Stress and anxiety are commonly understood to exacerbate IBS symptoms, indicating their neuroplastic origin. The symptoms of IBS are expressions of the brain interpreting nerve signals from the digestive tract as dangerous. In many cases this interpretation is false and the food is in fact harmless to the body.

Anxiety is a fundamental part of neuroplastic pain. It is the nervous system informing us that something is not safe. The nervous system always communicates in a language of sensation; heaviness in the stomach, tingles up the spine, prickling on the back of the neck etc. Sometimes the nervous system perceives a threat that is not there, causing these sensations to give us a ‘false alarm’. 

It is not just external threats that the nervous system warns us of, pain is the alarm for bodily damage. Sometimes the nervous system gives us a ‘false alarm’ here too, which is neuroplastic pain. Neuroplastic means ‘learned by the nervous system’.

When neuroplastic pain becomes chronic, the nervous system becomes hyper-alert to perceived threats, creating a feedback loop of physical symptoms and anxious responses.

Anxiety, emotional stress, and fear are often experienced as nausea and/or aching in the stomach area. When these sensations are interpreted as intolerances to certain foods or structural damage in the digestive system, the grounds for a feedback loop are set in place and then reinforced, quickly mimicking the bodily response to being poisoned.