What You ACTUALLY Need to Know About Your GUT

So you might have been to your doctor and had your digestive system, your gut problems checked out. You don't have any gut GI diseases, et cetera, thank heaven, but you still have some dysfunction and you might have symptoms such as bloating or trouble after eating or constipation, diarrhea, fatigue, any number of things. And you might say, well, if I don't have a digestive system disease or disorder, what in the world could be causing these things? It's a really common question that We get. And I just wanted to break down some things that you might look at that you might be able to experiment with now that you know you don't have any big bad digestive system diseases that may be helpful. So the first thing, instead of adding, is actually subtracting. So what I mean by that, experimenting with your diet in ways to see what could I remove or limit in my diet that might have a cause and effect to me having less of some of these symptoms. So, for example, I had a patient who was having very bad spells of tiredness late in the afternoon, and the problem was this correlated to when they were driving home. And of course, that's very disturbing and also very dangerous. And so they were offered different ways to look into this, but what came of it was we did some talking through, is there something— so we looked at the timing being late afternoon, end of their shift. Headed home on the freeway. What are you eating at lunch and maybe for snacks after lunch? And let's just see if there's something there that could be leading to this kind of big increase in fatigue later in the afternoon. So before we test anything or do anything elaborate, let's just see if there's something obvious. Well, it turned out there were 2 potential causes that could either both be contributing or one more than the other, et cetera. And these are things that I had seen before and they very reliably kind of had the same type of lunch and then afternoon snack. And their lunch had a particular setup where they would always have a sandwich that they would make and it would have different sorts of fillings, but it used the same type of bread every day. And then in the afternoon, they would often have, you know, those little small candy bars that like you get at Halloween. And they thought, well, those are probably better for you because they're smaller. So they might have one or two of those that they kept in their desk. Well, there's a couple of possibilities in that. And what we talked about was it Could just be that you're not handling the sugar very well. And so you're getting this rise in sugar through the afternoon and then you kind of get a crash because you get an insulin response. Maybe that's it. Or maybe you're a little sensitive to something that, you know, is either in the candy bars or the sandwich or whatever. Well, it turned out because we eliminated first, we had them switch up their lunch and take the bread out and that helped quite a bit. So what they did is they made like, you know, salads and bowls and stuff that didn't have bread in it and they were still eating, but they were still having some trouble. So then the next step was, well, you've eliminated that one thing. Why don't we try not doing the candy bars? And indeed they went from about a 40% improvement to about a 90% improvement. And as long as they didn't have that combination of sugar and they turned out to be quite sensitive to wheat, which is of course in the bread, they stopped getting that big surge in fatigue. So removal. Now I've had other people where there's more of a pattern. So had one patient that came in and they had profound Digestive. They would get cramping during the day and bloating. They always felt full and they'd been scoped and checked out and everything. Nothing seemed wrong that way. And when we looked at their, just their diet recall where, you know, you write down what do you eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a week, they literally had about 80% of their caloric intake was from grains. So wheat and other grains. Well, the other thing about that is you get that much mass of grains going in. So there wasn't much vegetable. There wasn't as much protein, you're going to have a lot of, of not only the grain response, which can be allergenic or sensitivity, but also a big blood sugar fluctuations throughout the day. And so again, while we were working on other things, I said, look, you know, you see it here. It's like, this is a mostly grain, you know, based diet. Let's start with the low-hanging fruit. Would you be willing to cut the grains way back? To like 20% from 80%. And let's figure out what we can add in from the plant kingdom and some good proteins and stuff. And they were like, yeah, I feel, I feel bad enough. I'll do anything. And so they did. And it was a little rocky for a couple of weeks because you make big changes like that and your body kind of doesn't know what's going on. But after about a month, not only was their energy more persistent, but a lot of their gas and bloating and cramping and things had just gone away without adding anything, with no new treatments or anything like that. So sometimes Most people talk about this like looking for hidden food sensitivities, and that's like maybe not an allergy, but just a food you don't really react well to. But also there can be things like maybe there's just too much sugar going in or too much of one type of food that maybe you've developed sensitivity to, or not enough of other things such as enough protein, for example. So removal first, look for patterns. The next thing is when you're adding foods back in, one of the things that has kept humans healthy for millennia, which in modern A lot of it has been taken out. I know everybody eats differently, but in modern Western diets, there's 2 kind of categories of food that have been part of indigenous human diets all over the world, no matter where you look. And they have 2 different benefits that kind of merge. One is foods which are generally plants, so vegetables or fruits that are called prebiotics. And those are, you can look up prebiotic food, not probiotic, Prebiotic, and prebiotics are foods that just support the good flora, the good bacteria in your GI tract. That's before you take any pills, before you take a probiotic or anything. And a lot of times these are foods that you might eat one here and there or whatever, but they might just not be part of your regular rotation. So adding that in. But the other thing that traditional diets have always had that merge to also support the microbiome, the good bacteria, and all that stuff is the native herbs and spices from different parts of the world. Those all protect against a lot of the bad bacteria in the, what we call dysbiotic organisms or inappropriate organisms that grow. So it's not just the prebiotic foods, but it's also herbs and spices that can come help out. Now, what I normally talk to people about is first, do you eat in any particular, you know, ethnic heritage manner or, you know, how did you grow up eating? What kind of, you know, spices and stuff did you use? And a lot of people, you know, I'm in North America. A lot of people, even if they've moved here from other countries, have kind of, you know, Americanized their diet. And so they're not getting maybe the same amounts and balances of different, different culinary spices, herbs, all of that, that maybe their parents or their grandparents had just as the background to their diet. Because a lot of the North American diet, unless you kind of are looking to add these things in, it has a lot of sodium and it has a lot of maybe pepper and certain other things, but a lot of the other herbs and spices are gone. Now, a cool thing about this when I was looking into, well, if we have this concept that these herbs and spices from our indigenous heritage and culture are going to help to keep the bad bacteria down and break biofilms and all this good stuff, it can't just be from one culture. So it can't be just, you know, East Indian spices or it can't be just, you know, Southeast Asian Asian spices. And indeed, if you look at all native heritage types of diets and you look at the spices and the herbs that are used, whether it's the far north where a lot of my people came from up around Scandinavia and Russia, or Southeast Asia, or native land North Americans, or anywhere else in the world, South America, et cetera, the spices and herbs may be different, but they all do the same thing. So the first thing is if you have a heritage and you like that type of food, consider looking Like how was this prepared in the past? What kind of herbs and spices were used that maybe you've fallen off if you've especially if you've North Americanized, and could we add those back in because they really will help. And like I said, it can come from any part of the world. Now what if you say well you know I've been in whatever country I live in for you know eight generations, and I might have a heritage from somewhere, but I have no memory of you know anyone any one of the past five generations eating any food from there. Then just pick something. Just pick your favorite cuisine or rotate. And as I said, the the native spices you see in recipes from Southeast Asia or South America or Central America or the subcontinents anywhere else. They're all going to have spices. So just pick the ones you want. So that's something you can add in, but it's something you're eating kind of like prebiotic foods. Now, after prebiotic foods and herbs and spices, I'll usually add in the idea about probiotics. But we get a lot of questions where people will say, well, I've taken probiotics and every time I take them, I get sicker. Now remember, we're talking about people with functional digestive problems. They might gas, bloating, et cetera. There's kind of 2 responses to probiotic supplements. Well, there's a third. The third is you feel fine on it and there's no problem, right? But the other 2 are you don't feel so good. Sometimes it's a short-term thing. I always tell people to give it a good 10 days to 2 weeks before we judge. So if you start taking a probiotic and you maybe get some gas and bloating, or maybe you get more frequent bowel movements or some other digestive change, just kind of ride it out. And see how you do over, as I say, ten days to two weeks. If it's getting better, it's probably a short-term thing. If you have certain problems in your digestive system's balance of bacteria or fungus, like small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or small intestinal fungal overgrowth , you're not going to get better after ten days to two weeks. It's going to be irritating every time you take a probiotic. And so that doesn't mean probiotics are bad. It It means now you have to go and get somebody, GI doctor, functional medicine doctor, naturopathic doctor, somebody who does SIBO and SIFO to help you clear those out. And then you're going to tolerate the probiotics. So probiotics, if they're tolerated, if they're not, you may be dealing with other things like SIBO, SIFO, those sorts of overgrowth types of syndromes. Now, beyond your culinary use of prebiotic foods and spices and stuff, if you're really having a lot of inflammation, You can always add extra anti-inflammatory types of herbs and spices. Depends what your tastes are, and you, you may not like any herbs and spices, in which case this advice may not go anywhere with you. But what I've done with a lot of people is use some basic things that you can get as a culinary spice, let's say, and have you grind it up and either make tea out of it or just mix it in with your food, depending again on what you're making and, you know, what you like to eat. My 2 favorites, although there are many of them, are getting organic turmeric root, which is what curcumin comes from. And that's that brightly colored herb. And you basically just, you know, peel the skin off and then grate it and either put it in your food or you can make a tea out of it if you want to. And turmeric is, people always say, well, it's, it's a good spice, good, you know, herb, but it doesn't really absorb very well as turmeric. And the thing is, if you have digestive inflammation, you don't necessarily want it to absorb. You want it to interact with your GI tract lining. So that's actually Not a bad thing. The other is that I commonly use is ginger. This is often used as a tea. And again, you can get a big ginger root and grind it and put it in tea. But as you may know, depending on what foods you like to eat, there's a lot of ginger incorporated into a lot of Southeast Asian cooking and other types of cuisine around the world. And if, if you like that and you can incorporate it, great. There are many, many other herbs and spices. Many of the herbs and spices that you would normally see used in different types of cooking that have a lot of color to them wind up being very good for your digestive tract. So always consider adding those things in. And then if you've done all this groundwork, so you've removed stuff that might be bad for you, check for imbalances in your macronutrients and stuff, you're eating some prebiotics and getting some good herbs and spices, sometimes you need a little bit of extra, and then you could do supplemental natural things to help out. So for example, if you have a lot of inflammation, you might do supplemental demulcent herbs, things like slippery elm is a really common one, or marshmallow Marshmallow root, not marshmallows, the candy, but marshmallow root, things like that. Okra is another one. You can also do things like the amino acid glutamine. We have other content on glutamine. There's a supplement called carnosine, C-A-R-N-O-S-I-N-E. That one we use a lot with GI repair and recovery. Many, many things that you could use as a supplement. But first, try looking at what could I rebalance or eliminate out of my diet that might be causing me trouble? Then look at what can I put into my diet that may be very pro-GI healing Et cetera. Then look at specific, maybe anti-inflammatory herbs and spices we might want to add in, and then go to supplementation, et cetera. All right. I'm Dr. A. Thank you for listening again. Love answering these questions, and we're going to put up some other content up here at the end that you can take a look at. Appreciate all of the subscribers. Please do subscribe if you haven't. Like, share, and we want to continue to grow the community and want to continue to share good healthcare information with you. Thanks, and I'll see you on the next video.