Scared? Better these foods instead of bread

Now perhaps more than the recommendation to eat bread to calm down, we see a thousand memes and stickers in our conversations right after a situation that scares us, like an earthquake.As good Mexicans, bread for the scare has become a way to take serious and clearly stressful things with a bit of humor, but it is already known that bread, whether it’s a bolillo or a slice of sandwich bread, really has no relationship to calm us down from the state of alert that fear leaves us in.What is true is that eating something solid after being scared is recommended, as this helps reduce the secretion of gastric juices; it does not necessarily have to be a bread or a bolillo.That is to say, you could eat a banana or an apple, or better yet, take an antacid, as the alert reaction in our body causes gastric juices to increase and can even lead to nausea and vomiting.In fact, there is something called a nervous stomach, which consists of feeling butterflies from nerves, knots in the stomach, nausea, indigestion, and other symptoms that can be related to your state or mental health, your digestion, or the health of your digestive system.This happens because the brain and the intestine are connected through the vagus nerve, one of the largest nerves in the body. This nerve sends signals from the brain to the intestine and vice versa, which increases digestive irritability and irregularity when stress and anxiety occur.The nervous stomach is what happens to many people after a scare and can be managed with home remedies, such as teas, and if you already suffer from it, you can also make simple changes to your daily diet, such as increasing fiber intake or eating foods rich in probiotics, like yogurt.The benefits of probiotics for anxiety have been proven in preliminary studies in mice and may help alleviate intestinal symptoms through action on the vagus nerve.Another option besides a bolillo for the scare is to eat dark chocolate with 70 percent cocoa or more, as according to research from the Journal of Proteome Research, eating about 40 grams of chocolate per day can reduce cortisol levels.Next time you feel that your stomach is unsettled from a scare, at least now you have more options to eat afterwards, besides bread.