Day 304 of 365 - Stress and Gut Health
I know I have talked about both stress and gut health in other posts. Maybe in this one, I'll put it together in another way that makes more sense for some readers. As you know, I keep signing up for various online summits so that I can watch a variety of presentations related to health and wellness, looking for inspiration for myself and ideas for my blog posts.
Today, I was so surprised to see that one of the talks was between a popular physician, Dr. Partha Nandi, a gastroenterologist, and an occupational therapist, on the topic of stress and gut health. What? Why would an occupational therapist be addressing this? As a former O.T. myself, I had to watch this one. No surprise, she is not working as a typical O.T., but is in a specialized practice due to the direction her own life took. Although part of our training as occupational therapists would certainly give us skills to help clients to address the impact of stress on their ability to function on a day to day basis, and tools for shifting that, this speaker is practicing in an even more specific way.
What the conversation is about, is really the gut/brain connection; the way that stress influences that and different ways to consider in alleviating problems. This takes us back to the good old nervous system, and especially that big vagus nerve, which I've talked about in other posts. Just to relate this in a typical way to our own gut experience, think about the following questions. Have you ever gotten constipated when traveling or when your routines have been significantly disrupted in some way? Or, has some significant fright sent you running to the bathroom with diarrhea? That's a vagus nerve/ gut connection right there.
The above examples are short term stressors, that likely resolve quickly once we get back on schedule or settle down from our fright. But, what about the effect of unresolved stress or chronic stress? When we have a lot of that going on the nervous system becomes sympathetic dominant, with that vagus nerve switched on to sending protective signals to all our organs and systems in a prolonged way. That kind of stress actually affects our gut function by disturbing the balance in our microbiome, the ecosystem of bugs in our gut that is key to our digestive function, and also something talked about in a previous blog post. It's now clearly understood at a scientific level how stress can be a cause of something like colitis for this reason.
Now, the specialized treatment practice of the O.T. being interviewed, Phaedra Antioco, is in pain relief. Because of her own life experience of a car accident and dealing with the subsequent trauma, scar tissue and stress, in addition to her O.T. training she became a somatic therapist, a myofascial release therapist and a craniosacral practitioner. Why? Because our issues lodge in our tissues, and often we cannot get relief from the pain we are experiencing until they are released in a subtle but powerful physical way. To quote her " it's about shining the light on your situation and pausing and having a little break of safety" to relax the body and free up those hardwired nervous system connections.
Sometimes we are not aware at a conscious level what kind of stresses or traumas from earlier in our life may be affecting how our organs and systems are functioning now. Having a session or a series of sessions with a practitioner who does the kind of release work described above may surprisingly bring something into your awareness. Once we are aware, we can change and heal. Diet and medication can relieve our symptoms and heal us at one level, but for ongoing health we benefit from healing at these other kinds of levels as well.
In case you haven't sensed my delight at discovering the direction of practice that this O.T., Phaedra has taken, I am just thrilled to see someone of a similar professional background as mine use her life experience to take her foundation skills to a whole new level, with the layering of further training to create an effective and functional approach for her clients.
Today, I was so surprised to see that one of the talks was between a popular physician, Dr. Partha Nandi, a gastroenterologist, and an occupational therapist, on the topic of stress and gut health. What? Why would an occupational therapist be addressing this? As a former O.T. myself, I had to watch this one. No surprise, she is not working as a typical O.T., but is in a specialized practice due to the direction her own life took. Although part of our training as occupational therapists would certainly give us skills to help clients to address the impact of stress on their ability to function on a day to day basis, and tools for shifting that, this speaker is practicing in an even more specific way.
What the conversation is about, is really the gut/brain connection; the way that stress influences that and different ways to consider in alleviating problems. This takes us back to the good old nervous system, and especially that big vagus nerve, which I've talked about in other posts. Just to relate this in a typical way to our own gut experience, think about the following questions. Have you ever gotten constipated when traveling or when your routines have been significantly disrupted in some way? Or, has some significant fright sent you running to the bathroom with diarrhea? That's a vagus nerve/ gut connection right there.
The above examples are short term stressors, that likely resolve quickly once we get back on schedule or settle down from our fright. But, what about the effect of unresolved stress or chronic stress? When we have a lot of that going on the nervous system becomes sympathetic dominant, with that vagus nerve switched on to sending protective signals to all our organs and systems in a prolonged way. That kind of stress actually affects our gut function by disturbing the balance in our microbiome, the ecosystem of bugs in our gut that is key to our digestive function, and also something talked about in a previous blog post. It's now clearly understood at a scientific level how stress can be a cause of something like colitis for this reason.
Now, the specialized treatment practice of the O.T. being interviewed, Phaedra Antioco, is in pain relief. Because of her own life experience of a car accident and dealing with the subsequent trauma, scar tissue and stress, in addition to her O.T. training she became a somatic therapist, a myofascial release therapist and a craniosacral practitioner. Why? Because our issues lodge in our tissues, and often we cannot get relief from the pain we are experiencing until they are released in a subtle but powerful physical way. To quote her " it's about shining the light on your situation and pausing and having a little break of safety" to relax the body and free up those hardwired nervous system connections.
Sometimes we are not aware at a conscious level what kind of stresses or traumas from earlier in our life may be affecting how our organs and systems are functioning now. Having a session or a series of sessions with a practitioner who does the kind of release work described above may surprisingly bring something into your awareness. Once we are aware, we can change and heal. Diet and medication can relieve our symptoms and heal us at one level, but for ongoing health we benefit from healing at these other kinds of levels as well.
In case you haven't sensed my delight at discovering the direction of practice that this O.T., Phaedra has taken, I am just thrilled to see someone of a similar professional background as mine use her life experience to take her foundation skills to a whole new level, with the layering of further training to create an effective and functional approach for her clients.
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