Recently, I’ve been hearing more and more accounts of doctors and research studies concluding that the major contributing factor influencing Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), Intestinal Permeability (Leaky Gut Syndrome) and other digestive dysfunction is Stress.
Yay!! This is so refreshing. About 5-6 years ago, I went to a doctor for a wellness exam. During the intake and visit, I mentioned that I had had ulcerative colitis, fibrocystic disease and hypoglycemia 25 years earlier, but healed them through diet and lifestyle changes, including juicing, cleansing, fasting, regular meditation and spiritual healing. Her response? “It must have been a misdiagnosis.” I mentioned that I knew others who had done the same. Still, she didn’t go for it.
As recently as one year ago, my father’s girlfriend was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. She was prescribed the same regimen and given the same prognosis that I had been given over 25 years ago. That was “take prescription steroids, stay away from high fiber foods (for instance, eat white bread and not wheat bread), and if it gets worse, we’ll take your colon out.”
I told her about what I had done to heal this disease in myself and begged her to try a natural approach. She insisted that she had to follow her doctor and disregarded my advice. Technically, she could have done both simultaneously – I never suggested not taking the medications. I only suggested dietary changes that cut out the “bad stuff”, especially foods known to cause inflammation, and included incorporating anti-inflammatory foods and non-fibrous high-density super-nutrient foods, along with getting more rest and incorporating some stress management techniques. I even flew to Texas and spent a week with her to show her how to do it.
My hope was that she would find she didn’t need the meds after a while. Instead, she continued eating processed lunch meat sandwiches on commercial white bread with artificially-sweetened yogurt cups, and cut out fresh fruits and vegetables. She took the steroids and made no other lifestyle changes. Before long, she ended up in intensive care in the hospital and had a long healing road to get back to a functional state.
Just this past week, I have run across several messages on internet and in person from medical doctors and PhD’s saying the latest research shows that in order to heal digestive dysfunction, you must address diet and lifestyle and learn to manage stress, with stress being a major factor. The common message: “You must manage your stress or change the way you react to stress in order to heal.”
I’m happy to have this research coming to light. Now maybe people will really get the information they need in order to heal. This message has been my passion and shaped my life’s work for many years now.
Your body is a part of nature, and as such, it adheres to the laws of nature. It is designed to react to stress in a way that protects you from the perceived stressor. Without this natural response, we would not survive. This is your body’s wisdom at work.
But the body is not designed to stay in the stress-reactive state. Our modern lifestyles have brought many of us into states where we are constantly under stress, and our bodies are continually reacting as if we are face to face with life-threatening situations. Then when our bodies are not doing what we expect them to do, we think there is something wrong with our bodies.
In fact, our bodies are doing what they are meant to do. We don’t want to change that. But unfortunately, the effects of staying in this stressed state over time do result in breakdown of other functions. What we need to change, and can change, is what we perceive as stressors and how we react to these perceptions.
This past week, I took a continuing education course from the Institute for Natural Resources called “Food, Mood and Cognition.” The course booklet sums up the major effects of stress on gut physiology nicely:
- Alterations in gastrointestinal secretions and GI mobility.
- Alterations in metabolic response to food.
- Increased visceral perception.
- Increased intestinal permeability (leaky gut syndrome).
- Negative effects on regenerative capacity of gastrointestinal mucosa.
- Negative effects on intestinal microbiome (neurotransmitters and bacteria).
From the course booklet for “Food, Mood and Cognition” by Institute for Natural Resources, Concord, CA. Booklet was written by Gina M. Willett, PhD, RD.
If you’ve read my eBook, “Unlocking Hidden Messages Behind Stress & Digestion,” you’ve read these same things in a more conversational layman’s terms.
The question that remains is how to manage the stress and, better yet, how to change what we perceive as stress and how we react to those perceptions.
This requires a slight reframing of the way we view life – a change in basic beliefs. That’s not as difficult as it may sound. Beliefs can be changed by the truth. And your body – the wise innate natural creature that you are – totally gets truth. When your body hears truth – note I said your body, not your mind – it is happy to return to its true nature – more than happy!
Much of what we have taken on as beliefs has come from our experiences in a world that is not aligned with natural laws or spiritual laws – the laws of love, compassion and innate beauty. When you expose your body, mind and heart to what it knows inside to be true, it will realign and return to conditions that it needs to heal itself – also a function of nature.
So, rather than tell you in words, which usually work on the mind, I would prefer to give you an experience. The body learns by experience, and then teaches the mind about the truths of nature.
Here’s a link to an intro meditation from one of my courses. This exercise will help you experience your connection with the natural laws and spiritual truths that your body knows inside. Take a moment to get into a comfortable space away from distractions, if possible. Allow yourself the experience. The time it takes for wellness is much shorter than the time it takes to be sick.
A background for this meditation: This is an excerpt from a live “I Love My Guts” telecourse. The purpose of this meditation is to release stress and tension from your body and connect with the spiritual truths that are within you that your body already knows inside.
The courses build on this introduction and help to bring your conscious awareness to your body’s states, memories, beliefs, pictures and perceptions that shape your reactions to stressors in your life, and what your true inner being – your knowing self – needs to heal and thus reframe your beliefs and patterns to align with your inner truths. This realignment is what changes how you will perceive stressors and how you will react to stressors in your life moving forward.
The teachings of the “I Love My Guts” course focus on the digestive discomforts and dysfunctions as messages from the body that lead us to seek the truth and healing behind the messages.
