The Gut Biome and Good Vaginal Health: What's the Connection?

Hi, I'm Dr. Donnie Wilson, and welcome to How Humans Heal. Today, I'm going to be talking about the gut vagina connection. That's right, there's an interconnection between the gut health and vaginal health. And as a naturopathic doctor and midwife specializing in women's health, as well as a naturopathic doctor specializing in gut health, I've been observing this relationship between the gut and the vagina for many years. I've been in practice almost 23 years. And I would see patients and I would be assessing their gut health and at the same time helping them a lot of times with vaginal or female health issues. And I would observe that there would be issues on both, both areas. And as I helped them to heal the digestion, then we would see a lot of progress in terms of vaginal health and even women's reproductive health and in terms of HPV and risk of abnormal cells. So I've been observing this along the way, and yet there really was not much research that existed on this topic until recently. More and more, even since 2019, 2020, there's studies starting to come out that are demonstrating this relationship and interconnection between the gut and the vagina. And so I want to bring special attention to it and really help you to understand why there's an interrelationship and how understanding this connection can help you to heal. Because a lot of times, if you're having, let's say, female reproductive issues or vaginal health issues, you would be going to see a gynecologist, but they don't deal with the digestion, or if you're having digestion issues, you might be seeing a gastroenterologist, and they don't deal with the vaginal area. So you're, when you're seeing different specialists, they might not be understanding that interconnection between those two areas of your body and what to do about it. The other thing is that the way to address it is really not with medications. The way to heal and optimize the gut vaginal connection is through diet and herbs and natural substances that I'm going to be mentioning in this episode today. So it makes sense that it would be from a naturopathic perspective. Or sometimes you, if you see a what's now referred to as a functional practitioner, either a functional or integrative gynecologist or functional integrative gastroenterologist, they might be more likely to understand this connection and be able to help you with it. And so just in terms of if you're wondering, why haven't I heard about this, why hasn't my doctor mentioned this? It's because it's not part of standard medical training. It's really going to be something that requires that a practitioner is looking at you as a whole person and looking at the research, really recent research, to be able to understand this connection and being willing and, and able to use approaches to help you heal that are outside of the standard pharmaceutical approaches.

So I want to go into detail about understanding your digestion, understanding the vaginal area, or what's sometimes referred to as the cervical vaginal area because it's where the cervix and the vagina are located and understanding how they are related to each other. There's multiple ways and understanding then what you can do about it. First I want to mention what are some of the health issues that you, you know, if you're listening in, you're like, do I have a health issue that might be related to this? So you understand if it's important to you, right? One of the key health issues that I see related to this gut vaginal connection is the predominance of hpv. So testing positive for hpv. Usually women are tested for HPV with a annual pap smear. And, and there's really, there's over 200 types of HPV of which I believe it's about 40 of them that are, could potentially be increasing risk of cancer, specifically cervical cancer, uh, also vaginal cancer, anal cancer and oral cancer, as well as for men, anal, penile and oral cancer. So these HPV types have been associated with cancer risk, including 99% of cervical cancer is caused by strains of HPV. Now, HPV is the most common sexually transmitted disease in virus. And so most all of us are exposed to this virus. And the majority of people's body will clear the virus, meaning it will go to negative within a couple years of it first becoming positive. So we know that the human body can fend off HPV and it doesn't always cause cancer. But for a certain percentage of women, it they are susceptible to HPV causing cancer, whether or abnormal cells on the cervix or lower vagina and so on. And so the question becomes, why are those women susceptible? Why is this HPV not being cleared by their bodies? What's making them vulnerable to this virus? Why is it sticking around and why is it able to cause cancer? And there actually studies are starting to help us understand that. I've been helping women with HPV for over 23 years. So it's is something I've been working with clinically and observing and researching for all of this time. And so I've already been making these connections and I'm so excited to be able to share it with everyone because I believe that by understanding these connections and addressing it, we are going to be able to reduce the rates of cervical cancer. Right now, cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women. And by understanding this, but vaginal connection, as well as other connections that I'll be going into more detail about in future episodes, we're going to be able to make worldwide changes and decrease the rates of cancer for women. And that is what really motivates me. So this HPV and risk of cancer is associated with the gut vaginal biome. That's huge. This makes it super important to understand and address effectively. Also, fertility is associated. So I've been helping women with fertility all these years and I saw that as I helped women to understand.

Leaky gut. Imbalanced gut bacteria heal leaky gut, avoid food sensitivities, including gluten. As we heal the gut, their fertility improves and now the ovaries start ovulating and they get pregnant way faster, way easier. This is also why I believe that women who follow my HPV protocol have increased fertility rates as well. Because I'm in my protocol, I'm addressing this gut vaginal biome and connection. Also other health issues, including pcos, irregular menstrual cycles, dysmenorrhea, endometriosis, also risk of vaginal infection. So if you're, if you've had recurrent vaginal yeast or bv, which is overgrowth of bacteria vaginally. So if you've had recurrent vaginal infections of other kinds, including herpes and chlamydia and other kinds of sexually transmitted diseases. Also if you've had recurrent urinary tract infections, bladder infections, that's also related to this gut vaginal connection. And I wouldn't be surprised if many other women's health issues are related. Also, we know that there's connection between the gut biome and other hormonal issues in our bodies. Autoimmunity, inflammation, neurological conditions, mood related issues. So if you are experiencing health issues anywhere in your body, really, then it would be important to look at your gut health and especially if you're experiencing even, even PMS and menstrual cramps, I would be wanting to pay attention to your gut health and that then can influence and help with the any discomfort you're experiencing. Related to your menstrual cycle. Even with perimenopause. When I help women going through peri and postmenopausal symptoms, I'm always going to be paying attention to her gut health, her biome, because. And her estrogen levels vaginally, which also affects the vaginal biome in order to help with various symptoms. So to me, this is really important for all of women's health. And so that's why I really wanted to highlight it in this episode. So what happens in the digestion? I mean, we kind of have a sense like, okay, we eat, we digest our food, we get our nutrients from our food. Any food that we don't absorb goes into forming the stool, which goes out in a bowel movement. That's kind of like the real basics. But sometimes we're like, eating and we're racing through our day and we're not really thinking about how our. What's really going on in our digestion and what should it be doing. In fact, when we're very stressed, it actually turns off our digestion. And we, when we're, when we're under a lot of stress, we don't make as many digestive enzymes. So we don't digest our food as well. We don't absorb our nutrients as well. We're more likely to develop something called leaky gut, which is when the intestinal cells are not as healthy as they should be. We have. If you think of your digestion as a tube that runs from your mouth to the anus, that tube is lined with cells. That's what makes up the walls of the tube. And the. When you're under stress, your body isn't as able to replace those cells and maintain healthy walls of your intestines from your small intestines and your large intestines. Also, we know that stress exposure, trauma exposure affects the balance of bacteria. And we have bacteria throughout our digestion. I mean, really, we have bacteria throughout our whole bodies, on our skin, in our intestines and vaginally. And even now we're seeing some bacteria that live in the uterus and the ovaries as well. So to understand that, really we exist in an environment with bacteria, but not just bacteria, other microbes. Also, there's normal levels, healthy levels of these microbes living in, in and on us that influence our health. In many ways, those bacteria influence our immune system. First of all, we know that the gut bacteria influence how our immune system's ability to protect us from infections in the gut, but actually infections throughout our whole body the gut biome also affects our ability to maintain a healthy immune balance, meaning if the gut. So when I say gut biome, I'm referring to the general population of bacteria and microbes in biome means sort of like whichever in the gut biome or the vaginal biome, that's this population of bacteria and other microbes. And so they communicate with and influence our healthy immune function. It's been shown that when, when we, when people have imbalance in the bacteria, either too much of certain bacteria, too little of other bacteria, they're more susceptible to all kinds of infections, viruses and so on. They're also more susceptible to autoimmunity, things like celiac disease, Crohn's disease, as well as rheumatoid arthritis. And you name any kind of autoimmunity. Psoriasis is correlated with imbalance of the gut biome. Same with Hashimoto's, which is the thyroid autoimmunity. So if you know you have an autoimmune condition, you right away should be thinking, oh, I need to pay attention to my gut biome and my gut lining, the cells lining the intestinal tract. And we need to pay attention to your stress and trauma exposure. And not just to me. It's not just a matter of trying to ignore the stress or just try not to be stressed, because we are going to have stress as humans. The point is, we need to help your body to recover from stress and trauma, which is absolutely possible. If stress and trauma causes leaky gut and imbalanced gut bacteria, then we can heal the leaky gut and heal the gut biome in order to recover from stress. And so you start to get a sense that, first of all, how important this digestion is and how important the gut biome is and how it's possible to heal it using nutrients, herbs, diet, and natural approaches. So this is absolutely possible. I see it every day, and so it shows me, and I've seen it for myself. It's absolutely possible to address effectively. It's just that a lot of practitioners are not trained how to do it. So you might be searching a long time to find someone like me who has worked on this so much and figured out, here's the way to address it successfully. So that's to give you a sense of the, of the digestion influence on the rest of our body. We also know that our gut lining health, if we have what's called leaky gut, where the intestinal cells are not as healthy as they could be and our food is not getting digested as well as it should. That undigested food leaks through the intestinal lining, and it's triggering an immune response, which is causing inflammation, which causes inflammation anywhere in the body, including vaginally. And so that's an infl. That's a source of inflammation from the gut. Even if you're eating healthy foods, if you're not digesting them well and you have leaky intestinal cells, you could be getting inflammation even from healthy food. Also, the food we eat determines the bacteria living on our gut. So if we're eating too much food and not digesting it well, it ends up overfeeding the bacteria, and then we have too much of certain bacteria or yeast, and then that's causing more inflammation and more disruption. If we're eating too much of a certain food, if we're eating too much sugar, if we're eating too much processed food, that also overfeeds the bacteria and yeast and causes more disruption. We also know that the gut biome and the vaginal biome are affected by several other things, including whether you were born by vaginal birth. Because when a baby is born by vaginal birth, that's how they get the bacteria to seed their digestion and their intestines. So with C section rates that are higher, babies are not getting the same transfer of bacteria to their digestion. So how you were born influences your gut biome. Also your age, your stress exposure, as I talked about, where you live, your occupation, also your diet and what you've been consuming, how well you're digesting your food, also your exposure to antibiotics, right? Because an antibiotic kills bacteria, including it can kill your healthy bacteria. So if you've had to take oral antibiotics, especially the more times you've had to take oral antibiotics or if you've had to use vaginal antibiotics, then it's gonna be more likely it's gonna disrupt your healthy biome, right? Or even if you've had constipation and need to use laxative, Laxatives and other medications, as well as toxins and pesticides. So if you are not eating organic, if you're getting exposed to pesticides, that affects your gut biome, if you're exposed to other chemicals, if you're exposed to even acid blockers that decrease your ability to digest your food. So. And even contraceptives. So even oral contraceptives affect the gut biome, and contraceptives affect the vaginal biome, including if you're using spermicides or have needed to use other chemicals vaginally to address infections. Or for contraception, that's going to affect your vaginal biome. And so some of you, as you're listening, I'm hoping you might be going, oh, my gosh, no wonder I've maybe. No wonder you've had recurrent bv, which is again, overgrowth of bacteria vaginally, if you have been exposed to a lot of stress or you've had to be on a lot of antibiotics or you've had disruption to your gut biome, or if you have leaky gut. And no wonder if you've had HPV hanging around positive and causing abnormal cells, if you've had some of these issues with your gut health. So really helping you to see that connection and to recognize, oh, that's why that's happening, because there is a connection between the bacteria that are in the gut. Most times when we, even when we do a stool test, for example, we're analyzing the gut bacteria in the large intestine, those bacteria can transfer over to the vaginal area. Now, in the studies, what they show is that.

There'S, that there's a high correlation between, like if they, when they study women and they study their gut biome and their vaginal biome, they're seeing a correlation between the bacteria in both places. So that's how they can say, oh, it makes sense. There is a cross.

The bacteria are going both directions and they're showing up in both locations. So that's one way we know that there's a connection of the bacteria just because they're the same bacteria are showing up in both locations. Also, we know that in the vaginal biome, there's a high percentage of certain types, certain bacterial types. So in the intestines, the main bacteria types are the, you have the.

Firmicones and Bacteroides bacteria. In the vaginal area, the main bacteria is Lactobacillus. And Lactobacillus produces lactate, which is a acid. So in the vaginal area, if you test the ph, it's a more of an acidic environment. It's a 3.5 to 4.5 pH. Vaginally, because the predominant bacteria is Lactobacillus and that's, that's considered a healthy ph. Vaginally, when there's a disruption in the vaginal bacteria and biome, that ph sometimes goes higher because there's now not a predominance of Lactobacillus. And when other bacteria become predominant, that's what we often will call bv, or sometimes women will become more susceptible to yeast. Vaginally as well. Right. So it's just understanding here's what a healthy, here's what the healthy biome vaginally looks like is mostly Lactobacillus with a low ph, and here's what a healthy biome looks like in the intestines. There's of course trillions of bacteria and we can, there are tests where we can measure. There's. These are not tests done in the standard doctor's office. These are not tests done in a standard lab. If we want to test these bacteria, we need to go to a specialty lab that does a DNA analysis of the bacteria so they. You can do a single stool sample. A DNA analysis will show you which bacteria are predominant in your intestines. This is a test I order through my office and for my patients all the time. It really helps us to see if there's overgrowing bacteria, undergrowing bacteria, if there's yeast, if there's leaky gut, if there's inflammation, inflammation and inflammatory reactions to gluten. This stool test gives us so much information. So if you're having a lot of digestive issues, let's say bloating, gas, irregular bowel movements, if you know you have autoimmunity, if you know you have hpv, that's not going away, then doing this specialty stool panel can be really helpful so we can see what's out of balance and then I can guide you to address it and get it back on track. There is also DNA analysis for the vaginal biome if necessary. I find a lot of times I'm able to help get the vaginal biome back on track even without having to do that test. So we, we can, if necessary, if there's patients where, because a lot of times when you have a vaginal infection, you might go into the doctor's office and they might run a culture. But it's. The cultures are not the most accurate way and so it can be very confusing and, but a lot of women end up is in us vicious cycle of oh, it's bv and then they treat it with antibiotics and then it becomes yeast and they treat it with an antifungal and it keeps recurring and it's like a never ending torture, you know, to feel like you can't get out of that loop. And what I do is help women to break that cycle. So many cases I can tell you where I help to be able to finally help women to break this, these recurrent BV and yeast patterns and finally get a healthy biome back and Then at this, if they also have hpv, it helps get rid of the hpv because if there's imbalanced bacteria vaginally, it makes you more susceptible to HPV and other viruses too. So the more we balance the vaginal biome, then the HPV goes away because it's not an environment it can survive in anymore. So that's to tell you, yes, some tests are available. Um, I also recommend, I mean, first I recommend doing a leaky gut test. Now, there's a lot of different ways to test for leaky gut, but to me, the most helpful way to test for leaky gut is to do a food sensitivity panel. Because, and not just any food sensitivity panel, there's a lot of them out there and they're not all accurate and they're not all going to give you good information. I don't recommend just spending money. Even if it's less expensive, if you spend less money on a less accurate test, it's still a waste of money. So I would, I always say I'd rather recommend a high quality test that's going to give you accurate information that you can, they can actually apply and actually help you solve your health issues. Then that test is really priceless because it's getting you out of the situation that you're in with your health. So this food sensitivity panel that I've been using for over 15 years is an IGA IGG finger poke blood test to a private lab. I'm one of the only practitioners they work with and they give the most, to me, the most accurate results, showing us which foods, of 96 foods are triggering inflammation in your body. When we do a panel like this, what it's showing us is which foods are leaking through and triggering an inflammatory response. It's not just to blame the food, it's not just to try to restrict your diet. I really prefer not to restrict your diet. But if I see that there's high reactions to certain foods, it tells me that it's leaky. That confirms it. If, if you don't have leaky gut, the food's not going to leak through and you're not going to have inflammation. If you have leaky gut, the foods you eat often leak through, trigger inflammation. They can go anywhere in your body, including the vagina, making you susceptible to vaginal health issues and of nervous system for that matter, that inflammation can go anywhere. Your joints, you name it. So when we do the food sensitivity panel, which you can order right from my website, you can, and you can get the test and Then you can meet with me. Or you could do my leaky gut program, or you could do my HPV online program and I teach you. Here's what the results mean, and here's how to heal leaky gut. I've been helping people heal leaky gut for, for my whole career. So I have tried everything. I know what it's the best results. And so I'm always looking for what's the simplest, most effective protocol. And so I want to get the test results that show me how severe is the leaky gut. It's not about whether you have leaky gut really. It's about how severe is it. If you're reacting to more foods more highly, that means it's more severe leaky gut. And the more severe the leaky gut, the more inflammation, the more risk of imbalanced bacteria, the more risk of immune issues, meaning more susceptibility to infection and autoimmunity. So we need to know if you have leaky gut and how severe it is. We need to know which foods for you to avoid. Because if you avoid those highly reactive foods now, your inflammation starts dropping, your leaky gut can start healing, we can start adding in the digestive enzymes I recommend to digest your food better. The nutrients and herbs that I recommend in my supplements to feed your intestinal cells and decrease the inflammation. Things like glutamine, which is an essentially amino acid in the small intestines. Bgl, which is herbal. Licorice, which is anti inflammatory. Aloe, which is anti inflammatory. So we can start to heal your intestinal cells in the small intestine, in the large intestine, we can be using butyrate, which is the most important short chain fatty acid to feed your large intestinal cells. Because the fact is that the gut biome, the bacteria and other microbes that live in your digestion require a healthy environment. If it's leaky and inflamed, those bacteria can't survive very well. It would be like planting a plant in soil that's not healthy. We need this, the soil and the ground to be healthy in your intestines in order for these, this biome to thrive. So we need to heal the leaky gut, drop the inflammation, heal your large intestinal cells, and then, yes, sometimes we use a probiotic, but it's not to just swallow. A lot of probiotics isn't a solution. A lot of people think, oh well, I'm just going to then take a whole bunch of probiotics or use rectal probiotics, or use Vaginal probiotics. Yes, we do use some probiotics, but that's not the whole solution. We have to be thinking bigger than that because if you're just flooding your system with more bacteria, that doesn't solve the issue, that doesn't solve the leaky gut, that doesn't solve the inflammation, that and they can't even stick and thrive because it's not a healthy environment. Environment. So I want to warn you against just thinking that this is all about just taking more probiotics. Now, probiotics companies might tell you that because they're selling probiotics, but I want you to know that it's a matter of really helping your body to get back to healthy in order for you to be able to maintain healthy bacteria throughout your body. So we need to figure out which foods are inflammatory, start working on healing leaky gut. I'll put links to the resources for you and the products that I mentioned and potentially do a specialty stool panel to see what kind of imbalance exists in your gut biome so that I can guide you. I, if I do see an imbalance in the gut biome, then I use antimicrobial herbs. So herbs that are antimicrobial that can are known in research to kill the overgrowing bacteria, but not kill your healthy bacteria. And we can use not just any probiotics, but we use spore forming bacillus which are known to help be traffic directors. They help take care of overgrowing bacteria while also maintaining your healthy bacteria. Right. Wouldn't that be great if we can kind of, I think of it like weeding the garden. We don't want to just, you know, do a rodentiller and completely wipe out the whole system. We need to help prune the garden and weed the garden and support and fertilize the healthy bacteria. How do we fertilize our healthy bacteria? We need to feed them, but we don't want to overfeed them. So we want to eat healthy vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds. If you can fiber in general, this is how we feed our healthy bacteria. They you, you want to have a large variety, a diversity of bacteria, which means you want to have a diverse diet. If we're eating the same thing all the time, we're going to be feeding those same bacteria that like to eat those foods. But if we can diversify our diet in terms of different vegetables, different fruits, different seeds, different nuts, different sources of fiber, even from carbohydrates, from different grains, from, from brown rice, from potato, you know, Then we're feeding a diverse population of bacteria. It's not about eating a huge amount. Bacteria don't need to be overfed. It's kind of like a goldfish. If you feed it too much, it's not going to be good. We need to just do tiny little bits of this foods to be able to optimize the bacteria and feed them just enough. If you're getting bloating or gas, you know you overfed your bacteria and you need to eat less and make sure you're digesting your food better. Which also means taking time when you're eating, taking deep breaths, chewing well, feeling relaxed, telling your parasympathetic nervous system and your vagus nerve that you want to digest and absorb your nutrients and feed your healthy bacteria in a healthy amount. If we're racing through the day, stressed, we're not, we're not going to get that optimized digestion and optimized feeding of our bacteria. So this is to say you want to assess where you're starting from. I always say you want to know your point A so that you can get to point B. And we're not all starting in the same place. So we need to know how leaky is your leaky gut? Mild, moderate, severe? Is your gut bacteria mildly imbalanced or severely imbalanced? Do you need to follow an antimicrobial protocol first? Then we get to maintenance. As we get things optimized and leaky, gut healing and inflammation dropping, then we can be in a maintenance. How do we maintain over time and prevent leaky gut? It prevent imbalance bacteria and the same thing vaginally as you change your diet. And I this is exactly what I include in my HPV protocol. We do dietary changes based on the food sensitivity panel, based on dropping inflammation, based on dropping sugar. Because not only does sugar drop your immune system, sugar also overfeeds bacteria and yeast. So we need to get the sugar out of your diet, balance your blood sugar levels, make sure you're digesting well and then that already drops inflammation in the vaginal area. Because what research is showing is that risk for HPV and cervical cancer as well as other HPV related cancers is related to the PH of the vaginal area, which is completely related to the bacteria hanging out there. Right. So if there's plenty of Lactobacillus that you have a healthy ph, you're going to be preventing HPV and cervical cancer. Also inflammation. If there's inflammation vaginally, which can be from gut health causing inflammation, vaginally you're at increased risk of HPV and cervical cancer and other forms of HPV cancer. So we need to be, our strategy needs to be for hpv, we need to be thinking how do we drop inflammation vaginally, how do we get the bacteria balanced vaginally? Because then we're going to be preventing the virus. And this goes for same for some of the other conditions I've mentioned. If we want to be preventing BV and yeast or we want to be improving fertility, it's the same, same thing. We need to be dropping inflammation in the pelvic area, vaginal area, we need to be optimizing the bacteria. And yes, we can use. If you have a history of vaginal infections, BV and yeast. My favorite has been to use Boric, something called boric acid, which sounds scary because it has the word acid in there. But remember, the vaginal area is an acidic environment and boric acid is a very benign substance that is really good at killing both overgrowing bacteria and yeast. So instead of having to go back and forth between antibiotics and antifungals, you can use Boric. And it's going to address any kind of overgrowing vaginal biome and boric. Many gynecologists are now becoming aware of using Boric, although they don't always recommend it. So it's important, I think for all women to know about it and know that you can access it even over the counter. So if you have recurrent infections, I would want to guide you through my protocol to help you break that pattern. And we, we are going to address your whole body. But we can also use boric vaginally and we can use lactobacillus vaginally. Because if we use vaginal lactobacillus, we're going to be reestablishing the healthy bacteria vaginally. And so this is really important to know that you can address if any of you been stuck in these patterns and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm not getting answers, what else can I do? I want you to know it's possible to heal this, possible to address it. This is what I do when I work with patients one on one. This is what I do when I work with patients in my programs, whether the HPV program, which is a 12 week online program, or when I work with patients in the Leaky Gut program or the stress Warrior program. This is my passion, is to help you to know how you can by changing your diet, by using herbs, nutrients and the right.

Types of bacteria, not just any probiotic, but it needs to be the right types to help your body get back on track again, then it's possible and you can actually have freedom from these health issues and including from autoimmunity, including from even depression, anxiety, insomnia, these are all and hormone imbalances, irregular menstrual cycles, menstrual PMS and menstrual related pain can all be resolved by addressing it from this perspective. Okay, so I covered a lot. I'm so excited to hear your questions and how what you'd like to learn next. So please reach out to me and let me know. Please also be sure to subscribe and to follow this podcast so you get the next episodes. The next I'm going to be covering even additional connections that you might not have realized are happening in your body and how to address them. You can also subscribe to my newsletter so that you get every week an email from me that has the latest podcasts and blogs and other updates from me about products and other workshops that you can attend. Because to me it's about sharing the information so that you can understand your body so then you can make choices to help yourself heal and to prevent health issues. And I just want you to know that that is possible and I'm here to help guide you. So thanks so much for joining me today and I look forward to connecting with you again very soon.

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