How to calm down your IBS symptoms

So you’re suffering with diarrhoea, or bloating, or constipation, or all of the above. You’ve been to the doctors for investigation and they can’t find anything wrong with you. They call it Irritable Bowel Syndrome, or IBS for short, and there is not much they can do for you….

So what is IBS?

IBS is a collection of symptoms (like bloating, diarrhoea or constipation), which is caused by ‘miscommunication’ along the information highway, which runs between your head brain and your gut brain, called the Vagus Nerve. Millions of messages go up and down this highway all the time, to make you breathe, make your heart beat, to organise your digestion etc. Sometimes these messages don’t get sent, don’t arrive, or don’t switch off. This can then create the symptoms of IBS.

IBS goes hand in hand with stress and anxiety, and most people with IBS are well aware that stress and anxiety make their symptoms worse.

When we get stressed, we go into fight/flight/freeze mode, we produce stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. In this mode, where the sympathetic nervous system is active, the body uses all its energy to to stay safe from perceived danger. It can’t digest at the same time, it puts digestion on hold by either getting rid of everything, resulting in diarrhoea, or by slowing it all down, resulting in constipation. On top of that, high cortisol levels create inflammation, making the digestive system super sensitive to certain foods.

So the trick to calming down your IBS symptoms, is to calm down the stress response in the body, coming out of the sympathetic nervous system mode, and falling back into the parasympathetic mode. In the parasympathetic mode, the body can resume proper digestion, restoration and healing.

It’s really that simple, but how do you do that when you are so stressed out, or when stress has become the ‘normal’ way to be for you.

Making time for you, and self care has to become a priority. Slowing down, learning to say no, listening to guided meditations, yoga, breathing techniques etc can all be really useful.

Colonics and enemas are another way to help the body fall back into the parasympathetic mode, while at the same time detoxing the body and calming down the inflammation.

BodyTalk and Reiki sessions are also amazing to help you fall into that really deep relaxation, while at the same time addressing the underlying causes, which created the chronic stress in the first place. This can go back to childhood trauma, other traumatic experiences or periods, fears or phobias, belief systems inherited or acquired along the way.

Why don’t you come and experience how some colonics and BodyTalk/Reiki sessions can make a difference to your IBS?