The Colon (yucch) As A Factor In PTSD

Current science consensus: the state of the bacteria in your gut could seriously have something to do with whether or not you end up having Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder PTSD).  PTSD has been a horrible side effect of war for a really long time.

In the Civil War, they were descriptions of “shell shock.” By the Second World War, there were apparently rumblings around that someone high up in the military had talked to the head of Menninger Clinic — a pioneering psychoanalytic training school in Kansas — and wanted to know who was going to be a PTSD victim before he actually started to fight, so such situation could be, well, avoided. The scuttlebut from when I trained in Kansas was that Dr. MenninGer wanted to go into the Army as a general, and was politely declined.

My guess is that he was thinking of a possible psychoanalytic solution.

In Complex PTSD sometimes it seems as if people become victims of multiple traumatic stresses and seem to, well, just keep accumulating symptoms.

Maybe he was just thinking of looking at personal histories.

It’s a sure bet Meninger never thought of looking in the gut.

I’m fairly sure nobody was thinking of the “gut-brain axis” then. Now many folks see connections between the guts and the brain.

I still remember the very first time I heard that at least half of the serotonin (a key neuroactive chemical in the brain) receptors were in the gut.

Probiotics may become more of our lives than ever.

I can only stay tuned.