People with intestinal distress often experience chronic gas and bloating, frequent abdominal cramping, diarrhea and/or constipation, and mucous in their stools.

While this constellation of symptoms is often referred to as IBS, or irritable bowel syndrome, the label does not tell us about the cause of the condition.

There are many possible causes of intestinal distress. Below are the most common culprits:

1) UNHEALTHY DIET

Many Americans eat an unhealthy diet, which creates digestive distress and causes overgrowth of harmful bacteria and yeast.

Solutions: 

a) If possible, eat all organically-grown food

b) Drink filtered water. Municipal tap water contains toxic chemicals.

c) Avoid processed and packaged foods as much as possible. Focus on fresh foods in the store’s perimeter.

d) Avoid vegetable oils since they are highly refined, often rancid, and can cause oxidative damage. Use coconut oil, olive oil, or butter for cooking.

e) If you eat red meat, make sure the animal is 100% grass-fed—no grains and no antibiotics or hormones.

f) Eat plenty of high-fiber foods, like vegetables that grow above the ground. High fiber helps eliminate constipation and feeds the beneficial bacteria.

g) Avoid or significantly limit intake of simple carbohydrates—sugar, alcohol, fruit juice, bread, pasta, crackers, cookies, boxed cereals, chips, and tortillas.

h) Substitute simple carbs with complex carbs (starch) like sweet potatoes, beets, carrots, parsnips, rice, quinoa, millet, and amaranth.

i) Avoid or limit intake of milled grains—grains that have been turned into flour. For example, rice (a starch) turned into rice pasta becomes a simple carbohydrate. Simple carbs instantly turn into sugar when mixed with the enzymes in the mouth’s saliva.

i) Include healthy fats with each meal to stabilize your blood sugar and help you avoid cravings for unhealthy foods. Fats are important for your brain and nervous system. Some examples of healthy fats are avocados, nuts and seeds, nut butters, homemade nut milks, butter, olives, olive oil, and coconut oil.

k) Eat a varied diet. Avoid eating the same type of food every single day.

l) Stay well-hydrated so the body can function properly and prevent constipation. A general hydration guideline is one quart of clear fluids per 50 pounds of lean weight (your weight in high school).

m) If you need to sweeten an item, you can use natural sweeteners that don’t affect the blood sugar, such as inulin (derived from chicory root), Monk’s fruit, stevia, and Japanese pumpkin leaf (BochaSweet).

2) FOOD ALLERGIES AND SENSITIVITIES 

What we eat and drink can have an enormous impact on our health, including the health of our intestines. Looking at possible food allergies and sensitivities is often the first place I start when helping my patients feel better.

Food allergies were rare 40 years ago when I first started my medical training. Now they have become commonplace.

Many factors are responsible for causing food allergies, including eating an unhealthy diet, the use of pesticides and other chemicals in our foods, overuse of antibiotics, and “leaky gut syndrome.” Leaky gut occurs when the gut wall becomes inflamed and swollen, making the wall permeable so that particles of food can leak through it and into the blood stream before the food is fully digested and broken down into its basic building blocks. The immune system does not recognize the partially digested food in the blood stream and mounts an attack. Thereby the immune system can become sensitized and tend to overreact every time it encounters that food.

Solutions: 

The most common foods that cause allergies and sensitivities are grains containing gluten (wheat, oats, rye, and barley), milk protein called casein which is found in all dairy products except butter and full cream, corn and soy—both commonly found in processed foods. Any food group can potentially be a cause of gut distress, but these are the most common ones.

Two popular drinks, alcohol and caffeine, do not usually cause allergies. However, they are gut irritants for many people.

Food allergy testing is often inaccurate. And since it’s a test exclusively for specific immune reactions called allergies, it misses food sensitivities and irritants altogether, which are not allergies. It’s best to try eliminating these food groups entirely for six weeks to see how you feel, and then re-introduce one food group at a time, at least a week apart, and observe the body’s response.

Sometimes foods regarded as healthy—like beans for example—can cause distress. After you’ve tried experimenting with the common culprits, look at less common troublemakers.

If you are not getting the results you hoped for, I suggest you read The Plant Paradox by Dr. Stephen Gundry to learn about how some healthy foods that contain lectins can cause gut distress. These foods include all grains, beans, night shades (tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, and eggplants), peanuts and cashews. Some of my patients have gotten excellent results following Dr. Gundry’s suggestions.

3) MICROBIOME

The gut microbiome refers to all the millions of living organisms in the gut. In order to have a well-functioning intestinal tract, the colonies of microscopic organisms need to be in balance, much like in a garden. The gardener feeds and waters the flowers to make them healthy and to decrease the chance of being overwhelmed and taken over by weeds.

The balance between the beneficial bacteria and the pathological bacteria influences not only our digestion, but also our physical, mental, and emotional states.

The more diversity there is of beneficial bacteria, the healthier the gut.

Solutions: 

• Eat organically grown food.

• Eat plenty of pre-biotics, foods that support the beneficial bacteria. These foods include fiber. Fiber is found in many whole foods, such as vegetables. Dr. Stephen Gundry sells a powdered pre-biotic supplement called ProBioticThrive that you might find helpful. The pre-biotics are even more important than taking probiotics. If you take probiotics and don’t give them what they need to thrive, they will simply die.

• Avoid antibiotics if possible. They indiscriminately kill off the gut bacteria, the bad and the good. If you do take antibiotics for an infection, take Saccharomyces boulardii, a beneficial yeast that fights the harmful bacteria, such as C. difficile, known for causing severe and sometimes life-threatening diarrhea after antibiotics. This beneficial yeast does not colonize the host unless the host is severely immune-compromised. The patient can begin taking the yeast while he or she is still on the antibiotics. When the course of the antibiotics is completed, you can begin the probiotics and continue taking them for at least three months.

• Avoid artificial chemical sweeteners, such as Splenda, that destroy your beneficial bacteria.

• Avoid being overly zealous with sterilization. (Gardeners often have a high level of diversity of gut bacteria, probably related to having their hands in the dirt.)

• Starve out the yeast by avoiding simple carbs.

• Eat cultured foods like raw sauerkraut and kimchee, which contain beneficial bacteria.

• Take probiotics. Here’s how you can test the viability of the probiotics you are taking: Warm up some coconut milk in a pan. Put the warm liquid (not hot) into a glass and add the contents of two capsules of your probiotics and stir gently. Cover the glass with a cloth and keep in a warm place. In 24-48 hours you will see clumping—like early yogurt formation—if the probiotics are alive. If they are dead, there will be no change in the liquid. 

4) OCCULT INFECTIONS 

Comprehensive stool testing (e.g.Genova Diagnostic Testing or Doctor’s Data) will often reveal a low-grade infection with bacteria or parasites, and often there will be an overgrowth of yeast or other fungi. The bacterial overgrowth is often the result—and not the cause—of a disrupted gut.

Solutions: 

Fungus: Fungal overgrowth is usually caused by a high carbohydrate diet, diabetes, and/or a history of heavy use of antibiotics.

Fungus, like yeast, needs sugar to survive. To lower the yeast colonies, eat a diet free of simple carbs. Refer to the dietary suggestions above.

Some foods have natural anti-fungal properties like coconut oil (caprylic acid) and raw garlic. If you tolerate raw garlic, I suggest you chop up a clove a day and add it to a salad.

If you have a history of heavy use of antibiotics, the low carbohydrate anti-fungal diet needs to be followed for life. Once the fungus gets thoroughly imbedded in the wall of the gut, it will easily flourish when you slip on the diet. It is never entirely eliminated.

Anti-fungal medications should be used only when the yeast overgrowth is severe. Medications do not eliminate the need to follow an anti-fungal diet.

Bacteria: Most chronic bacterial infections get established when the gut microbiome is out of balance. There are many effective herbs that can be used for gut infections. One popular remedy is called Biocidin. The drops contain several different anti-bacterial herbs. Another is grapefruit seed drops by Nutribiotics. Take 10 drops in 6 oz. of water three times a day for 10 days.

Protozoa: This category of organisms includes Giardia, amoebas, and Blastocystis hominis. They are more difficult to treat and often require antibiotics. The least harmful of the anti-parasitic antibiotics is Alinia (generic name is Nitazoxanide) You would stay on this treatment for one month. 

Worms: Worms are common, especially among people who have pets. In small amounts, most worms don’t usually cause harm. It is when their numbers become large that they can create blockages and “steal” the nutrients from our food.

Stool tests cannot usually detect worms because they would only show up if they were excreted into the feces. The best way to find worms is to look at the toilet paper after wiping and look for eggs. The eggs can look like sesame seeds, chia seeds, flax seeds, and even sunflower seeds. Most worm medication is not harmful. Ivermectin has been successfully used to de-worm both humans and animals for many decades. Do not take the veterinary version of Ivermectin.

5) GLYPHOSATE AND OTHER HERBICIDES

The pervasive use of Round Up and other herbicides on our crops in the US is raising havoc on our health, especially the health of our intestines. Glyphosate, among the many ways it harms us, kills our beneficial bacteria, especially our most prevalent species, called Lactobacillus, which is essential for gut health.

Solutions: 

Commit to eating organically-grown food—if possible.

Filter your water with a filter that removes herbicides, along with other toxins.

Consider urging your favorite restaurant to switch to serving organic food. Unfortunately, it means that the price of the meals will go up.

6) POOR DIGESTION

Many people, especially as they age, develop digestive problems. Digestion starts in the mouth with chewing, which mechanically breaks apart the food and mixes it with saliva. The saliva contains enzymes that break down the carbohydrates into simple sugars.

The food then travels to the stomach. The hydrochloric acid in the stomach acts like a solvent, dissolving the proteins into their basic building blocks, called amino acids.

People who have chronic health conditions and people over the age of 50 tend to make increasingly less stomach acid, which makes them prone to have digestive problems.

People mistakenly believe that acid reflux means too much acid. In truth, it means acid in the wrong place.

When the bolus of food exits the far end of the stomach, a tiny amount of stomach acid exits with the food. That acid is the trigger for the pancreas to secrete its acid-neutralizing enzymes, which further digest the food. If a person doesn’t have adequate stomach acid, the pancreas will not get the trigger to secrete its digestive enzymes.

Fat content in food we eat triggers the gall bladder to squeeze out bile that emulsifies the fat into little globules—similar to what soap does to oils on your hands. One of the pancreatic enzymes, called lipase, further breaks down the fat globules so that the fat can be absorbed into the blood stream.

Without sufficient stomach acid and digestive enzymes, the nutrients from food will not be extracted and the fat will not be absorbed. Fat malabsorption creates diarrhea and foul-smelling stools. Poorly digested proteins and carbohydrates create gas and bloating.

Solutions: 

• If you have a chronic health condition and/or you are over 50 years and have a digestive disorder, try acidifying each meal. You can use apple cider vinegar, lemons, or limes. Place two tablespoons of one of those options into 6 ounces of water and sip throughout your meal to aid digestion. Or you can put it directly on your food.

• Eat slowly and chew your food until it is almost liquid.

• If you have evidence of fat malabsorption by lots of gas, bloating, and foul-smelling stools, add pancreatic enzymes to each meal. I use Dr. Mercola’s digestive enzymes.

7) STRESS

Chronic stress can raise havoc on the body, especially on the gut. While stress can certainly be generated by physiologic and structural problems, stress is most often generated by our thoughts.

The brain and the gut have a special relationship. They both began life together as a ball of undifferentiated cells that made up the embryo. A group of those cells migrated upward to become the brain. Another group of cells migrated downward to become the digestive tract.

The gut is far more than a mere conduit for digestion and poop. In fact, the gut has a sophisticated neurological network. It also contains of 80% of our immune system.

The human gut is lined with millions of nerve cells and, like the brain, uses more than 30 neurotransmitters. The gut is the source of 95% of the body’s serotonin (the feel-good neurotransmitter). With good reason, the gut has often been nicknamed “the second brain.”

The brain and the gut remain connected by the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve controls the parasympathetic nervous system. It has been nicknamed the “rest and digest” branch of the autonomic nervous system. The vagus nerve is the longest nerve in the body and has branches to many organs, including the heart, diaphragm, stomach, intestines, and the bladder. The vagus nerve acts like a telephone line between the gut and the brain. This neural circuitry can allow the transmission of signals to each other in mere seconds. Every thought or emotion you have is registered in the gut. And every gut disturbance you have impacts the brain.

If you are frightened or anxious, you will trigger the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system, nicknamed the “fight or flight” branch. The stress causes adrenaline to flood the nervous system, which can severely impact the digestive tract, resulting in gas, bloating, diarrhea, and cramps.

When you remain in a “fight or flight” state with chronically high levels of adrenaline, the gut becomes inflamed and swollen and cannot digest food properly. This state is often associated with loss of appetite.

After my accident-related brain surgery in 2009, my formerly healthy gut became inflamed and swollen for more than a year, in response to the inflammation in my brain. During that time, the only foods that I could digest were soups and foods that were pureed or blended. In order to digest my supplements, I had to put them in the blender and mix them with my smoothie.

Solutions: 

Stress-management is one of the keys to maintaining a healthy gut. A few suggestions follow: 

• Eat slowly. Chew your food thoroughly.

• Eat in silence or in conversation about inspiring and uplifting information.

• Eat with reverence, with thoughts of gratitude for the plants and animals and the farmer and the sun and the rain that made your meal possible.

• Regard your meal as a holy sacrament.

• Exercise every day.

• Get outside into nature as much as possible.

 

ADDITONAL TIPS FOR GUT HEALTH 

• Zinc carnosine is a form of zinc that is well utilized by the gut. The dose can be between 30-50 mg a day.

• Vitamin A helps to heal and maintain all the mucous membranes in the body, including the mucous membranes that line the entire intestinal tract. Take between 10,000-25,000 units a day.

• Aloe Vera juice (in a glass jar) can be very soothing to the gut. Take only one or two ounces a day. Too much can cause diarrhea. Keep refrigerated

• Ginger tea helps with diarrhea, nausea, and inflammation. Drink hot ginger tea when your gut is in distress. You can also get a small grater and grate ginger for putting into your meals.

• When you have chronic diarrhea, eat foods that are easy to digest, like overcooked root vegetables, overcooked rice, and bone broth or vegetable broth. Drink hot peppermint tea if you have intestinal cramps.

• Constipation can be treated with a high fiber diet, avoidance of simple carbohydrates, adequate hydration, psyllium husk powder, seeds, Triphala, and CALM (magnesium citrate powder). Avoid calcium.

• If you have old amalgam fillings that contain mercury, commonly referred to as “silver fillings,” consider having them removed by a dentist trained in safe removal techniques. Every time you chew with the amalgam-filled teeth, mercury vapors are released into your mouth and end up in various places in your body, including your digestive system.

• If you have hemorrhoids, take measures to make your stools come out more easily by staying well-hydrated and eating high fiber foods so you can avoid pushing while on the toilet. If you have hemorrhoids that bleed, you might be interested in learning about a remedy that a patient shared with me. Below are the instructions:

You make a suppository out of coconut oil and THC in the form of oil or tincture. Lime essential oil for the scent is optional. Find a set of molds online and choose a size that suits you. Many choose pediatric sizes.  Melt the coconut oil and pour it into the molds, leaving a little room for the drops. Add 6 drops of THC and 6 drops of lime oil. Stir with a toothpick and place the molds in the freezer. My patient recommends using the suppositories at bedtime, but they can be used anytime there’s trouble with the hemorrhoids. The swelling diminishes almost instantly and lasts until something flares them up again, such as straining on the toilet and dehydration.

 

In conclusion, I hope you come to appreciate and support your gut, which plays a huge role in the state of your health and wellbeing. If you put your hands on your abdomen, with your eyes closed, while thinking appreciative and loving thoughts about your gut, the gut will respond to those emotions. Try it out sometime.

Here’s to your good health!