For 20 years, 45-year-old Geeta Parmar-Patel endured gut-wrenching pain from a common irritable bowel disorder known as Crohn’s disease.
“You’re in the bathroom a lot. You’ve got all this inflammation because everything you’re eating is going through your gut,” she said. “Nutrients are not absorbed.”
Doctors say Parmar-Patel’s condition classically illustrates the gut-brain connection and say mental health issues such as anxiety and depression occur two to three times more often in these patients.