WTF Is Going On?!

If you have a combination of symptoms like freqently feeilng stressed out, anxious, depressed, or moody ... along with being wired, tired, or exhausted ... plus some ADD, brain fog, insomnia, and/or overwhelm ... and nagging gut symptoms, too ...

... you might be experiencing the effects of what is sometimes referred to as the "Gut-Brain Connection". But it might be helpful to think of it as the "Gut-Brain-Adrenals Connection", or even a "Gut-Brain-Adrenals-Liver-Thyroid" Connection. But let's keep it simple for now.

When gut and adrenal issues are occurring at the same time, you may need to treat both at the same time.

One Clue: Secretory IgA

So how could you figure out if this is what is going on? Several clues of a connection between gut and adrenal function can be seen on certain lab tests. One example is a gut function marker called secretory IgA (SIgA).

SIgA is an immunoglobulin secreted by the gut lining and is like a bouncer and a chapperone for the gut lining.

SIgA prevents pathogenic organisms (e.g. bacteria, yeast, and parasites) in the gut from contacting the mucosa, and it also escorts some beneficial organisms across the mucosa into the body.

A deficiency of SIgA can lead to inflammatory bowel disorders and malabsorption of nutrients, but not always. A deficiency can also be entirely asymptomatic, and this may be a result of the body increasing IgM secretion to compensate for low SIgA.

SIgA, Stress, and Trauma

But even in asymptomatic individuals, low SIgA can be a potential signal of chronic stress or an upregulated stress response because stress negatively impacts SIgA secretion.

Several studies link low SIgA to chronic stress and negative emotions, and low SIgA is commonly present in various stages of adrenal dysfunction.

A common cause of chronic stress, negative emotions, and adrenal dysfunction is trauma, especially childhood trauma. Trauma often generates chronic upregulation of the stress response, which can result in low SIgA secretion.

This chronically upregulated stress response seems to be mediated by changes in the limbic brain and epigenetic changes in the genome that can even be inherited by subsequent generations.

These upregulations in the epigenetic and neurological regulators of the stress response have repercussions on the adrenal glands since the adrenal glands are the main workhorses in the stress response, secreting most of the stress hormones. 

Adrenal insufficiency or dysfunction, and the low SIgA secretion that often results, can be entirely driven by an unconscious and seemingly uncontrollable, automatic response to events around you. This is part of how trauma can influence your physical health.

Powerful Solutions

Fortunately, trauma can be healed, and the upregulated stress response can be reset. Then the adrenal glands can recover and normalize their function.

Resetting your stress response can improve your level of confidence in formerly stress-inducing situations and improve your average emotional state, thereby potentially restoring normal SIgA secretion and normal gut function that were previously impaired by a chronically upregulated stress response due to trauma.

In 2016, I learned a form of trauma healing work that has worked quite well with clients. One woman's fibromyalgia disappeared after our second session. Since fibromyalgia is often caused or mediated by gut dysfunction, I would guess that among various physiological changes that may have occurred, she probably now has more normal adrenal and gut function, including more normal SIgA secretion. 

The Risks of Not Addressing This

The Kaiser Permanente study on Adverse Childhood Events (ACEs), the more ACEs in a person's past, the greater their risk of degenerative diseases and the shorter their life tends to be.

One of the most frightening degenerative diseases that is closely linked to gut dysfunction is dementia, including Alzheimer's disease. Inflammation of the gut often leads to inflammation of the brain, and that is one of the main causes of dementia.

But realize that having a lot of trauma in your past and having a lot of gut inflammation do not have to be a death sentence. The daunting Kaiser Permanente statistics connecting childhood adverse events with degenerative disease pertain to people who had not resolved their trauma. The damage and the risks can be reversed if you resolve the trauma patterns. But you have to get started doing something about it.

If you have gut health issues, chronic stress, or a traumatic past, it would be a good idea to test your SIgA, test your adrenal function, and heal any trauma you may have and the maladaptive stress response it may be causing.

Gut-Driven Chaos in the Body and Brain

So far this post has discussed how stress and trauma can drive dysfunction in the gut, adrenal glands, and brain. This is an example of "top-down" causality. But causality can flow in the other direction as well, from bottom to top.

Gut dysfunction can drive stress, adrenal dysfunction, and neurodegeneration in the brain. It typically does this by causing inflammation in the rest of the body.

For example, intestinal hyperpeability (aka "leaky gut") and imbalanced gut bacteria (dysbiosis) cause more lipopolysaccharide (LPS) to pass through the gut lining into the body.

LPS is very inflammatory to the liver, brain, and membranes of your cells and the mitochondria within them. The inflammatory influence of LPS is a metabolic wrecking ball.

Inflammation can stress you out and exhaust you by causing neuroinflammation in your brain, imbalancing your mood-regulating neurotransmitters, damaging the function of your vagus nerve (which is supposed to keep you calm and your gut happy), taking your liver's detoxification functions offline, overstimulating and weakening your adrenal glands, interfering with normal thyroid function, and more.

Gut-derived inflammation makes you a hot mess in so many ways. This is why in functional medicine they say that "all disease begins in the gut". It's a little more complex than that, but there is much truth in that statement.

And the influence of the gut on the brain goes far beyond gut-derived inflammation. Some beneficial bacteria can be anti-inflammatory. In addition, some bacteria can lower the stress response (including cortisol), immune system cytokines like TNF and IL-6, and neurotransmitters in the brain. 

Because of their impacts on neurotransmitters and the stress response, these bacteria can indirectly reduce anxiety, depression, and stress. So they are sometimes referred to as "psychobiotics".

Getting to the Root of It All

To get to the root of what is going on within you, we need to look at your past trauma, your current stress response patterns, your gut and adrenal function, and many other factors in order to identify the root causes and best interventions to straighten things out.

In the Bio-Individual Blueprint system, that process begins in the "Accurate Assessment" step and continues in other steps like the "Neuroendocrine & Metabolic Tune-Up", "Perfect Pre-Tox", "Dynamic Detox & Disinfection", and "Top-to-Bottom Gut Restoration".

If you are ready to shift out of a stressed-out nervous system, a dysfunctional gut, and overly wired or tapped-out adrenal glands ... so that you can experience more peace, good moods, comfort in your body, and great energy ...  check out the Bio-Individual Blueprint Roadmap system.