The Mind-Gut Connection

banchan and people in Spain enjoy their tapas

came to my office with his fifty-two-year-old mother. Surprisingly, it was she who started the conversation: “I really hope you can help Bill. You are our last resort. We are desperate.”
Over the previous eight years, Bill had spent countless hours in various emergency rooms, suffering from excruciating stomach pain and unstoppable vomiting. During particularly difficult periods, he would visit the ER several times a week. Usually the ER physicians prescribed painkillers and sedatives to treat his discomfort, but none of them seemed to have any idea what was actually wrong with him. Even worse, some labeled him a drug-seeking patient because nothing in the diagnostic tests they ran matched the severity of his symptoms.
Bill had also been to several gastrointestinal (GI) specialists who performed extensive diagnostic tests but without finding a cause for his miserable symptoms. His continued pai