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john1781 comments on A sense of logic - Less Wrong
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The stomach pain from mental distress is quite a common phenomenon, due to the enteric nervous system (also referred to as "the brain in the gut"). We have an amazing number of neurons in our digestive system-- roughly the size of a cat's brain. Strong emotional responses (like fear, anger, or disgust) are transmitted from the brain in the head to the brain in the gut, often resulting in pain or other discomfort.
Now that is fascinating. Do you have a reference I can look at further?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enteric_nervous_system
It's about 100 million neurons. (Compare 1000x that in the brain.)
The more interesting question is whether the strong emotions do indeed cause discomfort in the gut.
I've also been told that trauma for the stomach can effect the emotional state, and I can personally attest to feeling distressed, then eating a good sized meal and feeling better afterwords; Also connecting with fast food and eating disorders.
But this could also be an old wives tale, and I'm suffering from a placebo effect.
I was under the impression (I don't recall from where) that this was due to the effect of blood sugar levels on mood. No evidence for this other than that I become irritable when hungry, but it's an alternative explanation.
One interesting source is Heribert Watzke's Ted Talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/heribert_watzke_the_brain_in_your_gut.html
You could also look at http://www.psyking.net/id36.htm
See also the Second Brain-- a fairly detailed book about the elaborate nervous system which runs digestion.
Unfortunately, I lost my copy when I was about halfway through, but I treasure knowing something about the complexity needed to manage storing stomach acid-- stuff which is there to break up proteins-- in the middle of a body built out of protein.
First, the acid isn't made inside cells. There's some chemistry that I didn't understand which makes it possible for the components of stomach acid to combine with each other outside of cells.
And there's a system for adding appropriate amounts of a base to neutralize the acid as the stomach contents head out into the intestines, not to mention a not perfectly reliable valve(?) system for keeping the acid from moving higher in the digestive tract than it should.
Anyway, the book has a history of the development of an understanding that the nerves which run the digestive tract are fairly independent of the brain-- as is commonly the case, it was a hard fight to get the idea across.
I'm not sure how much there is about the connection between the digestive nervous system and emotions, but I gather from the amazon description that there's a conclusion that a lot of digestive problems are from poor regulation of the organs rather than in the organs themselves.
You know, I'd never even considered that. An impressive feat. :)