If your digestive system could talk, what would it say about you?
Mine would tell you when there’s something weighing on my heart I’ll be in the bathroom a lot!
It would also tell you I’m a work in progress when it comes to regulating my nervous system.
In Chinese Medicine, the small intestine is the paired channel with the heart.
The large intestine is paired with the lungs.
Both the heart and lungs are tied into the autonomic nervous system and your adrenal glands.
And considering your gut is your first brain connected directly to your nervous system you have a main message portal there with tributaries from the heart and lungs.
Your heart’s predominant emotions are joy or anxiety.
The lungs are associated with grief.
In midlife, I’ve found many women may have diarrhea with a progesterone deficiency while estrogen deficiencies go with constipation.
That being said, I think it goes deeper than that, for example…
Diarrhea starts in the small intestine so what is your heart trying to tell you?
Constipation is tied to the large intestine so what are you holding onto?
Emotions and the digestive system fascinate me and I hope this inspires you to explore them a bit more.
Irritable bowel syndrome can be either predominantly diarrhea or constipation plus there’s the mixed version.
What does that say about someone? I suspect there’s a lot of unprocessed emotions being stuffed down, literally.
Now let’s look at midlife, a time when the shift in hormone production from the ovaries to the adrenal glands calls you out on all the things that are stressing you out.
You better bet that what you’ve been putting up with, accepting, pushing off, ignoring, your soul is going to speak through symptoms and more often than not it hits in the digestive system.
Some call the symptoms of perimenopause to menopause transitions a design flaw yet the longer I observe myself and others make this transition the more I’m convinced it’s part of our intelligent design.
This is the time in life to step into your wisdom.
The gas, bloating, belly fat, increasing food sensitivities, bowel changes – these are more than annoying symptoms they are messages and they are tied to your nervous system.
These emotions can be processed and let go of without years of talk therapy.
If I’ve learned anything in the last 19+ years, it’s that sometimes the best gut detoxes don’t come in a supplement bottle.
So if you’re feeling like your digestion isn’t what it used to be or nothing is working to get your gut feeling good, start taking notes and explore what’s going on with your emotions.
Does lack of joy, anxiety, grief or sadness resonate? Explore how you can let go of what you’re processing and step into a new you.
Chronic gut issues are often something deeper than finding the right hormone balancing protocol, gut cleanse or bug kill for you.
Instead of hating on your gut for causing issues, listen to it, you have an intelligent body, it’s trying to communicate with you.
Here’s to learning life lessons from your gut,
Dr. J
