I feel like meditation is one of those things that the news makes seem like a cure-all. Depressed? Meditate! Anxious? Meditate! Ok…but how helpful is it REALLY? And is meditation for IBS and SIBO in particular helpful?
It turns out that meditation for IBS and SIBO is, in my experience and opinion, one of the best things you can do to help yourself. And the science supports it!
I started meditation about a year after being diagnosed with IBS ten years ago and while I haven’t kept up with it as regularly as I should, it has been one of the most useful coping mechanisms for living with IBS and SIBO.
My Personal Experience with Meditation for IBS and SIBO
I started meditating due to a psychologist I saw many years ago. I’d been diagnosed with IBS (this was before doctors knew much about SIBO!) and he told me that I needed to at least try it. I initially thought he must be a kook. How was sitting and paying attention to my breathing for ten to fifteen minutes per day going to do anything for my IBS?
Nevertheless, I began to meditate daily. And to my surprise, it ended up being incredibly helpful. To be clear, meditation didn’t help a ton with my physical symptoms. I still had all the classic IBS symptoms that I’d had before I started. But what meditation did do was make me more tolerant of pain, less depressed, and significantly less anxious. To me, that proved extremely valuable. Having a greater tolerance for my symptoms and less anxiety about them allowed me to lead a more normal life despite still having IBS.
My personal experience seeing those benefits is why I always recommend meditation for IBS and SIBO. Or just to anyone, because it has so many benefits!
But Don’t Take My Word for It…
By now you’re probably familiar with the so-called “mind-gut connection.” The digestive system and the brain are very closely linked such that the gut has it’s own “brain” of sorts.
That “brain,” called the enteric nervous system, causes the gut to respond to both physical and emotional or mental stimuli. It’s what causes the sensation of butterflies in your stomach when you’re nervous. It also responds to physical stimuli as well. The digestive system also contains tons of neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine, and others also found in the brain. This connection between the gut and the brain explains why stress contributes to IBS and SIBO and exacerbates it.
This connection between the gut and the brain also explains why meditation helps IBS and SIBO symptoms. Mindfulness meditation, when practiced regularly for long enough, helps to control pain, anxiety, and stress. For example, most people with digestive disorders have a heightened sensitivity to pain, called visceral hypersensitivity. In fact it’s one of the most common traits associated with IBS! But meditation has been shown to help people better tolerate pain. Similarly, meditation helps to relieve and better deal with anxiety, which in turns helps IBS and SIBO.
There are also lots of studies that support the beneficial effects of meditation for IBS and SIBO. One study from 2015 found that 9 weeks of meditation helped IBS patients with anxiety and pain. Another study of women who practiced meditation, yoga, and other relaxation techniques for 8 weeks found that three months later, the women who practiced meditation had improvements in the severity of their IBS symptoms, quality of life, psychological distress, and anxiety. And those are just a few of the studies supporting the benefits of meditation for IBS and SIBO.
Is Meditation Hard?
Lots of people don’t really know or understand what meditation is. When I talk to people who maybe haven’t meditated or haven’t had a lot of experience with it, there are misconceptions that your mind has to be clear, or you have to be religious or spiritual to properly meditate, or that you’re doing it wrong if your mind wanders.
Those are all false! Mindfulness meditation, the kind that I will talk about here, is easy and anyone can do it properly. ANYONE. There is no mystery, just some simple instructions to follow.
(There are obviously lots of other kinds of meditations some of which are religious, more complex, etc. However, this post focuses on mindfulness meditation.)
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How To Start Meditating
The most basic way to start with meditation is to find a comfortable place to sit. You can either sit cross legged on the floor, with or without your back against a wall (I prefer some back support), or in a chair with your feet on the floor. You could even lay down, although this does sometimes result in an unintentional nap. I like meditation cushions to sit on.
Once you’re seated, close your eyes. Focus on your breath and watch your breath rising and falling. When your mind wanders, which it definitely will, just bring your attention back to your breath when you notice that it’s wandered.
One trick I like to use to not get caught up in following all my thoughts when meditating is to imagine my mind as a cloudless sky. When a thought comes along, I just watch it like a cloud crossing the sky of my mind, being blown along by the wind, until it disappears from sight and I return to focusing on my breath. Another helpful mental image is to envision your mind as a river. When a thought comes along, put it on a leaf and watch as the leaf floats down the river, out of sight.
Ideally, you should meditate at least ten to fifteen minutes per day in order to get the mental benefits of the practice. If you don’t do that amount each day, you won’t see the benefits. I recommend trying to do it after waking up or before bed or at least having some set time of day to practice.
Easy Ways To Get Started Meditating
I also recommend trying out some guided meditations to help you get started. It’s just like meditating with a teacher but way more convenient!
Many free guided meditations are available online. Some of my favorites include the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center’s guided meditations, which you can find here. FreeMindfulness.org also has some free guided meditations for download. You can also just search for “guided meditation” on YouTube and try out some of the many videos available.
To get a better idea of the philosophy behind mindfulness meditation, I also highly recommend reading Jon Kabat-Zinn’s classic book Wherever You Go, There You Are. You can find it on Amazon for cheap. It’s an easy read and a book that I return to year after year. Aside from giving helpful instructions about meditation, it’s full of generally applicable wisdom. It’s an invaluable book if you’re trying to live in the moment more and navigate the up and downs of life more gracefully. And it will help you start practicing meditation for IBS and SIBO!
If you REALLY want to take advantage of all that meditation has to offer those dealing with chronic illness, major life upsets, depression, or pain—and let’s face it, that includes most SIBO patients—then I also strongly urge you to read Kabat-Zinn’s book Full Catastrophe Living. It walks readers through a meditation plan for weeks that is specifically geared towards people with challenges who are living in a state of “catastrophe” and need a way to get their minds and bodies into a better state. It goes step by step through what to do in order to develop a deep and healing meditation practice.
Final Thoughts
I firmly believe that meditation has been one of the best things that you can do for yourself, regardless of whether you have health problems or not. It costs nothing and you can do it wherever you are. The hardest part is just sitting down and regularly making the time for it. One of my favorite quotes applies here: “The best time to start was yesterday. The next best time is now.”
So I urge everyone to try it and stick with it for two months.
Questions? Comments? Have you tried meditation? Let me know in the comments!