How Chronic Stress Is Making Your Gut Hypersensitive | Will Bulsiewicz

0:01This is a Be Well Moment, the most replayed moments from my latest conversation. It's a glimpse into the wider episode, which you can find linked in the show notes below. Because sometimes one small moment is enough to reconnect to living well and being well.

0:22I honestly think that gut pain is one of the worst. It's so underestimated in how painful some gut symptoms can be. Even things like trapped wind can be so painful for so many people. 100%. People who have severe constipation or have symptoms from constipation, they feel pain that is on par with requiring a surgery. They think they need surgery. And part of this, Sarah Ann, is the number of nerves that carpet our intestines. So they're not as finely tactile as my fingers are. So for people who are listening to the podcast, but not on YouTube. I'm holding up my hands and I'm rubbing them together like an ASMR video.

1:06And please stay with us though. Don't fall asleep, but you are allowed to get nice and relaxed and settle in. So they're not as tactile as our fingers. Our fingers, we can interpret precise touch. They can't do that. They're much more simple, but there's tons of them. There's 500 million nerves in our gut. It's more nerves than we have anywhere in our body except for our brain. five times more nerves than you will find in your spinal cord. And they're constantly feeling and sensing. And that sense is with a purpose. And when there's something that's wrong, it sends this pain signal. And the pain signal is meant to tell you that something is wrong.

1:45That's the entire reason we were wired this way. So this is the reason why the pain can be quite intense. Because you have so many nerves. The other thing too is when you suffer with chronic pain, digestive issues, particularly within the context of having a damaged gut microbiome, you can develop something called visceral hypersensitivity. And that is like, imagine for a moment that we're listening to a song that we both love and I walk over to the sound system and I turn it up so loud that it's making your ears bleed. That thing that was totally fine, in fact, kind of enjoyable before has actually become problematic because it's like way too loud.

2:27and that's visceral hypersensitivity as these nerves start getting jumpy and reactive to things that they shouldn't even react to. And we will get to the solutions of constipation but before I forget when you said that is that why some gastroenterologists actually prescribe a low dose of SSRI for people that do have that hypersensitivity to a gut because there's some really interesting research there to show actually in different types of protocols of the gut, that can also be one really helpful step to help the sensitivity of the gut calm a bit more. Yeah, that's right. So actually, Sarah-Ann, you've read my new book, Plant Powered Plus, and chapter eight, yes, you're good.

3:07You've done your homework. Chapter eight of my new book is actually my favorite chapter, and it's about the brain-gut connection. And in this chapter, I discuss my relationship with one of the most famous gastroenterologists in the history of my profession. His name is Dr. Douglas Drosman. And he, so he's my friend, he's my mentor. And he's actually the one who, what you just described of using SSRIs, which are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. These are the drugs that we think of as being used for mood disorders like depression and anxiety because they increase serotonin levels. But it turns out that you can apply these drugs to gut issues at a very low dose.

3:49And he's the one who really started us in this sort of process. He started this back like late eighties, early nineties. He was starting to unpack some of these concepts that we're talking about that now finally are becoming more mainstream. 10 years ago, I would talk about this and no one knew what I was talking about and thought it was crazy. So, but yeah, so you could use SSRIs to increase serotonin. you could use tricyclic antidepressants, which are actually wonderful for people who have diarrhea type issues. In fact, they're preferred to the SSRIs because SSRIs make people poop more. And you could also use the, what we call SNRIs, selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors like Cymbalta, which are actually very good at targeting pain.

4:35So if you wanted to target pain and you had constipation, actually the ones like Cymbalta are the perfect choice. it's not your primary treatment for constipation, but you're using it to help to control the discomfort that comes. Thank you for listening to this Be Well Moment. If it resonated, the full conversation is linked in the show notes. And I hope it gave you a small pause to take a moment for you and to reconnect to living well and being well. If you loved it, please do leave a review, follow the show, or share this maybe with someone you love.

5:12Thank you.