Reddit mentions of The Second Brain: A Groundbreaking New Understanding Of Nervous Disorders Of The Stomach And Intestine

While not all Crohn's-specific, these are some that have helped me:

• Living with the Bully of Crohn's Disease - this book is anecdotal but has been the most helpful to me on how to deal with the emotional component
  
• Chronic Resilience
  
• Sick and Tired of Feeling Sick and Tired
  
• The Second Brain - this one is really more about the workings of the digestive system which was educational for me
  
  I would recommend NOT reading The Man Who Couldn't Eat, unless you want to scare the crap out of yourself. It was horrific.
  

The Second Brain should answer a lot of your questions.

Yeah I think for me it's probably a mix of both. There's a book about your gut being your second brain...found it...https://www.amazon.com/Second-Brain-Groundbreaking-Understanding-Disorders/dp/0060930721...which I should probably read one day.

Indeed The Second Brain is a fascinating read on this topic.

Most of the body's serotonin is created in the gut. Even stranger, the colon, like the brain, has its own internal nervous system.

It is a fascinating subject. There has been quite a lot of research done into the gut, If you want to read more about this, I recommend reading The Second Brain: A Groundbreaking New Understanding of Nervous Disorders of the Stomach and Intestine

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060930721/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_HkH0xbGK6Z1XK

> I can also say that my own personal experience was that probiotics positively influence my own digestion (significantly) and well-being

What specific brand did you take?

Also: http://amzn.com/0060930721

>This is a really bad faith argument. Coercion is between individuals or groups, not between non sentient things and forces of nature or one's own bodily functions and your conscious mind. This is a pretty bad form of reductionism.

Only for people ignore the complexity of sentience, and the murky neurology behind "conscious will" and subconscious action. We have loads of evidence illustrating what you perceive as free will, is merely your conscious mind explaining the actions of one of those "non-sentient" things that forced you to take an action. It just happens so fast you believe you had some control over it. (In reality, your "conscious" mind is mostly for training those parts of your brain to act in a certain way, rather than actually making decisions in the moment.)

Also--reductionist eh? Oh, I thought we were identifying basic elements of coercion in society, isn't it pretty important to identify the fact that coercion stems from actions that are not consciously derived?

>Don't cut yourself on that edge.

Go on and wake up tomorrow and decide you don't want to eat anymore. See how that works out for you. You tell me what its called when you're racked with pain from cramps because the symbiotic organisms through your intestines are producing a response that is coercing you through pain. Yes, that's right--you literally exist with organisms which are not human, but are essential to life--and they coerce you toward certain actions EVERY day.

Your gut, in fact, is often called the second brain--because it has tons of neurons, which developed in order to communicate with these coercive and beneficial organisms. Here is an 'edgy' book written by a bunch of edgy doctors.

Every day you fight entropy to maintain a system pulled toward dysfunction. The physics of the Universe coerce you....The very nature of life is coercive. There is nothing edgy about that, it is simply reality.

"Consciousness" is a very complex subject.

This might be a bit of a narrow example, and a specialist could elaborate more, but I would like to direct you to the enteric nervous system, which consists of one hundred million neurons and many of the same neurotransmitters that are found in our brain, including the usual suspects associated with our mood/consciousness (serotonin, dopamine, acetylcholine).

The wiki mentions that the enteric nervous system has been described as a "second brain", which I believe is referencing this book by Dr. Michael Gershon, chairman of the department of anatomy and cell biology at Columbia University.

The seat of our consciousness appears quite layered. I would love to hear the thoughts of a deafblind individual on this topic.

The title here is misleading... "ancient"???

Michael Gershon writes about his neurogastroenterological findings in "The Second Brain: A Groundbreaking New Understanding of Nervous Disorders of the Stomach and Intestine"

an Article here


Taoist healing may be where OP gets "ancient" from.
The following Taoist healing philosophy explains the Three Minds

(Smiling to the Second Brain)

It my own experiecne I have found my intestines becoming more sensitive to sugas and milk products against the will of my upper brain.
The argument here is also that we get diarrhea when scared worried or nervous, other autonomic responses to emotional states! do feed back

The top answer by Anodynephilm is wrong.

Your digestive system has a complex nervous system that acts as a "second brain" It seems more likely that your feeling is a negative emotional association with that system that is perceived your somatasensory cortex, causing the undesirable feeling.

Sources:
The Second Brain
Digestive Intelligence
Damasio's books on feelings as perceptions of internal body changes.

If there is any support for the claim about blood leaving the stomach, please cite it and I'll stand corrected.