My recent lead author
publication was just published in the March/April issue of Explore: The Journal
of Science and Healing, entitled, “Perceived Stress in Patients with Common
Gastrointestinal Disorders:
Associations with quality of life (QOL), symptoms and disease
management.” Explore
2017;13:124-8.
Here are the Important Study Findings:
1.
Perceived stress in people with GERD, IBS and
IBD is higher than 84 % of the general population.
2.
The quality of life, both mental and physical,
is at least one half to a full standard deviation below general population
normative values.
3. Perceived
stress significantly correlated with average and worst pain in people with GERD
and IBD – since these are indicators of disease management, stress may be an
important marker of disease management in these conditions. Note – there was not a correlation
between perceived stress and pain in IBS, but I believe that this is due to the
ability of stress to contribute to worse diarrhea in some people and worse
constipation in others.
4. While
stress management should be included in the care of people with GERD, IBS and
IBD, an integrative medicine or holistic approach, which also includes
effective dietary guidelines and exercise, would be more important to study and
include in GI care in order to get the best health outcomes.
Here is the Abstract:
ABSTRACT
Objective and Methods: Research supports relationships between stress and gastrointestinal (GI)
symptoms and disorders. This pilot study assesses relationships between
perceived stress, quality of life (QOL) and self-reported pain ratings as an
indicator of symptom management in patients who self-reported gastroesophageal
reflux disease (GERD), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and inflammatory bowel
disease (IBD). Results: In the full sample (n=402) perceived
stress positively correlated with depression (r=0.76, p<0.0001), fatigue (r=0.38,
p< 0.0001), sleep disturbance (r=0.40, p<0.0001), average pain (r=0.26, p
<0.0001) and worst pain (r=0.25, p< 0.0001). Higher perceived stress also correlated with lower mental health-related
QOL. Similar
correlations were found for the participants with GERD (n=188), IBS (n=132) and
IBD (n=82). Finally, there were
significant correlations in the GERD cohort between perceived stress, and
average pain (r=0.34,
p<0.0001) and
worst pain (r=0.29,
p<0.0001), and
in the IBD cohort between perceived stress, and average pain (r=0.32, p<0.0001) and worst pain (r=0.35, p<0.01).
Conclusions:
Perceived stress broadly correlated with QOL characteristics
in patients with GERD, IBS, and IBD.
Perceived stress also appeared to be an indicator of symptom management
(self-reported pain ratings) in GERD and IBD, but not IBS. While future research using objective
measures of stress and symptom/disease management is needed to confirm these
associations, as well as to evaluate the ability of stress reduction
interventions to improve perceived stress, QOL and disease management in these
GI disorders, integrative medicine treatment programs may be most beneficial to
study.