and it controls around 70% of your immune system. We’ll get into some nerdy science with that later, but the one thing I want to bring up early on here is how stress impacts your gut and, subsequently, digestion.

Let’s first define what stress is exactly. Stress is any physical, mental or emotional factor that causes tension in the body and initiates the body’s “fight or flight” response. Stress can be categorized into two types:

Acute: This is short-term, situational stress. This is considered normal. Examples of this would be getting nervous before public speaking or encountering an aggressive animal. Acute stress can actually enhance performance. It causes the body to perform at an elevated and focused level and manage dangerous situations.
Chronic: This is long-term, on-going stress. Examples of this are caring for a parent with a degenerative disease or working in a high pressure job over the course of months or years. After the first surge of adrenaline, the body activates the HPA axis (hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal) to keep the body in a state where it can respond to ongoing stress by releasing more hormones, including cortisol.

Stress is a large contributor to chronic disease. Approximately 75-90% of all doctor visits are for ailments or conditions tied to stress.

Why does this happen?

Your central nervous system operates in one of two states. The first is the parasympathetic nervous system - also known as “rest and digest”. This controls functions such as blood pressure, digestion, sexual arousal, salivation, urination and excretion. It also maintains long-term health and a healthy balance across all of the body’s functions. This slows to a halt during a state of stress to conserve energy.

The second is the sympathetic nervous system - also known “fight or flight”. Have you ever been called on during a meeting when you were half paying attention? Do you notice that your hands get sweaty, your heart rate increases and you feel your face get flushed? That’s the body activating the fight or flight response. The body doesn’t know that a danger is real, such as getting attacked by a tiger, or perceived, such as meeting project deadlines. It just senses you’re under attack and mobilizes the body to respond to danger. When the fight or flight response is activated, several things occur in the body:

The movement of food through the gastrointestinal tract is slowed down to conserve energy for survival.
Breathing and heart rate speed up and blood sugar increases to provide fuel.
Blood flow and oxygen is diverted from major organs to the muscles and brain.
Digestive enzymes stop releasing and digestion on a whole is put on the back burner.

All of this is helpful when you’re in a state of emergency, but what happens when your body is stressed all the time? The body can’t experience stress and properly digest at the same time. It would be like stepping on the gas pedal and the brake at the same time while driving. When you’re in a constant state of stress, you’re suppressing your body’s ability to digest the nutrients in your food.

What can happen when you're in a state of chronic stress?

Food is the building blocks to our health. When nutrients aren’t being properly absorbed, it can lead to a breakdown in many other systems. You can eat all the kale in the world, but if you’re chronically stressed, you still can experience weight gain and a number of health issues, due to the constant release of stress-related hormones, including:

Increased belly fat (the really dangerous kind of fat, and more on this in a future blog post)
Develop food intolerances and food allergies
Leaky gut
Elevated blood sugar
Increased inflammation
Altered microbiome, which can impact brain health
Increased risk for acid reflux, indigestion and ulcers
Aggravated IBS symptoms
Increased risk of SIBO
Lowered immunity, which is especially important now coming out of the pandemic.

Quite the laundry list of shittiness, huh???

Stress is inevitable. It’s part of everyday life. And the body is built to handle that short-term, acute stress. But it’s not built to handle chronic stress.

Now you're probably stressing over being stressed right about now. Take a deep breath. Here are a few ways to help get chronic stress under control and get your body to kickstart the parasympathetic system:

Meditation - even starting with a simple 5 minute meditation first thing in the morning can get you started without a big time commitment
4-7-8 breathing exercise - breath in through your nose for 4 seconds, hold for 7 seconds, release through your mouth for 8 seconds. Do this 3 or 4 times.
Physical activity - yoga, walking, swimming, biking, running
Establish good sleep hygiene (much more on this in a future post as well)
Declutter your living and working areas. Adding plants around the house can also help detoxify the air in your house.
Get sunlight. Ideally, get at least 10 minutes of sunlight within two hours of waking up in the morning. This actually helps reset your circadian rhythm which will improve sleep quality. Sunlight provides vitamin D which is vital to gut health and assists with nutrient absorption and supports the maintenance of a healthy gut microbiome.
Be present when eating. Turn off the TV and put away cell phone
Smell your food before eating to get the salivary glands going. Once the saliva is pumping, you’re tapping into the parasympathetic nervous system.
Express gratitude

If you’re having trouble putting work aside to eat, take note that the brain can only focus well for 50-90 minutes at a time, so taking a break and stepping away for 15-20 minutes can actually increase productivity. (More on this in a later blog post too.)

So to close this out, stress management is just as, if not more, important to your overall health than what’s on your plate. I hope this was helpful and gave you something to think about. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions.