The Link between Anxiety and IBS
Does anxiety beget IBS? Does IBS beget anxiety? This is a classic, "What comes first, the chicken or the egg" dilemma. Can the mystery be solved? Anxiety is often linked with Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Anxiety, in fact, can create, contribute to and exacerbate the symptoms of IBS. Concurrently, the symptoms of IBS have a strong impact on mood and can create stress and feelings of anxiety. As the cycle continues, both patient and physician must dissect this vicious cycle in order to make a valid diagnosis. Most probably anxiety and IBS fuel each other.
Anxiety
Anxiety can be defined as a psychological and physiological reaction to a stressor which expresses itself in fear, worry, uneasiness and/or dread. Medical researchers at The Anxiety Disorders Association of America (ADAA) have learned that there exist somatic, emotional cognitive, and behavioral components to the root cause of anxiety. It is important to note that anxiety, itself, is a normal reaction to a given stressor. It is when anxiety becomes excessive, that physicians classify this reaction as an anxiety disorder.
IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome)
In her book, The First Year: IBS, Irritable Bowel Syndrome is considered to be a functional disorder of the lower intestine characterized by chronic abdominal pain, bloating, abnormal extension, and abnormal bowel movements which alter bowel habits. IBS is a disorder of elimination. Once no known disease is found, patients are diagnosed with IBS because symptoms have no detectable organic cause. Diagnoses are typically classified in four ways.
- IBS-D is diarrhea predominate.
- IBS-C is constipation predominate.
- IBS-A is an alternation between diarrhea and constipation
- IBS-PI is a result of an infection or a stressful life event.
Emotional Stress Often Makes the Symptoms Worse.
While here is no known specific cause for IBS, medical expert and professor at the UCLA Collaborative Center for Integrative Medicine, Emeran A. Mayer MD suggests people who suffer from IBS have a colon that is more sensitive and reactive to certain foods and stress. (The disorder is also known as spastic colon). If misery loves company, it may relieve some anxiety to know that approximately one in five adults in the United States has IBS. Women are more likely to experience symptoms, which usually begin in late adolescence or early adulthood. Rest assured that although IBS can be painful and uncomfortable, it is not permanently damaging to the intestines, nor does it cause other gastrointestinal diseases.
People with IBS Frequently Suffer from Anxiety Which Can Worsen Symptoms.
Here we go again. Why does this vicious cycle continue? The bowel is controlled by the central nervous system. As a person responds to stress, the bowel reacts. When the bowel reacts, it can make you feel more anxious. Here we go again.
Sources
- Anxiety Disorders Association of America, 8730 Georgia Ave., Silver Spring, MD 20910
- The First Year: IBS(Irritable Bowel Syndrome)--An Essential Guide for the Newly Diagnosed , Heather Van Vorous, Marlow and Company, New York, New York, 2001
- New England Journal of Medicine, Emeran A. Mayer EA , April 2008) Edition "Clinical practice. Irritable bowel syndrome".
