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Chronic Stress's Impact on the Digestive System

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Chronic Stress's Impact on the Digestive System

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Stress causes a decrease in blood and oxygen flow to the stomach, causing cramping. Cramping occurs from a kind of gut imbalance and inflammation. It also increases fluid secretion which in return increases the chance of getting diarrhea. This leads to a different bowel habit. Because the intestinal mucosa is filtered through the myenteric plexus which is controlled by signalling from the brain – the gut and the brain are connected. Mucosal permeability is affected and stress can change the gut flora composition due to a higher amount of cytokines.

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It is a type of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). It is thought that good bacteria in the gut is attacked by the immune system, causing leukocytes to build up around the lining of the gut. This leads to an inflammation, becoming chronic. Being chronic, this causes ulceration and laceration in the digestive tract.

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Crohn's disease is a condition that causes the lining of the gastrointestinal tract to become inflamed. Any part of the tract may be affected, although it usually occurs in the ileum (last part of small intestine) or the colon. The condition usually affects individuals between the ages of 15 and 40 and common symptoms include the following:

Individuals with Crohn's may experience long periods of remission, where they have no symptoms or only very mild symptoms. This may then be followed by a "flare up" where symptoms return and can be particularly severe. For some people, symptoms may be absent for the majority of their lives, while others have a chronic and severe form of the condition where symptoms persist and never resolve.

Crohn's disease is named after the famous gastroenterologist, Dr. Burrill Crohn. It first became regarded as a medical condition when it was described by Crohn and colleagues in 1932. However, the first explanation of Crohn's was given by Giovanni Battista Morgagni, an Italian physician who diagnosed a patient suffering from a debilitating and long-term disease that caused diarrhea.

Further instances were described by John Berg in 1898 and by Antoni Lesniowski in 1904. in 1913, Kennedy Dalziel also reported on the condition at a British Medical Association meeting and the paper was published in the BMJ.

Physicians examining patients with the condition could clearly see the inflammation in the digestive system and patients, especially young adults, who had the disease during the 1920s and 1930s usually experienced diarrhea, weight loss, and abdominal cramps.

In 1923, physicians identified 12 individuals at the Mt Sinai Hospital, New York, who also presented with these sorts of symptoms and in 1930, Dr, Crohn noticed that two of his patients had similar problems. In May 1932, Dr. Crohn and two colleagues presented an article on the condition "Terminal Ileitis," in which they described the characteristics of Crohn's disease to the American Medical Association (AMA).

The AMA then published the piece later the same year in JAMA, as a landmark paper entitled "Regional Ileitis: A Pathologic and Chronic Entity." This happened to be a time when people in the field of medicine were particularly interested in novel discoveries.

In contrast to the 1913 BMJ paper by Dalziel, the paper by Dr. Crohn and colleagues was given significant recognition. Crohn happened to be the first author named on the paper (as a result of alphabetical order, rather than a reflection of contribution) and his name was used to refer to the disease itself after people read about the condition in a popular medical journal for the first time.

Further Reading

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Crohn's disease is a condition that causes the lining of the gastrointestinal tract to become inflamed. Any part of the tract may be affected, although it usually occurs in the ileum (last part of small intestine) or the colon.

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Not being able to handle stress, or relax oneself in the face of stress can aid in the progression of Crohn's disease. In Crohn's disease, one of the theories of its origins is from disruption of the gut bacteria. Since stress causes the composition of gut flora to change due to exposure to cytokines, the good gut bacteria is reduced and the leukocytes can build up and cause inflammation. If this inflammation is chronic, with chronic stress, then Crohn's can develop.

Stress is especially a factor in flare-ups causing the inflammation to worsen, therefore making an already painful condition, worse. Often, patients with Crohn's are worried about becoming stressed, knowing that it triggers their symptoms, which in turn causes stress - thus aggravating this cycle.