Learning how stress impacts digestion can be hugely beneficial when tackling any health goal. Whether you’re interested in boosting your metabolism, enhancing your digestion, or better assimilating nutrients, you simply have to learn how stress impacts digestion.
When stressed, the body goes into flight or fight mode. Your heart rate increases, blood pressure increases, respiration quickens and your body produces stress hormones. Cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenaline are released into circulation, which helps redirect blood away from the core towards the head and limbs for quick thinking and reacting. Less blood in the core means less energy investment in digestion.
The Nerve-Stress-Metabolism Connection
In order to better understand how stress impacts digestion we have to take a closer look at the nerves. The Autonomic Nervous System (ANS), a part of your Central Nervous System (CNS), controls gastrointestinal function. There are two parts to the ANS that work together to turn digestion on and off in times of stress. The sympathetic branch of the ANS tells the body to feel stressed, which slows digestion and gets the body ready for a stress response. In contrast, the parasympathetic branch of the ANS tells the body to relax, there’s no need for a response, thus more energy is allocated towards digestion. You’re body can’t digest food properly when you’re stressed. But when you’re relaxed, your body says digestion’s a go!
To see how stress impacts digestion, let’s consider the salad you scarfed during lunch while sitting at your computer. You barely tasted the salad, because you were gnawing away while hammering at the keys of your computer. Were you relaxed? Not a bit. Were you digesting properly? Definitely not. Do you even remember eating the salad? Maybe not. Did you do something healthy for yourself that day? Ehh… not really.
Negative Impacts
While scarfing that salad, you didn’t allow your body the chance to properly digest or assimilate those valuable nutrients and phytochemicals. Your sympathetic nervous system was saying, “Hey, it’s not time to eat! I’m too stressed!” You would’ve been better off taking a break in the lounge and slowly and mindfully indulging in a giant piece of cheesecake.
Stress is negatively impacting you by decreasing:
- Nutrient absorption
- Gut flora populations
- Oxygen supply
- Thermic efficiency (your ability to burn calories)
- HCl acid production (can lead to heartburn, delayed stomach emptying, and increased stomach ulcers)
- Growth hormone
- Salivary secretions (don’t forget that digestion starts in your mouth!)
- Thyroid activity (thyroid controls metabolism)
- Mitochondria production (the powerhouses of your cells; without them you can feel fatigued)
While increasing:
- Nutrient excretion
- Nutrient deficiencies
- LDL blood levels
- Serum triglycerides
- Blood platelet aggregation
- Salt retention
- Cortisol, a stress hormone that has a rippling negative side effects
- Insulin activity
- Oxidative stress
- Inflammation
- Risk of osteoporosis
Now that we know how stress impacts digestion, we see that intervention is necessary. Watch the video above to learn a simple technique that anybody, anywhere can use to help relax periodically throughout the day. The exercise may seem insignificant, but it has huge benefits!
Reference: Marc David. “The Slow Down Diet: Eating for Energy, Pleasure and Weight Loss“ Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press, 2005.
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