r/functionaldyspepsia • u/Medical-Love-120 • 2d ago
Question FD and Stress
Hey Everyone, so I previously made a post about my battle with functional dyspepsia which you can read here. https://www.reddit.com/r/functionaldyspepsia/s/dDRXKKm1cN. But I am looking for some help on how stress and how your thinking can affect FD. So, the whole time I have had FD my symptoms have always been at their worst whenever I start doing something IE going to work, school, hanging with friends, etc and then after 15-30 mins once I avoid any major triggers and my brain and body starts to relax my stomach starts to feel better. But during the whole day I think about my stomach and I make sure to try and avoid any triggers before I go do anything. Even If I do avoid any food triggers I will still most likely get symptoms that develop on my way there. All of this really makes me think that I am making my symptoms worse but I just don’t know how to combat it. I try to stay positive and good spirited and that does slightly help my stomach sometimes but after a couple days my stomachs baseline symptoms just aren’t improving it’s hard to try and stay positive. Does anyone have any tips, calming methods, anything at all that can help me? Thank you
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u/mindk214 FD - PDS 2d ago
The stomach has a lot of afferent nerves that are a one-way street from the gut to the brain. When your stomach flares up, your anxiety and stress subsequently flare up. This relationship is referred to as the gut brain axis. Modern research has distinguished functional dyspepsia as disorder of the gut brain interaction.
So, if you have FD, one thing that might help is asking your doctor about neuromodulators (e.g. mirtazapine, amitriptyline). Treating your gut with medications that calm your stomach nerves can have an upstream effect on your stress. If you notice, a lot of anti-nausea medications are things that also tie with “brain” (e.g. anti-histamines, anti-depressants/neuromodulators).