All of john1781's Comments + Replies

5NancyLebovitz
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.

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.

0wedrifid
Now that is fascinating. Do you have a reference I can look at further?