7-8 Butterflies in your stomach
It’s a thing. I mean it’s a real thing. Like it isn’t just that you’re nervous and excited and you’re just experiencing this overflow of feelings emotionally. There’s something happening within your body physically that causes you to feel this sensation and it has to do with your GI system. More specifically, your gallbladder.
Your gallbladder is associated with your GI system and all the organs we’ve touched on so far because it hold the bile that you need to aid in digestion of the food in your small intestine. The bile needs to be released from the gallbladder and secreted into your duodenum (the initial portion of the small intestine), and your body tells it to do so in two ways: hormonally and neurally. When your body senses fatty acids (from fat in your food) in the duodenum, it stimulates the enterocytes to secrete a hormone called cholecystokinin (or CCK). CCK acts by contracting the gallbladder and relaxing the Sphincter of Oddi, which is at the connection of the duodenum and the gallbladder. In doing so, it released the contents of the gallbladder (the bile) and sends it along, past the sphincter of Oddi, into the duodenum. Neurally, what occurs is something called the vagovagal response. This is when the duodenum senses stretch as the food comes in, nerves are activated and the vagal afferent nerves act on the muscarinic receptors of the gallbladder. The receptors sense the activation and this leads to contraction of the gallbladder.
This is when the fun comes in. These contractions of the gallbladder are essentially what you’re feeling when you have the “butterflies in your stomach” sensation. Strong emotions can circumvent the vagovagal response and activate the vagal afferent nerves leading to the same gallbladder contractions.
So there you have it. Maybe you don’t actually love them. Maybe your body is just telling you that you’re scared -- to run away. I jest. You’re fine. It’s me with the problem seeing as I’ve never had butterflies for someone in my life...
