Episode 29: Break The Rules and Heal Your Gut, with Dr. Lauryn Lax

Hey beautiful, it's Dr. Tabatha. I want to share something with you that I believe God is doing right now in women's health. We're in the middle of a massive movement and most people don't even know it. Every single day, 6,000 women in the U.S. enter menopause. That's over 2 million women a year, and by 2030, that's more than 1.2 billion women worldwide. So here's the thing, most of these women feel exhausted, bloated, anxious, disconnected from themselves, and the medical system is Doctors are handing out prescriptions and quick fixes, and no one is helping women heal from the root cause of their issues. That's where Fast to Faith coaches come in. As a certified coach, you'll be equipped to help midlife women balance their hormones, heal their gut, regain their energy, and reconnect their faith, the foundation that so many of us have been missing. And from a business standpoint, woo, this is one of the most lucrative untapped opportunities in the entire health coaching world. The global health coaching industry is expected to reach over $33 billion by 2023, and midlife women are the fastest-growing, highest-spending demographic in that space. Most importantly, these women stay with their coaches. They invest deeply because they are desperate for lasting transformation— body, mind, and spirit. So if you've been feeling that pull and that whisper that you're meant to do more, This is it. Now is the time to rise, to serve, and build a purpose-driven business that not only changes other women's lives but transforms your own in the process. Because when you help one woman heal, you help her family, her marriage, her faith, and her future. That's the ripple effect that we're creating with Fast to Faith. So join me, click the link to come watch this webinar. It might be the one thing that really moves the needle for you in this next— Season. I can't wait to see you in there. Hi, I'm Dr. Tabatha, the Functional Gynecologist. I'm a board-certified OB-GYN and functional medicine physician. I've embraced the world of functional medicine and wellness through my own personal health journey, and I'm super excited to share my wisdom and unique perspective as it pertains to women's health. So if you're struggling with hormone imbalance, weight gain, period issues, anxiety, insomnia, you name it, Then you've come to the right place. I want to be your functional gynecologist. So welcome. Hi friends. Today we are talking to Dr. Lauren Lacks. She has a very inspiring personal story of her own health journey from anorexia to functional medicine practitioner, helping other women reclaim their health. You're really going to enjoy listening to her story. I totally resonated with it, and I just wanted to give her a big hug after it. But she's also going to talk about gut health. So this is a super important topic because it really does affect all aspects. Aspects of your health, your other systems. The gut microbiome is running the show. They're the back millions of bacteria that live in our gut system, and they help make our feel-good neurotransmitters. They help us absorb minerals and vitamins. They actually help make certain vitamins, and they're super important to be in balance. If they're not in balance There's overgrowth of bad bacteria, opportunistic bacteria, then we can develop inflammation. And, and if we have the propensity, we can have autoimmune disease develop and many other things. So it's really important to understand that the gut is running the show and what we are feeding those bacteria are super important to the health of what's going on in our gut. So it's all interconnected. She's going to give you a lot of information, and if you want to work with her to reset your gut, she has some awesome programs for that. But first of all, let me sing her praises. So she's a doctor of occupational therapy and a functional medicine practitioner and nutritionist. Dr. Lauren's work is inspired by her 20 years of personal and clinical experience recovering from her own gut health and digestive disorders, her autoimmune conditions, mold illness, Lyme disease, hormone and thyroid imbalances, all stemming from her eating disorder. Today she helps so many others reclaim their health in the same way. So Dr. Lauren's personal story has been featured on ABC Good Morning America, CBS, U.S. Today, and Women's Health. She's the author of 8 books. She lives in Austin, Texas, where she operates her virtual functional medicine practice. You can find out more about her and work with her at www.drlauryn.com. It's L-A-U-R-Y-N. So stay tuned and listen to this episode. You're going to get a lot of good information about how to have a happy, healthy gut and affect your own health. And be inspired to either find your purpose or get focused and re-engaged in what you're meant to do on this earth. Because it's so important for us to not just be in survival mode all of the time, but to take a step back and think, why am I here? Why am I, you know, doing what I'm doing every day? And see, do you need to tweak? Do you need to refocus your vision? Have You've been walking around seeing double or having blurry vision. Like, get your purpose into focus. And I love to lean on my higher power for that. I love to get back my connection with God and really ask why. So think about your own story, your own life story, your own purpose. today as you're listening to this episode and get inspired. Get inspired to be your best self because that's what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to lift each other up and just keep working on it, right? This is a journey and we don't know what the destination is, so that's what makes it so fun. So here we go. Well, welcome, Dr. Lauren. Thanks for being on the Functional Gynecologist Podcast.

I'm excited to be here. Thanks so much for having me back, Barbara.

Yes, I loved being on your podcast, Break the Rules. It's so good. Everybody should check that out when they have time. But today I wanted to talk about gut health, and since that is your deal, I thought this would be perfect, right?

Yeah, like I said, I love the gut, and it has been by, I guess, personal experience, really, that I've Realize how much of a gateway to our health it is.

Yeah. I saw your story on CBS Evening News about your struggle with anorexia, and it was so touching. I think everybody needs to watch it. It's on your website, right?

Right.

But can you kind of just tell us, like, how did you find yourself on this path and what did you learn from it?

Yeah, thanks so much, and definitely experience again being the best teacher, but I had, I would say, struggled with gut issues and health issues for a lot of my life. So at age 9 is when I started really wrestling with eating disorders and anorexia specifically.

Hmm.

But like prior to that, there was a lot of things setting the stage for that. So grew up in a very upper-middle-class kind of home. Our lifestyle and just a lot of pressures to perform at a young age. I have 2 loving parents, but just like in the society that I lived in, I was so much just Type A, kind of A student and all that, and all the sports and dance and everything. So just these messages early on started downloading that I needed to be enough or that I wasn't enough.

Yeah.

Always. Yeah, come age 9, 10, I remember being on the playground one day and a little girl saying, oh my gosh, you guys, I weighed myself last night and I'm 10 pounds— or I'm 70 pounds. I'm so fat. And I was about 10 pounds heavier than her, and she then looked at each of us and said, well, if I'm not fat, what do you guys weigh? And this was the queen bee, the most popular girl in school, so definitely Wanted to fit in with her in the circle. And so when the circle got to me, I gulped and I lied and just said, I don't know, I haven't weighed myself. Like, I never weighed myself. I just knew what I weighed from my pediatrician. But that was the first time in my life that I just remember that being on the radar, like what my body looked like on the outside and just really what it felt like too. I had struggled with bloating and gut issues as a young child. I was a C-section baby, antibiotic baby, processed foods kid, you know, the whole rundown of why that would have been. So I remember going home that day from school, sitting in the pantry, and learning a new language I had never learned before, knew before, which was fat grams and calories, and turning over a Doritos snack pack. And just that day, my whole life changed, and decided to go on a diet so I could lose 10 pounds to be as pretty and popular as the queen bee.

Hmm.

So Eric Arthur would like me, and all the little girls would want to be me. And so that journey just really started very innocently, but very quickly took hold of my mind and my life and became a very defining illness that I struggled with from the time I was 9 till about 23, which is when I almost lost my life. And I had been in and out of treatment centers for most of those years throughout college and high school. And just spent over 4 years accumulated in a lot of treatment centers where the standard treatment is Pop-Tarts, pizza, and Prozac, and very much a symptom-chasing model. And just constantly at war with both the eating disorder and like, what did healthy really mean? And what did it mean to feel good? Because I didn't feel good on either spectrum. So with the eating disorder, I felt horribly mentally, yes, but obviously physically as well, just not nourishing your body and subsisting off of 500 calories or less a day.

Totally.

And then in treatment, I oftentimes would experience horrible gut symptoms just based on the standard American diet that we were refed, and just often told to pipe down, stop complaining about my tummy hurting, or just to take a Lactaid pill. MiraLAX to just kind of make my symptoms lessen. So at age 23, I was living in Nashville at the time. I was in grad school studying to be an occupational therapist, and I remember stepping on the scale one morning to go to my first workout of the day before going there and seeing a number I had not seen since I was 10 years old. And at that time, it was just my— everything flashed right back to that, and For whatever reason, it scared me for the first time. I had never really been scared up until that point. I was working out upwards of 8 hours a day and subsisting off very little, like turkey patties and steamed vegetables and Crystal Light, and just feeling horrible physically. I remember driving to the YMCA that morning and praying on my way there, God, help me make a change. To me, a change meant maybe 30 minutes less on my StairMaster. Or a tablespoon of almond butter, more.

Wow.

And when I got out of the car in that parking lot, I had not one but 8 individuals walk up to me who were other gym-goers about my parents' age, because that's who works out at that time, 5 AM in the morning. And they just were really acquaintances. They were fellow gym-goers I had seen every day that past year. They knew nothing about my story, my history, but they spoke up and just said, Lauren, We don't know what's going on, but we've been worried about you. We've been watching you over the past year just wither away. Really, that past month, my health had really started to plummet. I had been having really bad chest pains, horrible stress fractures from running nonstop on my feet, and just really in decline. They said, well, we want to help. We don't know what's going on, but we want to help. I just remember something in me just was It was so resistant, but at the same time submissive and just relieved. And like, man, maybe this is the answer to my prayer that I've been praying. So I, against kind of my will, got into the car and decided to go to the ER. They had called Vanderbilt Hospital and said, we're on our way there. And when I got there, no bullet wound had happened, no car wreck. The physician was just like, why is she here? And they were like, we want to help her.

Hmm.

I mean, within the next 24 hours, I was in the ICU with a heart rate in the 20s and my body just giving out. And that's where I was just game set at match. This is bigger than me, and it's something I haven't been able to conquer on my own. And I really began this path and journey of surrender and just wanting to come into new freedom and new light. And it was not rainbows and butterflies, like, 24 hours later. It was a very long journey out of that. The next 4 weeks in the hospital on tube feedings and IVs and harponomers. And then I had one choice, or 2 choices, but really one choice. I could either go to treatment or go to treatment. And so I could stay in the hospital or I could go to a treatment center, which I had been to many. They all looked like Vera Bradley catalogs on the outside, and I knew what happened behind closed doors.

Yeah.

But I went to Miami and Stayed the longest I'd ever stayed in treatment just because my body was there, like it needed that. And so I was there a year, kind of really mentally and spiritually working out of my eating disorder. Treatment was very much the same from a feeding process, refeeding process, and there's nothing magical there. But I made up in my mind that when I got out, life was going to be 100% different on the other side. And I had no idea what that meant. But I knew I didn't want the eating disorder and I didn't want to go back through treatment. I have a book where I talk about all the stories of just treatment, like Mr. Bagel experience, having 2 bagels in one day, to the day that— I mean, every Saturday having to have 2 large slices of pepperoni pizza and milkshake, and I'm lactose intolerant, and just feeling at war still in my body. And yet, there was something in my heart and head driving me.

Yeah.

And so I, when I got out of treatment, began to really tiptoe into a new life and to really seek earnestly to learn more about holistic healing and how to help what I now call post-recovery recovery, what happens after years of eating disorders or just chronic dieting, what that can do to your body and Mm-hmm. Which I did learn much later. But in the years after, I developed several autoimmune diseases, things like Hashimoto's and lupus and colitis that came to surface, and mold illness and Lyme. And just really, my body had been broken for all those years. Osteoporosis as a young child and loss of my period, etc. The list really goes on of the aftermath, and yet that's really what spearheaded my drive to learn more about healing. And so that's kind of how I've stumbled into functional medicine. Very tiptoedly as well, started initially getting into CrossFit, which was very empowering for my body confidence versus just being in a gym looking at myself in a mirror all day and being around people. It was very helpful. And then learning just more about balance and seeing people integrate a balanced, primal type of diet into their lives, not fearing fat, not fearing carbs, eating protein. I just had every single food fear under the sun prior. So I began to slowly learn and adopt healthier habits in that way, and then found, again, functional medicine just by The nature of where my body was, where my gut health was, like IBS, SIBO, Candida, like, again, list goes on. And I'm a big dive right in kind of girl. I'm always going to be a learner, very growth mindset. So I figured instead of just like being a patient, I wanted to like be a practicing clinician. And so really dove into learning and expanding my scope of practice within my occupational therapy background. Then went on to pursue my clinical nutrition and functional medicine master's, and just learning from great mentors as well. So that kind of like leads me to today, where like a lot of my life has been so defined by unwellness and illness. And a big part of my message is like just being able to become the best version of yourself beyond illness, and that you're not defined by your illness or your diagnosis. Um, which I so often was in the medical model of things.

Right, right. You are a rock star. Oh my goodness. Oh yeah, and it takes so much strength to share all of that, right? And to feel good enough that you can go out and help other people. I mean, that's just an amazing story, and I'm sure so many people are resonating with it just listening to it. You don't have to have an eating disorder to have struggles and be able to overcome them and find your purpose out of that, you know, and go on to live your best life. So I— bravo to you for like doing that and sharing your story and living it every day, like paying it forward. That's amazing. Oh my gosh, so amazing. So you hit on so many things. Like, I was flashing back to my childhood, and I think, you know, the '80s and the '90s were rough for girls and for, you know, body image and diet this, diet that, and the low-carb, low-fat foods. You know, like, we just did ourselves such a disservice, and you got caught up in that, and it's just heartbreaking to see, like, you were put in treatments and they were giving you Pop-Tarts. Like, that just blows my mind.

It kind of blew mine too, but— Wow.

So what was their treatment focus? Was it just trying to get you to physically eat more food?

Yeah, it was very much like, again, like being a patient. I'm a number on a scale and I'm a diagnosis. So if a girl came in with anorexia, which is what I did, I mean, a lot of my treatment was focused on weight restoration and kind of just feeling like I was— I felt like a prisoner.

Yeah.

But like very much like on a point and behavior system. So if I didn't finish a meal, then I couldn't see my parents or I couldn't make a phone call or I couldn't—

Oh my gosh.

Read a magazine, etc. Just like—

Wow. So more negative reinforcement.

Definitely.

Now you work with people and you have programs. Like, what do people with food issues need? What did you need as that young girl to actually heal?

Yeah, I mean, I think there's multiple layers to it. I think number one is just like realizing that you are good enough. And I think that like is something that has got to be felt like in your heart. really an experience. It's not just telling yourself, I am beautiful in the mirror. Like, I just had so much rah-rah pep talk and my, like, positive affirmation that went in one ear, out the other. I think really a big piece of feeling like enough was really getting clear on your purpose. And so that's a big part of my work with clients early on is just like getting a really clear vision of What it is you want, and then really leaning into what it is you're here on this earth to do. And so, I mean, a lot of my purpose really circled back to after all the years of the struggle is knowing that I really wanted to help others. But I think everyone has skills, passions, dreams for a reason that are really unique to them, and that can get really lost in that eating disorder.

Mm-hmm.

And so until something else is greater, than that, then you're gonna continue to try to find like your greatness or your purpose in that habit too. That is seemingly like still like a carrot over a horse's nose. You're constantly chasing it.

Yeah.

And constantly in pursuit. And then I think health-wise, just really what I needed was really great role models of what being healthy, like it's not a bad thing to wanna look good or feel good. And I oftentimes will tell my clients that, and I think in the diet culture, we're told it's vain if we like actually do want to look good or feel good.

Right.

Or that looking good and feel good is really only achieved through like dieting or whatever the fad is at the moment, where there can be this really beautiful balance of like looking good, feeling good, and like having peace with food at the same time. And so role models are really helpful for me in that, which I try to like set that Up now and like teach girls and women. I do work with some guys though too that have funky relationships with food and their body, what a healthy relationship with food is. And then just really nourishing, like using food as medicine versus like punishment or on that behavior system. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Talk about how food and gut health are so essential for our mood and our mental health and how Most likely, you started out innocently, like you said, but once you start abandoning your microbiome and not nourishing them, they'll turn on you and make your symptoms worse and progress your disease.

Right. It goes hand in hand. And which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Right, right.

Because, like I said, I was a kid of the processed food generation and had already had gut issues, so I think it really just Teed me up, and I think it tees a lot of people up to not struggle with eating disorders, but anxiety, or just have that mental health battle of not even feeling good enough because of the brain-gut connection and just how much of our brain health and how we think is impacted by what's going on in the gut, the inflammation in the gut, like directly connected. Your vagus nerve, the nerve that governs your frontal lobe, your coordinated thinking, as well as like your digestion itself, is directly connected like a walkie-talkie telephone line. And so whatever's happening in your gut is speaking or sending inflammation or signals to your brain. It could also be positive signals, and vice versa. What's happening in your brain from a stress level perspective, or like me interpreting my society, what I needed to fit in, constantly feeling like I was running to do that, also sends signals to the gut. And so yeah, I think that in and of itself There's a huge connection. You also have more neurotransmitters in your gut, which are brain cells, than any— in brain cells, rather— than any other part of your peripheral nervous system. So outside of your brain, that's impacted there. And then the majority of your serotonin, your dopamine, as well, produced in your gut, which feel good brain chemicals. So if you have a balanced, healthy gut biome, healthy bacterial balance, not dysbiotic, which would be like too much of one species and strains or not enough of another, then gut dysbiosis can cause gut stress as well. And so it's all interconnected, for sure.

It is, for sure. And so you went on to write the 28-Day Gut Kickstart book, right? Just based off the fact that You need to get your gut healthy and healed and having the right guys in there living because they're running the show, right? What are some basic recommendations that you would make to anybody? Because I can see this being an issue not just with restrictive eating or, you know, binge eating, but also just, like you said, eating the standard American diet, eating the SAD diet. having issues with not being able to lose weight. Like, I think it goes both ways.

Or eating, eating a very popular fad diet that you're told is healthy in general, but it may not be healthy for your body right now.

Yes.

And the goal always being like balanced protein, fat, fiber. We're omnivores as humans. And so coming to that, like getting your nutrients, even if you are opting for a plant-based style diet, still optimizing your aminos and proteins, but your gut microbiome can shift in as little as 3 days, like positively or negatively. So there's a lot of power there of like, no matter how far you're back, there's like recovery that can be really had on a, on a very practical daily level. And so it— I do have 5 gut love habits that I talked about in my book. One of them being Like just breathing, like the matter of oxygen. I oftentimes have an exercise that I'll do with my clients. I would encourage the listeners to do this, is time yourself just at rest, how many breaths you're taking in a minute, and to see where you are, sympathetic or parasympathetic state. Parasympathetic would be rest and digest, like I'm in a happy, healthy, peaceful environment, and your gut is more set up for success. And sympathetic would be like I'm running from a bear. And I have clients that have breath rates of upwards of 40 before. And I blame this. That's hyperventilating. Just like, just like that daily, like we can send signals all day long. And so ideally you want a breath rate of about 5 to 7 breaths at rest, just you're not working out or like doing anything strenuous, just on the daily. And a lot of people are not getting that in as a baseline. Just breathing before meals, even taking a minute to pause before like mowing into or grazing through your food, because the act of like rest and digest and just enjoying your food, fully chewing your food, is really important. Number 2 would be hydration. And just like your lymphatic system, for one, needs that hydration, which is—

Right.

Circulating out toxins through your body. And nutrients as well through your body. So it's really the channels of how nutrients are delivered in the first place. And your gut bacteria do need nutrients. And so a lot of people are just— I think 75% of people are dehydrated or under-drinking water, even if you feel like you're drinking all day. It doesn't mean you have to be guzzling your water either. I mean, a baseline would be at least half your body weight in ounces. So if a person weighs 140 pounds, 70 ounces of water, a little over 8 cups, and that can change depending on if you live in Austin, Texas and you're outside, hot, and during the day. But finding that hydration and clean water in particular, so filtered versus tap, can be really helpful. Another one would be just boosting stomach acid and digestive enzyme function naturally.

Yeah.

So that can come with like really chewing your food. Like you don't want that chunk of chicken in your mouth to be a chunk of chicken when you swallow it. You want it to be like really emulsified. It can start really early in the mouth. And then from enzymes and stomach acid, I find that those mechanisms are just more deficient than not in folks, and that can happen from just like Eating on the go, super— or just stress in general.

Mm-hmm.

And not taking the time throughout our lives, and the types of foods that we maybe ate as a kid as well, or in your current diet, have a hard time breaking down food. So those mechanics can also set you up for— there's a lot of talk about SIBO, Candida, in the gut health space. I find a lot of times those are more byproducts because of these mechanics. Like digestive enzymes, stomach acid, for bile as well, flow in the liver gallbladder, they just have not been optimized from early-on-stage digestion.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, as soon as somebody starts getting heartburn because they're, you know, shoveling it in from McDonald's in 20 minutes and running back to their job and, you know, never taking time to breathe like you said, and chew their food and eat. They go to the doctor, they're get— they're put on an acid suppressor, an acid blocker, and it's just making the issue worse. Now you're really not able to digest your food. You actually need that acid to digest your food. And so unfortunately, where I practice, I have so many women on PPIs and H2 blockers, and they've been on them for years. So to get their stomach and pancreas and gallbladder to start producing the digestive enzymes they need again can be quite a hurdle, you know? So I think that's super important that you touched on that. Like, we have to quit covering up the symptoms and listen to them. Like, why am I having this symptom? What is going wrong? And you are right on key with that. So finish up, you were almost done.

Yeah, well, and ways to increase enzymes and bitters can be supplementally if needed. And I love digestive bitters in particular, which people can take by tincture to help support. Ideally, you get your body back online where you don't really need them anymore. They're not a forever thing, but they can be helpful. Prebioticking up, meaning like adding color to your diet. Which in the form of like primarily vegetables, and you know, 1 in 10 people get the recommended number of vegetables, which is a minimum of 3. In my population that I see, a lot of them are like getting vegetables, but they may not be optimizing digestion with those vegetables. So a lot of raw salads that they felt bloated on, or eating the same vegetables every day. So just variety, like ideally ancestrally Humans ate 30 to 40 different plants a week, and we eat maybe like, if you count the number of plant foods you eat, and it could be like orange carrot and a purple carrot, those are 2 different ones. But just from a color perspective, that was a really eye-opening exercise for me to do and realize like I was still eating only like maybe 10 to 12 plants. And so just variety there, and then adding, yeah, 2 to 3 colors with meals. And really cooking, sautéing, steaming, or just for digestion purposes, if vegetables make you more bloated, as well as mindfulness with if you are— if you do have tummy issues of what FODMAPs are, what are histamine-rich foods, etc., for a time, for a season, not forever.

Right.

It can be helpful if you're eating— I was a sweet potato-aholic, and I would eat like Wow. And ended up— I would feel bloated all the time with that. And so I had— it's all about the load too, and that's where variety comes in. So really encouraging folks to just really taste the rainbow and to vary their diet. And then like on a probiotic front, like putting in like good guys— probiotics don't necessarily stick around in your gut without the prebiotics, so that's why I front-load with that, needing the vegetables and such. But from a probiotic perspective, choosing a quality probiotic can be really helpful for a microbiome reset just because most people do have dysbiotic guts and just from the way of our world today. Probiotics are not the end-all be-all though. 95% of probiotics don't contain the probiotics they claim on shelves. And so looking for, again, Quality, quality, quality. So one that has strain specificity is really important. Most probiotics just list species, so Lactobacillus enterum or Lactobacillus rhamnosus. But if you get like a Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG, that would be like a strain-specific, when there's an extra little character at the end. And a company that's putting that on their label is Light years ahead of a lot, and it doesn't mean all the strains are specifically for you. There are certain some strains that are better for like yeast infections, whereas others may be better for like if you have IBS, IBD. That's where I look to the research to see, and if you're not into like looking on PubMed or the research to see what's been out there, like we're working with a practitioner that can help you with fine tuning and learning how to do that for yourself as well. But Probiotics in supplement form can be helpful as well as fermented foods, like in moderation, like condiment-sized servings, 1 to 2 times a day. Those are foods that are really underutilized, I think, by most people, except maybe kombuchaland. And I would say most kombuchas on shelves at least are not super probiotic in nature. A lot of them are more juice-like.

Yeah, they're so full of sugar. Oh my goodness.

And so sugar's got— it is part of fermentation. But yeah, a lot of them are very watered down and like maybe had a little probiotic at manufacturing. So probiotics is kind of like a wild, wild west. So I say tread lightly in that area. And we're again setting yourself up for success would be either partnering with a practitioner to learn how to do that or calling the company, getting like talk to the actual company about their research Well, I really have been digging Seed Probiotic lately, and they're just light-years ahead on the research front and third-party clinical trials you would like a probiotic to have as well. That's another gold— 2 thumbs up.

Yes, exactly. Good. Awesome points. So would you say there are some general principles to eating? You mentioned that, you know, We should probably be eating meats, but more heavy on the plant-based. That would be a good general recommendation for everybody, wouldn't you say?

Yeah, definitely color being like the super seeder.

Yeah, eat the rainbow. And eat organic, non-GMO, stay away from those pesticides, right?

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Good. You have a new free gift that you're offering, is that correct? The 3-day gut cleanse?

Yes, I have a 3-day gut cleanse on my site, and I'll—

Yeah, I'll put that in my show notes.

But yeah, just really like helping you take some simple but effective, practical steps to healing and shifting your gut microbiota in a really non-diet— like, it's not a grapefruit cleanse kind of approach. Like, you can actually eat food on my cleanses.

That's awesome. So it's not like focused on your diet. It's the other aspects.

Yeah, there's definitely food recommendations in there. But yeah, it's just not from a diet mentality perspective. I'm really, I think in practice, see a lot of folks that are already eating healthy, doing all the things and maybe limited to 5 to 10 foods because of how restrictive it's become, or they're scared that certain things Like it's got too many FODMAPs or it's not on the AIP list, and to really break from those containers as well to really help people fine-tune the foods that work best for your body. And those foods may expand or change over time too, and the goal is more expansion versus restriction.

Yeah, I think that's a good point. You know, some people will go out and have food sensitivity testing and then they carry around those results like it's the end-all, be-all and they can never touch those foods again, right? And it's really not necessarily the truth. They might need to have healed their gut or get some digestive enzymes and reintroduce later. Maybe they have an autoimmune issue that they need to focus on. So—

Yeah, those tests are usually more of a snapshot of like what your gut microbiota are digesting versus like actually being Aside from like gluten, I think tends to be more something that people are sensitive to just because our gluten today is not real gluten. It's very processed, synthesized. We don't even have a snapshot of like really quality gluten in majority of the US. Yeah.

I mean, I've had so many people tell me they go over to Europe and they can eat gluten just fine.

Right.

Like, how much of it is it really the pesticides and our processing of it and what we've done to it? So that's a great point. But I think that it's super wise to just work with a functional medicine practitioner to actually— so like you said, not out in the wild, wild west just picking random probiotics off the shelves and guessing at what diet's best for you because we are all individuals and we all have different underlying medical problems that we're trying to treat, right? So I think it's super important to connect with people like you and me. Where can people find you?

Yeah, on my site, probably the best place, drlauryn.com. And that's Lauryn with a Y, so D-R-L-A-U-R-Y-N.com. And I'm Dr. Lauryn on all my social medias. So Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Awesome. And they can do your programs. Do you do one-on-one at all?

Yeah, I definitely do one-on-one. And then coming soon to a program near you would be my Total Gut Reset program, as well as my Body Love+ Food Freedom program. So, um, that's awesome.

Awesome. Okay, well, thank you so much for sharing all of your wisdom today and your beautiful story. I just, I'm so grateful for those angels for lifting you up and shifting your life, right?

Yes, for sure. That's awesome.

And now you're paying it forward. That's so beautiful. How wonderful. All right, well, thank you so much, everybody. You gotta go check out Dr. Lauren, and she's gonna help heal up your gut. So let's connect again soon, okay?

Thank you.

Thanks, take care. So I love Dr. Lauren's story. I think it's so awesome when people really dig in and they find purpose out of their pain, right? They find the reason that they went through that and they pay it forward and help others. That's so cool. So I hope you got something from her story, a little bit of And I hope that you realized how much our gut actually affects the other aspects of our health. So if you're struggling, definitely reach out to me. We need to work on your gut most likely and heal it. So take away one little nugget of information from today and start incorporating it into your life. Do this with every episode. I'm I'm telling you, it will be a compounding effect. They will multiply on each other and you will reclaim your health. I have no doubt. So if you're enjoying this, I would love for you to hit the subscribe button or even leave me a review. If you take a picture of your review and tag me on Instagram or Facebook, Then I will send you an awesome gift and be forever grateful. So share this episode with your friends, your girlfriends, your moms, your sisters. We're all in this together. We need to lift each other up. It's a sisterhood, not a competition, as my good friend Megan always says. So go out, conquer your day, be your best self, and know That I'm behind you every step of the way. Bye, friend!