Travel Tips for Leaky Gut and IBS

Hello there, everyone. I'm Dr. Donnie Wilson, and I'm so glad to see you here tonight. And I'm really excited to talk about this blog post about travel tips, what I call travel tips because they're tips to help when you're traveling, what to eat, what to do to stay feeling best when you're traveling. And I hope you guys, if you, if you're able to join in, please put like or put a little comment so I know you're there. And if you're listening now or later, please feel free to also share this information with anyone you know who this might help. So let's dive in. I'm going to be talking about this blog post. Let me put a link for you. Of course, maybe some of you saw it already. Let's see if it'll link it in there for us. Okay, There we go. The.

This is a blog post that I call it IBS and Leaky Gut because for many people it's that they've been maybe diagnosed with IBS or irritable bowel syndrome, or maybe, maybe you just kind of know, maybe sometimes you just know that your digestion is sensitive. You know, maybe you're more likely to get gas or bloating or diarrhea or constipation, especially when traveling. Right. So it's of course, right when we're away from our usual foods and our usual routine that if we have a sensitive digestion, it's most likely to go off track. I'm one of those people, by the way. I definitely have more sensitive digestion.

I would say now it's the easiest it's been in my whole life. You know, starting from a young age, I was. Seems like I was always having to be really careful with my digestion. And I've definitely had.

What would be considered IBS and reflux and digestive issues and definitely leaky gut. And what I share information I have to share with you is really what I learned from helping my body, helping my digestion, healing leaky gut, and helping thousands of patients to do the same over the last 18 years. So I'm really excited to share this information with you guys. And I always love to talk about leaky gut because I think it's such an important topic. Luckily, there's more and more information about leaky gut out there, but it's still, you know, I think, not well enough known in the medical literature. Like in the studies, it's referred to as intestinal permeability. And intestinal permeability actually kind of give you A better sense of what leaky gut is. It's when, you know, if you think about the cells lining the intestine, our intestines are kind of like a tube, really, from our mouth to the end. It's a tube that runs through our body, and the food that we eat has to get digested, and then the nutrients actually have to get through the walls of this tube or hose, if you think of it that way. And it's pretty amazing. I mean, when you think about it, how does our food get into our bodies? So the food has to get digested down tin that it can actually go through the cells and in the water, and some nutrients can go between the cells, but you really want it to. Mostly it has to go through the cells. So these cells have a really important job. And the cells that line our intestines are also very susceptible to all kinds of different stress. So as soon as we're exposed to various stresses. Hi, Beverly, thanks for listening in. I'm glad you're here. As soon as we're exposed to any kind of stresses, then these intestinal cells are not as healthy as they could be. So stress, I mean, even as simple as just life stress, like having deadlines and lots of stuff to get done. Hi, Myrna.

So just life stress can also make it so our intestinal cells are not as healthy as they could be, Let alone stresses that I. You know, other stresses that I would think of, like pesticides on foods and toxins in our environment.

Certain medications, even coffee and alcohol. And certainly. Hi, Kristen. Even if the bacteria living in our intestines. Hi, Myrna. If the bacteria living in our intestines gets out of balance, that also causes these intestinal cells to just not be as healthy as we really need them to be. So if these intestinal cells are not healthy, they can't absorb our nutrients, right? So we become depleted in nutrients. And what does get in is more undigested foods and toxins. And when these undigested foods leak through our int lining, our immune system is right there ready to protect us, right? The immune system really ready to protect us from viruses and abnormal bacteria or parasites, things that shouldn't get through. But when there's leaky gut, then the undigested food leaks through and the immune system tries to protect us from it. And this is where food sensitivities start to develop. So we start to get immune responses to our foods. The common ones would be.

Like anything made from cow milk, gluten. And we also know, by the way, from research that Gluten causes intestinal permeability.

Even if you. If in a person who doesn't have celiac disease, even someone who's just. Just, you know, eating gluten on a daily basis, it's going to increase intestinal permeability, which means that it makes it easier for gluten to get through. And if a person's consuming gluten multiple times a day, every day, it's kind of a matter of time until they're gonna. Their immune system is gonna start to try to protect them from the gluten. So the blame is not so much on gluten. It's just that the body is doing its job, trying to protect you from this, these foreign substances that are coming through the leaky intestinal lining. So to me, the solution is, yes, we're going to want to take away the things that are causing the leaky gut, right? Because if you got a bucket with holes in, doesn't really make sense. Just try to, like, keep plugging the holes. You gotta. You gotta figure out what's causing the holes to begin with. So we're gonna try to, you know, eat organic, so we're staying away from pesticides. We're gonna try to stay away from toxins. We're gonna. If there's an imbalance of bacteria, we gotta get them back to balance. If gluten is causing leaky gut, we got to avoid the gluten. So we got to first remove the things, get them out of your way so that your intestines have a chance to heal. Because this is the cool thing. Our bodies grow new intestinal cells all the time, every day. So we take away the thing that keeps causing holes in the intestinal lining, it's going to get better. Now, it takes some time. It's not overnight. Think of it this way. Our intestines so big, they could fill up a whole tennis court. So it's going to take time to replace all these little cells. So you got to give it some time. But we take away the things that are causing the leaky gut, and then we can add in the things that help the intestinal cells recover.

Like glutamine, for example, is a nutrient that the intestinal cells, they just love glutamine. So, and they get. Our bodies get depleted glutamine when we're stressed. So, of course, we need some glutamine when we've been stressed. We need some glutamine to help these intestinal cells recover. And it also helps to put in some digestive digestive enzymes, because again, if the food is better digested, it's not going to trigger the immune system. It's not going to perpetuate the leaky gut. And you know, to some degree we're going to use some probiotics. We got to make sure it's the right probiotic for you, depending on what's happening with the imbalance of bacteria, we. And if you have a histamine reaction, we're going to need to be really careful. So in this article, I also talk about.

A couple things I wanted to mention. One is the histamine intolerance. I can after I'll post an article about histamine intolerance in case you would like to read more about that. What happens is once leaky gut is happening and the immune system is on guard for you, trying to protect you from whatever's coming through, histamine can also start to get more triggered. And histamine, you know, we think of histamine like with allergies, you know, like sneezing and runny nose. But histamine can also cause hives and other kinds of rashes and headaches. And so if you find that you eat certain foods that are more likely to trigger histamine, then you end up, say, with reflux or a headache or rash, you might be experiencing some histamine triggers. Those foods would be things like, well, classic would be like wine and any alcohol and vinegar. Fermented foods in general can trigger histamine. So can certain fruits, especially citrus fruits and strawberries. Tomatoes also can trigger histamine. Sometimes nuts. For some people, nuts trigger histamine. And there's a few others. So you want to be sure, be careful. Even gluten and dairy can increase histamine triggers. So we're kind of back to that same. Because gluten and dairy are very common food sensitivities. Gluten and dairy also get caught up in the histamine thing. Avoiding gluten and dairy is a good place to start for healing your gut. But if you're getting histamine triggers, you might need to pay attention to these other histamine foods. And you're going to need to look at your probiotic because certain Lactobacillus, especially Lactobacillus casei, for example, can trigger histamine. And so if you're still finding you're getting histamine triggers and you're taking a probiotic that has Lactobacillus casei in it or other types of Lactobacillus, you Might need to actually back off of your probiotic for a little while. Figure out, you need to do a stool test, figure out what's going on with your bacteria in your digestion, get them back on track. And we use different kinds of probiotics. There's probiotics that don't have the lactobil, probiotics that have.

Oh, thank you, Myrna. Yes. Histamine can make you feel itchy. Yes, I hear you. It does. It makes you feel itchy. And everybody's a little unique. It's not the same for everyone. So it's good that you kind of notice, hey, what happens when you get a histamine trigger? So then you know, okay, which food do I need to avoid for some people, by the way, if food has been sitting out or it's a leftover from the day before, sometimes just food that's been around a little too long or like aged meats like salamis and things, or jerky, sometimes that can trigger histamine too. So again, I'll post a link so it has the list of foods in there so you can have it. And really the solution is now you're going to need to be really careful with those food triggers while you work on healing the leaky gut and figuring out which probiotic we can use. I have one in this blog post, in this travel blog post, I mentioned a probiotic called Prescript Assist. That is an example of a probiotic that does not trigger histamine. And there's a few other examples as well, but I wanted to give you one in this article. So the other thing to mention is sibo. I'm not sure how much of how many of you. Well, I know a couple of you who are listening in, know what SIBO is, but others of you may not know, may not have heard of sibo Sivo, which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Basically, we've got these good bacteria living in all over our body, including on in our intestines. Mostly when we think of probiotics, we're really thinking of the bacteria in the large intestine. There are some bacteria that live in the small intestine too. But what can happen with SIBO is basically too much good bacteria. If you can imagine, right here we are trying so hard to have enough good bacteria, but there is such a thing as too much bacteria, too much good bacteria in the small intestine. And what can happen with that situation is the bacteria are basically fermenting or eating up the food that you're eating. And making gases. So it causes you to feel really gassy and bloated, usually up high, kind of higher up in your digestion. And maybe you get even burping because the gas comes up. And so if you're experiencing that and you haven't been checked, I definitely encourage you to get checked for sibo. And it's a breath test, believe it or not. We can measure the gases coming in your breath to tell us if the bacteria are overgrowing. And, you know, if they're overgrowing, it just means, okay, there's probably some leaky gut. Probably the digestion's not been moving smoothly, and the food's probably not been getting digested well, leaving it for these bacteria to enjoy. So they're just having a party. They're loving living in there. So we need to work on changing the environment. We got to get your food better digested. We got to make sure that your bowels are moving regularly. We got it. And we can get rid of some of those overgrowing bacteria using herbs, you know, so the standard approach is using antibiotics, which sometimes is necessary, But I'm usually coming from the perspective of, hey, let's handle this with herbs, because the research has shown that the herbs are effective, and I find clinically that the herbs are effective, too, because the herbs can be. There's several herbs, including oregano and neem and berberine, cinnamon, and others that we choose. Based on your case, even garlic can kill the overgrowing bacteria, and we do a protocol to make sure that it's effective so you can get rid of the overgrowing bacteria, get your leaky gut healing, and get this behind you. I know it can feel like, oh, my gosh, when am I ever gonna just be able to eat and travel without having to worry about my digestion? Right? I mean, believe me, I've been there. I've been there. I was. Is it even worth going on a trip to travel somewhere when I have to make so many modifications and my family members will be like, donni, come on, can't you just eat this with us? And I, you know, like, still, I'm very careful, but I don't have to be as careful as I used to. In fact, I was. So it was a little nervous, but I was very excited to go visit my sister in India because so many people I know, patients I see who travel to India and come back with more digestive issues. And so I was like, okay, I've got to really think this through and make sure that. That I enjoy my trip and not end up not feeling well. So this really inspired and my sister actually helped as I was talking this through with her. She helped to think through what would be my travel tips. And so in the blog post, you'll see those and we're going to talk them through right now. And I also, by the way, made a little graphic with travel tips. So if that's something that you, if you are kind of person where you like to have a little graphic and maybe print it or put it somewhere so you can remind yourself later when you're going on a trip, you can have these travel tips. So I'll give you a link where you can get that. But for now, let's talk them through. So.

My sister, this is her idea, said make it work with the word travel so people can remember, right? So I thought that was really fun and cute. So here we go. So t is to take food with you. So whenever I'm traveling, I definitely bring. Oh my gosh, probably like basically go on the airplane. I have a whole carry on that's just extra food.

Plus, let alone all the food I put in my other suitcase. And so, you know, the trick is finding foods that you can travel with that you know are still fitting with the diet that we've just been talking about. Needing to, you know, avoid certain foods, histamine triggers and needing also say if you have sibo, you need to, you need to be even more careful with sugars with. I guess in general, you want to be careful with sugars and starches. So being able to choose foods where you can still get your protein, still get your. Your healthy fats, still get some, you know, healthy vegetables and some fruits, but do that without, you know, hitting. Actually, it was yesterday I was talking to a patient and she said, how am I going to do this? How do I handle the histamine and the sibo, and how do I handle everything at once? And she travels along. So we came up with this idea. I have to still get it in. I gotta get it written down. But we came up with this idea of thinking of circles. Like, say if you first start with your inner circle, your tightest circle is your safest foods, right? So if you were to write it down on a piece of paper, make a circle and put, here's my safest foods. The things that, you know you can eat that aren't going to make you feel worse. And that could be based on the histamine triggers and the food sensitivities and the need to avoid sugar and whatever Else you need to avoid, put, okay, here's my safest foods. And then you can figure out based on that, if you need to travel or you want to travel, what foods can you bring with you that fit with your safest food? It's like, my goal is always, you want to have some safe foods always available, because we don't want you not being able to eat and losing too much weight. So we want to make sure you have some safe foods. Now, for me, that includes a protein shake. I always bring some protein powder. You may have to work a little bit to find what protein powder works for you. Is that a pea protein? Is that a collagen protein? Is that a different kind of protein? But whatever it is, bring a protein powder with you that you could literally mix with water and drink, and at least you've got some protein. If you are able to get a little fancy, maybe you're able to add something to it and whether that's some fruit or some nut butter or something to make it a little more than just the protein.

So that would be like the simplest, safest part of the circle. Then say the next layer of the circle might be. These are foods that you can have. Maybe you can eat a little bit each day, but, you know, you can't eat a lot, or you might trigger histamine. So maybe you can have, you know, say you can have a little bit of berries, or maybe you can have a little bit. Maybe you can have a couple bites of apple, but you just can't have a whole apple, for example. So think of foods that you could have a little bit of, but it's. You can't have too much, or else, you know, you're going to feel worse in some way. So put those in the next circle, and then the next one might be here. Foods that, you know, you could only eat, not every day. Maybe you can only eat them a couple times a week. So maybe you can have. There might be certain foods you could have. Maybe there's certain nuts. Like you can have cashews one day, you can have almonds the next day, you can have pecans the next day. So put those in that third circle. So they're. They're foods that you can choose, but they're not your safest foods. You need to be careful with them and kind of rotate them. And then you might have an more outer circle. That's foods that, you know, maybe you can have once every two weeks. You know, sometimes when we're dealing with more severe leaky gut and sibo we. That's actually a thing where you're like, oh, I'm so excited. I can have, you know, let's say it's salmon. I can have salmon once every two weeks. For a while, that was me. I couldn't have salmon every day or even every week. I could only have salmon like once every two weeks. Okay, this is my exciting day. So that goes in this kind of outer part of the circle, and then you might have really far out on the circle. These are the things that you're just really trying to avoid because you know you're going to feel worse. You know, that might be, you know, things like sugar or certain vegetables that are higher. Like, say, for example, with fodmaps. I didn't mention fodmaps yet. Fodmaps is such a funny word, isn't it? Fodmaps. Fodmaps is basically fructose and sugars and starches. It's another way to say fructose and other sugars and starches that can potentially overfeed the bacteria and create gas and bloating. And for. The research really shows that a lot of people who've been diagnosed with IBS have a decreased ability to handle fructose and other starches and sugars. But think of it as, it's how much you can handle at any point in time. So I have fructose intolerance. I know for sure. So some of it can be genetics, and some of it, when you have leaky gut, it increases your fructose intolerance. So if you have leaky gut, you're less able to handle Fructose and other FODMAPs in your diet. So you're going to put FODMAPs, you know, kind of further out in your circles because you're going to. It's going to be maybe even have a little bit, like when I said you can have a little bit of apple, maybe a little bit of onion without triggering the whole fructose intolerance. But there might be certain FODMAP foods that you're not even going to go near because you know for you that it's going to just be too much. It's going to put you over the top if you eat those foods. So anyway, that's just concept I came up with yesterday that I wanted to share with you. But coming back to the travel tips, we can use this idea in terms of deciding for the tea, which foods you're going to bring with you. Bring a lot from your safest inner circle. And maybe the next circle in the blog post, share a lot of ideas of products that I bring with me and links where you can find them. The second thing that are has to do with rehydrate. It's amazing how, how important it is to your digestive tract to be hydrated, right? Like sometimes we think of hydration related to say, preventing headaches and just staying hydrated in general. But actually your digestion needs you to be hydrated. It's how our digestion works if you think about it. Hi Michelle, I'm glad you're here.

When even just keeping the bowels moving, we know that constipation is way more likely if we're not hydrated. So that alone. But at the same time, if you tend, even tend more toward diarrhea, hydration is important, right? Hi Theresa. So hydration and of course when we're traveling, you're way more likely to become dehydrated, especially on an airplane. Oh my gosh, it's all the air that's blowing and the dry air. I think we get dehydrated, like I think for myself at least twice as fast when I'm on an airplane than when I'm not. So I always buy a bottle of water before I get on the plane. Of course you can't really bring it with you because you're going to get through security, but you get a bottle of water. They usually serve water on the plane too. And I bring with me some electrolytes so I can put the electrolytes in the water. You can get either powdered electrolytes or liquid electrolytes. And I think I have some links in the blog post. I can make sure they're there for you. And maybe you have a favorite you could share too. Put the electrolytes in the water so that you can get not only the water, but the electrolytes. And that really helped, especially when I was on such a long flight, like a 16 hour flight and with the snowstorm, I had even a longer flight to come home. Staying hydrated was so, so important. And so I want to remind you of that. That's the R for the travel tips. A is awareness. And this really, you know, comes back to some of what we've been talking about. I would say it's about awareness about your body. You know, we're all individuals, even any of these tips, you really need to individualize it for you.

So you, you know, you'll start to learn how much of a fodmap can you have before you start to feel your digestive symptoms. Awareness about the histamine triggers. We've been talking about awareness just for, you know, what's going on around you and what your travel plans are going to be. So just really, you know, reminding you to that awareness about your body and about your body's needs and your body's limitations is an important travel tip. You know, sometimes we kind of expect too much of ourselves. I think we think, oh, I should be able to do this, or we get hard on ourselves. And it's really not about that. It's more, how could you be aware of yourself and take care of yourself and also be aware of, you know, smart choices with foods? Oh, my gosh, I've been very, very sick sometimes traveling when I think I wasn't being as careful as I could have been eating, say, foods that should have been refrigerated and weren't. And then I ended up very sick. So using, you know, using that awareness in your environment to help you make choices about foods, too. So the V in travel has to do with your vitamins and other supplements to bring with you. So I know sometimes it's like, oh, my gosh, I only have so much room in my suitcase. But to me, oh my gosh.

It'S prime real estate in my suitcase. To make sure that there's room for my food and my supplements. That might mean I have to leave something else at home or I might have to bring extra luggage to make sure I have those with me. Because it's so important, you know, it's not worth it to me to not feel well. So I'm going to make sure that I have digestive enzymes with me and take those digestive enzymes again. The digestive enzymes help make sure your food is digested. It's not going to prevent your body from doing its work. It's just going to help your body out. Especially if you might be eating foods that you're not sure, you know, 100%. Is this food gluten free? Is it dairy free? Might I react to it better to take some. I would even just take some pancreatic enzymes, make sure it gets digested. That's going to prevent a lot of reactions. I would also bring, you know, some, you know, if you can, if you're working on healing leaky gut, bring your leaky gut healing products with you and bring your probiotics. You know, once you kind of know, here's the right probiotic for me, that's not going to trigger histamine. That's going to Help me manage any imbalance of bacteria. You can bring a probiotic that doesn't have to be refrigerated. That's one option, especially when you're traveling and you don't have access to a refrigerator to keep it fresh. I would say a lot of even refrigerated probiotics are okay out of the refrigerator for a couple weeks. So what I usually will say is just pack. Like if you're going for a few days or a week, just pack that much. And if it's out of the fridge for a few days, those pills are going to be okay. Leave the rest of your bottle in the fridge at home, safe in the refrigerator for when you get back. Okay. So then you also want to bring your other supplements that just help. I mean, I bring. I take iodine to counteract the radiation on the airplane. I bring immune support to prevent me from catching a virus or any other kind of infection. I'm on the plane because that's so common as well. I bring glutathione and vitamin C because these counteract toxins in the airplane and wherever I'm going, of course, I bring my adrenal support and I absolutely have used melatonin to help me with the jet lag. So, you know, make sure you use these things to support your body while you're traveling. So this way you. It doesn't have to throw you off your healing schedule. Okay. So e in travel is for expectations. This is key because, you know, some of it's about mindset. You know, what's your mindset while you're traveling? Again, not wanting to be hard on yourself, maybe, you know, you might have to get a little more comfortable with talking with the people you're traveling with about your dietary needs or your digestive issues. Sometimes I think we get hesitant to share about that, but I encourage you to try it out a little bit. You might be surprised. You might be surprised that the other people you're traveling with also need to be making these kind of decisions and choices and you can together. I was really surprised when I went even on a safari in Sri Lanka out in the middle of nowhere, that they asked us, what are your dietary restrictions? And I said, gluten was my dietary restriction. And they made sure that all the food they served me was gluten free. So it's even on a safari in Sri Lanka. That can happen. It can happen on an airplane. You can tell them you need to be gluten free or any other kind of dietary restriction. So, you know, get A little more comfortable, I would say, with talking about this. I think that if we all agree to talk about it a little more, then everybody's going to become a little more comfortable with it. And also just to, in terms of expectations, you know, just, you know, kind of using that, not only about communicating people you're traveling with, but, you know, setting your expectations in terms of what you accomplish on your trip, making sure you build in time to find foods that work for you and for recovery time and so on. And then the L in travel is for locating food or using local foods. You know, you can either stop in a supermarket, you could even get a place to stay that has a kitchen so you can cook for yourself. You can get a refrigerator so you can save food that you ate for a meal the next day. You can, you know, so many things you can actually do to be cooking locally and using local foods. I was so, you know, interested and excited to get to try foods in India and Sri Lanka. And of course a lot of times traditional foods are already gluten free and dairy free. You know, local fish and rice and vegetables, even some fruits that I don't get to eat much at home, I was able to eat. Now I had to keep in mind the fructose intolerance. I didn't eat a whole lot of food at once, but I could try a little passion fruit or I could try a little star fruit or a little, you know, other fruits. I would just have a small amount at a time and then be aware and notice how does my digestion respond. Okay, so there you got the travel tips and again I'm gonna, I put these all on a really pretty PDF for you. So I'm going to post a link where you can download that. And for those of you who maybe you're just meeting me for the first time, I'm not sure if you already received my email newsletters, but I welcome you to sign up for them as well. I'll put a link where you can sign up to get my newsletter, my weekly newsletter, and also you'll get a free adrenal recovery guide. Any of you who haven't received that yet, please feel free to use that link and you can get it. I think it may be about 20 pages long. And I guide you through adrenals and stress, how stress affects our adrenals and how to help them recover. Now, a key point of the adrenals that I like to emphasize is that when we're under stress, of course our adrenals are trying to help us keep up, but they can't always help us keep up. Sometimes they get depleted or overwhelmed, and when that happens, it increases the likelihood of leaky gut and ibs and SIBO and all these things we're talking about. So if you're dealing with digestive issues, you need to kind of reverse engineer it and work backwards and think, if I have all these digestive issues, it's quite likely that I may have some issues happening with my adrenal glands. I pay attention to those adrenals because you wouldn't necessarily think that your gut has anything to do with your adrenals, but it does, telling you it does. So if you've got digestive issues, you got to be paying attention to adrenals as well. So this guidebook will really help you and you'll start to really learn how to not only recover, but to then become more and more resilient so you can go and enjoy travel or whatever else you want to be able to do day to day and not have to be constantly, you know, dealing with upset stomach and not feeling well. That's what I want for you. That's what my hope is, to really use what I've learned from myself and from patients to help all of you to just be healthier and have higher quality life and live healthier for longer, basically. So, anyway, so I'm so glad you're here and I really appreciate it. Please, you know, share this information if you think it would be helpful to someone you know. And be sure to also turn on notifications if you haven't already, so that when I do a Facebook live again, I try to do them at least every week or maybe every other week. I'll try to give you a heads up. It's usually on Thursday evening like this, but turn on the notifications and you'll know when I'm. When I'm live. And again, I'm so happy you're here. Any other questions? You guys post. If you think of something, I'll watch for them and I'll reply for you. Okay, very good. Well, I hope to hear about your successful travel trips and happy digestion.

So I look forward to hearing from you guys soon. All right, have a good night.