When we think of gut health, chronic stress usually isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. However, stress plays a pretty important role in our ability to properly digest food and protect our gut integrity. Most of the issues with stress relate to the speed of digestion and the gut microbiome balance. However, there are two other issues that are not talked about much: suppression of secretory IgA and low stomach acid. I’ll touch on both of these and also provide a few tips to help you better handle stress.
Secretory IgA & Stress
We also know that chronic stress can also affect how we digest and react to certain foods. What isn’t talked about is how this is related to secretory IgA and the vagus nerve. Secretory IgA is an antibody that acts as your gut lining’s primary security guard. It binds to toxins, bacteria, and undigested food particles, neutralizing them before they can touch your gut wall or enter your bloodstream. However, stress can affect Secretory IgA:
- When you are in a sympathetic (fight or flight) state, vagus nerve signaling drops. The vagus nerve is responsible for stimulating the production and secretion of Secretory IgA.
- High levels of chronic cortisol directly suppress your immune system’s ability to manufacture secretory IgA.
Why does this matter for autoimmune diseases? When your stress lowers your secretory IgA levels, your gut defense shield goes down. Dietary proteins and environmental triggers that your body normally neutralizes are suddenly able to breach the gut barrier, interacting directly with your systemic immune system and driving autoimmune flares. This mechanism is also related to the development of food sensitivities, which are so common among the autoimmune population.
Low Stomach Acid & Stress
Stress can impact your stomach acid production in two ways – it can either increase it, which is one of the underlying causes of gastric reflux, or it can decrease it, which can also lead to gastric reflux and digestive problems.
To manage an autoimmune condition, your food must be broken down completely into its smallest components. If it isn’t, those large, undigested proteins look like foreign invaders to a hyper-reactive immune system. The first line of digestive breakdown relies entirely on hydrochloric acid (HCl) in the stomach. But HCl production is an incredibly energy-intensive process that requires deep parasympathetic (rest and digest) activation. Here is what happens to stomach acid production when dealing with chronic stress:
- Blood flow shunt: Under stress, your body redirects blood flow away from the stomach and toward your skeletal muscles.
- Suppressed Gastrin: stress hormones inhibit gastrin, the hormone responsible for telling your parietal cells to secrete stomach acid.
- The Undigested Cascade: Without adequate stomach acid, proteins enter the small intestine largely intact, severely irritating the gut lining and triggering systemic immune reactivity.
You can eat the cleanest, most pristine anti-inflammatory diet on earth, but if you eat it while answering stressful emails or rushing in your car, your body cannot produce the acid needed to break it down safely.
How to Better Handle Stress
Chronic stress is a huge area to tackle when you are trying to manage your autoimmune disease. While this could be a discussion in and of itself, here are a few easy ways to lower stress as it relates to digestion:
- Before you eat, you must actively shift out of fight or flight. Take 3 slow diaphragmatic exhales (making the exhale longer than the inhale) right before your first bite. This rapidly stimulates the vagus nerve, signaling your gut to restore its protective defenses.
- Treat the 20 minutes during your meal as a sacred window. Put away work, step away from screens, chew each bite 20-30 times, and give your stomach the physical environment it needs to do its job.
- There is a reason why people say grace before eating. It invites mindfulness and gratitude into your eating practice, which is another way to engage the parasympathetic nervous system to lower stress levels. Begin your meal with a gratitude practice. Think about where you food came from and all of the steps it took to bring that food to your table.
Chronic stress greatly impacts digestion. Be aware of your own stress levels and implement a few of these tips to help improve digestion and strengthen your immune defenses. If you need help with any of your eating habits, please contact me. Additionally, follow me on my socials (Instagram, Facebook and YouTube) for more tips on integrating nutrition into your autoimmune journey.
Photo by Jared Rice on Unsplash
THE INFORMATION IN THIS POST IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR THE DIAGNOSIS, TREATMENT OR CARE OF DISEASE BY A MEDICAL PROVIDER. THIS IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. PLEASE CONSULT YOUR QUALIFIED HEALTH PROFESSIONAL FOR ANY CHANGES TO YOUR MEDICAL CARE.
