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Stress has always been a problem for humans when it is chronic. Over the last 20 years evidence points to negative events happening in the GI tract in response to chronic stress.
We have known for a long time that severe acute physical stress, trauma and burns, can cause increased intestinal permeability (gut leakage) and increased immune reactions at the gut level.
What is the effect of chronic mental stress? It appears that this type of stress also has a negative effect on our gut mucosa. In a excellent 2001 review in The American Journal of Physiology, Perdue et.al.looked at stress and found that this effect is profound on the ability of the gut mucosal lining to stay intact.
Science: the tight junctions of the mucosal lining are weakened and become more permeable. This permeability allows food and foreign proteins to cross over the barrier of the mucosa and into the immune layer. This has a chilling effect on human tolerance to food and other natural proteins like pollen. The effect we believe is to turn on auto immune cascades and food sensitivity patterns.
Many people think that the answer to this issue is to just remove a certain food and all will revert to normal, ala celiac disease and gluten. Not so fast. The answer, as this data is showing, is that we need to have a whole body approach. To stop the reaction and permeability we need to tackle our stressful nature while correcting food sensitivities and the subsequent mineral and vitamin deficiencies.
This article hones in on chronic mental stress as a major player. Think of ways to reduce your stress.
Here a few of my favourites:
1) prayer and meditation
2) journaling pain and thoughts
3) exercise (my personal favourite)
4) music listening or performing
5) spending time with loved ones
6) reading for pleasure
7) counseling with a challenging mentor or counselor
8) spending time forgiving and holding people in your positive thoughts
9) cooking a new meal
10 Hugging and spending time with an animal
This will be standard of care soon,
Dr. M
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