Mice in this case placed for an hour, on a platform floating on the water and therefore subjected to stress versus congeners remaining in a cage. And this observation from scientists: the former had passed more stools than the latter. From samples to exploration of the cellular mechanisms at work, they came to suggest that “cortisol directly influenced the neurons that make up the enteric nervous system”. Which is a “tissue independent of the central nervous system, distributed throughout the digestive tract, which regulates gastrointestinal functions”.
An accelerating transit
Concretely, an episode of stress appears associated with “an increase in the proportion of neurons which synthesize acetylcholine (a neurotransmitter, editor’s note) at the level of the enteric nervous system”. Which apparently helps speed up transit. If these results must be confirmed or refuted in humans, this work published in 2023 somehow confirms this reputation as the “second brain” that our intestine represents. Which would contain 200 million neurons! Enough to multiply exchanges with a stressed brain…
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