Regulate & Rewire: An Anxiety & Depression Podcast

Is Your Gut Triggering Your Anxiety? Understanding Bottom-Up Panic

• Amanda Armstrong • Season 1 • Episode 112

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Can anxiety start... in your gut? Triggered by a listener's experience linking a gut cleanse to panic attacks, this episode dives deep into the powerful gut-brain connection. Discover how physiological issues—from microbiome imbalances to inflammation—can ignite anxiety symptoms from the "bottom-up," often before any anxious thought occurs. Learn why this happens and gentle strategies to support both your gut and brain health for better mental wellbeing.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • How the gut and brain communicate through the nervous system
  • How gut disruptions can lead to anxiety or panic
  • Why anxiety often begins in the body (and how to reframe it as information)
  • Practical ways to support your gut and mental health together

3 Takeaways:

  1. Anxiety Can Start "Bottom-Up": Gut disruptions can directly cause anxiety symptoms, not just thoughts.
  2. Gut Health Matters for Mental Health: Gentle, consistent support is often key, be cautious with harsh cleanses.
  3. Reframe Anxiety as Information: View symptoms as signals of an underlying imbalance needing support.

Resources Mentioned:

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Amanda Armstrong  0:00  
Amanda, welcome to regulate and rewire an anxiety and depression podcast where we discuss the things I wish someone would have taught me earlier in my healing journey. I'm your host, Amanda Armstrong, and I'll be sharing my steps, my missteps, client experiences and tangible research based tools to help you regulate your nervous system, rewire your mind and reclaim your life. Thanks for being here. Now let's dive in. 

Amanda Armstrong  0:28  
Hey friend and welcome back. Today's episode is inspired by a thoughtful message from one of you, from a listener navigating the messy intersection between gut health and mental health, here is what they wrote in they sent me an email that read quote, 

Amanda Armstrong  0:45  
"what initially kicked off my anxiety spiral and subsequent panic attacks that led me to your podcast was a gut cleanse that I hypothesized either disrupted the balance of bacteria or produced by products that threw my brain chemicals out of balance. So my questions are, number one, how does your gut microbiome and byproducts impact the brain? And number two, can anxiety start as a purely physiological thing at a purely physiological level that then triggers a perceived threat response versus the perceived threat response triggering the physiological symptoms." 

Amanda Armstrong  1:26  
So in response to this message, today, we're going to unpack how the gut and brain are connected. What happens when gut disruption triggers anxiety or panic, whether anxiety can begin physiologically, and why that matters and tools to support yourself when anxiety has a more biological, physiological root. Let's first talk about this incredible connection between your gut and your brain, these two organs, these two body systems, are in constant communication, talking to each other all day long through what scientists call the gut brain access. So this isn't just some vague connection, it is a very complex communication network involving your nervous system, your immune system, and your endocrine or your hormone system, and this connection is so profound that many researchers refer to your gut as your second brain. 

Amanda Armstrong  2:27  
Your gut actually has its own nervous system. It's called the enteric nervous system, which communicates directly with your brain through the vagus nerve. Your vagus nerve is your longest cranial nerve. It exits your brain stem and then innervates almost every single primary organ throughout your body, and it is a key player when it comes to nervous system regulation. And if by chance, you are new here, I actually wrote a whole book about it titled healing through the vagus nerve, and I will link that in the show notes. And if you do already have the book, there is a spread on pages 40 and 41 that talks a lot about mind gut connection. That would be a great thing to go and reference and read injunction with today's conversation. 

Amanda Armstrong  3:16  
Now about 80% of the messages in the brain gut highway actually travel from the body to the brain, not the other way around. A lot of the messaging is coming from your gut. So your gut microbiome, which is made up of trillions of bacteria, variety of bacteria living in your intestines, they play a huge role in digesting and absorbing your nutrients. They play a huge role in producing neurotransmitters, your brain chemicals, things like serotonin, dopamine, GABA, your gut microbiome helps to modulate inflammation and influences stress and anxiety responses. So when that balance of your microbiome is disrupted, say by a gut cleanse, by antibiotics, overgrowth, even chronic stress, it absolutely can lead to changes in your brain chemistry, in nutrient availability and immune function, hormone balance and overall nervous system tone. 

Amanda Armstrong  4:25  
So let's talk about how disruption in the gut can spark anxiety by walking through a hypothetical a potential Chain Reaction using the example that this person wrote in. So the first thing that might happen is you take on a gut cleanse or some antimicrobial protocol. What this does is it wipes out some of the bad bacteria, but also sometimes a lot of the good bacteria, and that microbiome imbalance can affect the. Infection of the calming neurotransmitters like GABA and serotonin, you also lose some of the bacteria that helps modulate inflammation. This can trigger greater systemic inflammation. Can impact your nutrient absorption. Can dysregulate vagus nerve signaling. Your brain starts receiving signals that something is off, and your body responds accordingly. I know that was a really nerdy scientific walk through of a potential chain reaction that a gut cleanse or anything else, antibiotics, anything that disrupts or shifts or changes your microbiome, especially if it's aimed to do so quickly, how that can work its way up to sending stress signals to your brain that can look like anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia, feeling really revved up, but also exhausted. Mood swings, emotional reactivity, not because you're broken, not because you necessarily have a mental health disorder, not because you're overreacting or underreacting, but because your physiology has changed, and your nervous system is reacting to that change. 

Amanda Armstrong  6:14  
Your nervous system does not like big, quick changes. It puts up red flags. It says, hey, something's happening. Pay attention. We might not be safe, and that can result in a variety of different symptoms. So to address our listeners question directly, of can anxiety start as a purely physiological experience that then triggers a perceived threat response that leads to anxiety and panic attacks, and the short answer is absolutely yes. And this challenges the common narrative that anxiety always starts with a worried thought that then creates the physical symptoms. But for many people, it actually works in reverse, the body signals danger, and then the mind tries to make sense of it afterwards. 

Amanda Armstrong  7:08  
Here is another walkthrough of how this can happen. I want you to imagine your body as a really sophisticated alarm system, usually when there is a legitimate threat, your brain detects it, it sounds the alarm, your body responds with physical symptoms of activation or shutdown. Let's go with anxiety, because this is the particular listener's concern, racing heart, shallow breath, tension. But sometimes the alarm can be triggered, and often the alarm is triggered from what we call bottom up, starting with the physical sensations in the body, and then your brain interprets it as danger. So this could happen again, because your gut microbiome is producing inflammatory compounds that trigger your immune system, which signals to your brain, hey, something's wrong. Something's wrong. Something's wrong. A gut imbalance is affecting your neurotransmitter production. So this could create a chemical environment in your brain that resembles anxiety. The vagus nerve is sending stress signals to your brain based on your gut distress. It can also be caused by blood sugar drops, hormonal shifts, nutrient deficiencies, chronic infections, histamine intolerance, toxin buildup, even dehydration. There have been studies that show even mild dehydration is linked to increased feelings of anxiety, and so in these cases, there was no anxious thought to begin with. Instead, your body created a physiological state that your brain then interpreted as a threat, as anxiety. And once your brain detects these danger signals coming from your body, it naturally tries to find explanations for why you feel unsafe, which can lead to worried thoughts that can amplify the anxiety even further. It is your brain's job to assign meaning to sensations, to experiences, and so if you are getting these signals from your body, nutrient imbalance, gut issues, dehydration, goes up to your brain. It's like, red flag, red flag, red flag. Our brain often does not first go to I wonder if this sensation is because I am deficient in vitamin D. It usually is like, where's the tiger? Where's the tiger? Who's mad at me? What have I done wrong? Where am I disappointing someone? And so our body health, our body state, is either sending more messages of wellness or more messages of threat, and that is how our physiology. Drives our psychology so frequently, and this is something that I have experienced myself. There have been many times when I suddenly felt panicky for seemingly no reason, only to realize later, oh yeah, I hadn't eaten for hours. My blood sugar had crashed, or you haven't drinking water in six hours. My body in distress causes my brain to just tag along for the ride, coming up with all sorts of worries to explain the physical symptoms that I'm feeling. So can anxiety start in the body? Yes, 1000 times yes. Does it always no? And so to round out this conversation, yes, anxiety can absolutely start in the body, but the reverse is also true that your thoughts, your stress levels, your emotional state, can also impact your gut health. Chronic stress or anxious thinking activates your sympathetic nervous system, which can reduce stomach acid, it slows digestion, it increases your gut permeability, and can alter your microbiome over time. So it's not an either or. We have to think about your mind and your gut as a feedback loop. The body can influence the mind, and the mind can influence the body, and so that's why regulation needs to be both physiological and psychological. 

Amanda Armstrong  11:29  
So you might be asking, How do I know? How do I know if my anxiety is primarily bottom up, starting in my body, or top down, starting in my mind. How do I know if my gut issues are actually gut issues, or if my anxious thinking patterns or my past trauma is sending so many stress signals into my body that it's disrupting my gut? So for the sake of today's conversation, is my gut making my brain crazy, or is my crazy brain making my gut messed up. And the process of unpacking and getting those answers is unique for every individual. But you can start by asking, do symptoms often appear before or after anxious thoughts? So do you usually have a physical symptom or brain symptom first? Do you wake up feeling anxious without a clear reason. Do physical changes like eating, moving, regulating your breath, shift your anxiety more than changing your thoughts do, and if so, those might be signs of a more bottom up loop. But on the other hand, if your anxiety tends to or your physical symptoms of anxiety tend to follow racing thoughts or spiraling worries or mental what ifs you might be caught more in a top down pattern. And for many people, it's both this loop feeds itself, but by recognizing where it often starts, that can give you maybe a more effective entry point for healing. 

Amanda Armstrong  12:58  
And another thing that can play a huge role in this is to get a GI map to get your gut tested using some functional medicine test. And this is actually something that the provider on our team does and can do for our clients. So you can actually get a snapshot of what is the current state of my gut microbiome. Where is their overgrowth? Where is their balance? Where is their imbalance? And are there specific things that I can do to address and optimize my gut health, to decrease threat signals going into this feedback loop? 

Amanda Armstrong  13:35  
Now, another thing I want to talk about is what our listeners specific experience was around the gut cleanse triggering anxiety, and we've nodded to this already in the conversation, but I think it can be helpful to add a little bit greater conversation or context around the fact that gut cleanses or things like detox protocols can be disruptive to your gut microbiome and your system as a whole. When you suddenly change your diet, take antimicrobial herbs, use products designed to, like, quote, cleanse your digestive tract. While that absolutely might be needed for you, we also have to acknowledge that in doing so, we are creating a disruption of your gut and your body ecosystem. So here's what might be happening during a cleanse that could trigger anxiety. First, you might be experiencing what we call like a die off reaction. So if the cleanse is killing harmful bacteria, when these bacteria die, they release endotoxins that can temporarily increase inflammation and affect your brain function again. This is temporary, so just knowing, and I think just having context for Hey, I might need to do this detox, or this cleanse or this protocol to. Get my gut health in line, and I might experience some excess anxiety in the process and just normalizing that. 

Amanda Armstrong  15:11  
So another thing that might be happening is you could be disrupting beneficial bacteria too. So cleanses don't just target bad bacteria. They often affect your entire microbiome, which can include the good bacteria that helps to regulate your mood. Now, a lot of times a cleanse kind of gets you to a minimal baseline, and then the idea is that you refeed and you build up that good bacteria. But again, there can be a time and a season where the good bacteria that helps regulate your mood is at a low level. 

Amanda Armstrong  15:42  
A third thing is that cleanses often involve dietary changes that might be affecting your blood sugar stability, which can trigger anxiety on its own. A fourth thing is that some cleanses can affect your nutrient absorption, so potentially creating deficiencies in nutrients that are crucial for mental health, things like B vitamins, magnesium, omega three fatty acids. And a final thing I'll mention is that many cleanses also affect your bile production and your detoxification pathways, which can temporarily increase the circulation of toxins in your bloodstream before they are eliminated. So given all of these potential possibilities, it makes perfect sense that a gut cleanse could trigger anxiety as our listener experienced, and so their hypothesis for their experience is spot on based on what we know about the gut brain connection. 

Amanda Armstrong  16:44  
So what can you do? What can you do if you've experienced something similar or want to optimize your gut health for better mental well being? First when it comes to gut interventions, gentle approaches are usually better than something more aggressive. And this needs to be said with a huge, huge caveat of, I am not a naturopathic doctor. I am not a functional medicine provider. I just happen to be somebody who has a lot of conversations with those folks, who has one of those folks on my team who knows a lot about physiology and the brain and so you are not going to get your protocol ever from me. But most often, rather than intense cleanses, you might want to consider a more gradual approach to improving that health. You can focus on slowly increasing fiber rich foods that feed beneficial bacteria, vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, if you can tolerate them well and aim for diversity rather than like large quantities of any single food, one of the most beneficial things that we can do for our gut is to add a serving of fermented foods a day. These contain natural probiotics, things like kefir or sauerkraut or kimchi, can be really, really beneficial for maintaining and encouraging a healthy gut microbiome, staying well hydrated with clean filtered water, managing stress really, really important. Stress can dramatically affect your gut function and create a really vicious cycle that can worsen both gut and mental health. And the other thing I'll note is to be cautious with antibiotics or other medications that affect your gut bacteria. Consider taking them only when necessary. And something that I personally do is after I have needed to go on a round of antibiotics, I am really, really proactive of supporting the rebuilding of my gut after those treatment protocols. 

Amanda Armstrong  18:55  
And I think at this point, it goes without saying, but it is really, really common experience for people who struggle with anxiety to also have digestive issues, or for people who struggle with digestive issues to also struggle with anxiety, and that is because of this mind gut feedback loop that is happening 24/7, and many people who work on their anxiety and minimizing that mental threat load see improvements in their gut health or their digestive health, things that they were intolerant to, suddenly they're not anymore. Their bowel movements are more regular. Similarly, when people aim to improve their gut health, either by working with a functional medicine provider who can test and put them on a specific protocol, or adding in some of the things I just recommended, they see natural decreases in their anxiety as well. In summary, can anxiety start in the body? Yes. Can gut disruptions trigger that spiral? Absolutely. And while this conversation. Was very mind gut connection focused today, this conversation contributes to the greater conversation that I have here on the podcast all the time, which is that your symptoms are not random. They make sense, and we might have to do a little investigating, a little digging to figure out why and how it all works together, but it does. Your body is not working against you. It is sending you signals, and when you learn to listen to those signals with curiosity instead of fear, when we quit just trying to play Whack a Mole with our symptoms and try to really get to the root of what's driving them, we start to uncover a real, true, personalized path towards healing. 

Amanda Armstrong  20:44  
And so whether you feel like your anxiety is more bottom up or top down, a bit of both, I want you to know that there is support, there is strategy, there is hope, there is a unique path forward for you. And one of the things my team specializes in is really helping every individual put all of their unique mental health pieces on the table and start to puzzle it together in a unique way that gives mental and physical health an equal seat at the table in the path forward. 

Amanda Armstrong  21:14  
So today's three takeaways are, 

Amanda Armstrong  21:16  
number one, anxiety can start bottom up. Your gut and brain are deeply connected via the vagus nerve, via the gut brain access. And so just knowing that anxiety symptoms can absolutely originate from physiological disruptions and not just from anxious thoughts. And so if you are somebody who has been treating your anxiety and your IBS and isolation, maybe consider that they are more connected than you originally thought. 

Amanda Armstrong  21:44  
Number two, gut disruptions matter, interventions like intense gut cleanses or antibiotics or even chronic stress does alter your microbiome, which can change your neurotransmitter production, inflammation levels, potentially triggering or worsening anxiety or panic, and so gentle, consistent gut support might be a huge piece to your healing journey. 

Amanda Armstrong  22:12  
And number three is to reframe anxiety as information view, especially unexpected anxiety symptoms or those quote appearing out of nowhere, not as some like personal failure or malfunction, but as your body's way of signaling that there is an underlying imbalance that needs some curious attention and support. 

Amanda Armstrong  22:37  
All right, thanks for stepping into these continued conversations around taking a whole human, whole life, mental, physical, physiological, psychological approach to healing anxiety and depression. What we have found over years of working with clients this way is that we need both. We need both to address the bottom up and the top down to provide sustainable long term change, and until next week, I am sending so much hope and so much healing your way. 

Amanda Armstrong  23:07  
Thanks for listening to another episode of The regulate and rewire podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and leave a five star review to help us get these powerful tools out to even more people who need them. And if you yourself are looking for more personalized support and applying what you've learned today, consider joining me inside Rise, my monthly mental health membership and nervous system healing space, or apply for our one on one anxiety and depression coaching program, restore. I've shared a link for more information to both in the show notes, again, thanks so much for being here, and I'll see you next time you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai