by Amanda Malachesky | Dec 7, 2018 | Digestion, Food Intolerance, Functional Nutrition, Symptoms
Having an IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) flare is no fun.
To illustrate, imagine this scenario:
I live a 90-minute drive over remote mountain roads from the nearest city, and I make the trip once a week, to resupply my groceries and other necessities. It’s an all-day affair. I leave after I drop my kids off at school, and I return around 5:30 pm. It’s challenging on the best of days, but even more so on one of the days when I used to have an IBS flare.
One January day, I found myself pulled over on the side of the road in the pouring rain, frantically digging a hole, trying to keep out of sight, while my belly cramped. I knew I was in for a crappy day when that happened (pun intended!).
Later that day, I had trouble finding a decent public restroom. Belly rebelling, I managed to make it into a not-so-clean bathroom in a local grocery store.
On this day, I felt not only crampy in my belly, but exhausted, stressed, and fed up with this process! Unfairly, my IBS flare days often seemed to happen on my town days. I was pretty motivated to figure out not only how I could prevent these flare days, but also how to stop them from ever happening! Because, you know, life happens, and I had things I wanted to get done!
So to help you have less frequent and less severe IBS flares, I want to share how IBS patients and practitioners work through an IBS flare, and some bigger picture strategies for unraveling their root causes.
What is an IBS flare?
IBS, or Irritable Bowel Syndrome is a broad, non-specific digestive disorder. IBS typically waxes and wanes, much to the chagrin of sufferers. Sometimes it’s quiet, and not causing much trouble. But other times, it decides to rear its ugly head. In general, IBS symptoms may include:
- Bloating
- Gas
- Constipation OR Diarrhea
- Alternating Bouts of Constipation and Diarrhea
- Urgent need to use the bathroom, or stool is difficult to pass
- Clear, white mucous in the stool
The specifics can look different for each of us, but an IBS flare is an increase in the frequency or intensity of the symptoms. For me, this looked like frequent stool (up to 5-6 times in a day, though it might be even more for you), cramping, pain or soreness, along with fatigue, dehydration, and general malaise. As a practitioner, I have found that a food allergy flare looks quite similar, which suggests to me that IBS symptoms are likely to be connected with food sensitivities or allergies (more on that in a minute).
What Causes IBS?
If you’ve been given a diagnosis of IBS, it’s likely you have these symptoms. But this doesn’t mean that you or your doctor know what’s causing them. The IBS diagnosis is usually given when other digestive pathology, like Crohn’s, Colitis, or other diseases are ruled out.
But from a Functional Medicine or Nutrition perspective, there are a lot of possible causes, and you owe it to yourself to try to uncover them.
One of the main causes of IBS that is well within your control is food allergies or sensitivities. Many of you with IBS are already aware that certain foods flare your symptoms and you avoid them like the plague. But clearly identifying all of those trigger foods can be a game changer. (To read more about how to figure out your particular food triggers, check out Food Intolerance Primer: What I Wish I Had Known here.) Another commonly overlooked cause of IBS is Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth, or SIBO. Some studies suggest that as many as 85% of IBS cases are actually caused by SIBO. In SIBO, bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine can cause malabsorption issues, diarrhea OR constipation, bloating, gas, and many other symptoms. (Sounds like IBS, right?) In addition to SIBO, other potential root causes of IBS are underlying, previously hidden infections, including parasites, fungus, bacteria in the large intestine, or things like Lyme disease. Other potential players or contributors include mold, stress, environmental toxins, or poor water quality in your home.
How to Repair IBS and Restore Normal Gut Function
As tempting as it is to want a quick, easy fix for a problem like IBS, restoring normal gut function is more of a long-game. But even in the worst cases, there is hope for a more normal life. The first step to repairing your gut function isn’t to dive into every possible solution you can think of. Instead, you want to zoom out, and really understand what you’re seeing in context. Gathering information about your story, family history, the triggering events that may have started your problem, your collection of test results, understanding when, where, and how often your symptoms occur, and your current diet and stool habits can really help in creating the right solution. Once you have this information, you can begin to adjust your current diet and habits that are likely to lead to a change in your symptoms. This can often mean adding digestive supports like stomach acid, enzymes, or probiotics, removing foods that may be aggravating your gut lining, adding in nutrients that appear to be deficient, or even focusing on stress management. After you have adjusted these parts of your life, if you still have symptoms, now is the time to consider testing for deeper dysfunction, like infections or SIBO. (If you’d like to see all this mapped out, with some suggested action steps you can take on your own, I invite you to download your free copy of Roadmap to Recovery. I go into a bit more detail about what this looks like in real life, and provide you with some things you can do right now to get started.)
What to Do When You Have An IBS Flare
Even when you are diligent, and work really hard to avoid an IBS flare, they sometimes happen anyway (Damn it!). So what then? In a lot of ways, living with IBS or other bowel disorders is about learning how to minimize your flares. You may never be able to completely eliminate your symptoms, but you CAN certainly minimize them and live well in spite of them. I do want to make sure to say that not ALL of these tips is likely to help you. Choose two or three to test next time you have a flare, and see how you respond. If your body doesn’t like what you’ve chosen, now you know to move on to something else. You can keep a running list that details what works for your body and what doesn’t. This list is GOLD, because you now have a personalized tip sheet to turn to when symptoms get out of hand. If you have already created a Functional Nutrition Matrix, you can note these details in the “Mediators” section. These are important clues that help detail what your body is doing and why. This is at the heart of the Functional method of practice. I asked around my community of chronic illness bloggers and Functional Nutrition professionals to find out what they do themselves, or what they recommend to their clients when they experience an IBS flare.
Here is the list of tips they shared to quickly work through an IBS flare:
#1: Simplify Your Diet and go back to your known safe foods:
I find my flares often happen when I decided to get a little more adventurous on purpose. The first thing I do in response is to try to identify what the food trigger may have been, and return to foods I absolutely know to be safe. And I add a “note to self” to continue avoiding that trigger food while I work on my gut repair.
Here are some other SIMPLIFY tips from IBS patients and practitioners:
Shauna Gourley, Certified Bulletproof Coach and FDN: “Fasting works fast!”
Jessica Donces, FDN, Owner Optimize to Thrive: “I suggest basic, easy-to-digest animal proteins. They are broken down and digested earlier on compared to veggies, therefore “easier” on the gut in terms of symptoms one may be experiencing with IBS. Also, elemental diets can be a great tool, there are several different types.”
Amber Blackburn, IBS patient: “My biggest tip when I have a bad flare up is I start eating basically only from the BRAT (Bananas, Rice, Apples and Toast) diet. And I do that for a few days at least until my gut feels better.”
Marya Mesa, IBD patient, blogger at Chronic Mom Life: “I had IBS for years and now IBD – ulcerative colitis. When I flare I keep it very simple… stock, yogurt, smoothies, eggs, bananas, avocados.”
Candace Mantle, IBS patient: “I’ve also got Crohn’s disease. When I flare I just eat chicken, white rice and mashed potatoes. This allows my digestive system to rest.”
Collin Wong, IBD patient, blogger at Collin’s IBD Chronicles: “When I have a flare with IBD, I just avoid fried foods and spicy foods and keep it to steamed foods, and soluble fibers.”
Nicole NIckley, FDN Practitioner with The Health Mission: “Fasting with bone broth, chamomile tea, homeopathy (Ignatia Amara, or Nux Vomica remedies), and digestive essential oils blends, topically.”
Natalie Gardner, IBD patient and blogger at The Spoonie Mummy: “I have IBD (Crohns) and an Ileostomy. One of the first things I turn to when I feel like I’m starting to flare is the Low Residue diet (also known as a low fiber diet).
#2: Add binders
Binders, such as activated charcoal, bentonite clay, or citrus pectin, can bind up toxins or inflammation in your gut.
Nicole Nickley, FDN Practitioner at The Health Mission: “I had a flare up from my Thanksgiving feast and took GI Detox (you can get it here) and that took care of symptoms.”
I do want to add the caveat about binders: If you already trend toward constipation, you may want to skip these, or try them carefully and assess your reaction. Binders may cause or increase constipation. Here are a few specific products to explore (you can access most of these inside my online supplement dispensary at FullScript):
In addition to these shared tips, here are a few more than I have used myself for my flares, and might suggest for you if you are experiencing a flare.
#3: Plain water enemas, or coffee enemas, 1-2 x per day
I’ve found this practice greatly reduces the length of my IBS flares, especially since I generally trend toward constipation. Plus it allows my body to detox a little bit more thoroughly. I only recommend this frequency of enemas for a short period of time, maybe 1-2 days. To do enemas more frequently may lead to nutritional deficiencies and dehydration.
Here are instructions on how to perform an enema. Here is the enema kit I prefer.
#4: Return to your tried and true stress-reduction techniques
Stress has a huge impact on the digestive system. Any kind of stress can slow down (or speed up!) your digestion and appetite. If stress is part of your symptom flare, be sure to think about stress-relief techniques as part of your solution. For me, this includes:
You can also use any other stress relief methods you have found work.
This might include yoga, or walks outdoors, dancing, a hobby you enjoy, singing, time with people you love. Whatever feeds you and helps you feel happy is stress relief!
Rachel Romaine, FDN Practitioner with Present Day Wellness, recommends belly massage and a hot water bottle to relieve belly stress and pain. If you’re not too sore, massage in slow, small circles, moving always in a clockwise direction.
If I missed any stress relief techniques you like, please add yours in the comment.
#5: Include soothing, demulcent, or carminative supplements or essential oils:
This is a very bioindividual recommendation, because while some of these may help soothe your gut, some could irritate your gut. But many people find relief using herbs or botanicals orally, such as:
- deglycyrrhized licorice (DGL)
- aloe vera
- marshmallow
- cold soak slippery elm tea
- mastic gum to soothe the lining of the gut.
Rachel Romaine, FDN Practitioner with Present Day Wellness also suggests carminative herbs, which are herbs to support digestion. She includes fennel, ginger, peppermint, sage, and chamomile.
You can listen to her describe how to she uses these herbs for digestive support here.
Kara Louise, Certified Integrative Health Coach, Holistic Health Practitioner, and Functional Medicine Practitioner, and owner of Life Hub Center says:
“There are several essential oils that can help keep the digestive system in a state of relative calm. These are my favorites:
DiGize (Young Living brand) is an essential oil blend that includes Fennel, Tarragon, Ginger, Peppermint, Juniper, Lemongrass, Anise, and Patchouli. DiGize can be used internally (either via a couple drops in a capsule), rubbed on the lower belly, or via under the tongue. DiGize also helps relieve digestive problems like indigestion, heartburn, gas, and bloating to name a few. It is also known to help fight off candida and intestinal parasites making it an all-in-one essential oil blend that’s a must-have for every at-home medicine cabinet.
Marjoram, Basil and Peppermint are three single essential oils that when added to Epsom salt baths (3 drops each to a cup or more of Epsom salts) help relieve the cramping that is associated with irritable bowel. (Peppermint happens to be a great oil to keep with you at all time to help relieve stomach upset and nausea. It’s also great on the roof of your mouth to relieve headaches.)
Oregano is a “hot” oil that has strong anti-bacterial qualities. Many individuals have found it to be beneficial as part of their anti-candida therapy and to balance their microbiome. It’s best to work with a health coach trained in essential oil usage when it comes to using oregano.
Essential oils are powerful, strong and therapeutic. My two tips when it comes to essential oil usage are: (1) find the right company who can track your oil from Seed to Seal to be the best quality; (2) work with someone who is trained on aromatic medicine and can help you with an individualized approach to using essential oils as part of your healing journey.”
You can reach out to Kara at Life Hub Center here.
#6: Back off on probiotics temporarily
For some people, especially if SIBO is an issue, probiotics may aggravate symptoms. Back off on probiotics for a few days while you restore balance and calm inflammation.
#7: Increase antioxidants
Vitamins A, C, & E, CoQ10, or glutathione will help repair the inflammatory damage in your guts, whatever the cause. Give your cells the nutrients they need to do repair work! One simple way you can do this is by eating a rainbow of foods, if you can tolerate them, or by using herbal teas, which contain plant phenols which are natural antioxidants. While a nutrient-dense diet is always the preferred way to get these nutrients into your body, you can also include nutritional supplements to meet your needs.
#8 : Hydration
The body needs adequate hydration to do all it’s tasks. If you’ve had diarrhea as part of your flare, you may also be dehydrated. Be sure to drink plenty of fresh, clean water.
#9: L-glutamine
L-glutamine is an amino acid that your gut cells use to do repair work. Taking L-glutamine (1-5 or more grams per day) may help repair your gut lining during a flare. L-glutamine is generally well tolerated, but it’s always a good policy to start at a low dose and slowly increase to your tolerance to avoid any negative reactions.
Conclusion
You don’t have to simply wait out your IBS flare. With some attention and care, you can reduce the length and severity of a flare by trying out some of the methods shown here. If your IBS flares and attacks are an ongoing, regular occurrence, it may be time to get serious about investigating your root causes. When a client comes to me with symptoms resembling IBS, I always do a full case history, to try and identify when and why the symptoms first started. I help them do some dietary clean up and support their digestion first. If we’re not able to resolve symptoms that way, I suggest running a stool or breath test, to find out whether infections are involved. I’ve used this approach with myself as well as my clients. I’ve done so well with my IBS approach that I can’t remember the last time I had an IBS flare, let alone on my town trip day. What a relief! And though I do occasionally have a flare, they are no longer anywhere near as bad as they once were, and I’m able to resolve them quickly with a minimum of disruption of my life. My kids and my family need me, and I’d rather spend my time with them than be on my toilet. Wouldn’t you?
Let’s get you free from symptom flares, and back to comfortable belly function! When you’re ready to dig into your underlying reasons for your IBS flares, and are ready to see the length of time between your flares increase, grab your free copy of Roadmap to Recovery, and get started right away with some easy, accessible tasks.
by Amanda Malachesky | Nov 24, 2018 | Chronic Illness, Diet, Digestion, Food Intolerance
It can feel difficult to choose healthy foods during the winter holidays when you are facing food sensitivities or other digestive troubles.
Maybe you’ve successfully eliminated some of the big six foods (gluten, dairy, sugar, soy, eggs, and corn) or other foods that trigger symptoms for you, and you’re doing great! Or you’re even rocking a more involved elimination diet, like Autoimmune Paleo. Congratulations!
Or maybe you’re just working on maintaining your weight.
But enter the WINTER HOLIDAYS.
Thanksgiving, the holiday centered around overeating.
And then comes the Christmas season, with it’s parade of company parties, school events, advent calendars, community events, and candy bowls. Solstice, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and New Year’s (not to mention this author’s birthday!)
Each holiday comes with a lot of opportunities to feel tempted to eat foods you are choosing to avoid for health reasons because, you know, “tradition!” Or, “I don’t want to miss out!” Plus, you might be feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or tired, which always makes it harder to stay the course.
Most of us have been programmed from a very young age to associate celebration with eating with others to celebrate. It can feel empty and lonely to abstain from the treat your grandma makes every year, or eggnog that makes your company Christmas party feel tolerable. These are some of the things that help the season feel special.
So this week, I wanted to share a few tips and tricks I’ve picked up through my years with food sensitivities and digestive challenges to help keep you on track through your winter holidays. So you can come through without symptom flares, weight gain, or any other loss and hit the ground running in the new year.
#1. Reframe Your Holiday Eating Perspective
It’s tempting to descend into sadness or a fear of missing out, or even have a downright tantrum about not getting to have foods you have always loved. During special occasions, you might feel especially sensitive about having to go without what everyone else is enjoying.
In these situations, I coach my clients to return to their why. Why are you making the food and lifestyle choices you’ve made? Maybe it’s because your symptoms are disrupting your job, or your ability to parent, or simply your ability to enjoy something you love.
Remind yourself of what you are working to achieve with your food choices, and especially ask yourself the question, “So I can do WHAT?”
For example, I avoid the foods that don’t work for me because the consequences of eating them result in more uncomfortable time in the bathroom, severe back pain, and a grumpy mood. When I feel this way, I am a grumpy mom, and can’t keep up with everything in my life that needs doing. I choose this way of eating so I can be a competent mom to my beautiful kids, and so I can enjoy time outdoors working in my garden or hiking.
Getting crystal clear on this for yourself, and reminding yourself frequently, can help you stay committed, in spite of feeling the sadness and grief about missing out on sharing certain foods.
#2. Get a Holiday Eating Buddy or Accountability Partner
If you really struggle to stay on track with your food plan, you may have an easier time if you enlist a buddy to go to events with you, or to check in with daily during the holiday season. Together, you can preemptively think about what situations might trigger you to go off plan and think ahead of time about how you would deal with them, and then create a codeword, or alternative action to take when you feel like you want to cheat.
#3. Low-Carb Holiday Eating
So many of the delicious holiday foods you want to eat are high carb: baked goods with included sugar and alcoholic drinks. And the traditional holiday meals are also relatively high-carb. Think of the stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry dressing, along with the desserts and drinks.
Many people groan about the high fat holiday treats, or think they are blowing their diets by overeating. But ultimately, the extra weight gain that shows up by the end of the holidays likely has to do with all the extra carb helpings and sweets. You know, the cookies, cakes, pies, candy, and so on. And don’t forget the drinks.
If you can simply focus on keeping each meal and snack low-carb, and making sure you get protein, fat, and fiber at each meal, you’ll likely feel more satiated, and you won’t have gained much if anything by the turn of the year. You’ll also keep your blood sugar stable, which will reduce the possibility of bloating, a flare of bacterial overgrowth, or an autoimmune flare.
#4. Minimize Holiday Drinking
Alcohol, though delicious, is nothing more than empty calories that destabilize your blood sugar. This can lead to sudden blood sugar drops, which leads to craving and overeating.
If you really like sipping a beverage with your friends and family, make your own delicious mocktails with bitters, bubbly water, herbs, and 100% fruit juice, or bring sparkling apple cider, like Martinelli’s. Or give these more fancy mocktails a try.
If you can’t don’t want to avoid ALL alcohol, consider following these rules to minimize the effects of alcohol:
- Never drink on an empty stomach
- Drink a glass of water or other non-alcoholic beverage between your drinks
- Limit yourself to 1-2 drinks.
#5. Bring Your Own Healthy Holiday Eating Dessert
If the party is a potluck, offer to bring a dessert, and make something on plan: a gluten free, low sugar, treat, like these Nakayummies, for example, or these Cardamon Thumbprint Cookies, or this Dairy Free Coconut Chocolate Fudge. Then you can both enjoy dessert and not feel left out, but also let people see how delightful it can be to take good care of yourself while you’re at it.
#6. Minimize Holiday Late-Nights
All the holiday parties really can eat into your needed rest time. If you are struggling with digestive or autoimmune health problems, it’s always important to get a good 7-8 hours of sleep.
One reason this is important is because not getting enough sleep reduces the hormone that helps us control our appetite. Have you ever noticed that when you don’t sleep well, you experience more cravings and appetite the next day? In this way, not getting enough sleep can lead to overeating, especially if we use this moment to binge on foods we would be better off avoiding.
Not only that , but in the depth of winter, our bodies naturally want to snuggle in and get more sleep. The days are short, and it can start to feel like a push to keep burning the candle at both ends.
Honor your body by making sleep a non-negotiable. Your immune system and brain will thank you.
#7. Continue Your Normal Stress Reduction Plan
More and more, stress has become a normal part of the holidays. There are a lot of extra events to attend, shopping to complete, planning for family visits, or THE family visit itself.
If you have a regular stress reduction routine, like getting a massage, going to yoga or exercise class, or meditation, DON’T stop during the holidays. It’s at this time that you need it more than ever!
If you don’t already have a stress reduction routine, now might be a good time to invite this practice into your life!
#8. Plan Ahead for Healthy Holiday Eating
If you’ll be hosting holiday meals, make sure to plan ahead. Especially if you are new to your diet plan, you may need extra time to adapt your favorite holiday recipes, or to find suitable replacements. You may also need to test out those recipes.
One year, I wanted to adapt the pumpkin pie so I could eat it. I made one a week before Thanksgiving, and boy was I glad I did. The filling came out totally rubbery, and wouldn’t have been very attractive on Thanksgiving day. I was able to adjust the recipe to have it tasting and feeling good in the mouth by the time my aunt, who is a phenomenal cook, tried it.
Planning ahead doesn’t just need to be for food. It’s proactive and empowered to imagine the moments that might be a problem for you, and to create an alternative plan. For example, if you know your mother-in-law doesn’t “get” how gluten can impact your and will offer you Christmas cookies that you will want to eat, it’s often easier to follow through with your intention if you’ve visualized it ahead of time. What will you say? Do yourself the favor of thinking about it ahead of time.
#9. Do Your Holiday Eating at Home (Eat Before You Go), or Bring Your Own
If you know that you’re going to a party where there will lots of tempting foods, eat a full meal before you go, so that you’ll be less hungry and less likely to stand by the cheese and cracker plate or the dessert spread all night.
I often find that I literally can’t eat anything at a party, except maybe some sliced bell peppers or carrot sticks. If I showed up at a party hungry for a meal, I’d likely be in trouble, both mood and energy wise in a hurry. Not all of you will have diets as limited as mine, but I just bring my own food. I pack a dinner, like a lunch, and eat it with all the guests. It’s a little weird, and I do sometimes feel a little awkward letting the host know that I brought my own food.
But I’m far more willing to do this than to suffer with painful digestion, back pain, joint pain, or bloating and gas because I was afraid of feeling awkward, or was feeling shy about my diet choices.
Wear it proud! You deserve to be well cared for.
These tips are great for navigating the holiday in the short term, but I would like to see you not need to make these adaptations in the future. How are you working to resolve your symptoms so that these modifications aren’t necessary?
Sometimes, you need a little professional support crafting your plan for being out in the world and facing these kinds of challenges. If you’ve had a hard time making meaningful progress with your symptoms, it might be time to get a little help. Download your Roadmap to Recovery, a guide to the 7-step process that can help you create your plan to get to remission or an effective long-term management plan. Or, Schedule your FREE Assessment Session here, and I’ll help you see your next best steps to feel better.
by Amanda Malachesky | Nov 9, 2018 | Chronic Illness, Functional Nutrition, Symptoms
One of my personal missions with Confluence Nutrition is to help you become your own health care hero. By this, I mean that you are 100% in charge of your health. And one of the most important ways you can do this is by learning how to be an effective symptom tracker.
Symptoms are your body’s S.O.S. signal. I’m not talking about the kind of symptoms you have when you’re sick with a virus. I’m talking about persistent symptoms that continue, month after month. These are your built-in warning system that something isn’t right, and needs attention.
But figuring out which symptoms to pay attention to and how to organize this information can be confusing. This is especially so if you have A LOT of symptoms. In this blog, I want to share what to note on your symptom tracker, what to use for your symptom tracker, and some of the results that are possible with effective symptom tracking.
My Own Symptom Tracker Story
Years ago, I first reached out to my doctor because I was concerned about my lower abdominal pain. By the time I made the appointment, I was having pain a few days every month, and saw the symptoms getting worse.
I went in for an ultrasound, and it showed I had ovarian cysts. No follow up was recommended.
My symptoms paused while I was pregnant with my second child, but my symptoms returned with a vengeance with the hormonal changes that happened when I weaned him. At this point in my life, I only had 5-7 good days each month. The other days, I had some combination of pain, anxiety, digestive problems, insomnia, acne, and more.
The first important piece of information I gathered from my loose symptom tracking was that my symptoms were obviously getting worse. Over months and years. And this rightfully concerned me.
Symptoms that are worsening over time are a clear sign from your body that it is time to pay attention and seek some help.
From my perspective as a Functional Nutrition Practitioner, your symptoms are pure gold. Even if your doctor seems unconcerned with your symptoms, I want to teach you what symptoms I believe are important to track, how you can track them, and why you would want to.
How to Start Being A Symptom Tracker
For me, the purpose of tracking symptoms isn’t only to note them, it’s to begin to ask WHY they are happening. Because I am working to help resolve problems at their roots, I want to place your symptoms in a context.
For example, if you have a headache, I want to know what you ate earlier that day, how much liquid you had to drink, how your stress level was, how well you slept the night before, and so on.
But to have this information feel useful, it’s necessary to organize it on a day-to-day basis, and to connect food intake, symptoms, stool changes, hydration data, and sleep. It’s best to write down your observations at least once a day, as it can be hard to remember the details much beyond that.
The tool I prefer to help my clients keep track of everything and become a master symptom tracker is a Food-Symptom Diary (You can download your copy here). This tracks food, symptoms, and stool frequency and consistency. If my client needs to track other layers, I will have them note the results on this same form, for consistency and organization.
You could also use a calendar, an app, or any other method you like to collect your information. Just make sure that you can easily see what you’re trying to look at, and generally keep your results to one page per day.
What to Track on a Symptom Tracker
So what kind of symptoms am I talking about here? Well, just about any symptom you can experience is important, though severely uncomfortable symptoms are the most obvious.
Certainly, if your symptoms feel potentially life threatening, like shortness of breath, you should get yourself checked as soon as possible by a qualified medical person.
But if you’ve been checked, and your provider can’t see anything “wrong” on the surface, this doesn’t mean your symptoms should be ignored. On the contrary, this is an invitation to see what you can learn from them.
You will want to track things like:
- headaches
- migraines
- pain in the muscles or joints
- digestive symptoms like diarrhea, constipation, gas, nausea, vomiting, or heartburn
- brain fog
- itching
- skin breakouts of acne, eczema, psoriasis, or other rashes
- fatigue
- insomnia
- shortness of breath
- rapid heartbeat
- anxiety attacks
- mood symptoms, like irritability, anger, sadness, anxiety, frustration, or depression
- frequent illnesses
There are, of course, many more possible symptoms. This is just a partial list. Note the ones that are most present for you.
In addition to this list of signs or symptoms, there are additional metrics I like to encourage my clients to track, depending on the situation. These include:
- blood sugar throughout the day
- medications and supplements
- menstrual cycle and related symptoms for my female clients
- seasonal and moon cycles
- daily waking temperature (basal body temperature)
Other metrics people sometimes look at include activity levels, as with a FitBit or similar device, or heart-rate variability and sleep cycles, as with the Oura Ring.
To get the most value out of this tracking, use the Food Symptom Diary or similar log, and note foods along side symptoms and poop type. The longer you can track this data, the better your results. A good place to start is with one week of tracking.
Here are 5 additional metrics you can add to your symptom tracker to try and make connections about WHY your symptoms are happening.
Blood Sugar Levels
A high percentage of symptoms people experience are rooted in food sensitivities, or eating a combination of macronutrients (protein, fat, and carbs) that leads to blood sugar swings.
Paying attention to this one single piece can truly rebalance many many symptoms. Keeping your blood sugar stable keeps your moods and energy levels constant.
If you are eating too many carbs, or are skipping meals, you may feel more stressed, anxious, tired, irritable, or angry, and you may experience energy slumps, as well as difficulty sleeping. And this can lead to hormonal imbalances downstream. So just by tracking blood sugar and the relative balance of protein, fats, and carbs in your meals, we’ve addressed sleep, moods, fatigue, and hormones.
If you’re not sure if blood sugar is an issue, you can track this too with an at-home glucometer. You can buy one at your drugstore or over on Amazon (make sure you buy test strips too.) You want to check your values at :
• Immediately after waking, first thing in the morning (functional range: 78-88 mg/dL)
• 40 minutes after breakfast (functional range: <135 mg/dL)
• 40 minutes after lunch (functional range: <135 mg/dL)
• 20 minutes before dinner (functional range, if >2 hours since last food: 78-88 mg/dL)
• Just before bed (functional range, if > 2 hours since last food: 78-88 mg/dL)
Add these values to your food-symptom diary or other tracking tool.
If your sugars are higher than the suggested values, begin to track that backwards to your previous meal or two. Which foods may be triggering your elevated blood sugar?
(To read more about blood sugar, you can read Balancing Blood Sugar 101: How and Why)
Medications or Supplements
Make sure that you are taking note of your medications and supplements on your tracking sheet as well, as their side effects can be responsible for symptoms.
Menstrual Cycle Symptoms and Rhythms
If you are a woman, tracking your monthly menstrual cycle can also be important and can shed some light on your symptoms. Do your headaches correlate? How long are your cycles? Do any of your symptoms connect to your ovulation, or your bleeding time?
In Toni Weschler’s book Taking Charge of Your Fertility, she explains the method of tracking your monthly cycle, either for pregnancy achievement or avoidance. She uses a method of tracking daily waking temperature (basal body temperature) and cervical fluid quality.
I used this method to plan both my kids’ births, and avoid pregnancy until my hysterectomy during the first 15 years I was married.
Seasonal and Moon Cycles
Another interesting data layer to add to the equation is moon cycles and seasonal cycles if you have noticed changes during the month or year. Tracking these may be best done on an annual or monthly calendar.
Basal Body Temperature
Basal body temperature can be useful not only for tracking menstrual cycles, but also for tracking thyroid function. A basal body temperature of 97.1 or less can indicate an underactive thyroid gland, and would suggest a need to investigate.
For more information on interpreting this, check out the Take Your Temperature page on Stop The Thyroid Madness.
Symptom Tracker Results
The biggest trick is putting all your symptom tracker data together. This is why shorter periods of tracking with one sheet of data per day is what I recommend.
After you have a collection of days, you can look back over your record and take note of when your symptoms appeared. Can you see any patterns connected to the foods you ate? Did your acne flare after eating a particular food, or after you stayed up really late? Does your afternoon fatigue relate to what you ate for breakfast? Review your data and begin asking questions.
So often, the symptoms or clusters of signs you are experiencing are a consequence of one or more of your behaviors or choices, and you can make good headway against them by changing your behaviors.
Tracking this way has helped me solve many of my health mysteries. One story I like to tell involves my previously chronic constipation.
Though there were many actions I took to help resolve this problem, when I started using a food-symptom diary, I finally figured out that broccoli was a significant constipation trigger for me. Every time I ate broccoli (one of my favorite vegetables), I would stop pooping 1-2 days later, for a day or two. It was an easy enough thing to forego broccoli temporarily while I sorted out the other factors (which included SIBO, but that’s another story!).
A few years later, I was confused after my partial hysterectomy. Because I was no longer bleeding, I couldn’t exactly tell what my cycle was doing. I knew that I needed some hormonal support, but my other symptoms didn’t make it clear.
By taking my basal body temperature, I found that I WAS still cycling, but that my cycles had become irregular. So I learned that I was entering peri-menopause, which helped me craft my best support strategy. It also helped me understand some symptoms I was seeing on the outside, like acne flares.
I had a client who was able to figure out that the reason they had chronic, daily diarrhea was because of a melatonin supplement they were taking in order to help with sleep.
I had another client who learned through food-symptom tracking that tomatoes, a high histamine food, were contributing to their frequent hives.
One more client could clearly see that gluten and dairy were causing her bloating and extra morning trips to the bathroom.
Conclusion
Sometimes the solutions to your health problems don’t involve fancy protocols or pills, just some common sense changes that address what’s true for your very own body. If you are willing to take the time to look a little deeper, and learn to be a symptom tracker, you may find the root causes, which save us a life of worsening symptoms and increasing medical costs.
Now it’s your turn…if you’re confused about the source of your symptoms, download the Food-Symptom Diary and try your hand at tracking your symptoms. See what new information you can learn about your symptoms.
Tracking your symptoms to learn about your body’s non-negotiables is only one stop on the Road to Recovery. To see what else is needed to find your way to your personal remission or long-term plan, grab your free copy of Roadmap to Recovery here.
If you find you have more questions than answers after completing your Food-Symptom Diary, I invite you to schedule a free 30-minute Assessment Session with me, and I’ll help you make sense of what you found.
by Amanda Malachesky | Oct 26, 2018 | Chronic Illness, Digestion, Food Intolerance, Functional Nutrition, Nutrition, Symptoms
If you’ve been exploring an elimination diet for your persistent symptoms, you may be overwhelmed with all the conflicting advice. Some advocate for removing the top 6 allergens. Others say you should give up grains, legumes, and the big six. Some say it’s certain kinds of starches that are the problem.
I’ve heard from many of you who ask, “Which one is the right one?”, or “What do you think about the carnivore diet, is that a good one to try?”
It’s wonderful that so many people are becoming aware that their food choices have a huge impact on how they’re feeling. But many of you are falling into one of the traps I see a lot: the magic pill trap. It seems like if you can just figure out which elimination diet is the RIGHT one, then all your health problems will magically fade away.
The truth is, an elimination diet is only only ONE tool in a large box of many needed to resolve your symptoms. To get the best benefit from elimination diets, you have to choose the right one, AND use it properly to see the benefits.
What is an Elimination Diet, and Why Should You Use One?
An elimination diet is simply a diet where you remove certain foods to evaluate their effect on your body. If your symptoms improve while you have removed those foods, you can now tell that you have a sensitivity to them, and you can choose to remove them for a longer term while you work on finding your upstream causes of your sensitivity.
So often, your chronic symptoms are partly a result of eating foods you may not realize you are sensitive to. Trying a methodical elimination diet can help make sense out of all those symptoms, and help show you what is a problem for you.
But I so often see people make mistakes when they try to do elimination diets. And one of the frequent mistakes I see is choosing the wrong elimination diet for the situation.
Not only that, but diet templates are always a starting place, and must be customized. Because in Functional Nutrition and Medicine, what matters is not what has worked for everyone else, but what works for YOU.
How to Choose the Right Elimination Diet and How to Use It
The best way to choose the right elimination diet for you and your body is to begin with considering what kinds of symptoms you are experiencing. Are your symptoms primarily digestive in nature, are they more related to your immune health, or maybe you have a lot of hormone or neurotransmitter symptoms. (If you need help mapping these symptoms out, please read How to Use These 2 Functional Medicine Tools to Clarify Your Path to Healing).
There are literally hundreds of diets and dietary theories out there, but many of them fall into 6 main categories of elimination diets. Choosing the right one is important, because you don’t want to introduce too many drastic changes to your diet at once, or become deficient in important nutrients.
So choosing partly depends on symptoms. What follows is a summary of the different types of elimination diets, and when you might use them.
The basic elimination diet method is to remove (or reduce in some cases) the suspected foods for 3-4 weeks. During this time, your body has a chance to take a rest from these foods, and calm down and heal any inflammation that might be related to them.
Once the elimination period is over, you introduce the foods you removed (if desired) to test whether they have an affect, and what those affects are. This is the part that many people don’t take advantage of, but it’s one of the most important benefits of the elimination they just went through. The key is to ONLY introduce ONE food at a time and carefully observe any change in symptoms by using a tracking method. Next, you wait for 3-4 days until the next test.
If there is no change at all, then that food is not a problem. If symptoms show up, then that food may need to be eliminated for a while longer, while you work to resolve the sensitivity.
As a general rule, if you are someone struggling with persistent symptoms, I recommend removing gluten, dairy, and sugar. (You can read 6 Reasons to Quit Gluten if you Have a Chronic Illness here). These three foods are highly likely to be involved in your symptoms.
And also as a general rule, you will want to eat a real-food diet, full of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and pastured, organic meat, free of hydrogenated fats, industrial seed oils (canola, soy, cottonseed, and safflower oils), and artificial ingredients you can’t pronounce. Avoid conventional produce to reduce your exposure to pesticides and herbicides.
The Basic Elimination Diet:
The basic elimination diet, recommended widely by Functional and Integrative practitioners everywhere, is to remove gluten, dairy, sugar (including alcohol). These three foods are the top triggers of food-related symptoms. The three right behind are corn, soy, and eggs. So the basic elimination diet involves removing these potential food allergens, to assess their affects.
The basic elimination diet is best used if your symptoms are mild but persistent. Symptoms like fatigue, sleep problems, mild digestive trouble, mild anxiety or depression, or skin symptoms would be a good indicator to try removing these 3-6 basic foods.
You should of course also continue to avoid any foods that you KNOW are a problem for you.
If you are struggling with arthritis, you may want to include nightshades in your basic elimination program. These include:
- tomatoes
- potatoes
- peppers
- eggplant
- okra
- tomatillos
- cayenne pepper
- paprika
If your symptoms or health condition is more specific, for example, to the digestive system, or you have an autoimmune diagnosis, you may need a more specific elimination diet.
Specific Carbohydrate Diets (SCD)
A Specific Carbohydrate elimination diet is primarily useful if you seem to react to lots of vegetables and fruits, or have a lot of digestive symptoms or diagnoses such as Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO), IBS, or IBD. There are 5 types of starches in plant-based foods, and some people are sensitive to some or all of them. They are collectively referred to as FODMAPs, which stands for Fructo-, Oligo-, Di-, Mono-Saccharides, and Polyols.
If you experience a lot of bloating, pain, distention, gas, and discomfort from eating what you might think are “healthy” foods, high FODMAP foods may be the culprits.
There are two different variations on specific carbohydrate diets. One is a low-FODMAP diet, and another is the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD). They are similar, but they differ by which specific carbohydrates they eliminate. A low-FODMAP diet is designed to help IBS-sufferers identify trigger foods, while SCD is a more long-term strategy of avoidance of certain kinds of carbs.
As elimination diets go, low FODMAP is probably the way to help you distinguish which types of carbohydrates trigger your symptoms. You can find resources about how to give this elimination diet a try here.
Paleo and Ancestral Elimination Diet
You have probably been living under a rock if you haven’t heard of the Paleo diet. The concept of the Paleo elimination diet is to only eat foods that were available to humans before the advent of grain and dairy farming.
The Paleo diet relies heavily on animal protein, healthy fats, and lots of fresh vegetables. It eliminates not only grains, and dairy products, but sugar, industrial seed oils, alcohol, and legumes as well. Because of these omissions, this diet is also much lower in simple carbohydrates than most Americans eat.
The Paleo diet has been popularized by Chris Kresser, in his book The Paleo Cure, and the Melissa Hartwig’s Whole 30.
Many people have found significant relief from their symptoms by adopting a Paleo diet, especially those with heart disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and autoimmune conditions. Because it combines the basic elimination diet with elimination of grains, it’s a good template to try if you don’t have drastic health problems, but know aren’t in your best shape.
There are some caveats for the Paleo diet. Many people worry about the high fat advocated in the Paleo diet. The science is in on this topic, and it clearly shows that there isn’t an association between cardiovascular events and dietary fat intake. But if you increase your fat intake without making sure that your gall bladder and bowel can tolerate it, you may make digestive or other symptoms worse.
Also, the Paleo diet includes many high-oxalate foods (see Specialty Elimination Diets below), such as spinach, chard, sweet potatoes, almonds (especially as almond flour), chia, peanuts, and chocolate. Some people react to oxalates with increased body pain, or urinary tract problems, such as kidney stones.
If you’re a lot sicker, with one or more autoimmune diagnoses, you may want to consider the more specific autoimmune paleo template. (See below).
Autoimmune Paleo Elimination Diet (AIP)
The Autoimmune Paleo elimination has a lot of the same basic template factors as regular Paleo, but it removes many more potential autoimmune and symptom triggers in the initial removal phase. It is one of the most strict elimination diets. In addition to removing foods on the Paleo diet, foods to remove includes:
- eggs
- legumes
- grains
- many spices and herbs
- nuts and seeds
- nightshades
The AIP should generally only be considered for serious, autoimmune health problems, and ideally should be taken on with at least some guidance. And though it can take some time to work through the elimination and reintroductions, AIP isn’t meant to be a long-term diet solution, because the lack of diversity can lead to nutrient deficiencies of zinc, selenium, B vitamins, and the omega 3:6 balance. Not only this, but it can be very hard to adhere to, because eating outside of your home becomes very difficult.
But if you have food sensitivities or autoimmune issues that have been unresolved with a basic elimination diet, AIP may be the way to go for you.
If you want more support with the Autoimmune Paleo protocol, I recommend checking out Mickey Trescott and Angie Alt’s website Autoimmune Wellness.
Ketogenic Elimination Diet
A ketogenic diet is an very low carb, moderate protein, and high fat diet designed to bring the body into nutritional ketosis. This means that your body relies on burning fats for fuel, instead of the usual carbs and sugars.
The ketogenic elimination diet is similar to the Paleo template, but it also removes or reduces starchy vegetables, like potatoes, beets, carrots, and winter squash, and most fruit.
A ketogenic diet is most beneficial for people with metabolic problems like obesity, syndrome X, and diabetes, who are wanting to reset their metabolism for weight loss and maintenance. It’s also valuable for people who have severe brain issues, like epilepsy, brain injuries, certain types of cancer, autism, or neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s, Multiple sclerosis, Parkinsons, and ALS. This is because sugar is inflammatory for the brain and cancer cells, and the high fat, low sugar template can help reduce inflammation.
People on a ketogenic diet may become deficient in potassium, and will need to adjust the carbohydrate content of their diet to their unique tolerance.
Because keto diets are very high in fat, it’s important to assess the strength of your fat digestion before diving in. You aren’t necessarily what you eat, but what you can do with what you eat. Especially exercise caution if you have had your gall bladder removed, or already know that your fat digestion is compromised.
Specialty Elimination Diets: Glutamates, Oxalates, Salicylates, and Amines, Oh My!
Sometimes, the problem is a category of foods. These include foods high in glutamates, oxalates, salicylates, and amines, like histamine.
These eliminations typically are something to look into if you haven’t gotten relief with the more basic elimination trials. For some of you, certain chemical elements of different kinds of foods may overwhelm your body’s ability to break them down.
You’ve likely heard of people reacting to MSG (monosodium glutamate). MSG is a high-glutamate food. Glutamate is a brain-stimulating chemical that naturally occurs in cured meats and cheeses, MSG, soy sauce, fish sauce, corn starch, corn syrup, seaweed, bone broths, L-glutamine supplements, gelatin, and protein isolates.
Glutamate is broken down in the liver. If you happen to be deficient in nutrients your liver uses to break down glutamates, or if you have a genetic variation that inhibits your ability to successfully break them down, you may experience symptoms when you ingest too much of them. If you eat more than your body can handle in one meal, hello symptoms.
With Specialty eliminations diets, it’s generally not possible to completely remove them from your diet. The food chemicals are often present in many common plant foods. The goal is to identify which ones are the worst offenders for YOU, and then work to eliminate those ones in particular, or to find your level of tolerance. But don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Specialty eliminations are best done with the support of a nutrition professional who can help you determine where to look, and how to track the eliminations and trials.
A Food-Symptom tracking diary or app can help.
Conclusion
Food is such an important piece of how we feel, but we need to be smart about how we work to understand what we need to change to feel our best. We don’t want to open up our bodies to nutrient deficiencies, or take on undue hardship with restrictions.
Getting to the heart of YOUR unique sensitivities, so you can remove that stress from your body’s energy field is important, but you want to do it right, with the least amount of upheaval for the greatest benefit.
When you’re ready for some support in digging through the weeds, I would be happy to sit down with you and map out an elimination diet plan in the context of all your signs and symptoms. Schedule your Free Assessment Session right here, and I’ll let you know where I think you might best focus your efforts.
With any complex health issue, food is only one part of the strategy that will bring you relief. To find out more about the strategy I use to help my clients find remission or a successful long-term management plan for their symptoms, download your copy of Roadmap to Recovery: How to Move Beyond Your Symptoms and Create a Personalized Plan to Restore Your Health.
by Amanda Malachesky | Oct 12, 2018 | Digestion, Food Intolerance, Functional Nutrition, Symptoms
Digestion. It’s that kind of icky thing that is supposed to go on without notice. We don’t really want to think about it, but it comes back to talk to us when it’s not working right.
Nausea. Bloating. Heartburn. Gas. Reflux. Diarrhea. Constipation. Even vomiting. Who wants to think about that?
But nearly three quarters of you normally have at least one of these digestion problems regularly. And if you’re trying to heal from a more complex health challenge, it’s highly likely digestive troubles are part of your picture. Not only are they uncomfortable, but they are an important signal that something in your body needs attention.
Because digestion is so important for health, I want to make sure that you have the information you need to create your good digestion foundation.
What are Digestion Problems?
Though they range from mild to severe, digestion problems can be symptoms, like heartburn, reflux, indigestion, nausea, bloating, or diarrhea. But digestion problems can also be a diagnosis, like Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), Colitis, Crohn’s disease, and Celiac Disease. They can also be functional problems, like when your motility is too slow (constipation) or too fast (diarrhea). And don’t forget things like food sensitivities that can cause some or all of these symptoms.
All of these are signs or symptoms that signal that your gut isn’t working properly and needs to be supported. And no matter what health challenge you are facing, whether it is digestive in nature or not, we need to get your digestion working efficiently so your body can access the raw materials it needs for healing and maintenance.
Why Good Digestion is Key to Health
Of course, your body needs lots of high quality nutrients to perform its duties. You know, all those seen and unseen things it does every single day to keep you breathing, moving, and living.
If you think about the mechanics and chemistry of it, you chew your food up. Then little broken down molecules, like sugars, fats, and proteins or amino acids are absorbed into your bloodstream for use in your cells, tissues, organs, and systems.
Without this working right, you essentially starve to death, or at least work at a deficit.
If your carbohydrate digestion isn’t working well, your muscles may not have enough ATP to produce energy, and you feel fatigued.
If your fat digestion isn’t working well, you may not have the raw materials your body needs to create hormones or nerve cells, and you may feel moody, or experience pain, or memory loss.
If you can’t digest your proteins properly, your brain may not have the raw materials it needs to make your neurotransmitters, and you may feel depressed, or anxious, or irritable.
If you are low in particular vitamins or minerals, like B vitamins, for example, your liver may not be able to detoxify your waste as well as it should.
In this way, poor digestion can lead to just about any sign or symptom you can think of, though it might be difficult to track it back directly. And this is why, to give your body a fighting chance to maintain itself in full health, we want to make sure that your digestion is working at the top of its game.
A well-functioning digestive system also protects your body from outside invaders or pathogens that come in with your food, no matter how clean it is. If this function breaks down, for any number of reasons, you become susceptible to infections that can create more complex symptoms.
Beyond the fact that poor digestion can compromise your body’s ability to do it’s important work, there is an increasing amount of research that hypothesizes that one of the major sources of autoimmune disease is a permeable gut membrane.
So you can see how very important it is for us to evaluate and support our digestive systems at the highest level of health we can.
How to Assess Your Digestion
To assess your digestion, you want to look at the whole system from top to bottom.
Because digestion starts in your mouth, take a minute to consider how well you chew your food. Do you wolf your food down, or do you give yourself time to mix your food with your saliva?
Next down the line is the stomach. Your stomach produces a super important piece of the digestion puzzle: stomach acid. Without enough stomach acid, you can’t fully break down your protein, you are more vulnerable to infections because it’s supposed to kill them, and you are also susceptible to B12 and iron deficiency.
And though people often mistakenly believe the opposite, reflux and heartburn are actually a sign of not having enough stomach acid. This is because the acid helps maintain the sphincter that keeps stomach acid out of the esophagus.
Your stomach acid is ALSO responsible for causing you to release bile and pancreatic enzymes, for fat, protein, and carbohydrate digestion. It also helps move things along in your intestines.
So, to assess your stomach acid, consider: do you experience heartburn or reflux? How about poor fat digestion? Or constipation? A heavy feeling in your stomach long after you ate? Do you have a lot of food sensitivities? Mental health complaints?
If so, you may not have enough stomach acid to help move your digestion process along, release your needed co-factors for digestion, or the acid necessary to fully break down your proteins into amino acids and peptides.
Next in line is the small and large intestine. For many of you out there, the small intestine is not your friend when you eat the wrong foods. You experience such intense bloating that you may look 6 months pregnant. Or you experience brain fog with the wrong foods. Or maybe gas that smells so bad you’re afraid to go out in public.
The small intestine should have relatively low levels of bacteria, while the large intestine is designed to be teeming with beneficial bacteria. If you have trouble with diarrhea, constipation, bloating, brain fog, it may be a sign that your microbiome is out of balance. Stool testing or Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO) breath testing may help you determine if dysbiosis is part of your digestive challenge.
Finally, at the far end of digestion is your poop, which is an awesome assessment tool. Your stool should be a number 3 or 4 on the Bristol Stool chart, slightly “S” shaped, soft, and well formed. And it should sink.
If this isn’t true for you or your poop, it can tell you that you may need to evaluate your digestive health and track down what is irritating it. Too mushy, and you likely have inflammation in your gut, possibly from food or medication sensitivities or infections. Too hard and dry, you may also be dealing with food sensitivities, infections, too little water, or poor motility.
One of the biggest controls you have over your digestion is understanding how the foods you eat are affecting you. Becoming a skilled food-symptom tracker can help you determine where you can improve your symptoms simply by making some dietary changes. Learning about the right therapeutic diet template as a starting place can help. In many cases, this is all you need to do to feel much better. And even if you have deeper layers to investigate, this buys you some symptom relief while you work on figuring out the underlying issues.
How to Support Your Digestion Foundation
Step 2 in my Roadmap to Recovery (you can grab your free copy here) is to Lay A Solid Health Foundation. As I hope you can gather by now, this is nowhere more important than with your digestive health.
Here are a few of the digestive foundation supports I recommend for most of my clients as they walk their road to recovery. Not all of these will be right for you. As with everything in Functional Nutrition, you will want to evaluate how right they are FOR YOU. If your body gives you negative feedback, listen to that closely, and see what else you can learn from it.
#1 Stomach acid: A little apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, or Betaine Hydrochloride supplement before meals can support your stomach acid, and make sure your proteins are fully breaking down, your secretions are flowing well, you are absorbing your B12 and iron, and your sphincters remain closed. Avoid this support if you have ulcers, or are currently infected with H. pylori, a bacterium.
#2 Enzymes/phytonutrients: If stomach acid has been low fore some time, you may need additional enzyme support for digestion. One way to get more natural enzymes is from colorful plant foods. Another option is chewable tablets or capsules. If you don’t have a gallbladder, taking ox bile as a supplement may be important to help your body properly digest the fats it needs for hormonal and brain health.
#3 Probiotics: An essential part of your healthy digestive tract is a vibrant, healthy community of beneficial bacteria. Adding a probiotic supplement can be a helpful addition for most gut problems. However, some people have a difficult time with some or all types of probiotics. If this is you, listen to your body, and maybe look into gut testing to see why. It’s often related to bacterial overgrowth or infections. If standard collections of Acidophilus and Bifido bacteria seem to cause trouble, you may do better on a soil-based, or a spore-based formula. (Email me about how to access MegaSpore Biotic probiotic supplement). Experiment to see what works.
#4 Essential Fatty Acids: Certain essential fatty acids are necessary for gut repair and maintenance. Some of these EFAs are made by beneficial bacteria in your gut (hence the benefit of using probiotics). Adding fish oil supplement and cod liver oil can help provide these needed nutrients.
#5 Vagus Nerve Support: Certain behaviors encourage the vagus nerve, the largest connection between the brain and your involutary organs. Things like gargling, singing loudly, bouncing on a trampoline, deep breathing, meditation, laughing, or yoga help promote digestive motility, and can be especially helpful for constipation or gastropareisis.
#6 Habits That Encourage Good Motility: Stopping eating by 6 or 7 pm, and avoiding food until your breakfast in the morning, as well as waiting beyond 12 hours between dinner and breakfast, can help restore your digestion by giving the system a break. This also goes for snacking between meals, if you don’t already struggle with low blood sugar issues.
#7 Chewing: Fully chewing your food, until you can taste the sweetness of it, not only helps promote the proper “rest and digest” nervous system state, it also mixes your food really well with digestive enzymes and secretions that help it absorb better.
#8 Bitters: Digestive bitters promote secretion of saliva, bile, and pancreatic enzymes, which all support good digestion, breakdown, and absorption of the foods you eat.
#9 Avoid Food Sensitivities: Foods that you know cause trouble for your digestion should be avoided. This can be a blind spot for many people, because many of you are sensitive to common foods, like gluten and dairy, but because you never take a full break from eating them, you can’t tell. Avoid your known sensitivities. If you’re not sure, but suspect you may be sensitive to foods, you can do an elimination diet to explore this possibility.
Conclusion:
Because poor digestion is linked to so many health problems, including autoimmune diseases, and because digestion is the fundamental center of health, you owe it to yourself to create a solid digestion foundation as a major part of your road to recovery.
And contrary to popular belief, there is no one solution for everyone, but only specific and targeted solutions for YOU. I encourage you to experiment with some of the supports I mentioned here to work on reducing symptoms and to lay your digestion foundation. This may give you the breathing room you need to investigate deeper. Or perhaps you will uncover the one or two things that will help you resolve your challenge at the roots.
When digestive symptoms continue over weeks, months, or years, it’s time to get serious about searching for root causes and resolving them. When you are ready for some support identifying and resolving your digestion troubles, schedule a free Assessment Session with me to get my opinion on how you may need to move forward. Or to learn more about what YOUR Roadmap to Recovery might look like, download your Roadmap here.
