system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why does anxiety/stress cause intestinal upset in some people?

For example nausea or acid reflux?
gpt
There is a part of your brain called the insula. In mammals, it handles gastronomical disgust, like if you were eating an apple and looked down and saw a worm (or even worse... half a worm). It doesn’t taste bad—-rather, just knowing that you’re eating something nasty makes you retch.


Well, humans have higher levels of cognition than other mammals, BUT we still use the same parts, simply retrofitted for our “high-minded” uses. And so for us, a bunch of negative emotions, especially moral disgust, are handled by the insula as well. Thus, seeing your girlfriend kissing a strange guy makes you queasy, and somebody who rapes a child “makes you sick”—-a physical reaction to a purely emotional trigger. 


Interesting tidbit that accompanies this knowledge: Some people struggle to differentiate physical disgust and unease from moral disgust and unease, which is a biological explanation for SOME (NOT ALL) homophobia —- people see someone doing something that they themselves are PHYSICALLY repulsed by, get that “triggered insula” feeling, and become certain that it’s MORALLY wrong.