5 WARNING Signs Your GUT Needs Help (IBS, Constipation, and Leaky Gut)

Inflammatory foods. And again, these are different for different people. There are some people who can eat one food, no problem, their whole life, and their sibling can eat that food and can feel discomfort through the GI tract. Welcome to my YouTube channel. I'm Dr. A, and I've been treating patients with complex chronic illness for decades. Also been involved in researching and teaching in the integrative healthcare space for 30 years. So I wanna share some things that I've learned and observed over time. Today, I wanna talk to you about 5 warning signs that your digestive system may need help. And as we go through, I'm gonna give you some tips on things you can think about that may be things that you can get help with or even help yourself with. Now, I wanna have a disclaimer that any of these symptoms could be something deeper, a worse pathology. And so if you're having these symptoms and they're not getting better, you need to seek professional help from your healthcare provider. But let's talk about GI problems, 'cause a lot of them are what we would call functional. A big area that we deal with after we've ruled out bad pathologies is discomfort or pain after eating. Inflammatory bowel problems, so IBS, for example, a common symptom is discomfort or pain after eating. Now, we're gonna talk about why that might come up, but that's a really common You do want to know that if you have some sort of acute onset, sudden onset of pain, you have sharp pain that's not going away, high-intensity pain, or even rhythmic spasming pain that's getting worse, you really should get that checked out at urgent care or the emergency room potentially, or at least call your healthcare provider. But lower-level, mild to moderate pain could be a whole number of things. And so the next group of things we're going to talk about would include some of those things that you might be experiencing to create a non-acute, non-life-threatening, but chronic pain picture with your digestive system. The first thing, not having regular bowel movements. Sometimes they will define constipation in any number of ways and up to any number of days of not going to the bathroom. Your body really should be at least eliminating what has been stored up in the bowels and colon. Some people have the other problem, talk about that. But if you are not eliminating at least daily through a bowel movement, you will have not only a lot of heaviness and fullness and discomfort, but it can create a lot of cramping-type pain. It can create other types of pain. And something that we forget about is stool is a way to move a lot of toxic material out of the body. So if it's sitting around for longer than a day, You can actually reabsorb some of those toxicants back into your bloodstream and it can create problems such as just an overall sick feeling, chronic pain, headaches, et cetera. So a big reason for this GI type pain is not having regular bowel movements and ideally it should be at least one bowel movement. The next are a group of things that we categorize under permeability problems. Some people will call this leaky gut. Now, leaky gut is not a specific medical term, but what it's really talking about is this continuum of inflammation in your GI tract. And then that inflammation causes the junctions between your absorptive cells in the GI tract to get weaker. And then instead of absorbing small micronutrients through the GI cells, we absorb some micronutrients, But then the junctions being leakier or more open, we absorb some bigger pieces of molecule. This can create inflammation at the level of the GI tract lining. It can also create inflammatory immunologic inflammation because those larger molecules are not supposed to get into your digestive tract. Some of the ways that you would see this would be you would have potentially progressive inflammatory problems, but often you would feel more inflammation after you ate. There's a lot of reasons for the next symptom, which is being tired after eating, but being tired after eating can be another reason because you're getting this inflammatory immunologic reaction when you have permeability problems like a leaky gut situation. And then the others, It would include things like brain fog, so feeling kind of dopey after you eat, and then any number of other symptoms that may come on after eating. The permeability issues that are often called leaky gut syndrome are never in a vacuum; they're never alone. So leaky gut is a part of other things that are triggering an inflammatory response that starts to break down this very well. put-together system that we have in our digestive tract. Now, we mentioned being tired after eating. There's other things that can create tiredness after eating. We said it could be linked to leaky gut or permeability problems, if you will. That's certainly true. The other thing that can happen is you might be eating foods, and this could be a little different for different people, that are causing blood sugar spikes and then insulin spike. And for some people, If those 2 molecules, so the rise in blood sugar and then the rise in insulin are not well timed, and maybe you have like a reactive dysglycemia or certain other problems where you might overproduce insulin, you could actually feel very tired after you have the spike in your blood sugar and then the spike in the insulin, especially if they're not coinciding like they're supposed to. The other reason that you can get very, very tired after eating Are eating foods you're sensitive to. Now, we've talked about this in other videos, but the real quick version is you can have foods you're allergic to would usually cause a type 1 allergic response mediated usually through immunoglobulin E, like Edward. And those are usually well known because you might get hives, you might get swelling, angioedema, you might, you know, have other allergy symptoms, anaphylaxis, et cetera. But you also can have foods that you're not technically allergic to, But you're sensitive, they're just not good for you, and they can cause all sorts of symptoms. Okay? They can be immunologic symptoms, et cetera. But one of the main symptoms can be a big heavy feeling, brain fog, and tiredness after eating if you eat foods you're sensitive to. And these can be things that otherwise are fine for other people, and maybe you used to eat them and they weren't a problem, but your body has just developed either an immunologic or a non-immunologic reaction to that food that creates this response in you, which can be brain fog, tiredness. And the final one is sort of a combination of a couple that we talked about, but just inflammatory foods. And again, these are different for different people. There are some people who can eat one food, no problem their whole life, and their sibling can eat that food and can feel discomfort through the GI tract, maybe tired, maybe shaky, maybe achy in their body, et cetera. And they'll, they won't tie it to what they ate, but that actually can be a food response that is an inflammatory response inside the GI tract. Seen patients with these where, again, they don't have an allergic response, their tongue doesn't swell, they don't get wheezy and all of those things, but they will feel for 4 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours, like they just don't want to eat again. Because they're so inflamed and they have so much just general digestive upset and pain. So direct inflammatory foods. And again, those are things like food sensitivities. They're individual to you. The next thing would be irritable bowel syndrome. And this is generally when you're worked up and you don't have an autoimmune problem like Crohn's or colitis, et cetera, but you still have a combination of symptoms. You'll get usually pain after eating. You'll get alternating diarrhea and constipation. And a lot of times you'll have poor digestion or maldigestion of your foods. Now, there can be a number of reasons for this. You could have a gluten enteropathy like celiac disease or other gluten-related enteropathies. IBS can sometimes be caused by food allergy or food sensitivity. It can be caused by foods that your body just does not like for some other reason. And it can be aggravated when you have an underlying disease process that's inflammatory, and then you put dietary things in that just don't work for you. What are the next steps and what should you do about this? Well, one of the things is that all of the above that we talked about could mean that you have something called gut dysbiosis. So the gut is your digestive tract, and dysbiosis is that the microbiome that millions, billions, trillions of organisms that are supposed to be helping us with our digestion and GI ecology are out of balance. So, ideal biotic would be all the human microflora that is good and well-balanced. Dysbiosis is often you have some good human microflora, and then you have some flora, some bacteria, et cetera, that are not good for you. Maybe you've overgrown some fungal elements, maybe some others have overgrown. So imbalance of the proper microbiota, microbiome is one of the first things to look at. The next thing, which we talked a lot about, would be eating foods. And again, they don't have to be a classic allergy for you, but they could be foods that you simply are just not resonant with, with the way your digestion works. So they could be sensitivity and inflammatory food, et cetera. And a lot of times those things, if you don't take those out of your system and stop assaulting your digestive tract, the other things like the microbiome, the dysbiotic organism problems will not heal up well. The inflammatory and pain problem, constipation, diarrhea, they won't really heal up well either till you get those foods out of your system. The next thing could be that you have usually a There are some genetic reasons for this, but a digestive system imbalance. So you may not produce enough of the digestive system chemistry. Stomach is supposed to produce most of your hydrochloric acid. There are some diseases where you don't do this, and then there's just functionally acquired reasons why you don't produce enough hydrochloric acid. So that can be something that could be looked into, because if your stomach doesn't do the first job after chewing, the next job is the stomach has to produce enough hydrochloric acid to open up the proteins and help to start break bonds down. So then, the second phase, when you get to your duodenum, the first part of your small intestine, it can then encounter the bile and the enzyme. So, HCl, very important to kick it off. Speaking of bile and enzymes, that could be another dysfunction that you might acquire or an imbalance where maybe you don't make enough bile, maybe you don't make enough enzymes. And, that can be for any number of reasons. A lot of people, who have a lot of chronic digestive issues in the inflammatory bowel world have just sort of downregulated that system. So HCl first, enzymes and bile, those are big areas to consider. Things that you could try, things you could look into. And again, if you're having chronic issues and you're not getting answers, please see your healthcare provider. But just some general things would be watch your macronutrients, especially in the area of what might cause blood sugar and insulin spike. And I've done this with lots of patients where we check their blood sugar before and after they eat something. And you get one person that eats the same exact, say, bowl of salad or a bowl of soup or some other thing. One person, their blood sugar kind of is ho-hum. It doesn't go up too much. The other person, for whatever reason, their blood sugar just shoots way up. Generally speaking, if you have foods that cause a quick blood sugar rise, They're not going to be good for your long-term gut health because they're going to cause insulin to be hyper-excreted. They're going to cause inflammation, other things. So look at your macronutrients, especially the carbohydrates, and then you can do some experimenting with or without checking your blood sugar and just eat different things and see how you feel after you eat them. Now, generally, and we, we have other content just on magnesium, but magnesium can be helpful because of 2 main things and a thousand other reasons. In your gut, magnesium is actually helpful for smooth muscle contraction. And in people who it's a little hyperactive or they have a lot of cramping, magnesium can decrease that. And then magnesium is an osmotic agent. And so that means it brings more water into the digestive juices and the stool. And so in people who are struggling with constipation, we will often use a poorly absorbed magnesium like magnesium oxide. And there's other magnesiums that are not great absorption, and they'll be used actually to help to keep water in there so that the stools can soften. And it's literally an osmotic anti-constipation agent. Probiotics. Now, there's a lot of controversy about probiotics. There's a million You know, articles written about them and all that. But the bottom line is probiotics kind of come on a continuum. The first thing you want to do, and you can look this up online, is eat prebiotic foods. So prebiotics come before probiotics, and they help to set up proper growth of the good microflora in your digestive system. So eating prebiotic foods can be a way to help you keep your probiotics in balance, keep the levels up, etc. You can also take probiotics, and there's lots of different kinds. Generally, If we're not sure how a person's doing or they're sensitive, there are strains now that are called HMF or human microflora. And that's usually what we start with because it's very gentle. It's only the strains that are normally inside of humans, et cetera. And then there's other specific probiotics on the market now that are made for people with chronic inflammatory problems, people with constipation, et cetera. There's lots of ways to get it. Now, are there foods that you can get probiotics in? Certainly. We all know about things like yogurt, et cetera. So look at prebiotic foods and then look at foods high in probiotic, and that can be a way without pills to sometimes get your microflora back on track. Then eliminating, just remember those foods that we don't do well with. So if you already know you're allergic to a food, you're probably not eating it anyway, right? But there can be lots of foods that are simply inflammatory to you and you realize you just don't feel good after. You might get brain fog, you might get sleepy, you might get GI tract inflammation symptoms, pain, and mal digestion and stuff. And the problem with that is that there are some testing for it. We've done other content on this, but each test looks at a different part of a food sensitivity or foods that just aren't good for you. And there's no perfect testing. The best thing to do if you can is to eliminate certain groups of food, eat your regular diet, and see if you don't have an improvement in your symptoms. And then you can try and put those foods back in, and usually you test them once at a time. So let's say for the sake of talking about it here, you really think dairy products are an issue. You take all dairy out of your diet, and you do that for 2, 3, 4 weeks. Usually that's enough. Some people it takes longer, but 2, 3, 4 weeks. When you go to try them back again, you wanna try 'em one at a time because dairy is a big category and the chemistry in each dairy food is different. So I've had patients where they really, you know, wanted to try milk first. So they try milk and the way you do it is day 1, you have some milk 'cause you haven't had it in 4 weeks and you see what your symptoms are that day. Does anything come back? Then the next day, because you can have delayed response, you try it again without any adding any other dairy. And if by the end of 48 hours you've done dairy, that milk for 2 days, you either notice something or you don't notice something. There is an answer in there for you. If you're reactive, take it, leave it out, then give yourself a day off. And so then that's— so day 3 is a day off. Then on day 4, pick the next thing. Maybe you really like cheese. Try cheese the next day and take it out if it's still a problem. Leave it in if it's not. Take a day off. Then maybe the next thing is yogurt, or the next thing is butter. Just keep going through it. Now, let's say you also added in there, you were gonna leave out wheat or grains or whatever. Again, don't test them at the same time. You just keep doing the elimination and rechallenge. This sounds like a lot. There's a lot of things you can do on your own, but this is an area where it'd be great for you to work with an integrative medical practitioner. In states where they license naturopathic physicians, this is right in their wheelhouse. Some states don't have that. And there's a lot of really good integrative MD and DO practitioners, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and then a whole host of others. We'll put some links below to some referral services, but you get the point. So if you like this video, I'm going to put up here a link to a video specifically on brain fog because it comes up a lot related to food, but it can be related to lots of other things. I'm Dr. A. Thank you for joining me. And I'll see you back on the next YouTube. Thank you.