Any way to rewire brain/emotion - gut connection that drives pain?

[Mark in Seattle]

i have known for years that there is a direct neuronal connection between my brain and my intestines. When I get angry for example, I feel it immediately in my inflamed intestines as pain or inflammation rearing up. It is sort of analogous to the sensation in your gut when going down fast in a roller-coaster; namely, it is a real physical/neuronal connection, that registers in real-time. For me, it is as real and tactile as the nerves in my hands or feet ir any other part of my body. Namely, when I grasp a spoon, I feel it on my fingers immediately; when I get upset/annoyed, I feel it as a burning pain in my gut immediately. Historically, surgery seems to do a goid job of severing that connection; my emotions no longrer have a brain-gut connection post-op, least for a couple years. But it does seem to come back eventually and just becomes prgressively more connected. Staying calm and avoiding unpleasant emotions helps ease my symptoms.

I am wondering if anyone else has this kind of experience and am looking for suggestions. I am not sure who to turn to? Some sort of psychologist? Learn meditation? Take numerous vacations? Some medication?

I feel like I must have some pathological way of internalizing my emotions. Just wondering if there are any recommendations on how to unwire such connections, thanks!

 

[Ozboz]

I'm the same have been an angry person and maybe a bit selfish all my life also used love to make a scene.

Like years ago when me and my sister were teen's she got really drunk and I had to pick her up and take her home well I made a scene infront of the house instead of quietly taking her in the house.

Also we would constantly argue like and about crap and I started it most of the time cause of my anger don't think it helped the crohn's either with pain and inflmation.

Even last year my mum was very sick and my sister stayed with us for a week and I was just angry and carried on like a lunatic I did try meditation and to be honest I was still a ranting raving lunatic angry as usual maybe it's just the way I was born I dunno but I know it doesn't help the crohn's one bit.;

 

[ebarker2]

Yes, you are completely right. Its well understood. We have a second brain (the enteric brain) in our guts. It plays an important part in our moods, emotional reactions and how we feel about ourselves and the world. The gut wall responds to stimuli from the enteric brain. Stress responses (anger, fear etc) will trigger the molecule zonulin to open the barriers between the cells, and this causes a chain of events which increase inflammation in the body. Feeling good does the opposite. So Dr. Alessio Fasano points out that laughter is the single greatest intervention one can use to reduce inflammation in gut and in brain. Meditation is also a great way to build resistance to stress, and learn coping mechanisms. Interestingly, studies of stress show that grooming or caring for others has a major stress reducing effect. And the stress is reduced more for those doing the caring than for the person receiving it.

 

[Ozboz]

This mught explain why I was always angry and some people said they didn't like me when they met me but I always felt inadequate compared to my friends and I was always jealous of people for some reason maybe my gut bacteria was always out of whack.

 

[ebarker2]

Yes I think your exactly right, and I was the same. My mother said I was like a caged tiger, and ive often been irritable much of my adult life. Fast trigger, defensive, argumentative. Now it turns out that gut bacteria have huge effect on our mood, behaviour and outlook. One of the more interesting moments in one of Fasano's videos about Intestinal Permeability is when he says he can predict if a child has Celiac Disease simply by if they show up irritable. Its kind of a signature of gut disease. The great thing is that we can get it to go away just by changing diet. I suffered from depression and hyper-anxiety/low self esteem for most of my life. After i stopped taking gluten, it lifted over a period of about 8/10 weeks. I now know what normal/happy feels like, and my wife says i'm a changed person. Meditation has also been a big help. Recently though i went on a meditation retreat and unfortunately was given some food with gluten in it for several days. I started to notice my mood changing; back to argumentative, defensive, quick to take offence, testosterone- aggressive. Once we'd tracked down the source of the gluten, it had been several days exposure, and now its taking weeks to repair the gut. But at I know that with a bit of time it will get better.

 

[Ozboz]

funny you should say that I called it carb brain and so did my sister like when I stopped eating bread and other stuff I was happy my mood was way better.
But the weird thing is and I don't know why I always go back to bread and sometimes pasta rice is oj.
A naturopath I was seeing a few years ago told me that yhe wheat in AUS/USA and some other places has been develpoed to withstand weather events and other things thus making it very hard to digest. That's why she said 10% of the population here has a hard time digesting wheat and they go to a gluten free diet thinking that it's better but sometimes it's not it is full of sugar to make up for the gluten. in some places they have banned prople feeding ducks cause everyone has jumped on the gluten free bandwagon and the bread is high in sugars making the ducks fat. And the people are still iratable cause of the sugar high I was on paleo for abit and did freat even had no carb brain and then stress and maybe even depression kicked in and I started drinking lot's of soda coke's iced cofee's and eating heaps of bread and became angry and irratble again.