Your Gut Is Talking To Your Brain: Why Anxiety Can Make You Feel Sick & What Psalm 23 Teaches Us About Peace

Bonus Episode

Season 2, Episode 1

Show Notes

Why can anxiety make the stomach hurt? Why do some people feel nauseated, lose their appetite, experience digestive changes, or feel a pit in their stomach when they are stressed?

In this episode of The Christian Mind Reset, Dr. April Joy explores the fascinating connection between anxiety, the gut-brain axis, the nervous system, and gastrointestinal symptoms—and brings the conversation back to one of Scripture's most familiar passages: Psalm 23.

As a board-certified psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner, psychotherapist, Bible teacher, and student of neuroscience, Dr. April Joy explains how the brain and gut are constantly communicating through a complex bidirectional system involving the central nervous system, enteric nervous system, autonomic nervous system, stress-response pathways, immune and endocrine signaling, the vagus nerve, and the gut microbiome.

She explains why anxiety is not experienced only as worried thoughts. Stress can also show up physically through nausea, appetite changes, abdominal discomfort, diarrhea, constipation, muscle tension, changes in breathing, and other bodily sensations.

The episode also explores interoception, the brain’s ability to sense and interpret signals coming from inside the body, and how physical sensations can sometimes become part of an anxiety cycle. A person notices a racing heart, tight stomach, nausea, or another uncomfortable sensation, interprets it as threatening, becomes more anxious, and then experiences even stronger physical sensations.

Dr. April Joy also discusses emerging research on the gut microbiome and brain, including why intriguing findings from animal studies should not automatically be interpreted as evidence that gut bacteria cause human psychiatric disorders.

But the heart of this episode returns to Psalm 23:5:

“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.”

Dr. April Joy considers this verse through the lens of anxiety and the nervous system. The table is prepared while the enemies are still present. The circumstances have not necessarily disappeared, yet David describes the Shepherd's provision and presence in the middle of them.