Stress In The Gut

Plastics, like those in water bottles, food containers, and toys, can also disrupt hormones in our bodies and act as a stress. Or consider another patient who accidentally put a drugstore heat pack through her dryer, which caused her to develop debilitating neurological symptoms and forced her to move out of her home and change jobs. Or what about my patients who were present at ground zero on 9/11, an established stressful event and toxic site, and are at increased risk of developing health issues, including dementia and cancer? The thing is, toxins are everywhere. Personal care products like lotion, soaps, shampoo, detergents, and perfumes, as well as hair color and nail polish, all potentially contain parabens and phthalates, which are known carcinogens and endocrine disruptors that confuse hormone signaling in our bodies and can predispose us to conditions like endometriosis and fertility issues. As you can see, we are surrounded by toxins that can overwhelm our detoxification pathways. Another major source of toxicity is your very own gut. In fact, studies have now identified bacteria that live in all areas of our bodies, including the ovaries, uterus, and bladder.12 And the bacteria living in us and on our skin contribute more cells to our being than the cells of our bodies. It is essentially stress inside our cells. Our bodies also make antioxidants to counteract oxidative stress, such as glutathione. If, however, the mitochondria are overwhelmed by stress and oxidative stress, mitohormesis decreases, which can lead to negative effects and increase the risk of disease processes such as diabetes and neurodegeneration.11 All of this means that the more stressed we are, the more likely we are to have difficulty managing toxin exposure, and the more toxins we are exposed to, the less able we are to handle more stress and toxins.

Two Shots of Happy, One Shot of Sad

I find that this vicious cycle of worsening ability to withstand stress follows the mathematical principle of chaos theory. According to chaos theory, otherwise known as the butterfly effect, a small change in a system can result in larger differences later on, due to interconnectedness and feedback loops observed in nature. This is why once health issues begin to develop, the tendency is for more health issues to layer on top of the original issue. Our focus, therefore, must be on giving our bodies the support they need before this process ensues, or on reversing the downward spiral. The bacteria living in your intestines are affected by stress on your body, which actually began before you were born. They can gum up the systems you count on for handling toxins and prevent the effective use of B vitamins for making healthy cells in your body. Even osteoporosis, kidney disease, heart disease, and dementia have been linked to an overgrowth of the wrong bacteria in the intestines, and in some cases, the overgrowth of yeast or candida. It’s important to note that it’s not harmful when these potentially toxic bacteria and yeasts are present in small amounts. That’s why I believe the problem is so often missed in our medical community. Plus, we aren’t yet standardly testing for a healthy microbiome in medical care, so most people have no idea what’s up with the population of bacteria in their gut. Doing a stool test at the regular doctor’s office is not going to yield this type of information. Consider, too, that most pharmaceutical medications, including antibiotics, negatively affect bacterial balance, as do pesticides on foods.

Go Your Own Way

Stress can also affect your gut on its own. It’s easy to see that stress is a losing game for the gut unless we stay ahead of it and eat in ways that keep the good guys healthy and the bad guys from overgrowing. All these stresses we’re talking about also directly damage the intestinal cells lining the gut walls, which causes what’s called intestinal permeability or leaky gut. Once they’re leaky, intestinal walls allow undigested food and bacterial toxins to pass through them and into our bodies, where usually only fully digested food, nutrients, and water are allowed to go. Undigested food particles can trigger an immune response, especially given that 80 percent of our immune system is located in our intestines, which then causes a cascade of inflammatory signals throughout the body. Meanwhile, with leaky gut, we absorb fewer nutrients and become susceptible to nutrient deficiency. It makes sense, then, that leaky gut is associated with many conditions tied to inflammation and nutrient deficiencies, such as autoimmunity, allergies, headaches, skin rashes, depression, anxiety, weight gain, joint pain, and brain fog. Combining dysbiosis with a leaky guy creates the perfect storm of internal stress, which communicates back to the nervous system and triggers even more of a stress response, worsening the issue. Managing your gut might feel like a lot to wrangle on top of an overly busy life. Resistance occurs when a substance, in this case a hormone, no longer triggers its intended response. Insulin is the hormone made by the pancreas that acts like a key to the doorway of our cells, allowing glucose, or blood sugar, to be used as energy. When the amount of glucose in the blood is too high, too often, the cells no longer respond to insulin, referred to as metabolic syndrome, leaving a high amount of glucose in the blood.

Everybody Finds Out Sometime

When the blood circulates through the liver, the excess glucose is turned into fat, which is then put into storage in three possible locations. The glucose can be turned into cholesterol or triglycerides, raising the level of those substances in the blood. The glucose can go into fat storage in the body, often around the waist. The liver converts glucose to fat, it is difficult to reverse. Our chagrin, the body is more likely to break down muscle for energy than it is to use fat in storage. Leptin, on the other hand, is the hormone released from fat cells that manages hunger and fullness. It tells our brain when we need to eat and when we’ve had enough.