It first happened when I was lying face up on a massage bed. Wrapped in one of Ricari Studios’ signature sheer mesh body stockings, the practitioner worked her lymphatic-massage tool across my abdomen to the somewhat-new pooch right below my belly button. “Ah,” she said with an absolute sense of knowing—even though this was the first time we had ever met and she didn’t, in fact, know me at all. “You have a grief gut.”
In that moment, things clicked. A year ago, my father died after an absolutely brutal battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Ever since, I could feel my body keeping score: First, I developed a case of chronic (and absolutely embarrassing) angular cheilitis, then came shingles, and now, apparently, life was giving me a grief gut.
“Grief is a whole-body stress response,” says research psychologist Sarah E. Hill, author of the upcoming book The Period Brain. “It activates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, flooding the body with cortisol and other stress hormones.” And there’s science to back it up: Bereavement isn’t just about feeling depressed, though that’s certainly a piece of the incredibly difficult puzzle. It’s also been linked to an impaired immune system and poorer metabolic health and can even cause a minor cardiac issue called broken-heart syndrome.
Sure, I could get out of bed every day after an hour of giving myself a pep talk—plus a highly targeted combination of antidepressants, therapy, and the fury left over from a failed stint at the Hoffman Institute—but I could feel the loss of my father in every cell of my body. And apparently every cell of my body was feeling it too.
“With grief, many people may experience stress changes that lead to cortisol fluctuations,” says psychiatrist Judith Joseph, MD, whose book High Functioning aims to demystify depression. Coristol—one of the fight-or-flight hormones—is always prevalent in healthy human bodies, but too much of it can impair sleep, digestion, mental health, and more. Dr. Joseph points out that I was noticing my grief and the ensuing rush of cortisol affecting my vagus nerve (the longest nerve in the body that connects vital organs to the brain), as well as my skin and hair in particular. “Skin changes and hair loss are also stress responses to grief, and this may be why people start to look fatigued and worn out after grieving and why some report acne and hair loss during the grieving process.”
When I met with my general practitioner for my annual checkup a few months later, she commented on my grief gut too. “Are you depressed?” she read from a questionnaire at the end of our 15 minutes together. “Obviously, who wouldn’t be after the year I had?” I replied. We moved on.
I thought back to that now non grata fat-shaming scene in the first Sex and the City film, when Samantha had surprised her friends at Charlotte’s baby shower—but all they could talk about was the “I eat so I don’t cheat” changes to her body. Yes, my clothing was fitting differently, which became a new and even more frustrating reminder of loss. Add on the body commentary, and it was all compounding out of a cute little term and into a deeper depressive spiral.
“The gut is often called the second brain because of the enteric nervous system and its constant communication with the central nervous system via the vagus nerve,” says Dr. Hill. “Emotional stress from grief can change gut bacterial diversity to favor pro-inflammatory species, increase gut permeability, and cause leaky gut, as well as impair nutrient absorption. That’s why grief can feel like a knot in the stomach.”
It’s been half a year since I first heard the term grief gut, and it still remains. What’s changed is my perspective on it. Mourning the loss of somebody like my father won’t stop overnight—but what can change is how I address the issue. Now, it’s multiple therapists who tackle my sadness from many different angles (a luxury, I know), along with trying to increase my sleep hygiene, finding low-pressure social situations, and continuing lymphatic body work.
I’ve also removed the idea of fixing my grief gut—and myself—from my vocabulary, at the advice of both doctors Joseph and Hill. “Grief can’t be fixed,” says Dr. Hill. “But supporting the gut-brain connection can reduce physical distress and speed emotional recovery.”
Sure, I have a grief gut. But it’s a survival gut too.
