Do symptoms like nausea, heartburn, bloatedness have psychological causes i.e. anxiety?

Doctor's Answer

In short, yes.

Anxiety as an emotional state causes a person to be more sensitive in all of their senses, even the internal awareness of your own body.

This is why when patients are anxious, they will report that their heart rate has increased, but when we measure their heart rate, it is usually within the normal range.

I advise my patients not to just take my word for it, and get a basic smartwatch that can track their heart rate and observe it on their own. They are usually bemused by what anxiety can cause them to (subjectively) feel!

On non-specific symptoms:

Nausea, heartburn and bloatedness are what the medical community call non-specific symptoms (i.e. taken alone, a symptom).

For example, heartburn, does not point definitively to a pathology/diagnosis (eg. gastrointestinal reflux).

However, medical professionals have to do our due diligence and rule out such pathology by asking further questions, performing specific phsycial exam, or order further investigations to confirm these are not there before we attribute the symptoms to a psychological cause.

A visit to your friendly family doctor/polyclinic will be a good first step if these symptoms are bothering you.

Here's more on how to get help if you have anxiety issues in Singapore.

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