When Normal Digestion Becomes Ultra Sensitive
My favorite instrument has always been the bass guitar.
The bass is that unsung hero in the background that makes the music rhythmic and adds depth without dominating the song. You don’t always consciously notice it, but you feel it.
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That’s how the body is supposed to work. You’re not supposed to feel every single moment of your digestion.
Many people don’t realize that digestion is constantly happening. Muscles contract, gas (yes, we all have it) moves, and food travels through the intestines. Even when we aren’t eating, the digestive system is still at work sweeping and cleaning through something called the migrating motor complex.
It’s actually quite amazing how much happens quietly in the background. And most people barely notice it; kind of like the bass playing in a well-balanced song.
But imagine if someone suddenly turned the amplifier all the way up.
You’d see the whole audience cover their ears and wince. The vibration takes over the room, and the rhythm becomes overwhelming.
Nothing about the instrument changed. But the volume did.
Doctors actually have a name for when the gut’s normal signals become amplified like this. It’s called visceral hypersensitivity. The digestion itself isn’t necessarily abnormal; the nervous system is simply perceiving those signals much louder than it should.
And that’s what it has felt like to live in my body.
How the Volume Got Turned Up
The strange thing is that I didn’t just wake up one day with a hypersensitive gut.
For most of my life, my digestion was pretty normal. Sure, I had stomach aches growing up, but nothing that interfered with daily life. I could eat salads, vegetables, and normal meals without thinking twice about it.
Everything changed about eight years ago when I was diagnosed with SIBO. Who knows if that is even what I had. What I do know is that the diagnosis opened the door to something many people in the health world eventually experience: the treatment spiral.
The protocol sounded simple: Remove. Replace. Reinoculate. Repair. Rebalance.
Easy. One, two, three. Or so I thought.
But for me, it backfired: One protocol led to another. One treatment led to another. More supplements. More food restrictions. More tests. More, more, more.
At the same time, my lifestyle didn’t slow down. I was still disciplined, still exercising regularly, still pushing forward with a fast pace and high expectations of my body. Over time, the combination of constant treatments, restrictions, stress, and pushing through discomfort created the perfect storm for my nervous system.
My digestive system kept getting more attention, more correction, and more intervention. It started sending louder signals which of course I assumed needed even more correction.
The vicious cycle had begun. For years.
Slowly, my nervous system began amplifying every one of them just like the bass guitar. It was no longer quietly supporting the music. It had become the main instrument.
The volume was so loud that I felt like the audience at a concert covering their ears and wincing.
There were moments when I nearly gave up.
The Body Powered Down
One of the hardest parts isn’t even the discomfort. It’s the tranquilized feeling.
Fatigue is an understatement.
When the gut becomes active, the vagus nerve, a major communication pathway between the gut and brain, shifts the body strongly into what scientists call “rest and digest.”
Blood flow moves toward the digestive organs, and the body can suddenly feel heavy and sleepy. Sometimes it feels like a wave of exhaustion hits out of nowhere. It took me a long time to understand that this isn’t from lack of sleep.
It’s simply the nervous system reacting to signals that are turned up too high.
Learning to Turn the Volume Down
Honestly, I just wanted to stop the song. It was and still is too much sometimes. However, I cannot stop digestion. The goal has been to turn down the volume.
For me that has meant stepping off the endless cycle of fixing and giving my body something it hadn’t had in a long time: consistency.
Regular meals that are gentle on my digestion
Steady nourishment
Little to no intervention
There are medications that can help calm the nerve pathways between the gut and brain called tricyclics. A low dose of one of these can truly be a life saver. The nervous system sometimes needs help resetting its sensitivity.
Living While the Volume Is Still Loud
It’s still a concert inside my body with the bass booming. But I’m learning something important. The system isn’t broken; it just needs to learn a new rhythm, and the volume just needs time to come down. It’s an extremely slow process, but I believe with all my heart that God desires it to be slow. This way, we learn to appreciate the little things. We learn to truly embrace simplicity. Doing less. Saying no more often. Living with love and gratitude.
Slowly, with patience and consistency, the concert begins to soften into something closer to a symphony. One day those signals will return to where they belong; quietly in the background, like the bass in a well-balanced song.