Have you been told that there is no known cause (or cure) for your irritable bowel disorder? What depressing information! Without a cause, how can a solution be found?
Well, here’s some good news.
Recent evidence from neurology and rehabilitation medicine shows that the little-known cause of IBS is a “trick” the brain plays on the body.
Your brain is incredibly powerful!
In fact, it is so powerful that when you go through an intense and challenging experience, your brain acts to protect you from feeling the full impact. And this happens without your conscious awareness. This is a wild thing, but no one said humans were easy to understand …
So how does your brain trick you into having irritable bowel disorder?
There are two different answers to this question. One is from pain expert and Rehabilitation Medicine specialist, Dr. John Sarno. The other comes from the orthopedic surgeon and brain scientist, Dr. Robert Scaer. Both physicians have helped thousands of patients recover from chronic pain and other recurring health problems during their decades as practicing physicians.
Dr. Sarno believes that we are all under some kind of pressure, whether it’s from daily life and work, unresolved childhood events, or expectations we have of ourselves to be nice, good, and perfect people. (Do you already recognize yourself?)
Maybe you’re great at dealing with pressure. But if you have an irritable bowel disorder, Dr. Sarno suggests that you open your mind to another possibility.
It says that no matter how calm and civilized you are on the conscious level, beneath your smooth surface, another beast lurks. On the unconscious level, pressure creates intense feelings of anger. In fact, we ALL have these feelings. They are normal. Except we don’t know that we are having them because they are not aware.
Now it gets even weirder. Because anger is so unacceptable, so unpleasant, and so threatening, this is what your brain does to keep you from realizing that you are feeling it …
Your brain actually creates a physical problem to distract your attention!
How weird is that? However, it happens to millions of people. This is how your brain tricks you into having an irritable bowel disorder or fibromyalgia, pain in your back, neck or shoulders, pain in your leg, TMJ, tendonitis, carpal tunnel, skin disorders, and some circulatory or heart problems. Your brain is trying to protect you by distracting you from that unbearable (and unconscious) emotion with physical symptoms.
Even though your symptoms stem from a trick your brain plays on you, Dr. Sarno does NOT consider them imaginary in any way. They are very real. In fact, since many of us have chronic pain and symptoms, Dr. Sarno believes they are a normal response to pressure and repressed anger.
Since Robert Scaer is a neurologist, he sees things a little differently than John Sarno. He says it’s your brain’s reaction to trauma that triggers your symptoms when you have an irritable bowel disorder, chronic pain, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, migraine, or one of several other chronic conditions.
Dr. Scaer defines “trauma” as any event that your brain perceives as a threat to your survival when there is nothing you can do about it. The trauma can be physical, like a car accident, or emotional, like bullying. There are many possibilities.
Normally, when you are threatened, you go into fight or flight mode. These are normal survival reactions. There is a third reaction that occurs when you experience the combination of threat and helplessness. You “freeze”.
Prey animals that cannot escape the predator will freeze in one last attempt to survive. “If I look dead, maybe that big hungry lion won’t eat me.” Then if the lion wanders away, the prey gets up and shakes off the ice.
We humans, on the other hand, train to NOT shake. Shake and shake look ridiculous and no one wants to be so uncool. Then we repress it. (There is that word again. Repression is a real killer). This creates havoc on your Autonomic Nervous System, which controls a host of bodily processes, including digestion …
Now, this is where the trick comes in. When you freeze, your brain remembers everything about that trauma, and I mean everything. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings, everything that was happening outside of your body AND inside of you. So later on, when any little thing reminds your brain of that experience, it thinks you are in danger again and causes your Autonomic Nervous System to overreact.
That is what triggers the symptoms of an irritable bowel disorder. Your brain “tricks” your body into thinking the trauma is happening again. So your poor body reacts by interrupting your digestion (constipation) or losing control (diarrhea, urge), or swinging wildly between the two (spasms, cramps).
Sarno and Scaer are not the only doctors who attribute the cause of an irritable bowel disorder to the brain. Two neuroscientists, David Servan-Schreiber, MD, PhD, author of “The Instinct to Heal” and Robert Sapolsky, PhD, author of “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers,” both point out that it is your brain’s response to threats. . and stress leading to gastrointestinal problems.
So according to these scientists, the true cause of an irritable bowel disorder is not “all in your head,” but it comes from the unconscious processes of your mind and brain. Fortunately, you can use drug-free methods like the Emotional Freedom Technique or Somatic Experimentation to “reprogram” and resolve your symptoms.
