Dr. Mark Hyman explains how digestive problems affect your whole body and what you can actually do about it. He covers diet, probiotics, and lifestyle changes that fix your gut health from the inside out.
Hi, this is Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome back to my vlog. Is something wrong with your inner tube? And that's the inner tube of life, your digestive system. It's actually likely that you suffer from, or maybe you've suffered from in the past, some type of digestive disorder. Maybe it's irritable bowel syndrome. bloating, constipation, diarrhea, maybe heartburn or reflux, gas, and other things too gross to mention in a blog or in print. Now you're not alone. Over 100 million Americans have digestive problems. The number 3 and 7 top selling drugs in America are for digestive problems costing us billions and billions of dollars. There are more than over 200 over-the-counter remedies for digestive disorders, many of which most unfortunately create additional digestive problems. And visits for intestinal disorders are among the most common to primary care doctors. And that's not even the worst news. Most of us do not recognize or know, including most of your doctors, that digestive problems wreak havoc over your entire body, leading to allergies, arthritis, autoimmune disorders, rashes, acne, chronic fatigue, mood disorders, autism, dementia, cancer and more. So having a healthy gut means more to you than not just being annoyed by a little bloating or heartburn. It is central to your entire health. It is connected to everything that happens in your body. That's why I almost always start helping people with chronic health issues by fixing their gut. In a moment I'll tell you how to find out if you have a gut problem, although many of you won't need me to tell you your gut will speak for itself. and how to create a healthy digestive system. First, let me explain why your gut is so important. The health of your gut determines what nutrients are absorbed and what toxins, allergens and microbes are kept out. You see, it's supposed to keep the good stuff in and the bad stuff out. And therefore, it is directly linked to the health of your total organism. See, intestinal health can be defined as the optimal digestion, absorption, and assimilation of food. But that's a big job and it depends on many, many other factors. For example, the bugs in your gut are like a rainforest, a diverse and independent ecosystem. They must be in balance for you to be healthy. The 500 species and three pounds of bacteria in your gut are a huge chemical factory that helps you digest your food, produce vitamins, helps regulate your hormones, helps excrete toxins, and produces healing compounds that keep your gut and your body healthy. Too many of the wrong ones like parasites or yeast or bad bacteria or not enough of the good ones like lactobacillus and bifidobacterium can lead to serious damage to your health. Your entire immune system and your body is protected from the toxic environment in the gut by only a one cell thick layer that covers a surface area the size of a tennis court that's one cell away from a sewer. If that barrier is damaged, you're going to get sick and you're going to create an overactive immune system producing inflammation throughout the body. And then there's your second brain, your gut nervous system. Your gut, in fact, contains more neurotransmitters than your brain. It's highly wired to the brain and messages travel back and forth. And when those messages are altered for any reason in any direction from the brain to the gut or the gut to the brain, your health will suffer. Then of course your gut has to get rid of all the toxins produced as a byproduct of your metabolism that your liver dumps in through the bile. And if things get backed up, you'll be toxic. That means if you're constipated, it's not good for you. In the midst of all that, your gut must break down all the food you eat into its individual components, separate out all the vitamins and minerals, and shuttle everything across that one cell thick layer into your bloodstream for you to stay healthy. Even in a perfect world, our gut has a hard time keeping things balanced. But in our world, There are so many things that knock our digestive system off balance. What are they? Well, first it's our low fiber, high sugar, processed food, nutrient poor, high calorie diet that makes all the wrong bacteria and yeast grow in the gut leading to a damaged ecosystem. Also overuse of medications that damages the gut or block normal digestive function, things like anti-inflammatories, antibiotics, acid blocking drugs, steroids all interfere with the gut. Also, you may have chronic low-grade overgrowth of different bacteria or low-grade infections and these gut imbalances and overgrowth of bacteria in the small intestine or yeast overgrowth or parasites or even more serious gut infections can have serious consequences on your health. Also, toxins like mercury and mold toxins damage the gut. Lack of adequate digestive enzyme function which can come from acid blocking medication or things like zinc deficiency which is very common in our society. and stress. Stress can alter your gut nervous system causing a leaky gut and changing the normal bacteria in the gut. So it's so important to understand that so many diseases that seem to be totally unrelated to the gut like eczema or psoriasis or arthritis are actually caused by gut problems and by focusing on the gut you can get better. One of my patients who suffered from eczema, a weepy red oozing scaly itchy rash over her entire body is a perfect example of someone who saw a doctor after doctor after doctor, and who put on salves and lotions and potions on her skin, and the doctors gave her steroids and antibiotics and never addressed the underlying cause or problem. This 57-year-old woman had severe, unrelenting eczema for eight years. She had a high sugar diet and had a history of frequent vaginal yeast infections. When I saw her, I checked her gut, and I found that she had a leaky gut. The barrier that was supposed to keep the outside world out and let only the good things in wasn't working and she developed 24 reactions or food sensitivities. She also had no good healthy bacteria in her stool and an overgrowth of yeast from years of taking antibiotics. She also had very high blood antibodies against yeast. So I just helped her gut out by improving her food and had her stop eating the foods that she reacted to and told her to stop feeding the yeast by cutting out sugar and refined carbohydrates which they thrive on. and killing the yeast in her gut with antifungals and medications and herbs. Then I put back in healthy bacteria and healing gut nutrients and her eczema disappeared for the first time in eight years and stayed away. So how do you keep your gut healthy? It's very simple. Eat real, whole, unprocessed foods with plenty of fiber vegetables, beans, nuts, seeds, whole grains. Eat real food, not too much, mostly plants, as Michael Pollan, the author of the Omnivore's Dilemma, so simply put it. If you think you have food sensitivities, then try an elimination diet. Cut out the main allergens or sensitivity type foods: gluten, dairy, yeast, corn, soy, and eggs for one week or maybe two weeks and see how your gut feels and what happens to all your other symptoms. Also, you may need to treat infections or overgrowth of bugs like parasites or small bowel bacteria or yeast. Also, you can take digestive enzymes with your food that help break down your food. and you can try probiotics, the opposite of antibiotics. They're healthy bacteria for your gut ecosystem. Also you can take extra omega-3 fat which helps cool inflammation in the gut and use other gut healing nutrients like glutamine and zinc. This subject is so important and so ignored by medicine that I've given you a list of scientific references that underscore the importance of this topic.
So if you want to achieve optimal health or what I call ultra wellness, you have to get your gut working properly.
