Can You Vomit From Anxiety?

Can Anxiety Cause Vomiting?

What is Anxiety?

Anxiety is an emotional state characterized by feelings of worry, usually about something happening in the future. This could be a specific event or an abstract fear [1]. Physiologically, anxiety triggers your body’s natural response to stress, including the release of stimulatory chemicals and stress hormones such as noradrenalin, cortisol, and a neuropeptide called CCK [2]. These chemicals can activate your sympathetic nervous system and trigger a stress response, which relates to the anxiety symptoms one experiences.

Although the stress response triggered by anxiety is psychologically real, the threat that has triggered the stress response is not. Hence, anxiety can be problematic if it persists for long.

What Causes Anxiety?

Temporary anxiety can be caused by environmental and psychological factors. These may include upcoming events or events in the past that are identified (consciously or subconsciously) by your mind as a source of worry or threat. The resulting physiological feeling of this worry is called anxiety.

Anxiety is a normal part of life. However, Generalized Anxiety Disorder or GAD is a state of persisting, unpredictable anxiety which impairs day-to-day functioning over a longer time. It is a clinical condition, and you should speak to your healthcare provider if you feel your anxiety is getting out of hand [3]. Social anxiety disorder is another common anxiety disorder, which describes persisting feelings of anxiety relating to social situations, and anxiety can also occur in individuals with ADHD.

Anxiety Symptoms

Symptoms of anxiety can vary from person to person, but common symptoms include increased heart rate, rapid breathing, restlessness, and trouble concentrating [2].

Other symptoms can include feelings of danger, panic, or dread, rapid heart rate, rapid breathing, or hyperventilation, increased or heavy sweating, trembling or muscle twitching, weakness and lethargy, difficulty focusing or thinking clearly about anything other than the thing you’re worried about, and insomnia [4].

Anxiety can also cause physical symptoms, including anxiety, nausea, unexplained aches and pains, dizziness, and shortness of breath [5].

Can You Throw Up From Anxiety?

Yes, anxiety can indeed cause nausea and even vomiting. As discussed above, anxiety is a response to a subjective threat and can cause a variety of physical symptoms, including nausea.

What is Nausea?

Nausea is a feeling of being ill in the stomach like you will throw up. It often occurs in motion sickness and may also involve abdominal pain, headaches, and pain in the digestive system.

According to a review from 2002, everybody has a fluctuating threshold for nausea, which can be altered by physiological states, including anxiety, stress or prior food consumption [6]. Hence, anxiety can lower one's threshold, making subtle triggers like bright light, food, or water exceed your nausea threshold and cause stomach pain.

Nausea Can Also Cause Anxiety

It's worth noting that if you have a pre-existing or suspected gastrointestinal disorder, you may experience anxiety as a result of your nausea. For example, when having Irritable Bowel Syndrome while attending a social event. Incorporating lifestyle changes to manage conditions impacting the digestive system, including deep breathing exercises or exposure therapy, may be plausible solutions to overcome anxiety relating to gastrointestinal issues in public places.

This highlights the complex psychopathology linking anxiety, nausea and vomiting.

The Neurobiological Link Between Anxiety and Vomiting

There is a specific region of the brain called the area postrema, responsible for triggering nausea. It has an important role in anxiety, as demonstrated by lesioning the area postrema and measuring anxious behaviour [6]. The team found that mice with a lesioned area postrema had lower anxiety levels. This indicates that activity in the area posterma is implicated in anxiety. Nonetheless, this study did not address whether neurotransmitters and biochemicals released during anxiety could activate the area postrema.

The area postrema is unique in that it can sense chemicals directly from the blood—something no other brain region can do because it is protected by the blood-brain barrier. Therefore, chemicals from your blood, as released during anxiety, can activate neurons in the area postrema [6]. The activation of area postrema will, in turn, induce queasiness and nausea, potentially leading to vomiting.