The Stress-Constipation Connection: When Anxiety Holds You Back

Heavy Stress and Constipation

[video transcript] In the past several months, I've had several patients come in, either from Ukraine or from Israel. They have family there, and it's a high stressor for them, and they all have the same condition, relatively: constipation. So why would somebody in a high-stress situation like that have constipation? And that's where we have to kind of go beyond the conventional and look a little bit more at function and look a little bit more on the spiritual side of things to understand why that's happening.

Why would I say that? Well, first of all, we have a fight or flight nervous system, right? The opposite is our parasympathetic "rest and digest" nervous system. So you'll hear me talk about this a lot, where we parse the two. And in 2024, we're mostly in this "fight or flight" mode, but our factory design as human beings is this "rest and digest" mode.

So the more that we're in "fight or flight," the more we are literally holding onto our own crap. And we end up with a start-stop sort of phenomenon that happens in the GI. So in "rest and digest" mode, we have this autonomic nervous system. Everything's moving our food, our chi, our feces along very gently without us even really knowing it. And it all just kind of works. And most people have a bowel movement every day, sometimes multiple times a day. Some people every two to three days, and that's perfectly normal under the criteria.

But when you're constantly in "fight or flight," what is the body going to be doing? It thinks it's running from an animal. Sometimes we're just sitting around at our desk, but it thinks it's running from an animal. So what are we not doing when we're running from the animal? Well, we're not pooping, we're not peeing, we are not stopping to have sex, and we're definitely not sleeping. So all those things come into play. So let's talk about constipation. We would definitely be holding on to more fecal matter, and if that signal is prolonged, we're going to be holding onto it for a lot longer.

Beyond Laxatives: The Nervous System and Somatization

So we have to take the nervous system into account. Oftentimes, these patients come to me; they've seen their primary care. They say, "Oh, go get a laxative." It doesn't really work. And then when it's not working, they go to a gastroenterologist, they get a colonoscopy, and they say they're perfectly fine, but nobody's really investigating, you know, the nervous system side of things. Maybe they're doing manometry tests or things like that to see, you know, how well the nervous system is doing, if it's like constant and very chronic. But generally, that's the pattern.

So that's where we have to look at the nervous system. Number one, what is this person not getting? What are they not nourishing in their lives? That's grinding everything literally to a halt.

The second thing that I look at is somatization. What is the body trying to tell us that the mind cannot? Pooping is a function that we can override as human beings, the same as like our appetite or being able to hold on to pee if we're on a long car trip. So, what is the mind kind of doing in the background, and that comes to somatization? And so it's kind of holding onto old ideas and holding onto an old way of thinking. So that can be part of it too. We have to get into that spiritual side.

Naturopathic Approaches to Unclogging Stress

And sometimes that also has a spiritual remedy. Sometimes these folks just need a break. They're very busy, they're constantly in this "fight or flight" mode, and we really just have to kind of break that state a little bit and put them in a parasympathetic mode.

And that's where some of these naturopathic modalities that I do, for instance, like acupuncture, really come into play. Now we can align the meridians with acupuncture needles as we do in Chinese medicine, but also it's just sometimes the act of somebody being super busy and being able to just lay down and relax for 30, 45 minutes for an acupuncture session. And that alone sometimes breaks the log jam, so to speak. Sorry for all the dad puns! I don't have any on my website.

That's my approach to constipation in these sorts of individuals. And everybody presents a little bit differently, and that's where you get a custom approach where you come see me. So check me out on the socials at Dr. Dan Wool. Feel free to put any comments below. And until next time, "fix your gut, solve your health."

For more on nervous system mismatch and gut dysfunction , check out this blog post.