Constantly feeling nauseous and queasy? What to check before you dismiss it as just nerves | Incheon SIBO

What to Check Before Dismissing it as Psychosomatic

Are you repeatedly experiencing sudden queasiness and nausea, even when you haven't eaten anything wrong in particular?

When it's severe, you might even feel like vomiting, making daily life difficult. Isn't it too distressing to simply dismiss it as 'psychosomatic'?

Perhaps that nausea is a 'warning light' for your entire system, connected from your stomach, small intestine, and large intestine, all the way to your brain.

Hello. I'm Choi Yeon-seung, a doctor of Korean medicine who has spent 15 years treating comprehensive gastrointestinal dysfunction, including SIBO (Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth), and autonomic nervous system problems, resolving the root causes of unexplained nausea.

If you read this article to the end, you will gain a map to untangle the complex reasons behind your nausea. And I promise you will no longer suffer from vague anxiety but find a clear path towards a fundamental solution.

Nausea: Where is the 'Epicenter' of the Problem?

To understand unexplained nausea, we first need to know where the sensation of 'nausea' originates. The command center for this is the 'vomiting center' located in our 'brain (腦)'.

The brain integrates information sent from various parts of our body and sounds an alarm, nausea, when it determines that 'something harmful has entered the body or there is a problem with the system'.

The question is what information this command center uses to make its judgments. We liken this process to a 'digestive orchestra'.

For a beautiful performance (comfortable digestion), all parts must be in harmony. And the 'discord' of unexplained nausea mainly occurs when the performance of the following three parts goes awry:

1. The Player Who Lost the Rhythm: 'Dysfunction' of the digestive tract (motility issues)
2. The Contaminated Stage: Deterioration of the 'gut environment' (Damjeok, SIBO)
3. The Sensitive Conductor: 'Autonomic nervous system' dysregulation (Gut-brain axis issues)

These three problems can act independently, but mostly they are intertwined, amplifying the problem. For example, declining function leads to environmental contamination, and the contaminated environment combined with stress, in turn, makes the nerves sensitive.

The result of this complex process is the 'unexplained nausea' you experience. From the next section, we will examine these troublemakers one by one.

Causes ①, ②: Dysfunction and Environmental Contamination (SIBO and Damjeok)

The first and second troublemakers of the digestive orchestra almost always go hand in hand. This is because if the player (function) loses rhythm, it's a natural progression for the stage (environment) to become contaminated.

Step 1: Dysfunction (The Player Who Lost the Rhythm)

First, a state of 'dysfunction' occurs where the peristalsis of the stomach and small intestine slows down. Food cannot move down smoothly in time and remains in the stomach and small intestine for an extended period.

Step 2: Environmental Contamination (The Contaminated Stage)

This stagnant food ferments and creates sticky waste products, known as 'Damjeok (痰積)'. This contaminated environment of Damjeok then becomes the perfect breeding ground for bacteria to explosively proliferate in the small intestine, leading to 'SIBO (Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth)'.

Why a Contaminated Environment Causes 'Nausea'

So, how does this contaminated environment affect the brain's command center and induce nausea?

In a SIBO state, proliferating harmful bacteria release powerful toxins and gases like 'LPS' (Lipopolysaccharide) or 'ammonia' during their metabolic processes. These toxins induce nausea in our body through two pathways:

• Direct Stimulation: By directly stimulating the 'vagus nerve' distributed in the intestinal lining, it sends a direct call to the brain's vomiting center, signaling "there's a problem in the body."
• Blood Contamination: Toxins are absorbed into the bloodstream through weakened intestinal walls (leaky gut), travel directly to the brain, and chemically stimulate the vomiting center.

Ultimately, your nausea may not simply be 'due to indigestion,' but rather a much more complex and serious problem where 'toxins produced by a contaminated gut environment due to dysfunction' are attacking your nerves and brain.

Cause ③: The Invisible Conductor, 'Autonomic Nervous System' Malfunction

Just because digestive tract function declines and the environment is contaminated doesn't automatically mean nausea will occur. There's one last troublemaker that 'ignites' the problem: the 'autonomic nervous system,' which governs all unconscious activities in our body.

The autonomic nervous system is the 'conductor' of the digestive orchestra. It controls the tempo (motility) of the performance and the volume (sensation).

However, if this conductor falls into disarray due to chronic stress, an irregular lifestyle, lack of sleep, and other factors, the orchestra becomes chaotic. The balance between our body's 'accelerator (sympathetic nervous system)' and 'brake (parasympathetic nervous system)' is broken, leading to a state of 'over-excitation' where the accelerator is always pressed.

At this point, two major problems occur:

• The conductor commands the performance to stop. (→ Worsening Dysfunction): Our body suppresses digestive function under tension. Autonomic dysregulation directly causes and exacerbates the 'digestive tract dysfunction' mentioned earlier.
• The conductor makes all sensations extremely sensitive. (→ Causing Hypersensitivity): Even subtle intestinal movements or small amounts of gas that would normally be ignored are deemed 'a big problem,' sending exaggerated danger signals to the brain and causing nausea. This is the true nature of 'psychosomatic' nausea.

The bigger problem is that this is not a one-way street. While stress from the brain can affect the gut, a diseased gut with SIBO and Damjeok, in turn, sends stress signals back to the brain, further destabilizing the autonomic nervous system, creating a vicious cycle within the 'Gut-Brain Axis'.

Ultimately, unexplained nausea is not simply a digestive problem but the result of a comprehensive 'system error' where stress and gut problems amplify each other.

Result of Comprehensive Dysfunction

This complex problem, which starts with issues like upward reflux and downward gas in the small intestine, never remains confined to the small intestine. It's like a major accident in the middle of a highway, where the aftermath paralyzes the entire road.

Upwards, Energy Refluxes (Stomach Qi Reversal)

Excessive gas pressure generated in the small intestine pushes up the stomach and loosens the lower esophageal sphincter. As a result, stomach acid or food refluxes, causing chronic reflux esophagitis, and creating 'Damjeok' symptoms—a constant feeling of tightness or blockage in the pit of the stomach. This is precisely the 'Stomach Qi Reversal (胃氣上逆)' phenomenon explained earlier.

Downwards, the Large Intestine Becomes Hypersensitive (Irritable Bowel Syndrome)

Harmful bacteria and toxins from the small intestine travel down and contaminate the large intestine's environment, disrupting the balance of its normal bacterial flora (microbiome) and causing inflammation in the intestinal lining. As a result, symptoms of 'Irritable Bowel Syndrome' appear, with diarrhea on some days and constipation on others, or one suffers from 'incomplete evacuation,' a feeling of not having fully emptied the bowels even after a bowel movement.

Thus, unexplained nausea is never an isolated symptom. It can be the most important 'starting signal,' indicating that the entire digestive system is collapsing in a cascade.

An Unharmonized Orchestra: Starting with the Conductor

In conclusion, the unexplained nausea that tormented you was not a single problem originating somewhere in your gastrointestinal tract. It was

1. Function (motility),
2. Environment (bacteria/toxins),
3. Nerves (autonomic nervous system)

a comprehensive 'discord' that emerged when all three parts of the orchestra lost their harmony.

Therefore, the fundamental solution is not to simply rely on medication that suppresses nausea (like silencing one instrument). The entire orchestra must be re-tuned, by:

• recovering the gut's rhythm (restoring function),
• cleaning the stage (treating Damjeok/SIBO), and
• calming the agitated conductor (autonomic nervous system regulation).

These three must be achieved simultaneously. This is the core of the integrated treatment our Korean medical clinic pursues.

Of course, efforts to stabilize the orchestra yourself in daily life are a great help to recovery. Today, we've explored the complex structure of the problem.

So, what is the easiest and most powerful thing we can do right now to stabilize this 'conductor (autonomic nervous system)'?

Next time, I will share specific methods that anyone can follow at home.

The discord your body sends can be transformed back into a beautiful performance.

#Queasiness #Nausea #SIBO