How Does Stress Influence Our Horse’s Digestive Health?

to the horses anatomy whether in cases of emergency or as a diagnostic tool. Consequently with the development of the threemetre endoscope most of the studies involving digestive health have centered around gastric ulcers a more easily accessible area. Work has been done observing the influence of psychological stress such as training and showing on gastric ulcer formation. Although the stomach is quite important it is still only a small portion of the total digestive system. 
Humans and Horses What Can we Learn? 
Unlike the horse the human digestive tract is more easily accessible allowing for the use of many new technologies including positron emission tomography PET and functional magnetic resonance imaging FMRI helping physicians to better understand the causes behind many gastrointestinal GI diseases. These technologies have led many physicians to a shift in approach from merely managing the symptoms to treating the root cause of the disease and its predisposing influences. New technologies have made it possible to classify all the GI diseases in humans by location and better understand the underlying causes of disease leading to a new term functional gastrointestinal disorders FGID .
Even though these new technologies are not available to the horse we can still use the components of FGID in humans to better understand equine digestive disorders. There are many similarities between FGID in humans and horses. Both involve abnormal motility and inflammation. There is also a connection between the nervous and digestive systems creating a negative feedback loop often the cause of digestive disturbances such as hindgut inflammation and possibly even colonic ulcers. In the horse these FGIDs may start out small with weight loss or poor performance but if left untreated can over time develop into ulcers chronic and acute diarrhea colitis or even colic. 
How does this process start? There are