psychological stress stomachache

Stomach pain induced by psychological stress is essentially a functional gastrointestinal disease caused by brain-gut axis signaling disorder. The stomach itself does not suffer from organic damage such as ulcers or erosion, but the pain is almost the same as that of organic stomach pain. In most cases, the priority is to adjust the emotional state, which is faster than taking stomach medicine.

Last week, I met a girl who works as an e-commerce operator in the clinic. She came in with a stack of normal gastroscopy reports. Her eyes were red and she said that she had been in pain for almost a month. The 618 sales had been going on for twenty days. Every day at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, her stomach started to throb and hurt. Sometimes the pain was so painful that she had to squat under her workstation for ten minutes. She took half a drawer of omeprazole and Weisu granules, but it didn't help at all. Colleagues in the gastroenterology department prescribed oryzanol for two weeks and asked her to take 20 minutes to take a walk every day after get off work and not to take her work phone home. She came for a follow-up visit last week and said she had almost no pain at all.

Many people don’t know that the stomach is actually the most “emotional” organ in the human body. Stress on the brain never stays in the brain, but synchronizes signals to the gastrointestinal tract through the brain-gut axis: when you are anxious, gastric acid secretion will be more than 30% higher than usual, and the smooth muscles of the gastrointestinal tract will also spasm. In addition, when under high pressure, many people will subconsciously hold their breath, wolf down food, and swallow a lot of air. The pain will naturally be overwhelming.

Nowadays, there are actually two ways to deal with this problem in clinical practice. The conventional logic of the gastroenterology department is to eliminate mines first: as long as you have stomach pain for more than a week, first do a gastroscopy and check for Helicobacter pylori to make sure there are no organic problems. Generally, they will prescribe some acid-suppressing drugs or probiotics to relieve the symptoms first, and they will not talk too much about emotions. After all, the number of the gastroenterology department will be called every two minutes, and there is no time to chat with you about whether you are stressed recently. The idea of ​​the psychosomatic department is just the opposite. As long as you have stomach pain after a stressful event and organic problems have been ruled out, you will first be advised to adjust your life rhythm. Unless the pain affects your sleep and prevents you from working normally, they will prescribe low-dose anti-anxiety or antispasmodic drugs. They will rarely prescribe a bunch of stomach medicine.

There are also many people who are willing to seek treatment from Chinese medicine doctors. Traditional Chinese medicine calls this "liver qi invading the stomach". To put it bluntly, it means that the emotions are blocked and the qi cannot flow smoothly and is blocked in the stomach. They will usually prescribe you some prescriptions to soothe the liver and regulate qi, or ask you to press the Taichong point on your feet. I have seen many people who are so anxious that they have stomach pains. After pressing the Taichong point for two or three days, they scream in pain. After rubbing it for two or three days, the stomach pain will be cured, which is quite miraculous.

Of course, don’t think that all stomach pains are caused by stress after reading this. If you actually vomit acidic water, have black stools, or lose four or five pounds in two weeks when you are in pain, don’t hold it back and go for a gastroscopy immediately. If there are real problems, they can be discovered and treated early. Don’t use “I’m under a lot of stress recently” as an excuse to delay things.

I also had this problem when I stayed up late to catch up on a project. When the pain was so intense that I broke into a cold sweat, the most effective method I tried was not to seek stomach medicine, but to find a place where no one was around to stand, and slowly do abdominal breathing for five minutes. When you inhale through your nose, you should expand your belly, and when you exhale, you should slowly draw it in. After five minutes, most of the cramped area will be loosened, which is much more effective than drinking a hot water tube.

To be honest, everyone is under a lot of pressure nowadays. Those who go to school have to cope with exams, those who work have to meet KPIs, and even those who stay at home full-time have to deal with a lot of chores. Many times we are used to being tense, and we insist on saying "I'm fine" even though we can't bear it anymore, but in the end, our stomach will give you a red light honestly. To put it bluntly, stomach pain is not a bad thing sometimes. It just reminds you: it’s time to stop and don’t tighten yourself too much.