Most people give little thought to gravity, the natural force that keeps all of us grounded to Earth. Without gravity, earthlings would be floating about like untethered astronauts.
But gravity does much more than that, according to Brennan Spiegel, MD, MSHS, director of Health Services Research for Cedars-Sinai, whose
new book makes the case that gravity affects every system in our bodies, and especially our digestive health.
Spiegel, a gastroenterologist, is the author of a new theory—published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology and detailed in his book—that irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and other digestive system conditions could be the result of the body’s inability to manage gravity.
Spiegel’s book, Pull: How Gravity Shapes Your Body, Steadies the Mind and Guides Our Health, expands on his theory, using the term “gravity intolerance” and describing how every part of our body—not just the gut— evolved to manage this fundamental force.
“If you’ve ever felt unusually fatigued after a long day on your feet, gotten dizzy standing up too quickly, dealt with persistent back pain, noticed swelling around your ankles, or had indigestion lying flat in bed—you’ve felt the effects of what I call gravity intolerance,” Spiegel said.
Spiegel, Cedars-Sinai’s George and Dorothy Gourrich Chair in Digital Health Ethics, describes how a family member’s declining health led him to his gravity intolerance theory.
Spiegel’s mother-in-law was living in an assisted living facility and spending much of her time lying down in bed. Simultaneously, she was experiencing depression and worsening digestive issues like bloating and constipation. Spiegel theorized that human bodies aren’t designed to lie flat all day but are meant to get up and move.
“Our abdominal contents are heavy, like carrying a sack of potatoes in our bellies for a lifetime. Thankfully, evolution equipped us with systems to manage this load when we’re standing upright,” Spiegel said. “But lying down for too long compresses the intestines, slows digestion, and can create a feedback loop of discomfort between the gut and brain. I started to wonder: Was my mother-in-law’s time in bed causing her symptoms, or was it the other way around? Her story revealed a much larger picture to me about how gravity affects the body—and how many of my patients’ struggles might connect back to it.”
“The human relationship to gravity is much like a fish’s relationship to water,” Spiegel explained. “We live our entire lives in it, are shaped by it, yet rarely notice its constant influence on our existence.”
This insight led Spiegel to think more about gravity and the gut. “Might gravity intolerance explain why physical activity—like core strengthening, tai chi or aerobic activity—can often improve IBS symptoms, more than some medication? Could it also explain why some patients get lightheaded when they stand up quickly, or why so many also suffer from lower back pain—a consequence of gravity strain—or get worse at high altitude, where gravity’s grip on the atmosphere is diminished, or have abdominal obesity, weighing down the belly?” Spiegel said. “I began to suspect that gravity’s relentless pull might be a common thread in conditions I’d been studying for years.”
Gravity intolerance, according to Spiegel, can affect our mental wellbeing as well. He describes mental gravity as a condition in which negative thoughts and emotions make us feel weighed down, as if gravity’s pull has intensified. More than a metaphor, Spiegel explains how the “gut feelings” many people feel when anxious also occur when falling on a roller coaster, or even when “falling” in love, revealing a deeper link between mind, body and gravity.
In Pull, Spiegel discusses gravity management and how to build gravity resilience to improve health and overall wellness, not just for gut health, but for overall mind-body resilience. He mentions flotation tanks, standing desks, inverted yoga poses, core strengthening and small adjustments people can make to improving gut health, like using footstools to create a more gravity-friendly posture. He also explains the idea of biogravitational medicine, a new field he hopes to develop to understand how gravity influences the human body and mind.
Other Cedars-Sinai leaders are intrigued by the new theory. Shelly Lu, MD, the Women’s Guild Chair in Gastroenterology and director of the Division of Digestive and Liver Diseases at Cedars-Sinai, looks forward to the hypothesis being tested. “This could be a game changer in how we think about IBS and possibly how it’s treated.”
Itai Danovitch, MD, chair of the Cedars-Sinai Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, says it offers a unifying framework for understanding why so many psychiatric conditions involve both mental and physical symptoms. “We’ve long known that gut health affects mood, that posture influences confidence, that movement helps depression—but conceptualizing these through the lens of gravity management is genuinely novel. This framework could point toward new interventions that can be rigorously tested and evaluated.”
Spiegel is already looking ahead to proving his theory.
“Gravity was here long before we were, and it will remain long after we’re gone,” Spiegel said. “It stands to reason that mastering gravity was essential for life to evolve on Earth, and we survive and thrive by standing up and staying up as long as we can, and as well as we can.”
Read More on the Cedars-Sinai Blog: Causes and Treatments for Irritable Bowel Syndrome
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