If you have a history of trauma, you are more likely to have a gut disorder.
The connection between your gut and your nervous system is inseparable. The vagus nerve creates the two way communication highway.
It’s not just brain biochemistry and physiology that’s affected by chronic and traumatic stress.
The gut changes too and this can have an enormous impact on your digestive health, as well as your thoughts, moods, memory, concentration and emotions.
Following stress and trauma the microbiome changes.
The number of “bad” bacteria increase, and the “good” decrease. This affects the 100 million neurons in the gut that produce neurotransmitters like GABA, serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine and endorphins, which are essential for resilience.
This change in the microbiome can lead to a gut disorder.
You may think it’s a digestive issue only, but what’s often found is it’s CAUSED by a dysregulated nervous system, and it’s a SYMPTOM of a chronic stress disorder. The disorder arises because the vagus nerve is disrupted from its job of regulating your digestive system.
The wear and tear that accumulates in the body from chronic and traumatic stress is called allostatic load. It can lead to ongoing cycles of dysfunction.
The effects of allostatic load on your body can be reversed with interventions that help the nervous system recover and return to a healthy baseline.
Re-establishing self-regulation through balancing the nervous system and increasing vagal tone can get to the root cause of stress related illnesses, rather than treating the symptoms.
A key intervention is interoception.
This is the experience of noticing and understanding internal bodily sensations.
Training your “eighth sense” improves the communication between the gut and the brain, as well as regulates the nervous system.
It plays a key role in the balance of the digestive system and your emotional health.
The British Society of Gastroenterology re-classified irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) as a disorder of gut-brain interaction, rather than a functional gastrointestinal disorder. Studies show that low interoception is associated with IBS.
Interoception is something you can retrain just like other sensory systems, for example, balance.
This improves both your emotional health and your physical wellbeing.