Dr. Trisha Pasricha

And that was based on real studies that showed that connection to be true.

And they started to do this series of very elegant experiments in the 2000s where they said, okay, we know in IBS that there are high rates of anxiety and depression.

And we also know one of the big risk factors for IBS is trauma, especially childhood trauma.

The kind of trauma that we have when our nervous systems are still in their infancy can really have an outsized impact on who we become as adults.

We know that.

So they said, okay, let's do these experiments in rats where they said, okay, we'll take one group of rats and they're going to experience a little bit of emotional trauma.

They'll separate them from the moms for a short period of time.

Then they took a second group of rats and they said, let's irritate the guts with just like a mild acid, almost like vinegar.

And then there's a control group.

They did none of those things.

And then after a couple of days, those rats all grew up and became adults.

They socialized the same way, had the same environment.

Well, what they found was that the ones who had been separated from their moms for just a brief period at birth, they experienced pain in their guts to small amounts of distension that the control group didn't even feel.

Like they inserted a small balloon and distended it.

And the control group didn't even know that a balloon was being inserted.

They just like kind of went about their business.

But that group that had experienced emotional trauma felt it.

And that's sort of the hallmark of irritable bowel syndrome is that we know that the nerves in the gut have a lower threshold to be triggered.

That those nerves are sending pain signals up to the brain for signals that other people who don't have IBS would just perceive as normal.

Those are things like, you know, food passing through, gas passing through.