The mind is stronger than the stomach

The mind is more powerful than the body. My Mom always reminded us of this mindset every time we felt pain, whether it was light discomfort or a tormenting ache. The power of this notion would only become clear to me after experiencing the worst case of acid reflux and health anxiety.

I’m acidic, meaning drinks and food like coffee, carbohydrates, spicy and oily meals, and salty food—most of which are present in the Filipino diet—can set off a bad case of acid reflux if taken in large consumptions or specific conditions. Eating big meals on an empty stomach is a big no-no, and consuming combinations such as spicy soup and Coke is like asking for a whole day of heartburn. Unfortunately, all the food I love falls under this category. I enjoyed them frequently regardless of their effects, a delicious stubbornness that became apparent in my second college year.

Due to academic stress, a pile of backlogs to finish in only a week, and no more mind to care about my sleeping or eating habits, I ate at strange intervals, sometimes even barely. If I did, I ate my stress-relieving “meals”: fire noodles, ramen, or bread. I did all-nighters and only napped for 10 minutes after every hour, paired with unhealthy junk or instant food to keep company. I should have known I could only handle so much and would eventually react to the weight of living on a deadline. It was from there that a long bout of acute acid reflux hit and challenged the wellness of my mind and body.

The pain started with my main trigger foods. I put these out of my diet, as I already knew what to avoid. I then noticed that the heartburn I would get after eating would not go away, even after I tried to relieve it with some of my Mom’s essential oils or a hot compress that usually helped with my reflux. Not long after, I began reacting to everything I ate, even if they weren’t supposed to trigger my reflux. Fish and vegetables still caused a rumbling that wouldn’t go away. Whatever I ate led to heartburn and deciding not to eat resulted similarly.

In a way, I understood what Sisyphus would feel if Sisyphus were tormented not with a rock, but with a stomach that couldn’t even handle what it was meant to take. Every day, there was a constant bubble stuck in my stomach and ribs that I’d have to keep pushing out until it popped. I’d press on my tummy to move that bubble through my body like a maze—up my belly, into the esophagus, and out through the mouth with a roaring BURP! That terrible bubble would make a home in my heart like a tiny bomb with nowhere to go. In many cases, I could not even discern the difference between heartburn and a heart attack; all I knew was the discomfort of an emptiness that kept making itself known. It was incredibly ironic how I’d have to heave and force air out of myself to feel the true comfort of breathing.

This loop prompted a trickle of health anxiety to overcome my mind and body. I started searching about my symptoms—whether it was normal to experience heartburn for long periods, what causes gastrointestinal pains, and if what I had could be gastroesophageal reflux disease or an ulcer. Is it normal to spit out phlegm or mucous from intense reflux burping? Do I have stomach cancer? Am I going to die? I had a bad habit of digging the hole deeper, not realizing that my concern for my health was also plaguing me with more mental strain that my body would physically react to. The anxiety affected my daily life to the point that I couldn’t even sleep without palpitating.

I resorted to sleeping beside my Mom, aided by her hand on my shoulder, meditation audios, and breathing exercises. It calmed me how her presence and the gentle practice of mindfulness brought me down from the noise of my anxiety. We then decided that I get checked up and have an abdominal ultrasound to make sure there was nothing serious. While the waiting time was nerve-wracking, I tried to do calming techniques and have the presence of mind; there was no use overthinking what I could not control when we had already done what we could. The best I could do was take care of myself and not take my health for granted.

It was with relief that the results of my ultrasound came out clean. I wondered, then, what all of my pain was if there was nothing wrong with me in the first place. Looking back, I think health anxiety had a death grip on me. My tendency to fall into a spiral of paranoia compounded the pain I felt. While my living habits were a factor, the pain may also have been psychosomatic: an illness of the body caused by distress of the mind. I realized that my Mom was right—our mental attitude can affect our physical health and, therefore, our overall well-being.

I still have moments of panic or worry about little tingles or strange sensations, but I know to get a hold of my anxiety before it blows away into an obsessive search for the answer. When an intrusive voice in my head would poke at a new symptom to worry about, I’d take a deep breath—actively and mindfully. In the end, it’s up to me to practice the daily habits that will benefit my health, redirect my anxiety into reasonable thinking, and know that all is well. When I anticipated the intense acidic reactions to start again after finishing my medication, my tummy surprisingly continued to live peacefully, for the first time in months. The heartburn did not return.

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Macky Aguilar, 21, is a communication arts student at the University of the Philippines Los Baños. She enjoys slice-of-life (in all forms), daydreaming, and doodling the things around her.