Having a nervous stomach can be a common occurrence in some people. Having a nervous stomach could have to do with your emotional state or mental health, your digestive or gut health, or even a mixture of both. Rarely, it may signal something more serious going on. Nervous stomach can also just be how your digestive system works naturally during times of stress. As well, it could be just an isolated experience. In rare cases, a nervous stomach may strongly affect the bowels.
Which, understandable. The overwhelming worry and fear that characterize anxiety can be debilitating. But anxiety can wreak just as much havoc on the body as it can the mind. You have your fight-or-flight response to thank for your physical anxiety symptoms. In way-back-then, cavepeople days, that threat might have been something along the lines of a lion. If you have anxiety, though, your fear and worry are that threat, prompting your sympathetic nervous system, which controls involuntary processes like your breathing and heart rate, to kick into high gear.
Stomach problems are one of the most common symptoms of stress and anxiety. Researchers have identified a powerful connection between the gut and the brain. Like the brain, the gut is full of nerves. It contains the largest area of nerves outside the brain with the digestive tract and the brain sharing many of the same nerve connections. When you are anxious, some of the hormones and chemicals released by your body enter your digestive tract, where they interfere with digestion. They have a negative effect on your gut flora microorganisms that live in the digestive tract and aid digestion and decrease antibody production. The resulting chemical imbalance can cause a number of gastrointestinal conditions. Once you suffer with one of these conditions, the condition itself can become a source of anxiety and greatly impact your quality of life.