Nancy was sensitive to many foods because they caused gut distress. She tried to stay vigilant about only eating foods on her safe list. One night at a party, she ate an appetizer that looked appealing to her. Five minutes later, she started to feel queasy and mildly bloated in her mid-abdomen. Being so concerned about her diet, she felt a surge of adrenaline and a feeling of anxiety.
She thought, Oh no, what if I ate something my gut can't tolerate? What happens if I have sudden diarrhea at this party and I get embarrassed? As she worried, she felt her lower abdomen start to cramp and the queasiness increase. As her anxiety intensified and her heart rate jumped, she urgently scanned the apartment to find the bathroom. Her emotions and her physiology were intertwined. Nancy's body and mind joined in an intimate yet painful dance.
Although our culture tends to separate the mental and emotional from the physical, our brain does not. Scientists define pain as both a sensory and emotional experience. Why? Pain signals enter our brain, where they channel through a sensory input center (the thalamus) and then are immediately evaluated by another brain structure (the amygdala) for emotional value and threat potential. Depending on this instantaneous evaluation, big physical changes can affect nerves, muscles, connective tissue, and even our immune system. Lo and behold, aching, bloating, or spasms arise in the gut.
Gladys Goes Through the Mill
Over the past twelve years, Gladys had seen more than eight doctors for her bloating, constipation, cramping, and indigestion. She'd had several complete physical examinations, numerous barium x-rays, countless blood tests, and three colonoscopies—all in the attempt to identify the problem. Doctors told her there was “nothing abnormal” on any of these tests. Identifying her problems as IBS, they tried to offer medications but ultimately encouraged her to learn to live with it. One doctor said, “There's nothing more I can do for you—maybe you would feel better if you learned to relax more.”
Have you had a similar experience? Have you been told, it's just stress or it's all in your head? This last comment—it's all in your head—is another way of saying that your problems are psychological.
Gladys' next visited a psychiatrist, who evaluated her for psychological problems, which were now believed to be the source of her physical symptoms. Her physical distress was now pegged as psychosomatic. She was treated for depression and anxiety, and then sent on. Although this is sometimes effective, for most people, including Gladys, it doesn't help at all.
Sound familiar?
Gladys continued suffering the same symptoms, except now she felt a sense of hopelessness, too, because the experts she turned to couldn't help her. The result? Gladys, like so many others—perhaps like you—had fallen through the cracks of our health system. Why? Because her symptoms could not be understood as strictly due to organic physical pathology on one hand or as caused by psychological disorders on the other.
So when you experience a sensation in your stomach or abdomen, remember that it may be neither physical nor psychological but actually a combination of both! It's part of your body/mind system. Your gut sensations provide you with valuable information, but you have to learn how to listen and pay attention to them. This is at the heart of the CORE program. This valuable information is somatic wisdom, and it is available as an important healing resource.
The Media Is the Message
You probably have heard that old joke about a man going to a doctor and saying, “Doctor, it hurts when I move my arm this way.” The doctor says, “Okay, don't move your arm that way.” Pharmaceutical advertising turns this joke on its head, transmitting to us the exact opposite message. The message no longer says, “Don't do that.” Instead it says, “Okay, you can still do that if you just take a pill first.” Medications are helpful for many people, but sometimes they can also serve to mask important signals from the body.
The mass media is the way we receive commercial messages in the modern world. Whether transmitted by television, radio, print, or the Internet, messages about the gut expressed through advertising deeply affect the way people think and feel about the intimate processes of their own body. American media, in particular, is saturated with pharmaceutical ads; they're everywhere. And why? The pharmaceutical industry's very existence relies upon patients asking their doctors for “that medication I saw on TV.”
What do you see when you watch a commercial for an over-the-counter or prescription gut medication? You see people with gut distress standing on the sidelines of life, not joining the party because they can't eat pizza. You hear them saying no to dinner out because they are terrified they might get a bout of diarrhea.
Medications sometimes prevent you from listening to the very important messages your gut is trying to send.
The hard sell? Medications put the fairness back in life. They are the great equalizer. It's unfair that your gut says, “Don't eat this food that everyone else is enjoying” or “I have to go to the bathroom even though the timing couldn't be worse.” Sure, the medications let you do what everyone else is doing, but sometimes they prevent you from listening to the very important messages your gut is trying to send. Why listen to a possibly inconvenient or embarrassing message when you can take a pill and make it go away?
Pharmaceutical ads also reinforce the longstanding and incorrect belief that symptoms and sensations of the body are simply annoyances to be eradicated. They devalue the notion that the stomach irritation that flares up when you eat pizza might be useful information about what your body needs for healing. For example, heartburn, indigestion, and irritation are desperate signals to protect you by saying, “Pay attention to me! This food doesn't agree with you, and it's going to hurt you! Don't put us through this suffering!”
Pharmaceutical companies take a great deal of time and expense to redefine what is normal to a sufferer of gut distress. We believe your body's sensations are important messengers trying to help you heal. We believe your body's own integrity is the new normal. Drug manufacturers treat these sensations as obstacles to having a good time.
So let's assume that the guy goes ahead, takes an acid-blocking medicine, and then eats pizza until he's totally stuffed. What happens then? Probably nothing for a few minutes. But within an hour or two, he likely will feel indigestion because his body doesn't tolerate the wheat, dairy, or tomato sauce in the pizza. This disrupts the ecology of his gut. He will probably react with either constipation or diarrhea.
And this is what happens after just one episode. If he continues to use acid-blocking medicine to tolerate eating pizza despite his body's warning signs, other problems follow. For example, the acid-blocking medicines change digestion over time, because we need a certain amount of stomach acid in order to properly absorb important nutrients from our food. The result: our pizza lover ends up with an increasing cycle of pain, bloating, bowel irregularity, and incomplete digestion of his meal.
Instead of ignoring your gut, start ignoring commercials. Ads by the large pharmaceutical companies say, “Turn off your gut's messages; they are unimportant at best and harmful at worst. You can live like everyone else if you only stop listening. This pill will make your gut shut up. It will put the belly aching to rest.”
The problem is that even if you ignore your gut's communication, your very wise body—your somatic wisdom—will find ways to get the message across. To find relief from the endless cycle of gut distress, it is critical to open—not shut off—the communication between you and your gut.
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