I’ve blogged about lots of things in my pursuit for good gut health: sauerkraut, juicing, bone broth, and probiotics. Today, I wanted to talk about mindfulness strategies: such as breathing, yoga, CBT, visualisation, and hypnotherapy.
AD: This post is a sponsored post with Zemedy, an amazing gut health app I’ve been using for the past month, but all words are my own.
Is IBS and poor gut health ‘all in your head’? No…
If you’ve followed me on this blog for a while, you’ll know I have Crohn’s Disease, but I also struggle with IBS symptoms when my illness is in remission.
Regardless of this, I find both my IBD and IBS are massively impacted by stress: I blogged before about how stress can affect your digestion and it’s really interesting. It doesn’t mean that gut issues are ‘in your head’ but that the brain and our gut are closely intertwined. This can be due to things like more cortisol when we’re anxious, different hormones, and the impact of lack of sleep: it’s even been shown that long-term stress and anxiety can alter your microbiome!
Therefore, it’s certainly a very real connection. So can tools that help with anxiety actually improve our gut health too? I mentioned last month about how CBT has been helping me with postnatal anxiety so I’ve been keen to do more of this!
I’m also going to share my honest experiences of using Zemedy: an amazing free app for IBS that uses a combination of information guides, symptom logging, breathing, hypnotherapy and mindfulness to help you with IBS.
Is there any evidence that things like Hypnotherapy and visualisation can help IBS or even IBD?
Zemedy are actually doing a clinical trial at the moment about the effectiveness of their app for IBS, so it will be amazing to see their results. One thing I find the most beneficial in the app (which I’ll go into more detail about at the moment) is the hypnotherapy option.
As well as just taking time to relax and unplugging from our phones, another study found that 71% of people with IBS found hypnotherapy helped and improved their symptoms. Whether this is due to lack of stress, sheer coincidence or the power of visualisation or if there’s something about this mindfulness practice that we just haven’t figure out yet.
Is there any evidence than CBT can help?
What about CBT? Well I know CBT is amazing but a study found that telephone CBT moderately improved IBS symptoms in a large number of patients-you can read more about this study on the NHS site. Zemedy, which is a 10 week CBT program for IBS, are also in partnership with the NHS at the moment which is amazing!
There’s been several studies about IBD and CBT but given the nature of the condition, there’s no concrete evidence it can help people like me with Crohn’s Disease.
My experiences of hypnotherapy for IBS and IBD: A review of Zemedy
Many years ago, long before I had IBD and my blog was even a thing, I actually underwent hypnotherapy for IBS. Of course, I’m not sure if I actually had IBS or actually had Crohn’s Disease at this point and just didn’t know it!
I did about 6 sections and I found it really helpful. So I was really excited to try it again with Zemedy.
How Zemedy works is really really clever. First up, there’s a comprehensive section when you first sign up to talk you through getting an IBS diagnosis, the difference between IBS+ things like IBD and coeliac disease. This is SO important and it stresses you need to get a firm diagnosis before accepting you have IBS and start the program. Of course, anyone can use Zemedy (and I find it really useful having IBD)
You can use Zemedy to track your symptoms and factors that affect it, like diet, periods, stress, sleep and medication. However, unlike other apps, the goals is to change your thought processes behind your health and gut issues.
The app has a series of tests you can do at the start. For example, the mind test helped me identify I still have SO many negative thought patterns around my digestion, e.g…
-I still have a lot of negative thoughts around my body being ‘faulty’ and I think I perceive my symptoms a lot worse than they are sometimes.
-I still panic A LOT when I’m out in case I need the toilet and there isn’t nearby.
-I feel like I’m to blame if I’m unwell in case I’ve eaten the wrong thing and I constantly try to ‘solve’ my gut health.
-Sometimes I’m restrictive in my diet and what I ‘can’t eat’, I’m not talking about being gluten and dairy free but other things I’m convinced will make me flare.
Zemedy’s Flare Mode
By far my favourite aspect of Zemedy is the ‘flare mode.’ If you’re struggling with pain or anxiety around your gut health, simply click ‘flare mode’ and you’ll be redirected to some amazing breathing exercises and guided hypnotherapy. All the activities are under ten minutes so you don’t need to spend a huge amount of time on them. But, by the end of them, you will feel so much calmer!
Other Zemedy features
The handy CBT feature is thought tracking: It’s basically what I do in CBT therapy: you record your thought, emotions and behaviours and come up with alternatives to replace it that are more logical and postives.
You can also dip in and do some short guided yoga moves and visualisation exercises. The yoga moves are only a few minutes long and easy to incorporate into your day.
My verdict on Zemedy
Honestly, I can’t recommend the app Zemedy enough. If you are struggling to access mental health provisions in relation to your gut health at the moment, downloading the app is one positive action you can take. You can work at it consistently or just dip in each day.
In a short space of time, I notice my brain is automatically reaching for the app, or doing some deep breaths, when I get anxious and it really does seem to be helping my gut at the moment too. I know it can’t solve my gut health issues but it really is helping my thought patterns around the condition!Free Gut Mindfulness Checklist.
Super interesting post! I’ve been struggling with IBS over the last few years (I think) and I’ve done countless searches to find more info about it and what I can do that will help so I will deffo download this app and try some of the techniques.
When i was a teenager i suffered from IBS, this was largely down to my stress levels with school etc, since then I’ve tried to take steps to improve my well being with all, great post.
I can understand how in some ways things like mindfulness can help as I think stress can definitely play a part in bringing on an episode of IBS.
Stress plays such a big part on our health and I think it is a good idea to try anything that is less intrusive first so this app sounds like a great idea. There is a lot to be said about mind over matter for sure
I am glad you found what works for you. I have not tried hypnotherapy yet, but I would like to give my husband a chance to try it. Hopefully, he’d find relief from his back pain.
I think stress and anxiety have a huge impact on IBS so I can see CBT being really useful.
This is intereseting, I suffer IBS so will have a look at this, my daughter is suffering with gastric problems and we have tried all sorts. So if her latest lot of treatment doesn’t work may try this with her x
Some really great Information you have here . I wonder if it really is the mind that can be changed
This is really interesting. My friend suffers from IBS and she really does suffer! I will get her to look in to this.
This is really interesting, isn’t it incredible how much our bodies and our minds reflect each other. I feel like a lot of my symptoms from my fibro are worse when I am stressed.
Just a Lovely Article .
Very interesting post I didn’t know that therapy can also help to improve gut health. I thought that only healthy eating and taking nutrients can improve gut health and that can only help with gut-related issues. Thanks a lot for sharing this informative post.
Really a Great Article.
I’ve never heard of a free app like this before so I was really excited to read this post. I’m just reviewing the Nerva hypnotherapy app for IBS and was looking forward to trying this one out for free. I was hoping to be able to recommend it as a free alternative to my audience and possibly doing a side by side comparison with the Nerva app. Unfortunately, I just went to download it and it’s now priced at £18.99 per month. I wish I’d seen this sooner. Bummer!
Wow very interesting blog & article, Thanks for sharing.
Is a good idea I have never think about it so interesting your post, it was really helpful.
Amazing Article! Thanks for sharing this informative blog with us. I am really to read about hypnotherapy. And It is really very important for our daily life.
HEALTH is very important for our life because if your not healthy you are not live your life freely.
HEALTH is very important for our life because if your not healthy you are not live your life freely.
I have seen that stress and anxiety can have a huge impact on IBS, so I would want to try cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).
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