How fear and disgust affect the stomach

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Many of us are familiar with the feeling when panic or fear causes unpleasant sensations in the stomach. As it turned out, emotions can indeed affect the acidity of gastric juice.

Scientists conducted experiments and saw that negative emotions lower the pH of gastric juice, thus increasing its acidity.

During the experiments, the researchers asked participants to swallow a small “pill”, which was actually a sensor that measured pressure, temperature and acidity in the gastrointestinal tract. The device transmitted this data to a computer.

During the experiment, people were shown short videos that evoked different emotions in them: from happiness and sadness to disgust and fear.

In the case of the last two reactions, the activity of the muscles of the gastrointestinal tract increased, the pulse and breathing rates increased, and the secretion of gastric juice increased.