From Neuroscience to Psychogastroenterology

The brain is part of the body!

While I was practicing mindfulness and stress reduction, something unexpected began to happen.

My gut symptoms slowly started to improve.

Not dramatically. Not all at once. But enough that I noticed. The constipation was still there. But the discomfort reduced.

At first, I didn’t even realize how significant that symptom was. Constipation felt mundane. Annoying, yes — but not medical.

Until I stumbled upon something called Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). A condition connecting the nervous system to the gut. A disorder where symptoms are very real — pain, bloating, altered bowel movements — yet standard blood markers often look completely normal.

That caught my attention immediately.

A few years earlier, I had already been diagnosed as lactose intolerant. I had removed dairy entirely from my diet. I was mostly vegan by then — though that, too, was evolving for reasons that deserve their own post.

Armed with this new knowledge about burnout and nervous system dysregulation, I returned to a gastroenterologist.

This time, I walked in with questions.

He confirmed that my symptoms aligned with IBS. He ran the standard questionnaire. I ticked most of the boxes

But what followed felt familiar.

Peppermint tablets.

Medication.

No discussion of stress.

No discussion of regulation.

No discussion of the gut–brain axis beyond a brief acknowledgment that it “exists.”

At that point, I was still just an engineer.

But I had begun to understand something important: the nervous system was not a side note in my story.

So I started experimenting on my own.

I continued practicing mindfulness. I began reading about the FODMAP diet. I started paying closer attention to patterns — what I ate, how I felt, what preceded flare-ups. I journaled obsessively. Logged symptoms. Tracked triggers. Looked for correlations.

What I was slowly entering — without realizing it — was the field of psychogastroenterology: the study of the brain–gut connection. What are now called disorders of gut–brain interaction — formerly known as “functional gastrointestinal disorders.” Conditions that are highly prevalent. Often underdiagnosed. Frequently dismissed. Real in their physical impact, yet invisible in routine lab work.

And once again, I encountered a familiar theme: There are conditions in the human body that do not show up in standard markers — and yet profoundly affect quality of life.

They are not imaginary.

They are not “just stress.”

They are not solved by medication alone.

Understanding IBS reshaped how I saw my gut — but it also reshaped how I saw the rest of my symptoms.

What if the joint pain, the dizziness, the tingling, the gut dysfunction — what if these were not isolated malfunctions, but manifestations of dysregulation?

I began looking at my body as a system

Not perfectly measurable. Not fully predictable. But interconnected.

That period became a turning point — not yet professionally, but personally.

It was the beginning of my fascination with disorders of regulation. With conditions that sit at the intersection of physiology and psychology. With what medicine sometimes struggles to categorize neatly.

Barely did I know that life was about to shift again — that we would soon change countries, that I would leave my job, and that this personal curiosity would quietly lay the foundation for an entirely new career.