If you’ve never dealt with constipation before… lucky you!
Seriously though—that would actually mean you’re quite lucky, since almost everyone experiences constipation at some point in their lives.
For those of us unlucky enough to experience it chronically, there’s a little-known side effect you should be aware of: constipation can lead to increased levels of anxiety.
The connection between the gut and the brain is a topic of increasing interest and study, and the specific link between constipation and anxiety is one that deserves closer attention.
Modern medicine is now revealing the profound impact your gut health can have on your overall well-being, including your mental health. Even though it lies outside your conscious, everyday awareness, the state of your gut and your digestive system plays a huge part in how you feel—not just physically, but mentally as well.
If you happen to be struggling with constipation and anxiety at the same time, you’ll want to read on.
What Constipation Is… Exactly
You probably didn’t open up your web browser intending to read a full breakdown of clogged bowels—but you’ve come too far to turn back now.
Depending on what you’ve been eating, the consistency of your waste can either harden or soften. When it hardens, it has a much harder time passing through the body normally—no matter how hard you push. When this happens, the waste has nowhere to go, and so it accumulates in the digestive tract.
The backlog can lead to inflammation as your body reacts to the… unwanted guests lodged in your digestive tract—this is certainly a less-than-ideal scenario. Further, the inflammation can then spread throughout your body, leading to intense stomach pains, bloating, and even lower immune response levels.
Types of Constipation
As with most conditions in the medical world, there’s not just “constipation.” There are many different kinds of constipation, and the kind that you have really does matter.
Here’s a quick summary for your reading pleasure:
• Acute constipation: This is your standard, occasional constipation that almost everyone gets at some point in their lives. It’s usually due to recent unsavory diet choices or disruptions in routine.
• Chronic constipation: If you consistently go to the John less than three times per week, you have chronic constipation. Like acute constipation, it’s often caused by poor long-term dietary or lifestyle choices. It can also be caused by underlying medical conditions like hypothyroidism, diabetes, or irritable bowel syndrome.
• Secondary constipation: This can be thought of as a subtype of chronic constipation, where the cause is known and usually due to a medical condition or side effect of medication.
Why Constipation Causes Anxiety
Now that you’re intimately acquainted with the details of constipation, let’s move on and talk about the reason you’re reading this article in the first place: why, and how, constipation causes anxiety.
Constipation Equals Inflammation, and Inflammation Equals Anxiety
Many studies have highlighted the correlation between inflammation and anxiety. The mind and body are intimately connected, and so when certain parts of the body become irritated, it necessarily affects the brain as well.
Since constipation is known to cause inflammation all throughout the body, it’s merely a logical step to conclude that it indirectly causes anxiety. What’s interesting is that, in this sense, anxiety can be thought of as a physiological alarm system going off to alert you that there’s a problem in your gut that needs to be remedied. Anxiety can actually be useful!
Unhealthy Gut Causes Imbalanced Hormones
Further compounding the issue, the accumulation of waste and the subsequent inflammation can have other harmful downstream effects.
The most prominent is the disruption of the balance of good and bad bacteria in your gut, often referred to as your gut microbiome. A balanced gut microbiome is essential for overall health—it aids in digestion, supports your immune system, and even plays a role in mood regulation.
In particular, serotonin is a neurotransmitter that helps regulate mood, and it turns out that a significant portion of your body’s serotonin is produced in your gut. And when your good and bad gut bacteria become skewed and gut health is compromised, so too is your body’s ability to produce serotonin.
The result? You guessed it—increased anxiety.
It Goes Both Ways
One of the hallmarks of anxiety is that its causes and effects are usually exchangeable. In other words, it’s often a vicious cycle.
Anxiety, especially when experienced chronically, can significantly disrupt normal gut function. When you experience anxiety, it’s because your body has partially morphed into fight-or-flight mode. As it happens, this diverts energy and resources away from non-emergency functions—and apparently, digestion is a non-emergency function.
The resulting neglect of the digestive process can lead to a build-up of waste material in the body, causing constipation, or even an acceleration of the process—which causes diarrhea. So it’s a two-way street: your gut affects your mental state, and your mental state can also affect your gut.
Understanding this connection can be critical to managing your gut-induced anxiety.
Constipation Causes More Than Just Anxiety
It’s worth noting that there’s a growing body of evidence suggesting a deep-rooted connection between our gut and our mental health in general—not just as it relates to anxiety. This relationship is often overlooked in mainstream medicine.
The connection is part of an emerging field of study known as the gut-brain axis. Recent research indicates that disturbances in this relationship—such as constipation—may indeed have a significant impact on your mental well-being.
According to the study above, “dysbiosis”—which is a bacterial gut imbalance—and inflammation of the gut have been linked to the presence of several mental illnesses, including anxiety and depression, which are both more prevalent in society today than most would like to admit.
Because severe depression and anxiety can lead to dangerous symptoms like increased blood pressure, panic attacks, and even sometimes seizures, it’s vitally important that you pursue every possible avenue to eliminate, or at least reduce, your constipation—and subsequent anxiety.
Rebalance Your Gut, Rebalance Your Mind
After paragraph upon paragraph about blocked bowels and mental health issues, it’s finally time for some good news: the endless cycle of constipation and anxiety is absolutely manageable. By embracing a combination of dietary alterations, regular exercise, and a good night’s sleep, you will find significant relief.
Eat a Gut-Healthy Diet
It should be obvious that diet is far-and-above the most important factor here. After all, we’re dealing with waste, which is nothing more than processed food. At a minimum, you’ll want to incorporate fiber-rich foods and probiotics into your diet.
Fiber-rich foods, such as whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and leafy greens all have the wonderful effect of softening your stool, thus increasing the frequency of your bowel movements and reducing constipation. It’s also worth talking about what you shouldn’t eat: in particular, processed meat and fried foods should be avoided at all costs.
Probiotics usually come in the form of yogurt or yogurt drinks. They re-supply your gut with large amounts of the good bacteria that you may have lost. This helps restore balance in your gut, improving digestion and the absorption of nutrients.
Be Active… and Inactive
Exercise plays a crucial role in reducing anxiety, both directly and indirectly. Regular physical activity helps stimulate the natural contraction of intestinal muscles, aiding in digestion and the passing of stool. Even something as simple as a daily walk can make a significant difference.
On the other hand, proper sleep is also extremely important. Sleep is when our bodies heal and rejuvenate. Insufficient sleep can disrupt your body’s natural processes, including digestion. Strive for a consistent sleep routine to ensure your body gets the rest it needs.
Maintain Balance
Balance is key here. Our bodies and minds need a mix of activity and rest to function optimally. When you intentionally make time to rest and calm your nervous system through activities like breathing exercises, yoga, and meditation, you trigger what’s known as the parasympathetic nervous system.
When you turn this system on, it flips the switch and tells the body it’s time to recover, not act. Besides rejuvenating your body as a whole, this also specifically helps send more blood and resources to the gut, further relieving constipation.
Anxiety Medications and Constipation
Before we wrap up this article, it will be helpful to touch on a common issue many people experience in dealing with anxiety: constipation caused by anxiety medications.
First off, yes—anxiety medications often have constipation as a side affect. Given what we discussed above about anxiety and constipation being a two-way street, this can seem quite counterproductive, to say the least. In particular, paroxetine is a bit notorious for having constipation as a side effect.
For your convenience, here are a few anxiety medications that, at a minimum, have a much lower likelihood of causing constipation:
• Selective Serotonin-Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitors (SNRIs) like venlafaxine and duloxetine;
• Buspirone, which is a non-benzodiazepine anxiolytic;
• Benzodiazepines like diazepam, lorazepam, and clonazepam are generally not associated with constipation, but they come with their own considerations.
Constipation and Anxiety: Recap
When you’re in the trenches with severe constipation, you probably won’t want to think about anything else besides how to make it stop.
So, assuming you’re not severely constipated as you’re reading this, use your time now to consider the link between constipation and anxiety, and how it might be affecting you.
If this is something you think you might be dealing with, stick with the basics: eat a gut-healthy diet, exercise regularly, and be sure to get enough quality rest.
Anxiety (or constipation, for that matter) is not always a losing battle, and with intentional effort, you can beat it once and for all.
FAQs
How is constipation related to anxiety?
Constipation can lead to anxiety, and anxiety can lead to constipation. Since the gut produces much of the body’s mood-regulating chemicals like serotonin, problems with the gut can throw off your hormone balance, resulting in mental issues like anxiety. On the other hand, anxiety can also lead to further constipation, creating a cycle that’s often hard to break.
Can bowel problems cause anxiety?
Yes—because the gut produces many of the body’s mood-regulating chemicals, any manner of bowel problems, including constipation and diarrhea, can result in anxiety.
What is anxiety bowel syndrome?
Anxiety bowel syndrome is a casual term describing the link between anxious thoughts and improper bowel functions—and vice versa.
Can constipation cause mental stress?
Yes—because constipation causes inflammation and also disrupts the body’s hormone balance, mental stress is a common side-effect.
How do you relieve stress constipation?
Seriously though—that would actually mean you’re quite lucky, since almost everyone experiences constipation at some point in their lives.
For those of us unlucky enough to experience it chronically, there’s a little-known side effect you should be aware of: constipation can lead to increased levels of anxiety.
The connection between the gut and the brain is a topic of increasing interest and study, and the specific link between constipation and anxiety is one that deserves closer attention.
Modern medicine is now revealing the profound impact your gut health can have on your overall well-being, including your mental health. Even though it lies outside your conscious, everyday awareness, the state of your gut and your digestive system plays a huge part in how you feel—not just physically, but mentally as well.
If you happen to be struggling with constipation and anxiety at the same time, you’ll want to read on.
What Constipation Is… Exactly
You probably didn’t open up your web browser intending to read a full breakdown of clogged bowels—but you’ve come too far to turn back now.
Depending on what you’ve been eating, the consistency of your waste can either harden or soften. When it hardens, it has a much harder time passing through the body normally—no matter how hard you push. When this happens, the waste has nowhere to go, and so it accumulates in the digestive tract.
The backlog can lead to inflammation as your body reacts to the… unwanted guests lodged in your digestive tract—this is certainly a less-than-ideal scenario. Further, the inflammation can then spread throughout your body, leading to intense stomach pains, bloating, and even lower immune response levels.
Types of Constipation
As with most conditions in the medical world, there’s not just “constipation.” There are many different kinds of constipation, and the kind that you have really does matter.
Here’s a quick summary for your reading pleasure:
• Acute constipation: This is your standard, occasional constipation that almost everyone gets at some point in their lives. It’s usually due to recent unsavory diet choices or disruptions in routine.
• Chronic constipation: If you consistently go to the John less than three times per week, you have chronic constipation. Like acute constipation, it’s often caused by poor long-term dietary or lifestyle choices. It can also be caused by underlying medical conditions like hypothyroidism, diabetes, or irritable bowel syndrome.
• Secondary constipation: This can be thought of as a subtype of chronic constipation, where the cause is known and usually due to a medical condition or side effect of medication.
Why Constipation Causes Anxiety
Now that you’re intimately acquainted with the details of constipation, let’s move on and talk about the reason you’re reading this article in the first place: why, and how, constipation causes anxiety.
Constipation Equals Inflammation, and Inflammation Equals Anxiety
Many studies have highlighted the correlation between inflammation and anxiety. The mind and body are intimately connected, and so when certain parts of the body become irritated, it necessarily affects the brain as well.
Since constipation is known to cause inflammation all throughout the body, it’s merely a logical step to conclude that it indirectly causes anxiety. What’s interesting is that, in this sense, anxiety can be thought of as a physiological alarm system going off to alert you that there’s a problem in your gut that needs to be remedied. Anxiety can actually be useful!
Unhealthy Gut Causes Imbalanced Hormones
Further compounding the issue, the accumulation of waste and the subsequent inflammation can have other harmful downstream effects.
The most prominent is the disruption of the balance of good and bad bacteria in your gut, often referred to as your gut microbiome. A balanced gut microbiome is essential for overall health—it aids in digestion, supports your immune system, and even plays a role in mood regulation.
In particular, serotonin is a neurotransmitter that helps regulate mood, and it turns out that a significant portion of your body’s serotonin is produced in your gut. And when your good and bad gut bacteria become skewed and gut health is compromised, so too is your body’s ability to produce serotonin.
The result? You guessed it—increased anxiety.
It Goes Both Ways
One of the hallmarks of anxiety is that its causes and effects are usually exchangeable. In other words, it’s often a vicious cycle.
Anxiety, especially when experienced chronically, can significantly disrupt normal gut function. When you experience anxiety, it’s because your body has partially morphed into fight-or-flight mode. As it happens, this diverts energy and resources away from non-emergency functions—and apparently, digestion is a non-emergency function.
The resulting neglect of the digestive process can lead to a build-up of waste material in the body, causing constipation, or even an acceleration of the process—which causes diarrhea. So it’s a two-way street: your gut affects your mental state, and your mental state can also affect your gut.
Understanding this connection can be critical to managing your gut-induced anxiety.
Constipation Causes More Than Just Anxiety
It’s worth noting that there’s a growing body of evidence suggesting a deep-rooted connection between our gut and our mental health in general—not just as it relates to anxiety. This relationship is often overlooked in mainstream medicine.
The connection is part of an emerging field of study known as the gut-brain axis. Recent research indicates that disturbances in this relationship—such as constipation—may indeed have a significant impact on your mental well-being.
According to the study above, “dysbiosis”—which is a bacterial gut imbalance—and inflammation of the gut have been linked to the presence of several mental illnesses, including anxiety and depression, which are both more prevalent in society today than most would like to admit.
Because severe depression and anxiety can lead to dangerous symptoms like increased blood pressure, panic attacks, and even sometimes seizures, it’s vitally important that you pursue every possible avenue to eliminate, or at least reduce, your constipation—and subsequent anxiety.
Rebalance Your Gut, Rebalance Your Mind
After paragraph upon paragraph about blocked bowels and mental health issues, it’s finally time for some good news: the endless cycle of constipation and anxiety is absolutely manageable. By embracing a combination of dietary alterations, regular exercise, and a good night’s sleep, you will find significant relief.
Eat a Gut-Healthy Diet
It should be obvious that diet is far-and-above the most important factor here. After all, we’re dealing with waste, which is nothing more than processed food. At a minimum, you’ll want to incorporate fiber-rich foods and probiotics into your diet.
Fiber-rich foods, such as whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and leafy greens all have the wonderful effect of softening your stool, thus increasing the frequency of your bowel movements and reducing constipation. It’s also worth talking about what you shouldn’t eat: in particular, processed meat and fried foods should be avoided at all costs.
Probiotics usually come in the form of yogurt or yogurt drinks. They re-supply your gut with large amounts of the good bacteria that you may have lost. This helps restore balance in your gut, improving digestion and the absorption of nutrients.
Be Active… and Inactive
Exercise plays a crucial role in reducing anxiety, both directly and indirectly. Regular physical activity helps stimulate the natural contraction of intestinal muscles, aiding in digestion and the passing of stool. Even something as simple as a daily walk can make a significant difference.
On the other hand, proper sleep is also extremely important. Sleep is when our bodies heal and rejuvenate. Insufficient sleep can disrupt your body’s natural processes, including digestion. Strive for a consistent sleep routine to ensure your body gets the rest it needs.
Maintain Balance
Balance is key here. Our bodies and minds need a mix of activity and rest to function optimally. When you intentionally make time to rest and calm your nervous system through activities like breathing exercises, yoga, and meditation, you trigger what’s known as the parasympathetic nervous system.
When you turn this system on, it flips the switch and tells the body it’s time to recover, not act. Besides rejuvenating your body as a whole, this also specifically helps send more blood and resources to the gut, further relieving constipation.
Anxiety Medications and Constipation
Before we wrap up this article, it will be helpful to touch on a common issue many people experience in dealing with anxiety: constipation caused by anxiety medications.
First off, yes—anxiety medications often have constipation as a side affect. Given what we discussed above about anxiety and constipation being a two-way street, this can seem quite counterproductive, to say the least. In particular, paroxetine is a bit notorious for having constipation as a side effect.
For your convenience, here are a few anxiety medications that, at a minimum, have a much lower likelihood of causing constipation:
• Selective Serotonin-Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitors (SNRIs) like venlafaxine and duloxetine;
• Buspirone, which is a non-benzodiazepine anxiolytic;
• Benzodiazepines like diazepam, lorazepam, and clonazepam are generally not associated with constipation, but they come with their own considerations.
Constipation and Anxiety: Recap
When you’re in the trenches with severe constipation, you probably won’t want to think about anything else besides how to make it stop.
So, assuming you’re not severely constipated as you’re reading this, use your time now to consider the link between constipation and anxiety, and how it might be affecting you.
If this is something you think you might be dealing with, stick with the basics: eat a gut-healthy diet, exercise regularly, and be sure to get enough quality rest.
Anxiety (or constipation, for that matter) is not always a losing battle, and with intentional effort, you can beat it once and for all.
FAQs
How is constipation related to anxiety?
Constipation can lead to anxiety, and anxiety can lead to constipation. Since the gut produces much of the body’s mood-regulating chemicals like serotonin, problems with the gut can throw off your hormone balance, resulting in mental issues like anxiety. On the other hand, anxiety can also lead to further constipation, creating a cycle that’s often hard to break.
Can bowel problems cause anxiety?
Yes—because the gut produces many of the body’s mood-regulating chemicals, any manner of bowel problems, including constipation and diarrhea, can result in anxiety.
What is anxiety bowel syndrome?
Anxiety bowel syndrome is a casual term describing the link between anxious thoughts and improper bowel functions—and vice versa.
Can constipation cause mental stress?
Yes—because constipation causes inflammation and also disrupts the body’s hormone balance, mental stress is a common side-effect.
How do you relieve stress constipation?
Stress constipation is best relieved by cutting off your anxiety at the root—and this involves eating a healthy diet, exercising regularly, and getting consistent, quality rest. These three steps will reduce your anxiety, thereby reducing your stress constipation—but they will also directly help to cure your constipation, thereby killing two birds with one stone.
