As a naturopath, I often work with people’s digestive system. Mostly because everything is interconnected to it. Our hormone, neurological, and even our immune system is housed in the majority of our digestive system. Our digestive system is the center of our bodies, also in the region of personal power, self-worth, self-love, and self-acceptance. If our digestive system is unhealthy our entire systems are unhealthy. Gas, pain, bloating, diarrhea, constipation is just apart of the symptoms often associated with an unhealthy digestive system. Gut imbalances have also been linked to hormonal imbalances, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, anxiety, depression, eczema, and other chronic health problems. Understanding how the food we eat, and how we break down and assimilate that food is key to beginning the process of healing ourselves. Having food allergies or sensitivities to foods may just be a sign that your digestive system is off balance. Anxiety, depression, mood swings, and irritability may also be chief indicators of digestive imbalances, particularly to the gut flora. Poor memory, concentration, focus, and brain fog are also contributing symptoms when an overabundance of yeast is present in the system. Diabetes, metabolic syndrome, as well as conditions relating to the metabolism, are also generated from poor digestive health. As if these symptoms were not enough frequent infections, chronic yeast infections, autoimmune diseases, and chronic illness are all contributed to a lack of healthy bacteria int he digestive system.
The first step in healing the digestive system is to be mindful of what foods we put into our system. Eliminating proinflammatory foods such as gluten, dairy, corn, soy, eggs, and sugar is often recommended when cleaning the digestive system. It is often not necessary to abstain from these foods forever, yet it is recommended to abstain for awhile while the body heals and repairs itself. As we rebalance the digestive system’s bacterias the body will heal itself and then allow for the body to reintroduce certain foods back into the system. The digestive system tends to appreciate variety, so eating the same foods over and over again does not tend to be recommended as the body begins to develop sensitivities to the foods. This could be because of a variety of reasons such as the herbicides, pesticides, as well as the advent of GMOs in our food. Understanding the current infections is helpful in rebalancing the digestive system. Running a comprehensive stool panel to determine bacterias, parasites, yeasts, and dysbiotic bacterias are key to creating a healthy gut ecology. These infections can be old or new infections and often times viruses the body has been exposed to years ago such as Epstein Barr remain dormant and hinders the entire system from healing. repairing the digestive process including the lining of the digestive system is also important to healing the mucosal barriers of the system.
Replacing digestive enzymes, hydrochloric acid, B complexes, carnitine, and bile acids that may be lacking support the bodies ability to break down digest, and assimilate whole foods eaten. Without these digestive supportive aids at times the body is not able to break down the food and thus creates unhealthy bacterias in the digestive system. Once the digestion and assimilation process is repaired now the body is ready for reinoculation of healthy bacterias. Understanding the current digestive microbiome and which strains of probiotics are in the system, which ones need growth, and which ones are in abundance can all be found in a comprehensive stool panel. I tend to not recommend things like Kombucha, or Kimchi unless you know the strains being grown as you may or may not know if the strains play well with one another.
Lastly repairing the lining of the digestive system by renourishing the lining with nutrients such as L-Glutamine, as well as other key nutrients such as zinc, vitamin a, c, e and various herbs such as licorice root or slippery elm. repairing and healing the lining is critical in reducing effects of leaky gut, a condition to which the lining of the gut has been compromised allowing toxicity to leaky through into the bloodstream. Autoimmune conditions are prone to this such as those conditions such as arthritis or thyroiditis as the toxicities normally contained in the gut is now leaky into the bloodstream connecting with either endocrine organs or joint capsules. Repairing this linign of the digestive system will prevent any future damages to these axillary organs and depending on the severity of the immune system compromise can repair the other aspects. This is why prevention and swift action is so critical at any given moment the body is either generating health or generating disease process. The trick is to prevent the disease process by building health int he body at all times. We can create a program to help restore your health one step at a time in our practice. By scheduling a first visit in our practice you can move forward in healing your digestive system, preventing many related auxiliary conditions such as fatigue or acne. It is often more difficult, time consuming, and frustrating to treat a manifestation of disease process rather than preventing one from occurring to begin with so even if you do not have a symptom it is important to support the bodies ability to heal itself one step at a time. Currently we offer a complimentary 15 mins wellness visit to assess your health concerns and educate you about the benefits of natural healthcare. Together we can heal your body and heal your life one step at a time.
All information contained in this blog post is intended for informational and educational purposes only, and is neither intended nor suited to be a replacement or substitute for professional medical treatment nor for professional medical advice relative to a specific medical question or condition.