Stress and the functional gastrointestinal disorders
Given how closely the gut and brain interact, it becomes easier to understand why you might feel nauseated before giving a presentation, or feel intestinal pain during times of stress. That doesn’t mean, however, that functional gastrointestinal conditions are imagined or “all in your head. Thought can combine with physical factors to cause pain and other bowel symptoms. In other words, stress or depression or other mental factors can affect movement and contractions of the gastrointestinal tract and can make inflammation worse, or perhaps make you more susceptible to infection.
In addition, research suggests that some people with functional gastrointestinal disorders perceive pain more acutely than other people do because their brains do not properly regulate pain signals from the gastrointestinal tract. Stress can make the existing pain seem even worse.
Based on these observations, you can expect that patients with functional gastrointestinal conditions can improve with treatment that relieves any malfunctions in the brain-gut communication system. .