How Stress Affects Your Digestion

Stress is any real or imagined threat, and your body’s response to it.

Americans tend to eat under a state of stress and anxiety, says Marc David, director of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating. When you are eating under the physiological stress response, you could be eating the healthiest food but you won’t necessarily be digesting, assimilating and burning the calories from that food.

When under the physiological stress response, your heart rate goes up and your blood pressure rises. Blood is shunted away from your midsection and goes to your arms, legs, and head. Your digestion also completely shuts down.

In relation to digestion, stress causes:

• cortisol and insulin levels to rise
• as much as four times less blood flow to your digestive system, leading to decreased metabolism
• decreased flow of oxygen and decreased enzyme production (up to 20,000-fold) to your gut
• decreased nutrient absorption
• water soluble vitamins, macrominerals, microminerals and calcium to be excreted and wasted
• a spike in your cholesterol and triglyceride levels
• an increased risk of food sensitivity or heartburn
• decreased gut flora population

Corisol and insulin are two hormones that tend to track each other. When your cortisol levels consistently rise under a chronic low-level stress response, you’ll likely have problems losing weight and building muscle.

The worse part is, with rising cortisol, you’ll tend to gain weight around your midsection. Body fat, particlularly visceral fat (fat around your midsection that gathers around your internal organs), increases your risk of diabetes and metabolic syndrome.

Eating under stress puts your body in the opposite state of where it needs to be so it can digest food, assimilate nutrients and burn calories. In short, eating under stress is a recipe for weight gain!

So what can you do to avoid eating under stress?

Stress management is an important part of optimizing your overall health. Though it is not possible to completely eliminate stress, there are several ways that will help you minimize the stressors that seriously disrupt your digestion and other important bodily functions.

Here are some stress-busting strategies:

• Use the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). Meridian tapping helps restore your mind and body’s balance by clearing emotional blockages from your system.
• Exercise is another effective and natural way of providing your body with relief from stress. Endorphins, your body’s “feel good” chemicals are released into your brain during exercise.
• Get proper sleep.
• Meditate.

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Tags: digestion, eating, EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique, exercise, sleep, stress, stress management