Emotions, in their truest sense, are a driving force which often lead to great accomplishments, and again that same driving force may lead to destruction. Emotional problems are real and not always easily solved, but every emotionally sick patient is also physically sick and every physical illness is produced by some type of human distortion. How can emotions transform the body, either creating disease or healing it, maintaining health or undermining it? The answer to the question is: It’s a two way street.

Studies have since shown that emotions can originate in the mind and the body. While it is true the brain can affect the behavior of the gut, the gut can also manage to get along without hearing from the brain in creating emotions. Historically, the endocrine system located in the gut has always been studied separately from the brain, even though the endocrine system conceptually resembles the nervous system.

What we now know is every change in the physiology of your body is accompanied by an appropriate change in the mental emotional state, conscious or unconscious, and conversely, every change in the mental emotional state, conscious or unconscious, is accompanied by an appropriate change in the physiology of your body.

Over 40% of the patients who visit an internist do so for gastrointestinal problems. Half of those have “Functional” complaints. Their gut is malfunctioning, but no one knows why. No anatomical or chemical defects are obvious. Physicians become angry. Patients who present themselves to doctors with problems that are insolvable are perceived as crazy and are often dismissed as mentally unbalanced and prescribed anti-depressant or anti-psychotic drugs.

Anti-depressant drugs and anti-psychotic drugs work by blocking the hormone and neuropeptide feedback loops, forcing a change in a particular message system, making a person feel better. Yet, it doesn’t take into account what else is going on in other parts of the brain and body when these drugs are taken.

Hormones and neuropeptides are the body’s instant messenger system. They work through delicately balanced feedback loops and when the flow of chemical information is unimpeded, it results in homeostasis or balance. Anything that un-balances this delicate system of feedback loops causes change throughout the entire system, moving the body out of homeostasis or balance. Low stomach acid, dysbiosis (fermentation, putrefaction, malabsorption and sensitization), and pharmaceutical drugs create an un-balanced gut.

Enterochromaffin or EC cells located in the walls of the intestines manufacture and contain 95% of the body’s serotonin. Any stretching of the gut wall due to food, gas, or liquid is interpreted as a need to secrete serotonin, causing a contraction to move things on down the line. If this stimulation is strong enough, cramps or vomiting occur. However, babies, small children and old people have very little reserve serotonin. If these reserves, even in an adult, become exhausted, the colon may not be able to contract, resulting in constipation. This contributes to altered serotonin response in the brain and gut, resulting in mood shifts and depression.

What happens when receptor sites in other parts of the body are blocked from receiving information from neuropeptides such as seratonin? An example of this is your intestines are loaded with serotonin receptors. It’s well known that people on antidepressants often have gastrointestinal disorders. And think what might happen to cells in the immune system that also have the same receptors in the gut. Because the hormones and neuropeptides--the molecules of emotion--are involved in the process of a virus entering the cell, it seems logical to assume that the state of emotions will affect whether or not we succumb to viral infections. This might explain why one person will get sicker from the same dose of a virus than another person.

Fiber gives the colon something to squeeze down on while providing no calories and keeps the colon fit and trim. A colon that lacks any exercise from years of the “good old-fashioned meat and potato diet,” obstensively a low-fiber diet, may become as flabby as its owner. The same thing occurs when the serotonin reserves are exhausted. A weak walled colon tends to develop little outpouchings called diverticuli. The disease associated with the presence of diverticuli is diverticulitis.

Wellness Alternatives specializes in caring for “Functional” gastrointestinal complaints and understand the link between altered gut function and emotions. The staff expects you to have certain emotions manifest with altered gut function.

Call Wellness Alternatives 636-227-4949

Dr. Dave utilizes Sacro Occipital Technique Viscero- Somatic Reflexes Manipulation to correct the neurology associated with altered gut function. In addition, through Functional Medicine evaluations, achieved through questionnaire and lab testing, specific supplementation protocols can be utilized for continued improvement.

It is not uncommon for someone to have an emotional catharsis as Dr. Dave is working the Visceral-Somatic Reflexes. The goal of the treatment is not to correct emotional issues but through normalizing gut function, emotions often change. An indirect result of normalizing gut function is that the hormones and neuropeptides produced in the gut and responsible for emotions are stabilized, resulting in improvements in moods.

Mind doesn’t dominate the body, it becomes the body

– Body and Mind are One.

If a thought or belief does not serve you, let it go! There is no written law that says that because you once believed something you have to continue to believe it forever. "Should" is the most damaging word in our language. Every time you use "should" you are in effect saying “wrong”.

For more information on depression and altered gut function, we suggest these books. The link below will take you to our recommended reading list.

Heal Your Body A-Z: The Mental Causes for Physical Illness and the Way to Overcome Them (Paperback)
by Louise Hay

Constant Craving A-Z: A Simple Guide to Understanding and Healing Your Food Cravings (Hay House Lifestyles) (Hardcover)
by Doreen Virtue

The Second Brain
by Michael D. Gerson, M.D.

Molecules of Emotion
by Candace B. Pert, Ph.D.

RECOMMENDED READING

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