Blood and Guts

Happy Halloween! This post has nothing to do with blood, but it does have to do with guts. i just added the blood because I feel like blood and guts are festive in a Halloween-y way. Anyway, the American Institute of Stress's November newsletter is entitled "Stress and the Gut: Mind over Matter?"

The newsletter is quite long, so let me sum up. Basically, digestion stops working properly when the body is under stress. The body focuses on the processes that are essential to life when you're stressed out and turns off those that are not. So normal digestive activity gets messed with. In addition, the gut is directly connected to the brain has almost every hormone and neurotransmitter that the brain has. As such it is very sensitive to things like feeling anxious or nervous.

What it all boils down to is that stress can cause and/or aggravate all sorts of stomach problems - from acid reflux to IBS.

This is all just another reason to reduce the stress in your life. So take a nice slow breath in. And let it out nice and slow. Because things get crazy sometimes, and sometimes stress is unavoidable. But even if you can't avoid it you can always control how you handle it. So don't forget to breath.