Gut, Brain, Immune, Hormone, Microbiome Connection

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Educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions. Dr. Donni Wilson struggled for decades to solve her numerous health issues and heal her body. But with focused determination, she healed herself and in doing so, she discovered the Dr. Donnie stress recovery Protocol. On this show, you're going to hear from doctors, nutritionists and Experts along with Dr. Donnie who will give practical advice and wisdom to help heal your body. This is how humans heal.

Hey guys.

This episode is from one of Dr. Donnie's live Facebook streams where she answered listeners questions live on Facebook.

Hi there, it's Dr. Donni. How are you? I look forward to talking with you today about the gut, the digestion and all things gut related. The thing about the gut, it sounds so funny, right? Like I don't know if do you guys refer to it as a gut and the digestion.

Intestines. I know, I'm so used to using medical words, so I'm curious how you refer to your digestion. And I always look at things from the perspective of stress. So that's how I like to think. Whether I'm talking about digestion or hormones or immune system or the nervous system, I always think of it from how does stress affect our digestion? And this is a lot about what I wrote in my recent blog post, by the way. So if you haven't seen the blog post yet, you can go to my website@drdoni.com just Dr. O-I.com will get you there. And go to the blog and you're going to see this long article all about this as well. But I know some of you, maybe it's, it's easier to just talk it through in person like this. So let's talk through how stress affects our digestion because we all know that as humans we've got stress. So we know that there's got to be some. Hi there. Thanks for joining me. I see you guys and I welcome your questions about your digestion and how stress. I'd love to hear how if you notice that stress affects your digestion, for some people, they can tell right away that stress is affecting their digestion. Some people will get heartburn or stomach pain or bloating or constipation or diarrhea. Sometimes people feel right away when they're stressed, their digestion. For some other people, their digestion is like, oh, I never feel it. It's doing just fine. Never tells me anything, never complains to me. And so sometimes you don't even realize that your gut may need attention. That's the thing is I think probably at least 50% of the cases, you may not have any digestive symptoms per se, but still your gut may need attention. And let's talk that through. Why is it that your gut needs attention even if it's not showing you symptoms that it needs attention? So what happens is when we're under stress, whether that's psycho emotional stress, demands of life, work, family.

Also stress from physical stress from if there was an injury to your body or a surgery or an infection or a toxin exposure, all of these things are considered stresses to the body where the body needs help recovering. And the signals from stress include cortisol and adrenaline. And one of the first things that cortisol and adrenaline do is they essentially turn off your digestion. Because when we're needing to respond to a stress, our body, it's not the time for our body to be trying to focus on digesting and absorbing nutrients. So when you're under stress, basically all the signals to your digestion get turned off or shifted. So it's no wonder that a lot of people do get digestive symptoms. The classic would be a stomach ulcer or you hear the term butterflies in your stomach when you're stressed is because the sympathetic and nervous system is engaged in fight or flight and, and the parasympathetic nervous system that has to do with rest and digest is turned off. So the digestion is not going to get the right optimal signaling if you're constantly under stress. And the main nerve from the brain to the digestion called the vagus nerve, or sometimes you also hear it referred to as a vagal nerve. It's the same thing. It's a long nerve that's part of our autonomic nervous system, meaning it's not under conscious control. It's managing your digestion without you having to think about it. Right. Like we don't have to purposely think, I'm going to digest now. You know, we count on our vagal nerve to communicate, to handle that for us. The thing is, is that when we're under a lot of stress all the time, that vagal nerve signal isn't as working as well as it could or should. And so we're going to talk today about some ways you can help improve your vagal nerve communication to your gut so that you can re optimize your digestion even though you've been exposed to stress. So what happens when we're stressed is we don't. Our body doesn't make the digestive enzymes Right. So the pancreas normally makes digestive enzymes. The liver makes bile that comes through the gallbladder to the intestines, and the stomach makes hydrochloric acid. Even there's enzymes in our mouth that start digesting the food. So when you sit down to eat and you're chewing, your body starts making enzymes to digest the food. When you swallow, it signals to the vagal nerve that you swallowed, and your stomach better get ready to digest. And then your stomach makes hydrochloric acid, mainly to digest protein. And then that food goes on to the small intestine, where the pancreatic enzymes and the bile come in and further digest carbs, protein and fat. If you think about it, all of our food, it comes down to those three main nutrients, carbs, protein and fat. And so we need the carb, protein and fat to be digested. Protein is digested with hydrochloric acid, and with proteases, carbohydrates are digested with amylase, which comes from the pancreas, but also the cells lining the intestine. Right. So if you think of the intestines as a tube, and the walls of the tube are made up of cells, that's Aphrodite notice giving me a little doorbell signal out there. The cells of the small intestine.

Part of their job is to finish the digestion of the food, including the carbohydrates, like fructose, for example, which is a lot in fruit and certain vegetables. So the cells are all lined up around this tube, and the nutrients have to be so tiny, like it has to be broken down to glucose, amino acids and tiny fat particles that can get through the cells, because that's the only way out of your intestines. Otherwise it would just stay on the inside of your intestines. But we want it to get through the walls of your intestines to get to your bloodstream. That's how the nutrients and food gets to your blood and your body. So it has to actually get through the cells, and the water and electrolytes can go between the cells, but it has to be tiny enough to do that. So if you're stressed and you're not creating enough digestive enzymes and stomach acid and bile, food's not getting digested well, it's not going to get through. It's going to kind of be stuck in the intestines, and that can overfeed the bacteria. We talk a lot about gut bacteria and how amazing and helpful they are, and the microbiome we can talk about. But there is such a thing as actually too much bacteria. And I find that most often happens when the bacteria are overfed. So if we're not digesting food well, we're essentially over. We could potentially overfeed the bacteria, and this could lead to bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine, also known as sibo. So again, we're stressed, we're not digesting well, we end up overfeeding the bacteria, and we end up underfeeding ourselves because the nutrients don't get into our bodies, which can lead to either weight gain or weight loss and a lot of food cravings and other things that happen in the body when we're not getting our food in as well as we should. The other thing that happens is when we're stressed and when the gut bacteria are out of balance, it causes leaky gut. So leaky gut is when those same intestinal cells, they actually turn over every 72 hours when we're healthy. So this is a huge surface area. Think about it as the surface area of a tennis court. That surface area of little tiny cells turns over every 72 hours. So our bodies, just like your skin, we're constantly losing skin and growing new skin. It's the same in the digestion, constantly losing cells and growing new ce. If we're under stress and our cells are not able to turn over effectively, the nutrients are getting used to help us deal with stress. Instead of helping our digestion stay healthy, it develops this permeability. It's a microscopic permeability or leakiness, where now the undigested food particles can get in between the cells. And when undigested food. So imagine this might be egg, or it might be dairy cheese, or could be avocado, for that matter. It gets through between the cells as a food particle that doesn't look like glucose, amino acids or fat anymore. It looks like a piece of food. The immune system is hanging out around the sides, the outside of your intestines. It's protecting you, right? Because most of our immune system, I think it's 80% of our immune system is in our gut because it's a good, smart place to protect us, right? Like, just imagine how many foreign things could get into our bodies through our gut. Viruses, bacteria, other microbes, and toxins can get through the intestines. And so our immune system is there to protect us. So if these undigested food particles get through a leaky gut, the immune system is going to try to protect you, and it might be trying to protect you from foods that are healthy. Like here you are thinking you're eating a healthy diet, but if you have stress and leaky gut and you're not digesting well, you could even start reacting to your healthy foods. You could be reacting to almonds and bananas. And those are very common, I find on food sensitivity panels all the time. And it's not just about then. I mean, yes, you can avoid the almonds and bananas for a period of time, but to me, we have to heal the leaky gut. It's all about how do we heal those intestinal cells because they can grow back. We just need to manage your stress, help feed those intestinal cells so they can grow back again and get your intestinal cells so they're helping to filter your nutrients, not managing undigested food. So I see your questions here. Let me see. Could there be a reason for new food allergies as well? Yes, absolutely. So this is what happens is.

Now I want to just.

Clarify. The word allergy tends to mean an IgE antibody. That's what an allergist deals with, is an IgE antibody response to a food, which is an immediate allergic response. Like when someone's allergic to peanuts. That's usually an allergy. When we have more delayed responses to foods with different antibodies like IgA and IgG, those are more delayed responses to foods. It doesn't usually send you to the emergency room. It's over days to weeks. And it could cause things like maybe a skin rash, maybe fatigue, maybe joint pain, maybe bloating. It can cause these food sensitivities. I refer to them when they're more delayed reactions to foods. I tend to call them a food sensitivity, which in some ways makes it seem less concerning. I mean, it's certainly not an emergency, but it's concerning in that it's creating inflammation that's affecting your body over time. And this is the thing, it's very hard. It's easy to overlook it. You end up thinking, oh, maybe this is just the way I feel, maybe this is just what's going on. Or maybe you have something like me, migraines or joint pain. Or maybe you have anxiety, depression, dementia, memory, decreased memory, autoimmunity, infertility, all of these things. In the research, you can actually find research if you look in PubMed online, for example, if you're interested, you can find studies connecting leaky gut and imbalanced gut bacteria to health issues throughout the body. So to me, that means it's a major thing. It's something we need to pay attention to and focus On. And the cool thing is, the more we help your gut heal, the more likely we can help everything heal. Right, because it is such a core part of your health and can make such a huge difference. I even use gut healing for my patients with HPV and abnormal Pap smears, because what I find is when we figure out their food sensitivities and eliminate those foods and get the leaky gut healing, get the gut bacteria on track, the HPV goes away. And that's not even something that most practitioners even consider possible, but I see it in my patients all the time, so I know it's possible. Same thing with autoimmunity. Most doctors don't think it's possible for it to go away, but I see it go away when we pay attention to the gut, get the gut lining healthy and get the gut bacteria back on track, autoimmunity can go away, patients can get pregnant. There's a ton of studies now connecting imbalanced gut bacteria and leaky gut to fertility issues. So these things are just showing us that our body's interconnected. We can't just be thinking of our gut as separate from the rest of our systems. They're all talking to each other. And that's what we, in the research, they call that the gut brain axis. And they also, sometimes you'll see it as a gut brain microbiota axis, which means that there's a lot of communications that are happening between the gut and the nervous system. And not just the gut and the nervous system, but the gut and the nervous system and the immune system and the hormone systems. They're all communicating with each other. And so it's mind blowing, actually. And at first, when you start to, you kind of know it probably. I think a lot of you are intuitive and realizing, oh, yeah, I think my gut has something to do with this. And I could tell you, yeah, it definitely, your gut definitely has something to do with it, even if you don't have symptoms. So in the blog article, if you go to my blog, it's a gut brain blog post, and I list out 10 conditions that's even just 10 conditions that I happen to mention in the blog post, some of which I just mentioned here too, that are highly associated with gut health issues and microbiome imbalance. There's many, many more. Everything from heart disease and diabetes and cancer.

And even kidney disease. So it's like we have to pay attention to your gut. And again, what's happening is when.

I left off with telling you about the small intestine so the food gets digested, the nutrients would get absorbed, and then any leftover food that's, or parts of food or fiber essentially continues on down to the large intestine. There's gut bacteria throughout from our mouth all the way down. But we, especially when we talk about the microbiome, we're thinking about the gut bacteria in the large intestine, the colon, otherwise known as the colon. And so one thing is that consistent movement through the digestion is important. So for those of you who struggle, say, with constipation, we want to address that. We want to help your digestion keep moving as consistently as possible. And I consider that from top to bottom, from swallowing to getting the food through your esophagus. Some people have a hiatal hernia, where the food kind of gets stuck above the diaphragm in the stomach or it gets reflux, which is the food coming back up or acid coming back up. So that means that the digestion is not moving downward consistently. We need to help shift that. We need to get the signaling so that the food is. You're chewing it, you're swallowing it, it's going right through your esophagus to your stomach. It's not getting caught in a hiatal hernia. A hiatal hernia, by the way, is just when the stomach kind of gets stuck in the diaphragm, but you can get it unstuck. We just have to do some nice deep breathing and sometimes a little massage and get the stomach unstuck from the diaphragm. We can eat protein to signal to the esophagus to close to prevent reflux. Then we want to keep the intestines moving and bowels moving. Of course, drinking plenty of water is important, and movement or exercise is important for bowel regularity as well as fiber, appropriate fiber for your body.

And sometimes we need to use things like magnesium, like magnesium citrate or oxide to help keep the bowels moving. And if you need more help, please reach out, because that's, to me, that's one of the keys, is how do we just keep things moving through. Because when things stand still, when the food stands still in your digestion.

One of the main concerns is that you can have then fermentation of the food. Now we all have some, we won some fermentation of our food. If you think about it, that's what the whole thing with the microbiome is. These gut bacteria, they live off of the food and the fiber that we consume. And we need to feed our good bacteria Right. So there's a balance. We want to feed them, so we need to eat some healthy fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds. They love berries. The healthy bacteria love berries, nuts, seeds and fiber. We want to feed them. That's why it's helpful for us to eat healthy foods, so that we're feeding our good bacteria in the colon. But if we. There is such a thing as eating too much good food. Like, I've definitely talked to patients who are having maybe a smoothie that has. It sounds amazing, right? Like chia seeds and flaxseeds and greens and you name it, everything in the smoothie. But then what can happen is the gut bacteria can actually overgrow because it's overfeeding them. So you really have to listen to your body. Maybe a little bit of flax seeds, maybe a little bit of chia seeds, another day, maybe a little bit of greens, maybe a little bit of fiber. You have to find just the right amount. So you're feeding your good bacteria, but not overfeeding them. Or fermented foods, for example, can be such a great way to get good bacteria. But it's also possible to overdo the fermented foods. We want a nice balance and diversity of bacteria, but we don't want too little. But what I find is it's also very often that people have too much good bacteria just by trying to, trying too hard kind of thing. And so I have to end up saying, just back off a little bit. Don't you know, you can have fermented foods, maybe a tablespoon or every other day, but you don't have to have that much. It's amazing. These bacteria don't need that much help to usually to feed them. But what they're doing is these bacteria feed, feed or ferment the fibers, and when they do that, they make nutrients. They help signal to our immune system, to our nervous system. So we depend on these bacteria to signal throughout our body. They're doing a lot more than we realize. They're communicating to our immune system whether to be inflammatory or non inflammatory. They're communicating to our nervous system whether to be balanced or imbalanced. They're communicating with our hormones, even cortisol and other hormones like leptin, which has to do with metabolism and hunger and fullness hormone. Everything is listening and communicating from our gut. And so having a balance is really important. But I know it can also feel overwhelming if you've been struggling with your gut health or, you know, your gut bacteria got out of balance for whatever Reason, they can get out of balance because of stress alone. So there's no judgment. I mean, we all have stress. They can get out of balance from pesticide exposure. They can get out of balance from toxin exposure, from gluten exposure from, you name it, there's antibiotics. There's so many reasons that gut bacteria can be thrown out of balance. And this could be way back from your childhood. So just figure, okay, my gut bacteria got out of balance. I need to help them get back in balance so that they're signaling correctly throughout your body. And I usually, when working with patients, start off with doing a stool panel, because there are stool panels now, not from the regular doctor's office and not from the regular lab, but these are at least not at this point in time. I hope in the future they are available everywhere. I think everyone should have access to these. DNA analysis of your gut bacteria. It's like we all know our, you know, a lot of people know their cholesterol level, but to me, it would be more important to know that your gut health, your bacteria, that would be more helpful to your health to know who's living in your gut than it is to know your cholesterol level. And that's based on all the studies. That's based on all the research I do. And that's based on the cases I work with. When people know their gut bacteria, then they can start being proactive. Then they can go, oh, I need to shift my diet. I need to shift the way I'm eating and the amount of food I'm eating and heal leaky gut so that I can get my gut bacteria working for me instead of against me. That's huge. That is one of the most preventive things you could do for your health. Even osteoporosis is related to, to the gut bacteria balance. So if you think about it, your health now and into the future is affected by who's living in your gut and the extent of leaky gut. Because what they find in the studies is, well, two important things. When the gut bacteria are out of balance, which is, by the way, called dysbiosis. But when the gut bacteria are dysbiotic or out of balance, they can cause leaky gut also. So they just add to the leaky gut and then they make toxins. These imbalanced gut bacteria can make toxins that can get into your bloodstream. So now you have another toxin exposure.

And when you have both those things, when you have imbalanced gut bacteria and leaky gut, there's way more increased Likelihood of ibs, irritable, inflammatory bowel disease, autoimmunity, you name it, down the line of all these different health issues. So to me, then I think of it as, okay, let's just reverse engineer this. Then let's figure out how do we heal the leaky gut, how do we get the gut bacteria back on track again? And what it ultimately comes back to is how do we help you recover from stress and be resilient to stress, because that's possible too. And this way you can, as you heal leaky gut and heal your gut bacteria, you're going to be able to maintain that over time because it's easy to fix it, and then in six months, it's off track again. No, we want to fix it and then maintain it over time. That takes some lifestyle changes. It's not a quick fix. It's going to be some diet changes that I usually recommend. Do a food panel so we know which foods you're currently reacting to. We offer those through my website and my office.

We do a stool panel so we can find out who's living in your gut and are they on track or off track and what do we need to do to get them rebalanced again. We help get your bowels moving. We help heal leaky gut. And I have several options for that. I'm thinking if you, if you want to learn more, definitely go to my blog because you're going to this one blog post, this most recent one, but I have so many blog posts related to this, so you can learn a lot this for free and get started. Also, sign up for my newsletter, which you can do from the blog post and I'll put a link here for you too, because then you're gonna get emails from me with more information and this way you can keep learning. And I have a couple things. I've created a leaky gut course, so I'm gonna be making that available so that people can do it anytime. In fact, if you contact my office, just let us know and we can help you do the leaky gut course on your own. This allows you to check for food sensitivities and get training from me on how to heal leaky gut and how to balance your gut bacteria so you can get started right away. Or of course, you can always contact my office and we can meet one on one. So I can help guide you. Because the thing I find is that it can be overwhelming when you, especially if you've been struggling with your digestion for a long time, know it. I've been there. I had a lot of digestion. This is how I learned all this is because I had digestive issues I had to fix for myself. And so I understand how overwhelming it can be, especially when you're reading a million different things on the Internet and you're like, where should I start? What should I do? And if you're having reactions sometimes when your body is in this imbalanced state, then you start reacting to even things that might be healthy. Reacting to nutrients, reacting to herbs, reacting to foods. And so it helps to have someone guide you to just say, okay, how do we get to your safest foods? And with the most gentle products to help you start healing your intestinal cells and start rebalancing your gut bacteria first? I think of it like weeding a garden, you know, like, because there's an ecosystem in our gut, right? Same as an ecosystem in your yard, where you have different plants and soil and everything in the ecosystem in your yard. And so if you think about it like, we have maybe there's like a. It's like a garden that's overgrown, oftentimes in the gut, and we need to just do some weeding first. We don't necessarily have to wipe out the whole garden. We don't have to rototill it and start from nothing. That's actually. You might think that that's. You know, sometimes you feel like, I wish I could just wipe this late clean and start over. But actually that doesn't actually work that well with the digestion. And then other times there's theories where people just flood the digestion, which with hundreds of thousands of bacteria, or even a fecal transplant. Now, fecal transplants have been researched, and sometimes they really help people. It's basically taking another person's microbiome and instilling it into your digestive tract. It's called a fecal transplant. And those in the United States are available especially for C. Diff cases of C. Diff, which is a bacteria that's difficult to get rid of. Although I help people get rid of C. Diff all the time, so I don't find it that difficult. But from a medical perspective, they've used fecal transplants to help people get rid of C. Diff. Anyway, so that's this theory of, let's flood the garden with a whole bunch of new bacteria, right? So, like, if you were gonna throw a bunch of seeds on your garden, you're like, let me just put a whole bunch of seeds on the garden and see if they all grow. But that may or may not really be the best strategy either, because now you just have more of an overgrown back garden, right? You just have more plants growing in the garden. And so what I find is the best strategy is instead to think of it like weeding the garden. We want to go in and take out the plants that are not as healthy. Let's take out the ones that are considered weeds or overgrowing bacteria or the plants that you don't want in the garden, and then really support the plants you do want. Let's feed the roses and prune and, you know, like, really help out the good bacteria to thrive. And to do that in a garden, you have to have healthy soil. The equivalent to that in your gut would be healthy intestinal cells. So we need to heal the leaky gut and make these intestinal cells really happy and healthy. Not only that, but intestinal cells need to have, like, a mucus layer and little proteins that kind of stick out from the intestinal cells. These help the gut bacteria be able to thrive. So we need a very healthy soil basically in your gut for your bacteria to survive. And so again, I think of this analogy of the garden where we can. We have to go in and just nourish the garden and get out the overgrowing plants and support the ones we do want. And it's the same thing in your gut. We need to just help the good bacteria and help get rid of the guys we don't need. And so there's actually products that help us do that. We can use herbs. There's either single herbs or herbal combinations like berberine and oregano and garlic. And we use all different kinds of herbs, depending on the person that have been shown to effectively weed the garden, get rid of the overgrowing bacteria. And we also can use probiotics. But you see, the term probiotic tends to be used to refer to lactobacillus and bifidobacteria. And the thing is, yes, lactobacillus and bifidobacteria are important. And yes, probiotics can make a huge difference. I see it every day where just adding lactobacillus and bifido probiotic makes a huge difference for people because it's just adding in some healthy bacteria, it's kind of fertilizing the garden. But if someone has a lot of imbalance in the garden, we also use different bacteria, like a bacillus form of bacteria, a classic formula called megaspore, for example.

We can use to, I call it direct traffic. It's actually been shown in the research that these bacteria called bacillus, they can tell the good guys to stay and the bad guys to go. So they can be little traffic directors in your gut, you know, kind of like weed in the garden for you. And the key is that whenever you're going to use herbs or bacillus or any probiotics to help with the ecosystem in your gut, you want to go slowly. That's my main caution I would give is to go slowly. It's tempting to go faster. Believe me, I get it. When you've not been feeling well and you just want to fix this, it's tempting to go faster, it's tempting to take higher doses and try to push yourself. But I want to guard against that because this is not the kind of thing that usually responds well to quick changes. It's. It can when you sometimes, if there's certain bacteria, when they die, they let out toxins, they can cause more inflammation or flares of symptoms. When here you are trying to clear out your garden and you're ending up with a big flare. So if you know that you tend toward allergic reactions, or if you feel worse with anything you're doing for your gut, that means you got to back off and start more slowly again. And so I usually encourage people to start slowly from the beginning. Like we start with every other day dosage, smallest possible dose only as you feel better, we can gradually increase the dose. My rule is always, if you feel worse, to stop and back off. Because it's telling us that your body just needs us to go slowly. We need to gradually shift the ecosystem. Quick movements and quick changes is going to be more of a stress. We know that and we learn that about our bodies until so many ways that quick change is more of a stress, Better to go slow and gradual. And so we make slow and gradual changes to the gut bacteria, and we make slow and gradual improvements in the health of the cells and the gut lining. And that's when I see patients do the best patients who've struggled with all different health issues from maybe recurrent bladder infections and had to be on antibiotics for years. And so then the gut bacteria got out of balance and autoimmunity develop. So we have to gradually start to address the overgrowing bacteria, put in the good bacteria, fend off a bladder infection, which can be done using herbs and nutrients as well, without antibiotics, so that we're not harming our gut bacteria anymore. And then we start healing the leaky gut. And over time, not only does the gut Health improve, but the autoimmunity goes away. And I've just seen it over and over. So that's how I can know that it's possible and share it with you, so that you can feel that hopefulness that there's actually something you can do.

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Many cases of, and research shows many cases of anxiety and depression and insomnia, which are normally we think of as all in our head, but actually these neurological conditions in our head is actually related to our gut. And so as we heal the digestion, mood stabilizes, sleep improves, energy gets better, skin is better, you know, because again, now you guys understand this gut brain axis that the gut is talking again, not just to the brain. It really should be called maybe like gut brain, immune hormone access.

If we want to be really more detailed in it. But that's kind of a long name. Basically it's to emphasize that the gut is interconnected with and the microbiome is interconnected with everywhere else in your body. What are the best tests for gut health? Okay, I see that question.

So.

The best tests.

I would do first, a food sensitivity panel. Because the food sensitivity panel tells you the foods you're reacting to. So which food your immune system is trying to protect you from. And therefore the foods that are causing a lot of inflammation in your gut and the rest of your body. But also food sensitivity panel will be able to show us indications of leaky gut. So we're going to get a sense of how severe is your leaky gut. Is it mild, moderate, or severe? And this way you have a starting place for motivating you to work on healing leaky Gut. And then I would also. If you get a lot of bloating or burping or a lot of pressure and you guys can see my belly here, but the upper digestion, like right under your ribs, right under your diaphragm. If you feel a lot of bloating after you eat and a lot of burping. We need to do a SIBO test, which is a breath test, where you can do these tests all at home, by the way. You don't have to go into a doctor's office. They can be done.

Most of these would be out of pocket. The food panel is out of pocket. I have one in particular I love, by the way. There's a lot of food sensitivity tests out there. They're not all as good or not at all equal. So you really want to choose a test that's going to give you most accurate results that you can work with. And if you're interested, just contact my office because we have. There's a couple labs that I trust for doing food sensitivity panels and for SIBO testing. For breath testing. You can also contact my office. I can help you with that. It's a breath test. You consume some sugar, basically a solution, sugar solution, and then you breathe in a tube every 20 minutes for a couple hours. And they measure the gases produced by the bacteria. And so we can confirm whether there's bacteria producing hydrogen and methane gases from your gut. And when we confirm that, then we know, yep, there's bacteria overgrowing in there. Let's start working on them. And I address sibo all the time super successfully using herbal and probiotic. Basically not the standard probiotic. I see another question here. Which is the best probiotic for SIBO and for overgrowing bacteria? I start with a product called Megaspore, which you can get from my office or, you know, contact through my website. You'll be able to find out about Megaspore. Megaspore is a bacillus bacteria and it has a combination of them. In Megaspore. It's also considered a spore forming bacteria, but essentially it's the traffic director. That's the one based on the research shows that it can direct traffic, which is what we need. If it's sibo, where there's bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine, we need to direct the bacteria to your large intestine and we need to say, tell the overgrowing guys to leave you alone and we need to tell the good guys to stay. So Megaspor can be very helpful for sibo. Along with herbs like oregano, garlic and so on. I would do the herbs based on your case, but there's a particular formula I find very effective called Bioseedin, which you can find also through Dr. Donnie Storr. And we use a protocol of Biosedin and Megaspore. There's other products as well. If some of you have been learning about SIBO and studying sibo, you'll know that there's many other considerations, like we need to keep the bowels moving. We need to keep your food digested. So I recommend digestive enzymes to help make sure your food's getting digested. I recommend that definitely for sibo, definitely for leaky gut, definitely for imbalanced gut bacteria. Because if you think about it, right now, your system's been stressed, so you're likely not digesting your food well. Your pancreas is probably not working optimally, and those undigested foods are just triggering in more inflammation and overgrowing gut bacteria. So having undigested food is not helping at all. We need to help get your food digested. And so that can start with helping you have nice, small, smaller meals so there's less to digest at one period of time. We also want to make sure you're chewing well. You're less stressed when you're eating. So you're sitting down with your plate and your fork and you're taking a bite and you're chewing it well. This helps get your food digested better, making sure you're taking deep breaths between your bites of food so that you're calming your vagal nerve and you're getting the right signals to digest your food, so you can be doing all of that. But I also find that it's important to use some pancreatic enzymes, digestive enzymes, at least for a period of time. I don't always jump to using hydrochloric acid. It is an option for some people if we find that the person has low hydrochloric acid. But most everybody has low pancreatic enzymes and they are not harmful, whereas hydrochloric acid can cause burning if you don't need it. So I start with pancreatic enzymes so that we're helping to digest the food. This way you're more likely to get your nutrients and you're less likely to have a food reaction or overgrowing bacteria take advantage of the undigested food. So digestive enzymes are important. And then for, like, if the gut bacteria are out of balanced, lower down in the digestion, again, we can use herbs in single herbs or in combination of herbs specific to that. Like, sometimes there's overgrowing yeast and we may need to use a different formula to address yeast. And there's so many things. I mean, oregano and garlic, for example, can have been shown to address both overgrowing bacteria and overgrowing yeast. So sometimes we can use the same herbs for different purposes. But again, we have, maybe you're allergic to garlic, we can't use garlic. In your case, we need to use something different. Or maybe you're, you know, so it really has to be individualized. I find maybe your body's so sensitive we need to start with single ingredients. Maybe we can only use oregano, or maybe we need to use a liquid versus capsules. So there's so much individualization that happens.

Maybe some cases we have to use a different herb, like the ayurvedic herb neem or black cumin seed, you know, so there's just know there's options. So if you're overwhelmed, it may just be a matter of having to figure out what's right for your body. And a lot of it still, even though a lot of these herbs work on a lot of overgrowing bacteria, I still find that doing a stool test, like I mentioned, is helpful to begin with because then you know what you're dealing with, you know where you're starting from. So the stool test I recommend, the one that I'm using recently, is called a GI map from Diagnostic Solutions, which is not available. A lot of these tests are not available, by the way, in New York State. New York State regulates testing and they don't approve. A lot of times different testing that's not in the standard of care. So if you're in New York, you're going to want to work with a practitioner who also practices in another state, like.

I practice in Connecticut and Arizona. So this way you can get access to these tests. But the Diagnostic Solutions GI map test is considered the best for clinical evaluation of your gut bacteria based on the DNA. So we don't just want a culture. Like if you go to the regular doctor, gastroenterologist or internist, and they do a stool test From Quest or LabCorp, they can test for a few specific bacteria that they can look for C. Diff, they can look for salmonella. And some of these, they usually look for the bacteria that tend to cause diarrhea and major issues. You know, those are the ones they're looking for because they're trying to help keep you out of the emergency room, right and keep you feeling well. So they're going to test for the really bad guys, but many times it's not one of those. You mean you can do that test, but if it comes back negative, say it comes back negative? No, you don't have any really bad guys in there, but you still have bloating or loose stool or other health issues going on in your body. And you're like, I want to know what's going on with my gut bacteria because I know how important they are to my health. You're going to want to do a DNA analysis. Yes. There are other companies like you Biome and there's companies where you can do a consumer analysis of your bacteria and those can give you some sense of it for $100 or $200. But if you really, I would say if you want to really be getting, being strategic and effective with your health, I would do the clinical version of the DNA panel which is a GI map. The company.

That makes Megaspore has also come out with a stool panel which is also one to consider. But the idea is one of these, you know, GI MAP or the, or the Microbiome labs stool analysis so we can see who's living in there and then we can find, we know where we're starting from. And we can then use herbs and different products to help get those gut bacteria back on track again. But keep in mind that it's not just about pouring in a bunch of bacteria. Yes, sometimes we'll use, I have a probiotic support product that has 50 billion of bacteria which can be, has helped people so much. I mean especially if say you're a person where you're like, well, it's not bothering me too much. Maybe your stool test comes back pretty okay, we just need a maintenance or maybe you just had to be on antibiotics. Then you might use a 50 billion of lactobifido to stabilize your gut. And those have made huge differences for people in terms of weight, in terms of mood, in terms of overall health. So sometimes starting with a really good quality probiotic is a good thing. But I would again good quality means I would want to do dairy free. Especially if you are sensitive to dairy products, you need to get a dairy free product. If you tend toward histamine reactions, which histamine would be like allergic reactions, you're going to want to stay away from certain bacteria that trigger histamine like Lactobacillus acidophilus and Casey can trigger histamine. So then you feel worse from taking a probiotic. So in your case, or if you have, you know, you have histamine issues, you know you have leaky gut, you know you have, you've now just recovered from an imbalance of gut bacteria. You're going to want to start with a very.

Hypoallergenic probiotic. And I use either Megaspore or in some cases a product called Gut Pro. Gut Pro has lacto and bifido, but without the histamine triggering bacteria. We have that at Dr. Donnie's store. Gut Pro and people who've had trouble with every other kind of robotic have done well with Gut Pro because you can start with tiny doses and it's hypoallergenic and it's super high quality. You have to keep that one in the refrigerator. There are formulas that are also high quality that don't have to be refrigerated, which can be great when you're traveling or you just don't. You want to, you know you're gonna forget if you put it in the fridge. There's Orthomolecular makes a probiotic called Orthobiotic, which is a really high quality lacto bifido product that is, you know, you doesn't have to be refrigerated and has made huge differences for people. Again, visit Dr. Donnie's store and you're going to find these. You're going to be able to read about them. So we sometimes use those as like maintenance or if, you know, you just want a probiotic to.

Just keep your. Because the probiotics can help with your immune system, they can help with preventing health issues. So it's good to have a probiotic that you use on a consistent basis. There's also a probiotic in my foundation packets. So I have these daily foundation packets that have a multi vitamin D, magnesium and a probiotic. So it's all in a packet that you take morning and night. And those are kind of easy way so you don't have to have a bunch of different bottles for all your important nutrients. So those are great for maintenance and for travel. But if you've really been struggling and you know we need to work first on getting your gut bacteria back on track, then we might not actually start with a standard probiotic. We might start with Megaspore and some other. Sometimes we need to use Saccharomyces boulardii. Sometimes we need to use just bifidobacteria. Sometimes we need to use a probiotic that's more women's health focused. If there's been fertility or Vaginal infections. So we might need to use some different products or probiotics to help get you back to stable. And then we use the, you know, something like Gut Pro on orthobiotic and probiotic support. Those are options for maintenance, if that makes sense. So I think of it as, let's first work getting your garden cleared out, the ecosystem set, and then let's use a maintenance product that works for you to maintain that. And if you're someone who you're like, okay, I think I don't really need to do reset of my ecosystem. I think I'm pretty good. Then you could just go straight to the maintenance version of a probiotic. So I would look for either the product from my Nature Empowered line called Probiotic Support or megas or excuse me, orthobiotic or.

Gut Pro. If your Gut Pro is especially for those of you who have sensitivities and histamine reactions, if that makes sense. Okay, so we've covered a lot. Let me see. I think there was another question.

Do you recommend everyone with SIBO uses motility agents after treatment to help with the mmc?

So this is great. She's asking about the case of sibo. As I mentioned, SIBO is bacterial overgrowth of the small intestine. And there's something called the migrating motor complex. Migrating motor complex or otherwise known as the MMC is, you know, when normally when we think of movement through our digestion, we think of the big movement, the bowel movement, but there's also these minor movements that are happening and that's the migrating motor complex. It's kind of like a very fine tuned movement through the intestines. And what can, what they found is sometimes when people have bacterial overgrowth, it may be partially due to their migrating motor complex not working well. Right. We talked about how we want things moving through effectively and so sometimes we can use or we may need to add a product to help things move. And I find it's interesting to realize that one of the main things that helps the migrating motor complex is 5HTP. 5HTP is a precursor to serotonin and serotonin is a neurotransmitter. So we usually think of serotonin in the brain, but actually 80% of serotonin is made in the gut. So isn't that interesting that the thing that helps our gut move is 5 HTP, which is precursor to serotonin, which is a neurotransmitter. Right. So that's neurotransmitter, serotonin is likely involved in this signaling the movement in our gut. Another herb that's helpful for migrating motor complex is ginger. So if some of you like to eat ginger or drink ginger tea or you can get supplements with ginger, it's been shown to help. So sometimes we're already helping the migrating motor complex by, because I'm usually helping people address their serotonin at the same time. And we're helping to, you know, we might be using ginger and other herbs by the way, like chamomile, fennel, these herbs which you can get in a tea form or capsule or liquid. These herbs are very, they've been known for centuries to help with the gut. Now we know that ginger, fennel, chamomile, not only are just generally helpful for the gut, but they actually help things move. They help move the gas, they help move the contents of our intestines. So they can help with bloating and they can help a lot with sibo. So sometimes you don't have to go crazy adding a million products because sometimes you're already doing some things that help with migrating motor complex even without purposely paying attention to it. But yes, if you are finding that you're struggling with getting sibo to resolve, sometimes it's helpful to think through, hey, what have we not done? What are we in this whole digestive process process? What have we not addressed? Do we need to pay more attention to managing cortisol? Do we need to pay more attention to getting the food digested? Do we need to pay more attention to getting the food moving through the digestion? By the way, the other thing that helps with migrating motor complex and a lot of other digestive issues is some period of time of not eating overnight, Usually referred to as intermittent fasting, which is when you stop eating in the evening. Maybe you stop eating at 9pm and if you don't eat again until 9am That's a 12 hour fast. And having a time period like that where you're not eating, usually you'd be sleeping or, you know, doing other activities before bed. And when you first wake up, having that kind of 12 hour fast helps the digestion, helps the migrating motor complex to actually move things through. It starts to turn on those signals of the migrating motor complex. So it's interesting to think that, you know, kind of notice if you're a person who's been eating late at night or maybe you're, when you wake up in the middle of night, you're eating something or you're, you're basically your fast has been shorter Maybe you've only had eight hours of not eating. That may be partly why your digestion is overwhelmed. So that's another important thing to consider when you're working on healing your gut is can you give your gut a break? You know, now we could talk another day more about fasting and intermittent fasting. I'd be happy to talk about that because I'm sure you guys have a lot of questions about that, too. Yeast overgrowth with severe thrush, coughing in my throat and sore throat. Okay, so she's asking about Candida. Yes. So we've been. I'm mostly talking about bacteria overgrowth, but Candida can overgrow. And when they overgrow, they can cause a lot of bloating, they can cause thrush, which is when your tongue turns white and it can cause a lot of inflammation in the esophagus. So it just, to me, that's like a, again, a different version of the ecosystem or the garden being overwhelmed and confused. So we have to take steps to help get those yeast to back off and leave you alone. But the thing about yeast is, or candida is to think about why they are there in the first place. Candida love when you're stressed. Candida love when there's sugar around. They feed off of sugar, and they love when there's not enough good bacteria to fend them off. So we just need to change all that. We need to help manage your stress. We need to help drop the inflammation in your body, heal the leaky gut. We need to help get the sugar out of your diet and get your protein and healthy fats into your diet. And we need to help your immune system and your probiotics, your good bacteria, to protect you. And so is the process.

Managing Candida is difficult, but it's not impossible. I've helped many people out of that spot where we can, yes, work ways. There's herbs that will kill Candida, but it's not just about killing the candida. We have to change the environment or else the candida will come right back again. They'll be like, oh, okay, they killed me one day. But it's such a happy home. I'm coming right back again. We have to make it not a happy home. Now it's okay to have a little bit of Candida around. That's normal. But if they start to overgrow, it's just because it was a happy home for them. And we need to change your body and your ecosystem so that it's not a happy home for overgrowing. Yeast or bacteria or viruses like HPV virus, for example, will do the same thing. It thrives when it's an environment that is perfect for them to thrive. And we just need to change the environment in your body. She's saying yes. Bad headaches, migraines, dizziness, eye pain, pressure, nausea, anxiety. So you start to get a whole long list of symptoms. Right, because you're just your body. I think of it like your body is just trying to tell you that it's overwhelmed and it's inflamed and it's got yeast and bacteria and all of these gut brain signals going crazy all day long. No wonder you feel awful. But we can break those. We just, you know, try not to be overwhelmed by all the symptoms. Sometimes we have to do things to help you with the symptoms, help calm the anxiety, calm the nausea, decrease the headaches, work on those symptoms while we work on healing your body.

Yes. Okay, so she's saying she had vaginal bacteria infections. So here's the thing is, I often find that when a woman has bacteria or Candida vaginal infections most often, and same with hpv, they most often have imbalanced gut bacteria and leaky gut, because if you think about it, the vagina and intestines are right next to each other, and they're going to be affected by each other, and the bacteria are going to be communicating with each other. So, of course, you know, the thing that's going to help get rid of the vaginal infections is to heal the gut. And so we have to address the vaginal infection. There's many ways I help with that, too. We can break the vicious cycle of the vaginal infections. And the way to do that is also to heal the gut, because as long as the gut is imbalanced, you're going to be susceptible to infections, bladder infections, vaginal infections, and sometimes for other people, it's sinus infections. It could be infection anywhere in your body, could be hpv. So the infection is just telling you that your gut needs attention is the way I look at it. So we help manage the infection while we heal your gut. And as your gut heals, then the infection doesn't happen anymore and you're free to go live your life.

Let me see. I think there's one more question. I had no idea. Hormones have a lot to do with this. Yeah, hormones too. That's why I think it should really probably be called the gut brain immune hormone axis, because it's all of it in communication together. And so.

Thyroid can get involved. Like she's saying, she says she's 61 and her thyroid has an issue and she's been constipated and has reflux. Right. So it's like you can see when you start to understand how these things are interrelated. You can see, of course, of course thyroid gets involved. Of course Hashimoto's, which is autoimmunity toward the thyroid gets involved when the gut is got an issue there. We know gluten triggers Hashimoto's. We know imbalanced gut bacteria causes Hashimoto's. Hashimoto's damages the thyroid and causes more gut issues. Right? So it becomes a vicious cycle. But instead of being overwhelmed by the vicious cycle, and I recommend to just realize that it's about healing the gut. Because when we heal your gut and we help your body recover from stress, then no longer are you going to be perpetuating this vicious cycle. The vicious cycle will just have to go away because you, you've shifted your whole body. They call it the terrain. Sometimes you'll hear people talk about like teeth, E, R R A I N terrain. We change the terrain, we change the home that you're living in and the bacteria are living in so that it's a happy environment. You're going to grow healthy bacteria, healthy balance of bacteria. You're going to be able to digest your food, you're going to be able to get those nutrients into your cells so that your cells can make energy for you and your nervous system can work well for you and your nervous system, immune system, hormones can work well for you. And that's possible. But a lot of this has to do with helping to heal the gut. And so I'm glad if this has helped some of you to connect some dots you hadn't connected before. And if it helps some of you to just be inspired and hopeful that this is possible to address. And if I can help more, please reach out again. For more information, check out my blog post, check out the podcast, because I have more interviews on this topic. Check out my book. There's several books actually. There's the Stress Remedy book which is the most comprehensive that's going to cover all of this. And then there's a Stress Warrior book too. And the Stress Remedy program is a three week program where we work to heal leaky gut, get your blood sugar, balance your sleep, you know, so that you can really start to reverse these vicious cycles and start to heal leaky gut so that you can be on this path to a healthier gut, which means a healthier you. Great to see you guys all today. Thanks for joining me and I look forward to talking to you soon.

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