Dr. Will Bulsiewicz

Really?

A hundred percent.

So to, to lay this out, because it kind of is a two way street.

I mean, you asked me about the role of the gut in stress and I'm kind of starting with the role of stress in gut health.

Okay.

You know, imagine that you are in traffic and you have a near miss, you almost got into an accident, you barely missed it and like zing, like your eyeballs bug out, your heart rate's pumping, your blood pressure's up, right?

There's a certain feeling that you get.

Imagine that you are about to go on stage and while you are very comfortable with this, because you've done it many times, for many people, that's like extremely anxiety inducing.

Yes.

Right?

And so they get this feeling of butterflies in the stomach.

They might feel a little nausea.

They might actually start to feel bloated and then cramps and then waves of cramps, and then it's intense and it's crippling and folding them over.

These are all manifestations of very clear physiology connecting the brain to our gut.

What's happening is that our environmental experience, basically, our brain was hardwired to react quickly

to things that are happening around us, right?

That way we don't have to even process, we can just react.

This is why you have a near miss in the car, instantly, boom, you get that feeling, right?

You don't think about it before you even process that you almost got into an accident, right?

So that's your sympathetic nervous system.