Fact or Fiction - Stress makes UC worse?

For me, it depends on the kind of stress. I have a stressful job but it's the kind of stress that I work well under and that seems to be fine. Other kinds of stress, like money worries, can exacerbate a flare although so far stress alone apparently doesn't cause a flare for me.

Fact.

I think it just depends on the person. Stress never made my symptoms worse and no stress didn't make them better.

Besides from the overall effects of stress on your body, one thing to consider is that stress causes your digestion to work less effectively. To me it seems likely that if you aren't digesting your food well it's more likely to be bad for your UC.

Hopefully you aren't stressed all day. You may want to try to make sure that you eat during the less stressful times of your day.

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The typical stress response involves the release of hormones like adrenaline and cortisol from the adrenal glands. The hormones trigger reactions like an accelerated pulse. They also cause changes in the digestive system, like sudden lack of appetite, heartburn, nausea and stomach pains. Stress also causes inflammation throughout the digestive system, which leads to aggravation of the digestive tract and affects the assimilation of nutrients. Over the long term, stress can actually cause chronic digestive problems like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and stomach ulcers.
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From: www.naturalnews.com/028766_stress_digestion.html

yes fact

Got my first tattoo the other day, very happy about it, but was pretty stressed during the short process. Next day bad bad stomach pain, nothing else exercise/work/food changed...all better now....I've read that our "second brain" is in the gut...Over 60% of your body’s neurotransmitters are not in your brain, but in your gut!

YES! Stress is why we have this disease. I'm in a flare now (from work stuff) going on a little over a month. It gets better on the weekends and gets worse when I am at work. I'm on vacation next week and I bet my flare will get totally under control.

I think that stress can elevate IBS like symptoms (especially constipation and diarrhea), an and as noted above it lowers the quality of digestion, making sensitivities to food antigens and issues of gut permeability more acute. But is this UC or symptoms that accompany UC? Stress also elevates cortisol short term, and possibly lowers it long term. This is a steroid and there may be some echo in inflammation. Stress and cortisol also thus have potential immunomodulatory effects. These effects (not generally observed in just a few hours) can impact UC (an autoimmune dysregulation with specific histological changes in the type, number, and appearance of cells in the mucosal lining) more directly.

So ... in my analysis, YES, stress can cause the big picture of UC AND symptoms to rise and fall a bit, but not necessarily for all people. A lot will depend on individual disease, genetics, and coping mechanisms. Long term stress may also have direct effects on the underlying immune system too, but again varying by individual and coping response. But ...

@beachlife: IMO anything that comes and goes in 24 hours is only related to symptoms, and possibly other disease like IBS. There seems no way for pronounced changes in the type and shape of cells in the mucosal lining to fluctuate this quickly and clearly. I would say this was "big picture UC" based on your total symptoms and discomfort. To a patient this distinction may not matter much because the symptoms and related conditions are the disease. To an autoimmune researcher, it may matter a lot, and recognizing that the episode you report was not a direct change in autoimmune behavior ... well that may be priceless.

@Michelejc: do you really intend to tell the other posters in this thread to piss off, that their opinions and reports of experience are invalid? about half posted that stress did not affect their UC, or that only some types of stress had any effect, or that how they coped mattered. In total that's a lot of support for the idea that stress is not a consistent trigger of UC flares, nor is the relationship present for all cases. Yet you make the simple declarative, speaking broadly, that "stress is why we have this disease". Possibly in your case, and possibly a very predictable trigger in your case, and possibly you are not distinguishing symptoms and related disease form the UC, .... but really. As a moderator I would have hoped you could have at least said "stress is why I have this disease" or even "stress totally raises and lowers my symptoms". But, instead you speak for everyone by using "we", you conflate the disease and its symptoms, and concomitant disease like IBS or food sensitivities. You totally mix issues of etiology with issues of relapse or management. You implicitly deny the validity of all those posting their experience of their UC not strongly connected to stress. Overall, I find your post very unfortunate in terms of accurate information content. Three giant steps backwards for the understanding of UC and complex issues of etiology, symptoms, individual differences ....

IMO, FACT!

DBwithUC: Calm down...LOL...

MY opinion is that stress causes this disease. MY opinion is that food and stress TRIGGERS the flares.

ssarow said...
I think its subjective. Some people constitute a bad day at work as stress while others consider a traumatic event as stress. I am not speaking on behalf of this board at all but from personal experience in life, I feel people blame stress far too often for problems. Maybe not necessarily UC but just from what I've experienced. I'm guilty of it but its not an ongoing thing. Its just easy to point at stress as a problem when in fact it could be something else.

totally agree.

Anxiety and stress have very similar symptoms, and often, the terms are used interchangeably because of the similarity of symptoms that they produce. Basically, same crap, different pile, either can trigger flares and it's often a vicious circle, you can get stress or anxiety that can trigger IBD, then the IBD can make the stress and anxiety continue, or rollercoaster.

Fact ---Stress definitely makes UC worse.