Brain-Gut-Axis

The main reason why GI Health Psychology is a vital aspect of GI disorder treatment is because of the constant communication that is happening between the gut and the mind, known as the Brain-Gut-Axis.

Imagine that you are spearheading a neighborhood and you need volunteers to help with: obtaining a city permit, figuring out food, hiring a band, delineate parking versus drop-off areas, and general volunteers who are available to run errands. You can either 1) reach out to different neighbors who you think might be able to possibly take care of one/more of those activities or 2) reach out to your one neighbor for help who knows everyone and knows what everyone is capable of and, most importantly, has a strong persuasive ability.

You would likely pick the second option as the one that is more efficient and more effective.

Similarly, when the brain needs something to happen in the body, it is oftentimes going to reach out to the gut because the gut, similar to your neighbor, has its fingers in all the important pots.

The gut and your brain have a direct line of communication and also many indirect lines of communication. Together, they can efficiently cause changes to happen in the nervous system, changes in your hormones, and changes in your immune system. The brain and gut rely on their relationship in order to maintain survival of the body and optimal conditions.

Sometimes, though, although your brain and gut may think that they have a sound game plan, the actions they take may instead contribute to problems. For example, imagine this scenario:

Gut: Wow, Dug is really stressed, so she must be in danger (because the body can perceive stress as a response to a life threatening situation). You need to keep an eye out for any pain so that we can address injuries as quickly as possible.

[Brain is then hypervigilant to pain.]

Brain: Oh, I think… was that pain? It happened so fast, but I’m pretty sure that was pain. I am sure that Dug has been injured and is probably dying on our watch! Quick, wake up the immune system and stop wasting your energy on digesting food.

[Gut stops digesting, tells immune system what to do.]

[Gut notices growing pain because of the stalled digestion.]

Gut: I’m glad we saved her life, but now there’s a lot more pain so something is clearly wrong. There’s no way I’m going to send out serotonin now (the happiness hormone, most of which is stored in the gut) because she can’t be happy when she is supposed to be keeping an eye out for danger.

Brain: I agree with that reasoning. I’ll also trigger the other mechanisms that will ensure that Dug is sad and anxious so that she continues to focus on how her body feels instead of the good things in her life.

This is of course a simplified illustration of how the Brain-Gut-Axis works, but the lesson is accurate.

When we engage in GI Health Psychology, we are attempting to interrupt unhelpful messaging.

For example, when Gut is freaking out about the growing pain, Brain could respond by saying, “Yeah, but she had increased pain last week too and she totally survived. I’m pretty sure this is just a normal thing for her. Let’s just go with it for now and get things back to normal with digestion and serotonin and then we’ll see where things are.”

If an interruption like that could have happened, it would have stopped the destructive feedback loop that was going to cause our symptoms to get worse and worse.

With this illustration, you can see that the purpose of GI Health Psychology is to help manage your symptoms, rather than cure the GI disorder, and help you get back to living your life instead of just focusing on symptoms.