Did you know that, on average, it takes a whopping 76 years to conquer the incredible fortress that is the human body? It’s like our bodies are on a lifelong mission to defy the odds and keep us rocking and rolling through the adventure of life. But, hey, here’s a little secret – they might need a bit of extra love, especially when it comes to the mysterious world of gut health.
This is what we’ll cover in this post:
- How to recognize the language of your digestive system and understand why they demand attention.
- What a healthy gut looks like – this might surprise you
- Challenge the misconception of normalizing digestive discomfort as part of aging.
- Essential Habits (diet and lifestyle) for optimal gut health.
- What you can do to uncover imbalances and gain insights into your unique microbiome, nutritional status, and overall digestive health.
- A Do-it-Yourself (DIY) 3 Month, 3 Step Total Gut Restoration Program
Do you often experienced stomach pain, bloating, acid reflux, constipation, or diarrhea? Chronic cough or clearing your throat? Or maybe unexplained weight gain, allergies, and skin issues? These are all distress signals, telling you that your gut needs a little TLC. We often brush off these signs as “normal,” but what if they’re your body’s way of saying, “Hey, I need some attention here!”? You might not have connected the dots that fuzzy thinking, autoimmune struggles, wonky hormones, and those aches and pains in your joints and muscles are also signs of a not-so-happy digestive system.
Ignoring these signals is like turning a blind eye to your body’s SOS calls. Sure, the conventional medicine’s wisdom might be, “Oh, it’s just part of getting old,” or “you have IBS” which essentially means, “you have irritable bowels but we don’t know why.” Let’s be real…your digestive system plays a crucial role in your health and longevity, and neglecting it puts you at risk for more serious issues down the road.
The Prevalence of Digestive Issues
A 2023 study showed that 74% of participants had dealt with digestive discomfort for over six months. That’s a lot of uncomfortable bellies! Yet only 37% sought help from their doctor. 56% of those who experienced discomfort didn’t seek medical help because they didn’t believe their symptoms required medical attention. Why? Maybe because we’ve normalized feeling crummy. How many times has your doctor said “there’s nothing wrong with you, your tests look fine.” yet you still experience many symptoms. It’s time to break free from that misconception.
What does a Healthy Gut Look Like?
Has your doctor every told you what a healthy digestive system looks and feels like? If everything is working well this is what your experience would look like:
- no abdominal pain at any time, even after meals
- no bloating
- very little gas with hardly any smell
- 1-3 easy to pass bowel movements a day, that feel like you are emptying entirely
- barely any toilet paper is needed
- hardly any smell
- clear cognition
- pain and inflammation free body
- having the energy to do the things you love to do
- maintaining a healthy weight
Ignoring the Signs
Many people are looking for the magic pill: laxatives, probiotics, acid blockers. But ignoring the cause of the digestive issue is a dangerous approach to take. According to a March 2023 poll of 1005 adults age 18+, 3 in 5 Americans don’t know that an unhealthy gut can increase the risk of heart attack, stroke and of dementia. If you experience ongoing or severe digestive symptoms like the ones mentioned above and your goal is long term health, wouldn’t you want to learn more about what is causing these symptoms and how to fix them and not just how to manage them with medication? This is the approach used in integrative and functional medicine. When you address the cause the symptoms go away, they aren’t just managed.
As an example, Proton Pump Inhibitors (PPI’s) are one of the most widely used medications worldwide. They are used to inhibit gastric acid secretions for variety of gastrointestinal disorders including peptic ulcers, gastroesophageal reflux (GERD) disease, and non ulcer dyspepsia. However, because they only masking the symptoms, the root cause is not addressed and people find they continue to need them long term. But, long term use has proven to be a problem, recent studies have noted that long-term use of PPI medications have potential adverse effects, including risk of fractures, pneumonia, Clostridium difficile diarrhea, magnesium and vitamin B12 deficiencies, dysbiosis (lack or imbalance of good gut bacteria), chronic candida infections, mineral deficiencies, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), diabetes, eczema, gallbladder disease, osteoporosis, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, thyroid conditions, chronic kidney disease, and dementia. Essentially what is happening is you can’t breakdown your food if you don’t have enough acid, enzymes don’t work without the correct acidic environment, and therefore you can extract the nutrients out of the food. The variations in how this manifests in different people is a result of bio-individuality as well as life circumstances, where you break is going to be unique to you. For some it will be arthritis for others is will be their thyroid. Make sense?
In functional medicine we would look to the reasons that are causing the acid reflux. Is it actually not enough stomach acid, do you have an H.pylori infection, are you hypothyroid, how stressful is your life? The goal is to identify the root cause and help you to fix it with protocols and lifestyle strategies.
Lifestyle Tools to Support Good Digestion
I’m going to share with you how you can actually turn things around with a few tweaks to your diet and lifestyle.
Chewing Your Food
When your digestive system is acting up, the first step should always be to go back to the basics. Let’s start with a simple yet powerful step – chewing your food like a champ. Seriously, it’s not just a mindless task. Chewing kickstarts the digestive process, breaking down your food into smaller bits increasing the surface area so your digestive enzymes can get to work more effectively and chewing also triggers the production of saliva which contains the first enzyme in a cascade of different enzymes, each triggering the next to achieve complete digestion and absorption of nutrients from your food.
Eating too fast or while scrolling through TikTok:-) are often reasons we don’t chew our food well enough. It is more important than many of us realize to set aside ample time to enjoy your meals. If this is new for you, try scheduling meal times like any other priority to help fortify the habit in the beginning.
Eat a Digestion-Focused Diet
What you munch on is a big deal. There is no one diet for everyone and in fact there is no one diet for one person all the time. The elimination diet, Mast Cell or Low FODMAP diets have been beneficial for some when addressing digestive issues. In general, nutrient dense, fiber-rich foods loaded with enzymes help your meals move through your digestive system. Lucky for us, the foodie universe has our backs. We’ve got a smorgasbord of options – veggies, whole grains, beans, nuts, seeds, and fruit.
Some of the easier things to address help your gut is to remove the obvious culprits: avoid alcohol, sugar, dairy, and gluten. Did you know for every 1 person who has a gluten sensitivity that appears as a digestive complaint, there are 8 that do not. Meaning more often than not gluten sensitivities do not show up as a gut related symptoms but as body pain, brain fog, autoimmune, lethargy or fatigue, mood and neurological issues.
More Fiber
The amount of energy that we harvest from the food we eat is largely determined by the bugs in our gut. It’s important to note that the bugs rely on fiber, and, without fiber, they will starve. In order to keep our microbiome healthy, a diverse range of fiber-rich foods is needed. The wider the variety of foods we eat, the more strains of bacteria we will find in our gut.
High Fiber foods also absorb water and other fluids to form a gel-like substance that feeds the good bacteria in your digestive system and soothes the gut wall. This helps provide bulk, which eases the passing of waste through your system. Try to incorporate the full spectrum of fruits and veggies, all colors, what’s in season and what is local.
Fewer Irritants
Allergens and irritating foods such as gluten, lectins, dairy, soy, or corn and sugar can often cause inflammation and irritate the GI tract and guess what, the bacteria that causes gas and cramping feeds off sugar and multiply. Irritants can also include substances or pollutants we are exposed to in our environment. Find what irritates your digestion and remove them immediately! You will notice a world of difference. Consider doing a Food Sensitivity Test.
Prebiotic and Probiotic Foods
Eating probiotic rich, fermented foods like unsweetened probiotic yogurt (except if dairy is an issue for you), kimchi, kombucha, kefir, miso, and sauerkraut helps as well. Probiotics battle bad bacteria in your digestive system and lower the pH levels in the colon which supports your gut lining and aids in absorbing nutrients.
Prebiotics are the indigestible plant fibers that feed the good bacteria in our gut. Prebiotic foods include bananas, berries, tomatoes, onions, garlic, asparagus, broccoli, etc.
Healthy Fats
Lastly, fats encourage gallbladder function and thus support the absorption of minerals from your food. Healthy options including avocados, nuts, seeds and their oils as well as fatty fish are all great ways to support your digestive cascade while nourishing your body the right way.
Drink Plenty of Water
Dehydration and constipation go hand in hand. Water is needed to produce digestive enzymes, it helps move nutrients from your food into your cells, it supports your fiber intake by keeping soluble fiber hydrated and puffy so it can do its job of “sweeping” the digestive tract, and it is a crucial part of muscle movement – remember that your gut is a long tube made up of muscles that need to contract in a co-ordinated wave-like motion.
Warning: Unfiltered water – chemicals added to our tap water, such as chlorine and fluoride, not only kill waterborne pathogens but also negatively impact your gut bacteria. The typical refrigerator filter or Britta filter are not effective at eliminating chlorine or fluoride.
Reduce Stress, Especially at Mealtimes
In “fight or flight” mode the body redirects water from your digestive system to serve the immediate survival need, so high stress over time causes constipation and a host of digestive symptoms. Keeping stress low is particularly important during mealtimes as the body needs to be in a state of calm for digestion to occur at all.
Slow down and make a conscious effort to sit down at a table to eat your meal. Turn off any screens, take slow, deep breaths and pay attention to the pleasure of good food, and if you’re lucky, good company. This will help put your body into “rest and digest” mode and enable the body to do what it needs to do next in the digestive cascade.
Make Sure to Move
Dr. Bernard Jensen, a digestive health pioneer, once dropped this nugget of wisdom: “After your meal, sit a while, then walk a mile.” Turns out, research reveals that exercise isn’t just about sculpting muscles – it’s a digestion game-changer too. Imagine gravity and movement teaming up to kickstart peristalsis, those rhythmic contractions steering your digested goodies through the digestive highway. Exercise isn’t just a gut cheerleader; it’s a stress-buster too. So, after savoring that delicious meal, take a cue from Dr. Jensen, catch your breath, then hit the pavement for a stroll – your digestive system will thank you, and you might just uncover the magic that happens when you mix movement with meals!
Functional Stool Tests Can Uncover Imbalances
Now, if you’re ready to dive deeper into the mysteries of your gut, optimizing digestive health is where integrative and functional medicine excel. We’ve got state-of-the-art tests to uncover what’s really going on in your belly universe and we won’t just give you drugs to manage your symptoms, we have a full toolbox of protocols & strategies to evaluate your digestion and uncover issues that may be driving your symptoms and can even reverse them, including:
- Stool testing to check your unique microbiome of bacteria and yeasts
- Testing for markers of inflammation
- Checking pancreatic enzyme levels
- Checking for food intolerances and immune markers, as well as celiac antibodies
- Testing for nutritional deficiencies, diabetes indicators, liver function, stress hormones and more.
And finally, a good place to start is with Microbiome Labs 3 Step Program to gut restoration:
3 Steps To Total Gut Restoration
The three fundamental aspects of gut health include: the microbial population, physical structures, and regulatory immune function. A healthy gut microbiome is multi-faceted and relies heavily upon all 3 of these factors, like a three-legged stool. For this reason, therapies that only address one of these facets do not typically provide total restoration of a dysfunctional GI tract.
The Microbiome Labs Total Gut Restoration Program is uniquely designed to target all 3 of these areas, providing you with the highly effective tools to maintain optimal health.*
MegaSporeBiotic™️ is the first step in the Total Gut Restoration system which RECONDITIONS your gut and restores balance to your gut bacteria by increasing microbial diversity and maintaining key health-promoting gut bacteria.
MegaPreBiotic™️ REINFORCES the beneficial microbial changes created by MegaSporeBiotic™️ to promote a strong and diverse microbiome.
MegaMucosa™️ is the first complete mucosal support supplement of its kind, formulated with key amino acids to REBUILD a healthy mucosal barrier.*
Program Timeline
It will take about 3 months to complete this program, though it may be longer, depending on your symptoms.
Who Is This For?
This program is for anyone who struggles with digestive symptoms like food intolerances, bloating, hormonal imbalance, inability for weight loss, constipation/diarrhea, skin rashes, inflammation/pain, moodiness, insomnia, or other annoying symptoms.
What Is Included
- 3 bottles of MegaSpore (This provides one for each of the standard three months.)
- 2 bottles of MegaPreBiotic (This is added during month 2, so this supply should last for about 2 months.)
- 1 bottle of MegaMucosa (This is added during the third and final month, so this supply lasts about 1 month.)
To learn more information about the Total Gut Restoration program or to place an order, click here.
We are Here to Help
So, what are you waiting for? Your gut is sending signals – it’s time to decode them, take action, and give your body the love it deserves. Remember, your gut feeling could be the key to a healthier, happier you!
If you’re experiencing digestive distress, book an appointment with me, and together we’ll get your digestion back on track. I’m here to help.
Click here to schedule your 20 Minute Free Consult to see if this is right for you!
Be well,
Dr. Kat
References
AbbVie, (Nov. 6, 2013.)New Survey Reveals More than Half of Americans are Living with Gastrointestinal Symptoms and Not Seeking Care from a Doctor.
Avinash K. Nehra, MD; Jeffrey A. Alexander, MD; Conor G. Loftus, MD; and Vandana Nehra, MD Proton Pump Inhibitors: Review of Emerging Concerns Avinash K. Nehra, MD; Jeffrey A. Alexander, MD; Conor G. Loftus, MD; Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research Mayo Clin Proc. 2018;93(2):240-246. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mayocp.2017.10.022
Anderson JW, Baird P, Davis RH Jr, Ferreri S, Knudtson M, Koraym A, Waters V, Williams CL. Health benefits of dietary fiber. Nutr Rev. 2009 Apr;67(4):188-205. doi: 10.1111/j.1753-4887.2009.00189.x. PMID: 19335713.
Boekema PJ, Samsom M, van Berge Henegouwen GP, Smout AJ. Coffee and gastrointestinal function: facts and fiction. A review. Scand J Gastroenterol Suppl. 1999;230:35-9. doi: 10.1080/003655299750025525. PMID: 10499460.
Everhart JE, editor. The burden of digestive diseases in the United States. US Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2008; NIH Publication No. 09-6443.
Iorgulescu G. Saliva between normal and pathological. Important factors in determining systemic and oral health. J Med Life. 2009 Jul-Sep;2(3):303-7. PMID: 20112475; PMCID: PMC5052503.
McFarland LV. Use of probiotics to correct dysbiosis of normal microbiota following disease or disruptive events: a systematic review. BMJ Open. 2014 Aug 25;4(8):e005047. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2014-005047. PMID: 25157183; PMCID: PMC4156804.
Oettlé GJ. Effect of moderate exercise on bowel habit. Gut. 1991 Aug;32(8):941-4. doi: 10.1136/gut.32.8.941. PMID: 1885077; PMCID: PMC1378967.
Patricia JJ, Dhamoon AS. Physiology, Digestion. [Updated 2021 Sep 18]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2021 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK544242/
Schloetter, M., Mietus-Synder, M. et al. Metabolic and physiologic improvements from consuming a paleolithic, hunter-gatherer type diet. Dr. Bernard Jensen. Dr. Jensen’s Guide to Better Bowel Care: A Complete Program for Tissue Cleansing through Bowel Management. Avery; 1190th ed. edition (Sept. 1 1998)
*THESE STATEMENTS HAVE NOT BEEN EVALUATED BY THE FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION. THESE PRODUCTS ARE NOT INTENDED TO DIAGNOSE, TREAT, CURE OR PREVENT ANY DISEASE
