In this article:
- Can stress cause stomach bloat?
- Other signs you may be struggling with stress
- Understanding how stress impacts your mind and body
- Ways to improve your stress levels
Bloating is a pretty common issue, with a pretty common cause - eating stuff that doesn’t make your body happy. However, sometimes your digestive woes are caused by stress. How can you tell the difference, though? It’s actually simpler than you might think.
Takeaways:
- Everybody deals with bloating from time to time, but not everybody knows that it can be caused by stress.
- When you’re stressed, your body spends less energy on digestion, and more on gearing up for whatever crisis it thinks is about to happen.
- Figuring out the cause can be tricky on your own, but lab testing will help you nail down both the cause and the solution.
Can stress cause stomach bloat?
If you feel bloated more often than not, your first thought is probably about whatever you’ve eaten in the last 24 hours. Maybe you had a late dinner, or you’ve just eaten too much junk food recently. Most of the time, you wouldn’t be that far off; if your eating pattern looks like it was planned by a carb-crazy child, that’s a sure way to disrupt normal digestion patterns.
That being said, your digestive system is a complicated thing, and there are plenty of ways for it to get knocked off-balance. Some people even suffer from frequent bloating while eating a pretty healthy diet - what’s up with that? If food doesn’t seem to be the culprit, you should probably turn your attention to your stress levels.
What we call “stress” is mainly caused by cortisol, a.k.a. the “stress hormone”. If you’re having a good day, your cortisol should be at a normal level, and it’ll play nicely with all your other hormones. What if you aren’t having a good day, though? That’s a whole different story. Your cortisol will be higher than normal, and this will disrupt all kinds of important processes. Say hello to things like brain fog, poor sleep, and yes - stomach bloating.
How many times have you blamed a heavier-than-usual supper for indigestion, when maybe it was really just stress? Rather than vowing to avoid junk food for the next few days, a better solution could be some deep-breathing exercises or mindful eating practices; most of the time this is enough to fix the problem at least temporarily.
The question is, how can you tell if you’ve found the right culprit? It could be that huge plate of nachos you scarfed down last night while catching up on Squid Game, or it could be work-related pressure that’s had your stomach in knots all week. So is it time to give up nachos, or is there another solution? If you aren’t sure, getting your cortisol levels tested could be a good first step. After that you can figure out the best strategies for fixing your bloating issues, rather than playing a guessing game that’ll just leave you frustrated - and probably still bloated.
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Other signs you may be struggling with stress
The good news? The answers you’re looking for may be more obvious than you think; you just have to get the bird’s-eye view of your stress level. Bloating is one indication that you need to de-stress, but there are plenty of other symptoms which could signal that your cortisol levels are out of control. Not everyone will have all of the symptoms below, but if a lot of them seem awfully familiar to you, it’s probably time to dig a little deeper into the issue.
Physical symptoms:
- Headaches
- Gastrointestinal disturbances
- Insomnia
- Lack of energy
- Elevated heart rate
- Dry mouth
- Loss of libido
- Abnormally high or low appetite
- Unexplained weight gain
Emotional/cognitive symptoms:
- Feeling overwhelmed
- Inability to relax
- Low self-esteem
- Constant anxiety or worrying
- Uncharacteristic pessimism
- Forgetfulness
- Brain fog
As you can see, high cortisol is a nasty problem to deal with. It affects all kinds of things, not just your digestion. On the flip side, bringing your cortisol levels back down to normal can have a huge impact on most aspects of your life.
If you’re looking for signs of stress, it’s also important to consider how long these symptoms have been going on. Do they come and go in tandem with work deadlines, family obligations, or anything else that puts you in a tizzy? Or have they been a part of your daily routine for as long as you can remember? Cortisol levels are supposed to self-regulate, but if they stay elevated for too long, they could get stuck that way. This is why your symptoms may not subside when the source of your stress goes away; your body has “forgotten” how to de-escalate its stress response.
Understanding how stress impacts your mind and body
In order to understand the effects of stress, you should learn the difference between “rest and digest” versus “fight or flight”.
Rest and digest
This isn’t exactly a scientific term, but it’s a helpful way to describe how your body responds (or is supposed to respond) after a long day of work, a vigorous exercise routine, or a good meal. Once the activity is over, your system is supposed to focus on repairing tired muscles, replenishing energy stores, and breaking down the food you just ate into the fuel you need to function. Even though resting is supposed to be involved to some degree, these processes still take energy resources, which is why you generally won’t feel like running around right after a big meal. But what does this have to do with bloating caused by stress? As it happens, quite a lot.
Fight or flight
When your cortisol gets too high, your “fight or flight” mode is activated - always at the expense of “rest and digest”. Back in the hunter-gatherer days, this mechanism helped our ancestors successfully escape from predatory animals or rival tribes. After all, scoring the best food sources wouldn’t help much if that meant they were too sluggish to escape anyone who wanted the catch for themselves.
In modern times, however, there aren’t any wolves trying to chase you down for a piece of that wild boar. What’s more likely is that you’re trying to fit meals in between all the other demands on your time, and you never get the chance to sit down and concentrate on what you’re eating. And guess what? These demands on your time don’t just include the ones you don’t like; it also means stuff like browsing social media, catching up on the latest news, or binge-watching your favorite shows. You might feel like you’re getting some much-needed “me time”, but you can be sure that your digestive system does not feel the same way.
This type of interruption often results in - you guessed it - bloating. You get stressed and experience digestive distress as a result. You might even become stressed because you can’t seem to digest anything properly anymore, resulting in a vicious cycle.
That’s not all, though. Efficient digestion depends on (among other things) the right amounts of T3, a thyroid hormone that governs metabolism, heart rate, and a lot of other important stuff. When cortisol gets too high, T3 production is scaled down, resulting in impaired digestion, weight gain, and plenty of other unpleasant things. In other words, elevated cortisol will really mess you up.
Ways to improve your stress levels
As pervasive as digestion-related stress symptoms are, there are plenty of common-sense ways to get them back to a manageable level.
If you can concentrate on savoring each meal, you’ll be sending signals to your body that it’s time to relax - meaning you’ll have less chance of bloating afterward.
Deep breaths and low-effort exercise
Deep breathing and gentle exercise have both been shown to regulate the nervous system, which is integral to the digestion process.
Probiotics
If bloating is stressing you out, you could reverse-engineer your stress-reduction strategy by tackling potential gut microbiome imbalances. Foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, yogurt, or anything else that’s fermented (and unpasteurized) can repopulate your gut microbiome with beneficial bacteria, improving digestion.
Lab testing
If you want to get to the bottom of your stomach bloating issues, you’ll have to do more than limit screen time and join a yoga class. Lab tests can give you reliable, accurate data on the inner workings of your own body, so you can be confident that you’re addressing underlying issues, not just the symptoms. Base’s at-home lab tests cover key biomarkers for stress, digestion, and much more - and you’ll even get personalized recommendations based on your test results.
So what’s the conclusion? Your stomach bloating could definitely be caused by stress, but if you can identify the problem, that’s a big step towards finding a practical solution. And best of all, you won’t have to visit innumerable specialists, or request all kinds of complicated tests. By implementing some practical stress-fighting techniques and taking advantage of Base’s expertise, you could get the results you were hoping for. How’s that for reducing stress?
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