Dougal Sutherland: Worrying yourself sick - the impact of stress on physical health

Have you ever been so anxious that your stomach started hurting? In addition to its well-known impacts on mental health, stress can also make people feel physically ill—and a new study could help explain why.  

Although it’s fairly common knowledge that the gut “talks” to the brain by releasing hormones into the bloodstream, this recent study showed the relationship going back the other way: from the brain to the gut to the immune system.  

Researchers have found that removing key glands (called Brunner’s glands) in mice, which line the walls of the small intestine, triggered inflammation and increase the chance of infection. Similar thing happens in humans who’ve had tumours removed in their gut.  

It seems that removal of these glands leads to a reduction in gut bacteria which triggers inflammation and subsequent pain.  

When the researchers took a closer look at these glands, they discovered a connection to the vagus nerve that goes from the base of the brain to the internal organs, influencing digestion, blood pressure, and even memory and mood. Fibers that connect to Brunner’s gland lead directly to a region of the brain known as the amygdala, which plays a key role in emotion and the stress response.  

Researchers found that when mice are under chronic stress their glands shut down—causing gut bacteria to dwindle and intensifying inflammation.  

The take home message: being under mental stress can lead to a painful stomach! It highlights the importance of monitoring your stress levels and keeping good gut bacteria.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from News Talks Be and Google.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Sutherland, our clinical psychologist from Umbrella Well Being, is with
us this morning. Canter Google Cured.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
And mister Tame, How are you this morning?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Very very well? Thank you? How are you you into
e F one? Is that you're scene?

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Look? I never was a part until you know, I
started watching the Drive to Survive. I'm exactly and yeah,
and now it's like, oh, yeah, I know all about
that liamla So yes, I was interested. You're listening to
to the aps and downs of of his progress. Yeah, yeah,
I think I think it sounds like respectable.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Yeah, you don't even need to really be into racing,
you know, you can kind of just appreciate the interpersonal
drama of it all and then see how Liam Lawson
conducts himself and feel kind of proud about it.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
Yeah. The racing is, the racing is a sort of
a sidepect total sort.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Of money and the glamor and everything else.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely done a great job of marketing it.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
They have, they really have. It's amazing how those TV
shows like Drive to Survive, Tour de France Unchained, It's amazing.
How they've kind of rejuvenated interest in those sports.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Anyway, we digress this This is You've got some really
interesting new research for us this morning that looks at
the connections or relationship between stress and the gut. And
it can probably best be summarized as saying, worrying does
indeed make you sick, so you can worry yourself set.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
Is that fair? I think it is. And I was
intrigued to read this because when I was a young
teen I remember I had all these stomach unexplained stomach issues,
and I had a sore stomach and I'd wake up
in the morning with a sore gut and nobody could
really figure it out. And I was going to the
doctor and doing all these tests and this sort of thing.

(02:00):
And I mean, at the time, I knew that I
was a bit anxious and a bit worried about I
don't even know what it was at the time, you know,
typical teenage things, probably girlfriends and friends and that kind
of thing. But I think now, looking back in hindsight,
that anxiety, that stress that I was experiencing was causing
my stomach pain. Yeah, and this this research is sort

(02:25):
of highlighting how that link really works. So it's fascinating stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah, okay, that's really that's very intriguing. So but basically,
you know, I think I think we're starting to get
a better understanding right of how gut health affects our
body health. But these researchers have found that by taking
out a couple of glands and mice that that line
the walls of the small and testine, it kind of

(02:52):
has triggered inflammation and the chances that they would then
get sick or get a kind of infection and the
same thing happens to people as well. All can happen
to people as well.

Speaker 3 (03:03):
Yeah, that's right. So it's that link between they found
a gland and you don't have the gland, you get it,
you get information in your stomach. And they found that
that's because there's a reduction in good gut bacteria that
protects your stomach. So that's that makes sense in the gut, right,
But the connection I think was missing with the brain.
But what they've found is that that gland in the

(03:27):
gut is connected. We've got this big vegas nerve that
runs right down the middle of our body that's responsible
for whole lots of things, but it connects right and
from your gut up into your brain and up to
part of your brain called the amygdala, and that's where
your fight or flight response sits. And people will know,
you know, most people have an idea of what that is.
That's the thing that gets activated when we are stressed.

(03:51):
So it turns on our stress response. And what the
research has found they sort of they connected the two.
They found that if there was chronic and this wasn't mice,
but they're assuming it works the same in humans that
if mice were chronically stress, there amigdala was all fired up.
It transmitted down the vagus nerve into their gut, into

(04:12):
that particular gland and they saw the shutdown of that
gland and the reduction in the the good gut bacteria
and then more stomach pain and information in the gut.
And so it's it really, I think shows how connected
our whole body system is. That the stomach and the

(04:33):
gut talks to the brain, and the brain talks to
the gut and it's all sort of tied up together.
So whilst so we sometimes think of stress and worry
as something that's in our heads, it's also very much
in our stomachs.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah, well yeah, okay, yeah, that makes sense. So what
can we do about it? Don't get stressed.

Speaker 3 (04:57):
If only look I think you know, it obviously highlights
that managing your stress levels and whether that's a home
or a where you know, we know that that's good anyway,
but it's good not only if your mental health, but
your physical health I think also too. And I'm not
obviously a gut specialist, but i would imagine that it

(05:19):
points to us making sure that we take care of
our diet and our guts as well and keeping that
good gut bacteria. And you probably need you probably need
a nutritionists really to be talking about to be talking
about that, but I think you know, it really highlights
that how one looking after one part of our health
impacts the whole of our body. So look after your

(05:42):
brain and that will look after your stomach. Look after
your stomach, and that will look after your brain. And
which is I mean, it makes sort of common sense
in a way, and I think we all know it,
but it's good to have that sort of scientific understanding
of actually what's going on when we're doing that.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah, right, I mean that, Yeah, it's very it's funny
because it feels intuitive in a sense, being able to
have the science to back it up as a as
a different kind of story. And it's funny that it
feels intuitive, you know that it makes that kind of
makes sense to us, even if we haven't necessarily been
able to pinpoint it quite like the study has.

Speaker 3 (06:19):
I know. That's I find that vaguely disappointing at times
about yeah, sci scientific discoveries. Everybody goes, oh, yeah, that
makes sense. There was Yeah, I knew that, And it's like, yeah,
me too, but this isn't it amazing? But it's like, oh, yeah,
but we just we kind of knew that, didn't we.
It's like, well, we we sort of did. But but look,
here's the actual evidence to show what the connection is.

(06:41):
I think a bunch of understand the connections. You know,
you can you can isolate much more how you can
actually help, Like what can you do about the gut
bacteria for example? And maybe and this is me speculating,
but maybe you know, if you address gut bacteria, you're
going to reduce the symptoms of anxiety and stress, and
then that'll that will flow up back to the brain

(07:03):
as well, so you know, we don't have to just
focus on mental ways of coping with streets. It could
be physical as well, right.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
Right, that makes sense. Hey, thank you Google. That's very
very interesting and thank you for bringing that study to
our attention. Google Sutherland our clinical psychologist there. He was,
of course, with the Umbrella Wellbeing.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
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