New work helps to explain how chronic stress can inflame the gut
For the past few years, I've had gut issues with a very unclear root cause. I was definitely under an insane amount of chronic stress due to the pandemic and isolation when the issues started, but after isolation ended and my life should have been less stressful the issues persisted. Some doctors seemed to take this gut-brain connection thing to mean that it was all in my head since they couldn't find anything medically wrong with me. That was incredibly frustrating because I was experiencing real physical issues like weight loss, hair loss, bloating, indigestion, etc. But all of the tests and biopsies they did came back normal. With functional medicine and a lot of trial and error with diet and lifestyle changes I've gotten to a point where I feel pretty much recovered, though still with a very sensitive gut. I never discovered the root cause of my problems. My leading theories are long-covid, non-celiac gluten sensitivity, or chronic stress. Possibly a combo of those things.All of that being context, the thing I wonder about this is, if chronic stress does indeed inflame the gut, what does the process of reversing that inflammation look like? It doesn't seem like you can simply remove environmental stressors to undo the inflammation. It seems that there are feedback loops and damage that occur that can take awhile to undo. When someone has a stressful life, it can be difficult just to reduce the amount of stress, much less completely redesign their life to be less stressful. And gut inflammation makes it even harder. Even if they manage to do so, say perhaps by taking a year long sabbatical if they can afford to do so, removing the stress may not be an instant solution.I hope more research is done in the area of healing from gut inflammation triggered by chronic stress.