It's really empowering to think we have it within each one of us to feel better and do something that it sounds intimidating sometimes, but with a tiny, you know, a little bit of guidance, it's really not that hard.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of Uplift For Her. I'm your host. Dr. Mallorie Cracroft, and I am so excited about our guest today. This is my friend and colleague. Dr. Tricia Petzold, thanks for coming in, Tricia.
Oh, it's an honor to be here. Mallorie, thanks for inviting me.
For sure, we are talking all things gut health today, which, if you are interested in this subject, you're going to love it. If you're not interested in this subject, you should be. So hopefully by the end, everyone sees kind of how important this is and really learns to apply it to their life. I'm going to start by introducing you. So Dr. Petzold is a family physician certified in functional medicine. She has a functional medicine practice here in Salt Lake City called Pinnacle Health, and she also teaches at the University of Utah School of Medicine, teaching integrative and culinary medicine, which is awesome. Her background includes studying theology and working as an outdoor instructor and ski Patroller, which shaped her holistic view of health. She grew up in a health focused household, but later recognized that her conventional medical training often prioritized medications over addressing the root causes of chronic diseases. This realization, especially from her experiences in emergency medicine led her to pursue functional medicine, which allowed her to combine medical knowledge with practical lifestyle changes. Now she empowers patients to improve their health through lifestyle adjustments outside of work, she still enjoys her outdoor activities and is involved in community volunteer efforts. So we are we just love you, Tricia, so thanks for being here.
Thank you for having me. Thanks for the introduction.
Well, so tell us a little bit about–we'll just start off with the basics. How does gut health show up in your functional medicine practice? Obviously, it's not the only thing you do in functional medicine, but I think it's one of your primary focuses.
It's very true, because whether someone comes in with GI symptoms or more difficult symptoms to control and treat in our conventional setting, it turns out that there's a connection to our gut, yeah, yeah. And from from skin conditions to headaches to joint pain to autoimmune diseases, you name it, there's a relationship to our gut, and part of that holistic healing really is starting at the very core of us, quite literally, and helping that heal so that the body's healing effects can sort of trickle outward to the skin and the brain and the and the heart and everything else I love that tell us then what, what are we talking about when we talk about gut health like we hear it certainly enough.
What does that mean when we say a healthy gut?
So you know, we know, many people know that the gut digests food, absorbs nutrients, and gets rid of waste. What we don't commonly think about is that the gut has a really important role of protecting the immune system, being a barrier to inflammation, to unregulated immune responses. And the reason being is that 70% of the cells of the immune system line our GI tract, which is crazy amazing to think about. And it's by design we build ourselves every day from the things we ingest. And so we need to know that it's safe to take them in. And so the things that come in through the GI system need to go through layers to get into our bloodstream. And it's, it's, and if those are all working, well, that's a really healthy gut. If those break down, that is where inflammation can go amok, and the immune system can not work as efficiently, as it should.
To think that the gut is really one of the only parts of our body that is really exposed directly to the outside world. Our skin is and our, you know, the air coming into our nose that's directly exposed to the outside world. But the gut is really what we're adding. All of this information to our body in the form of food that we take in through our mouth and it goes down our digestive tract that's directly exposed to the outside world more than most of the parts of our body, right? Our heart is not exposed to the outside world, so our heart and our blood and our muscles, those all have to take cues from other things, but the gut is saying, what information am I getting from the outside world and and a big part of that is food. So if we're bringing in food and it's not the right type of food, or we're bringing in food but our body's not processing it, well, the gut is getting a set of messages, and it passes that down the line, and that set of messages can get really misconstrued if it's if that process isn't working really beautifully.
Yeah, absolutely. And we have many friends helping us in that process, because we have over 30 trillion microbes in our health. There's so many studies of the microbiome right now, and it's an expanding frontier of medicine, and it's. So exciting. It's great. Yeah, very exciting. I think when I look, there's 2000 new studies on the microbiome, you know, in PubMed each year that I look at. And so it's really exciting. And one of the common themes that happens with a lot of these studies is it highlights that the more biodiverse, good, healthy microbes are, the more resilient our health is. Our physical, our entire health, yes, emotional health all improves with healthy microbes. So, that's the first line that our food comes into contact with, is a breakdown from our microbes.
I think we should go through the gut, kind of top to bottom. And one of the things that I want to emphasize is we are going to talk about some supplements and some adjunctive treatments that we use to help support the gut. But really, what we're talking about is, how do we help rehab the gut, and how do we help the gut function the way that it was intended? Because it really is an exquisitely beautiful and complex process that is supposed to work a certain way, and when it works, it really, as you mentioned, affects every other part of our bodies. So when we're talking about this and having a healthy gut, we're really not talking about here are the supplements that you need to take. What we're talking about is, how do we live in a way that our gut can function the best, so that the rest of our body can function really well, exactly, beautifully. So when I describe the gut, and I think we've spoken about this before, this is similar to how you describe it. I say it starts at the brain, actually, and goes all the way down to the bum. And we have to start at the brain, because I think a lot of us would think, well, it starts at the mouth, right? But where is the digestive tract getting its cues from? Even before we put food in our mouth, it's coming from the brain. So will you start there and explain what is this at the simplest level, what is this gut brain connection of just like thinking about food and thinking about digestion, and then will you expand a little bit further into the way that the data coming into the brain really affects the gut at a deeper level? Absolutely.
Yeah. So you're right. We start digesting the minute we think I might go get a snack. Yeah. And so our our brains incremental for that aspect of it, and start sending messages to our organs that release digestive enzymes right off right when we start thinking about food. So we pick out food, we prepare food, and we start chewing it like even in that period of time, our brains already active in that aspect of our digestion. And then I think at a much deeper level, there's estimates that 95% of our brain is is subconscious or unconscious. And we try, we're trying to heal our gut with our thinking brain, and we should be trying to heal our gut with our thinking brain or no, we know we are trying to. We're trying to take the supplement. We're trying to look for the answer. We're trying to get the diagnosis. The diagnosis, we're trying to do a biopsy, whatever we're trying to do, we're trying to figure it out intellectually. And it's very natural, because that's how we solve problems a lot, and we're successful in other venues, but, but the thinking brain doesn't control how the gut works, and so it's this subconscious, this automatic nervous system, or autonomic nervous system that really is the controller of the of the gut. And so when we live our life in high arousal or fight flight or freeze, we're telling our body that there's a there's a danger, and we need to prepare for the danger. That's the opposite end of the autonomic nervous system that that allows good digestion. The good digestions occurs when we're in, when we're safe, when we feel comfortable and when we're resting. So we talk about the fight, flight or freeze response, or the rest and digest response. And the autonomous nervous system, or the subconscious of the brain, doesn't work with those two aspects of the nervous system at the same time, it's one or the other. So so if we're eating on the run, thinking about our to do list, do it, having lunch in front of our computer at work, things that many of us do, those are that's telling our body, at a subconscious level, that it's not time to digest, and so we're not sending the right neural messages to our gut, and so when, when we're in that, what we call the parasympathetic nervous system, or the rest and digest nervous system we're we're sending messages to the parotid glands to produce enzymes, to to break down food, to our stomach, to produce stomach acid, to break down food, to our pancreas, to produce pancreatic enzymes, to break down food, and to the smooth muscles around our small intestine, to to move food along. And all those, all those intricate activities occur when our body feels safe and calm and is in this, in this rest and digest part of our autonomic nervous system. And so it's, it is an essential part that's missed because we don't it's not the natural thing for people to think about is so essential. But that's really when we can when we start to understand how to transition out of fight flight or freeze into rest and digest at the beginning of a meal, all of a sudden we have a sustainable improving in our gut health. Yeah, it's really, really huge.
I think that when we talk about the rest of the gut. Which we'll get to. I think those are the things that we hear more about, is probiotics and prebiotics and different things like that. And those can be really helpful, but they really are just a band aid or duct tape. You know, they're they are helping the gut to rehab, but temporarily they're not going to make big, massive changes if the brain isn't coming back online to help control digestion. I call it a sneak attack when, you know, I always picture like we're working, working, working, and then we don't think about food at all. Our hand whips out, grabs an Eminem, puts it in our mouth. We never had any clue that we were about to do that, right? It was a split moment decision, and sneak attack to the gut, and the stomach's like, What the Where did that come from? Like, I wasn't thinking about food, I wasn't experiencing hunger like this. Food just dropped in on me from nowhere. And when that happens, the stomach is not well prepared for that. Now that's that's oversimplified, but I still think it's it's really what we want to avoid. We want to be able to experience food in the way that we were intended to do. And so tell us, what are some things that we can do to start bringing that nervous system or bringing that brain control back online with our food?
Yeah, absolutely. One of the really sort of quick ways to do it is to do deep diaphragmatic breathing right before a meal. And it's really, you know, the autonomous nervous system regulates all our internal organs without us knowing about it. And the lungs are special, because we will breathe without knowing about it, but we can override that with our deep diaphragmatic breathing, and that can access that. What we, a lot of people have heard about, the vagus nerve, that's, that's, that's the kind of the master nerve that that of the autonomic nervous system, that that fight or flight, yeah. And the in the vagus nerve actually, when it's turned on, it's directing energy and messaging to the gut, and that so that deep, and it goes right through the diaphragm. So when you diaphragmatic breathe, it stimulates it, and we start calming down. And that's a great way to to clue yourself in that it's, it's time to eat. Yeah, some people do a little meditation. Other people do a little stretching. It's, you know, if you're in, if you can sit down, spend time and not be in an argument, in the eating then, then you're in a place that you feel, you start to feel safe, and you start to activate that nervous system that tells your gut you can have all the energy you want. Or this is what we're doing now.
Yeah, exactly. And I think we don't want to make it too intimidating, which you haven't. We don't want to make it too intimidating, because it doesn't take much. We're not talking about 20 minute meditation before you eat. I think anything that just slows you down a little bit, one of the recommendations I give people, there's some mindfulness exercises around eating on YouTube, and you don't have to do them every time, but they're very simple, and they start with like, choose a piece of food, like a strawberry. And you look at it and you see it, you know, you just have that connection where the thought moves from the subconscious brain into the conscious brain, and it says, Oh, I am now going to eat something. And you smell it, and then maybe you taste it, and you take a bite and you feel it. And even as I'm talking about this, I'm starting to salivate, right? Because talking about it, my brain starts to get that signal that, Oh, I better get the digestive tract ready. She's going to eat something so that mindfulness exercise, it can be super simple. I think sometimes, when we are really busy, I will be the first to admit, like, sometimes I do eat on the go. Frequently, I eat more on the go than I should. But if we can just before it goes in our mouth, just pause for a moment and okay, one deep breath. Here I go. I am now going to consume food. I think it can really help prime the digestive tract when we take that time to pause ourselves and to focus on digestion. Do you also think that it helps support our nervous system to get used to spending time out of that sympathetic overdrive, to move it over into the parasympathetic, where we kind of have that calming down.
Absolutely. This is an exercise practicing makes it become your go to mind, body state, yeah. And without practice, we and with the society we all live in, we get moved over into fight, flight or freeze by default, yeah. And so it's it is a practice, and and I now, because of this, started teaching a course to the community on mind body bridging and allowing people to appreciate those triggers when they are in more of a stress response, and how to shift over in simple things like being present, like that. What you just described three deep breaths, and you can for a count of four, and hold for seven and out for eight, in just, just some kind of routine that that clicks you back into the present moment. Yeah, until your, your, your body starts defaulting there.
Yeah, that I you mentioned it before. You know, fight or flight. I think of it like fighting saber tooth tigers, right? Like the cave woman analogy is, when we're fighting saber tooth tigers, the body's not going to be like, I should really think about pooping right now. That's a great idea. It's not going to do that. It's going to say, like, Forget digestion. I've got more important things to think about. But we can bring that back by using meals as a restorative time and as a. Of connectedness, and that's really how it was intended, to sit down with our family or our village or our tribe and be able to say, like, how are you? How are we doing? There's no saber tooth tigers around. Because if there were, we wouldn't be sitting having a meal. And so using that time to to connect our brain and our body and allow that digestion to actually take place. It's pretty massive. Like, I know it sounds a little hippie, what we're talking about, and a little bit Woo, maybe, but like, it's, it's literally what's happening with the physiology of our body. And if we continue to ignore it, there are trickle down effects. The body is not going to respond as well. Absolutely,
I think that's, I think that's beautiful, because meditation has lots of data. We know that it works. We and for these physiological reasons, and a lot of patients who come to see me say, I'm not really good at meditating, and I get it, I'd rather walk and meditate, but eating is an opportunity to be present, and that's a meditation. And so I actually take the opportunity for food to be that trigger to say, let's get into that, that state of calmness Yeah, and, and, instead of the opposite, I think it's really can benefit your everything else about your health.
I want to go off of that for a second, because I think you, you made me think of something really important, which is with our current diet culture and with women, especially who have issues with self image and issues with weight. I think that food can elicit massive fight or flight feelings. You know, they think like, oh, it's meal time, and what am I going to eat? Like, I shouldn't be eating this, but I'm starving and I don't have anything else. And why am I craving this? And why am I so weak? Or why can't I do this? And all of this is really centering around food. So I think when people do have a complicated relationship around food. It sort of doubles down on the issues around digestion, because it's doing the opposite of what we've just spoken about, right? You think about food and the body is automatically like, Oh, great. Like, here we go again, this terrible thing. So that idea of using food and meal time as sort of this time to heal and recover can be complicated, and I think if people have any sort of disordered eating patterns, or have this automatic response to food that is more negative, that that can be something that that people can help with myself and you, or therapists, or that may need some some assistance to Say, how do we stop that fight or flight response to food, because that's not going to do you any favors? Yeah, absolutely.
How do we change from thinking about food to our weight, our image, our how we look, to understanding nutrients, understanding what it's how it's fueling understanding health. Food is not the enemy and doesn't become the enemy, but becomes a way to reconnect with yourself. Yeah,
and I think mindfulness is so powerful that way, because the way that I explain it is mindfulness is bringing into the present moment, and the brain can only think about so many things at once, so it can't be thinking about how terrible food is. If it's busy analyzing like, This is sweet, this is sour, this is juicy, or I am with my friend, we are eating. The brain can only do so many things at once, so if we can really bring it into the moment of at this moment I am chewing my food, at this moment I am having this particular food. It sounds a little weird and it sounds a little oversimplified, but really, the brain can take a break from that exhausting hamster wheel of negativity, and just say, in this moment, I am eating this food, not good, not bad. I'm not judging it. I'm just saying this is what I'm doing right now. Yeah.
And I think that's a great point, because the autonomic nervous systems lives in the present moment. Yeah, it doesn't work worrying about the past or thinking about the future. Yeah. And so you That's exactly right. We're shifting and giving on our place, our self of an opportunity to be in that place, and as we do that becomes in a more natural place to live.
Okay, wonderful. So that's that's where the digestion starts, and it's something you and I are both very passionate about, so we spent a little bit of extra time there. But I think it's so important to recognize that for long term healing, for the gut, you won't get there very well unless you really are establishing how that brain is responding, especially around food and digestion. So the next phase of digestion that I think about is chewing. So we actually we've thought about food, we've thought about digging, we've thought about preparing the food, and now we actually take it and we put it in our mouth. What happens there that's so important to our digestion?
Well, a number of things. One is just breaking down the food. Sometimes people say they're shovellers and they just have one bite and it's down. Yep, there's a couple benefits to chewing. You know, people say 215, times, 230, times. You know, that's that's challenge, but, but as you chew, you're breaking down the proteins. You're giving the the enzymes from the parotid glands in your mouth more of a chance to start breaking down the proteins in the food. And you are changing. You're giving your your taste buds a chance to change to taste different aspects of the food. So as you chew, the food gets sweeter, and if you notice that, there you are in the present moment, in in a calming state. So it's really the chewing aspect is at. Absolutely brilliant and wonderful and and over the years, our food has gotten softer, and so we're chewing less, and chewing we know opens up airways, allows us to nose breathe more readily, like there's a lot of benefits to chewing, and so allowing yourself the joy of chewing is kind of slows everything down. Yeah,
it is definitely one of the simplest things we can do to promote our digestion, but one of the most difficult things to do, and I have worked on it. And as as in my surgical training, the adage was like, you eat when you can, and you eat whatever you can because you don't know when you're going to get the chance to eat again. And so I definitely was trained to shovel it in, like whatever it is, you get it in, you get it down, and you move on with your life. And so it's been a challenge for me to actually stop and chew. And I've noticed when I do it, I actually sit back in my chair, like I put my fork down, and I sit back in my chair, and my brain is like, Well, I'm gonna be here for a minute, so I guess I'll just relax into it. And if you do this experiment of just see how much you can chew a bite. This works better, obviously, if it's something that has some bite to it, like a piece of meat or a chewy vegetable, but if you can just settle in and chew it until you couldn't possibly chew it anymore. I mean, it's liquid, right? It's like you're you're accidentally swallowing because it's so chewed, right? When you do that it really is a different experience. And you kind of realize the contrast, which is that most of us it is in and down, like you said, with one chew, two chews, and it really is this different experience. When I've experimented with it, I notice, like I actually raise my eyes from my plate, and I pay attention to the people I'm at the table with, or maybe I notice the wind blowing by, or maybe I notice something else. And I don't do it every time, but it certainly has helped me to slow down, and especially if I am eating a bigger meal, just to notice, like it's okay to slow down, like, just take a break, just take a break and do it. And as you mentioned, one of the things that's doing is it's allowing the saliva to actually do its job, which is a very powerful digestive enzyme, and so it takes a lot of the burden off of the lower digestive tract, which can get more complicated messaging, which we'll get into, but the saliva is pretty ready it. There's not a lot of things that you can do to inhibit saliva when that once there's food in there. So it works well, and we don't have to fix it. You don't have to take extra saliva tablets like it's going to work for you. So let it work. Use the advantage of this part of you that's functioning really well to break down the food as well as it can. And then the other thing that's happening when we do that is it's stalling, right? We're stalling in our mouth and our brain. 100% knows that it should get that digestive enzymes and the gastric acids, the stomach acid and the bile acids. It knows 100% that it should get that going then, because it's just sitting there, chewing all day, you know? And
we remember that we the goal of this is to absorb nutrients, to absorb the amino acids, which are from protein, and you have to break that protein down. It we don't absorb a whole, a whole chain of protein all at once. We need to break it down. And so allowing every step to do its job allows us to get more energy, yeah, if you will, out of our food. Yeah.
Okay, great. So we've now chewed our food like crazy, and we're at peace, and we're zening out with our meal. We swallow it. What happens then? What's that next step in digestion that's so important?
So it goes through the esophagus into the stomach, and when it gets to the stomach, the stomach's already been told that there should be stomach acid, ideally, ideally, and that stomach acid is a trigger to the distal esophageal sphincter that closes it down so we don't get reflux up into the esophagus and the stomach churns the food and breaks it down with the stomach acid.
Okay, so what can go wrong?
We can not produce stomach acid for a variety of reasons. Taking a acid blocker is probably the most like Nexium or Prevacid photonics or omeprazole, absolutely. Being under high stress, stress blocks our ability to produce stomach acid, and certain foods, alcohol will block some stomach acid, so control pills too. Okay, certain medications, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so if that trigger, if the stomach acid is not there, often, we tend to not have release of intrinsic, fast infector with the acid, and we have lower absorption of important vitamins like B 12 and nutrients like iron and other breakdown of protein that and fats. It doesn't happen exactly.
So we're just not breaking down that food as well. And then you can see, as we start to stack these steps together, if we're super stressed, we're eating on the go, or we're eating while we're in an argument or something like that, and then we're hardly chewing our food, and then it's down there and it's in the stomach. There's not enough stomach acid. We haven't broken anything down. We're just getting this undigested food basically into the stomach, so the contents that we've eaten now move past the stomach into the small intestine. What's happening there? I.
Really, the messaging has gone to the liver and gallbladder to produce bile acid, to break down fats, and to the pancreas to break down the protein and those elements would be broken down in the small intestine as it goes through
the purpose being to, as you said earlier, to absorb those nutrients. If it's not being broken down, then we're not absorbing the nutrients as well. And this isn't just, this isn't just intellectual like, Oh, interesting. You know, this actually has real world implication. I think one of the ways that we see this is in mental health, is the our mental health needs amino acids to make neurotransmitters, to make our brains function as they should, and if we're not good at breaking down proteins, there have been studies showing that it can affect mental health because we're just deficient. We're deficient in getting these amino acids, even if we have adequate levels of protein, even if we say, like I'm eating protein, I should have all the amino acids that I need. But if your body's not breaking them down, then you may not be able to have access to those really important building blocks to help your brain function. So this is not just a matter of scientific like, let's take a journey through the digestive tract for fun. Like it really is real world implication abou our health, absolutely, absolutely. And that's so common where people are following the right rules of what to eat, but aren't getting well, it will even measure those levels and they're not there.
Yep, exactly, exactly. Okay. So I like to divide the digestive tract into sort of the upper portion and the lower portion. So we've just completed the upper portion. I think brain to stomach small upper small intestine is sort of that upper portion. And if we get that upper portion really firing, just doing exactly what it should, it sure makes it a lot easier on the lower portion of the digestive tract. So what are some things that we can do? We talked about some things we can do to support the brain portion of the signaling of digestion. We also talked about chewing more than we should for the for that phase of digestion. What are some things that we can do to support the digestive enzymes, the bile acids, the stomach acid, either from a lifestyle angle, or from supplements.
So number one is fiber, fiber, fiber, and more fiber. And what I mean is eating the rainbow of plants, vegetables, fruits, and trying to eat a variety. Because not only does a Granny Smith and a pink lady Apple have different nutrients and phytonutrients, creating different colors, but their their their fiber makeup is different. So we're feeding different microbes with different fiber. And so by the time the food gets to the small intestine there, it makes it there because there's certain plants that we don't have the enzyme as human beings to digest, but our microbes do, and they live in this large intestine where they can break down cauliflower, break down broccoli. And from that breakdown of the fiber, we produce short chain fatty acids, which which it goes directly into the immune system and calms it. And really, we've decreased how much fiber we're eating as a society. So thinking about where you can get your fiber is is a great way to start. Hydration is another important piece to having the GI system function well. And then joyful regular physical activity, and I say joyful in the sense that we'll do it more often if it's enjoyable. But also, there's, there's a benefit to our nervous system when we're doing things we like to do, and we're not just checking off a tutorial. Off a to do list, yeah, and having to do our workout somewhere, but really being being active and being moving and everything counts. You don't have to get to a gym, you can you can take the stairs at work, or, you know, everything really does count. So thinking about how your body moves in space and those that's an important piece. Some of
it we've already talked about in terms of supporting the stomach and the small intestine, is that chewing is that not being in fight or flight, it's slowing down around your meals. What are some of the supplements that you do, that you do use from time to time to support that upper portion of the digestive tract, that stomach acid, digestive enzymes, bile acids.
This is, it can be tricky to decide whether someone needs more or less stomach acid. And one, one way, a simple way I check with it is, I have someone, while eating a meal, take two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and eight ounces of water and drink it. And if it's causes more heartburn, I don't have them continue that, but if they all of a sudden feel like my heart burns less, or my digestion feels better, then that's an indication that they're not producing stomach acid. So we look upstream to the root causes of that and try to fix that. But in the meantime, sometimes I'll use apple cider vinegar as well as digestive enzymes. And digestive enzymes can include butane HCl, which is actually an acid to help contribute to that breakdown, that digestion, until we fix the root cause Exactly.
And I would say that's one of the things I see actually help most with symptoms, is when people need digestive support to give them digestive support, and it works very quickly. But a lot I see a lot. People take them in correctly? People will say, Oh, I take them once a day, and that's not going to do anything, because they're very rapidly acting. It's not like a vitamin that you're taking it throughout the day and it gets absorbed into your body. You're supposed to be taking it with the meal to break down that particular meal, so 10 to 20 minutes before a meal, ideally, with a meal is okay, but not not after a meal. It's not really going to do very much. So another question that comes up while we're talking about the stomach is heartburn, right? Oh, I have heartburn. Heartburn means my stomach acid is either excessive or it's coming up into my esophagus. I should take a heartburn blocker. Will you talk about that idea of heartburn blockers and just lay out a little bit of the complexity there with heartburn blockers like Prevacid protonics, PPIs, proton pump inhibitors. Lay out that complexity. First,
we just said stomach acids is critical for digestion, right? And so taking the acid out of the picture can really be detrimental to absorption of good nutrients. So long term use of proton properties, it generally not very healthy thing to do. And so helping get someone get off a proton pump inhibitor is like protonix, or premise said, are things that I do a lot of, and trying to figure out what is going on at that level can be like, I said, the test with apple cider vinegar. If we get off the proton pump inhibitor and try that and it feels good, then we're on to something we've been the some of the problem with the reflux is that there's not enough stomach acid to trigger that sphincter that I talked about that stops the food from moving up into the esophagus, so allowing the nervous system to slow down everything and Then add apple cider vinegar or Patan HCl and digestive enzymes can help people start to digest their food, start to feel better and then move away from having to be blocking stomach acid for the rest of their life.
Yeah, exactly. So heartburn, the old conventional treatment, I actually think, or the old conventional thought on this, is that heartburn is because you have too much acid, so we should make less acid, right? That makes sense. And I do think that is moving away. I think that even in the conventional medical world, definitely there is more of that understanding that maybe it's not just too much acid. But I do think there's still a lot of conventional doctors who put people on proton pump inhibitors in a pretty lax way, you know, hey, you feel better. Okay, see you in 10 years, you know, like, and I've had patients who say, I asked my GI like, well, when do I come off of this? And they say, Oh, you don't, you don't come off it. And I have colleagues in the conventional gi world who say, like, no, that's, that's a little bit of lazy medicine. I think that there's plenty of conventional gastroenterologists who who who see the negative sides of being on a proton pump inhibitor long term. Now, sometimes we do use proton pump inhibitors appropriately when we're treating conditions like H Pylori, which is a bacteria that can grow in the stomach and cause stomach ulcers. And sometimes we do use them temporarily in that way, but then we're trying to pull people off of them and then allow and retrain that stomach to appropriately secrete stomach acid so that, like you mentioned, the esophagus, the bottom of the esophagus, that sphincter can close and the acid isn't being pushed up through the esophagus, giving that heartburn sensation. So if someone is listening to this and they say, oh my gosh, I've been on Nexium for you know, for years I'm gonna stop it. What would you what would you tell them? Well, I caution them, because they might respond with a lot of symptoms, yeah. And so typically, the way I work with people is I'll get them on a very anti inflammatory nutrition plan and really, really optimize food for a little while, I really allow them to be digesting Well, moving their bowels Well, having everything work in their digestive system really well, and lowering their inflammatory burden on their body, which is what, you know, we're kind of coming to with this whole gut health piece. And then I'll say, now, let's wean it down. Yeah. And so I think guided with, with a dietitian, with, with a functional medicine doctor with, with, with you. I mean, I think all of these having a little bit of a guide to when and how to do it, so the success rate goes up.
Yeah, yeah. It is important to have guidance, because there are conditions that you you maybe shouldn't come off of them, things like Barrett's esophagitis or or conditions where maybe you really do have too much acid, not common, but, but there. And I also think if you just stop it right away, like you mentioned, side effects, oftentimes terrible heartburn, terrible, terrible stomach aches and heartburn. So there are ways that we can slowly bring you off of the proton pump inhibitor in a way that that you feel good on, but it takes a while, like if, especially the longer you've been on it. But we do want to get you off of it. It's associated with vitamin deficiencies. It's associated with osteoporosis. It's not good. We really shouldn't be on these medications for most people long term. But don't stop it without help.
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Now, the second part of my question that I'll come back to is, if someone is listening and they're like, Okay, I'm not on a proton pump inhibitor that sounds like those digestive enzymes might be good for me. One of the things that that I do is ask for any warning signs for who should not be on betaine. What are your What are your warning signs of someone that you may not just jump straight to increasing that stomach acid, like you mentioned, someone who with a diagnosis like Barrett's esophagitis, something that there's medical conditions that it is counter indicated with h pylori. H Pylori, because we know that when the stomach acids high and h pylori is present, you have an increased risk of stomach ulcer. So, so those, those things for sure, if someone tries the apple cider vinegar, tries the botany seal and has worse symptoms, I stop them. I I do indirectly, test for stomach acid patterns on their stool. Tests. When I do stool testing in my clinic to get a little more information, if it's not, if it's not clear clinically, what to do, and if you can't take the betaine, a lot of digestive enzymes do have betaine in there. One of the things I'll use is bitters. Do you have any do you ever use bitters, or have any other food as medicine? Ideas of something that that helps support the digestive enzymes or bile acids? Yeah, absolutely. Bitters is excellent. Their papaya extract is a often it comes as a supplement, but they there are digestive enzymes that don't include betaine HCl in it. And so a lot of times I'll start with, with that, yeah, with people, if, if the if they're not able to tolerate or I think it's not wise to start with the beta HCl. So, of course, not medical advice, and you shouldn't do this without, without assistance. But just overview of there are lots of ways to go about this. And of course, everyone can chew more. You're always welcome to do that. Everyone can sort of slow down around their eating, and that's why we spent so much time. There is a lot of times it's like, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I'm supposed to chew more, or I know I'm, I know I'm, you know, moving too fast, and I shouldn't eat so fast. But this is how you fix the rest of the problems that we're talking about. So it's not just like, oh, yeah, I know I should do that. It really is essential to help these downstream consequences, to allow the stomach to secrete the acid that it's supposed to. We can give you acid, but we don't want to give you acid forever. We don't want to give you digestive enzymes forever. We should transition you off of that so that your body is actually working on its own.
Absolutely. I think the first half of this conversation was essential because that it really is what? What reverses the condition?
Yeah. Okay, so now let's go down to the lower part of the gut. You mentioned some really good things that we can do for the lower portion of the gut, like eating plenty of fiber and eating the rainbow, hugely important for for especially, I mean, for the entire digestive tract. But tell us what happens. Maybe tell us just about sort of the overview of the lower portion of digestion. So we've just moved from the upper small intestine. Now we're going to go through the lower small intestine and then into the colon or the large intestine. With your autonomic nervous system, there's messaging to the small intestine for peristalsis, which is the smooth muscle movement that moves the food through to get to the large intestine. Once it's in the large intestine, it eats trillions and trillions of microbes, and depending on what foods you commonly put in your mouth into and put in your into your gut, determines what type of microbes will be there, and the type of microbes that promote health, reduce inflammation. They do so by breaking down fiber and the metabolites from that that breakdown between microbe and fiber is what promotes health, yes, and if you skip all the fiber as vegetables and fruits, then some of that energy actually is absorbed in the small intestine and raises your blood sugar quickly and others will feed unwanted microbes, things that can overgrow and cause inflammation and in metabolites we don't want. Candida is a fungal infection that can get too prevalent with a lot of more simple sugars and cause problems in the gut and just and through. The body, yeah, okay, so that large intestine has this huge diversity of good bugs. It can have some quote, unquote bad bugs too. It can have it can get out of balance and have bad bugs. But for the most part, we're looking for these good bugs because they have important mechanisms, like you mentioned, blood sugar stabilization, I think you mentioned earlier, mental health, signaling and serotonin. You also talked a lot about the immune system. These things happen in, in large part by the bug community. It's by this bacterial community. And that leads us to this idea of probiotics. We hear a lot about probiotics, and I think it's, it's a more nuanced conversation than I think a lot of people appreciate. A lot of people say, Oh, my, I was having all sorts of gut symptoms, so I started a probiotic. Tell us about tell us about probiotics, and where the research is right now, and where you stand with using probiotics right now, pros and cons. Yeah, absolutely. A lot of problems people have is not enough biodiversity, they're microbes, and so probiotics provides that temporarily while you're taking them. And so if someone is to have to go on an antibiotic or they've had a lot of gut high stress and gut problems related and they're trying to heal their gut, those are really great times to add a probiotic to take some of the pressure off their own microbes, while at the same time, trying to grow their own microbe colonies that will live there forever. The microbes that we take in a probiotic are just visitors. They work while they're there, and when you stop taking them, they don't stay. So the way to get microbes that stay would be eating prebiotic foods, eating fermented foods, eating a diversity of different fibers. And so really, those and really prebiotic foods are, are fiber, different types of fiber. I mean really, in the simplest terms. And so really trying to bio diversify that way. And then, and then, yes, I think people can feel better with probiotics, and they can be used. Well, sometimes they're not tolerated. And so I think that's where some of the nuances, some people have bloating from certain probiotics, or they have so many months of antibiotics, and then they just knock them microbes down. And so they're not tolerating probiotics well. So there's some strains of probiotics that are better tolerated and seem to balance the microbes better, like Saccharomyces. Boulardii is an example of a more gentle approach to probiotics.
So I'm going to recap that a little bit, because I think it's so important that we have these good bacteria in our gut. And it can seem like a really simplistic solution to be like, well, good bacteria. I want more good bacteria. I'm going to take a probiotic. It is a capsule full of good bacteria. I will swallow it. It's now in my body. Fine. Fix it, right? But it like you said, they don't linger, they don't move in. They just visit and then move back out. I love a good metaphor, and I'm ridiculous, so I love the metaphor of a party, and having a party in our gut and and having a probiotic is like, is like paying people come to come to the party, right? You they do come, they're still dancing. So you're getting those good effects. And that sometimes is what you need. You need the first people on the dance floor to start the dancing, and so then the body starts to get those good effects from it. But they're not going to stay, and no one else is going to come if you don't have good food at the party. So the good food at the party then is that fiber. You're talking about those prebiotic foods, and prebiotics as a supplement are getting more popular, and I don't think you necessarily need it in a supplement, but we can come back to that. But the idea of you have to feed the microbes is probably more important than the probiotic. It's even more important than having the people forced to come to the party. If you have an empty room and you put out tons of good food, you have a decent chance that someone's gonna come, right? Someone's gonna come to your party if you have enough good food. So it's kind of ridiculous, but I'm gonna go with it for a minute more.
I love it. I've not done this one. It's great.
But then the next step is, you say, like, but how do I get my real friends to come to the party? Like I paid these people to come, so they'd start dancing and make it look like fun, but how do I get the rest of the people to come? That would be like introducing fermented foods, that's actually bringing in native bacteria. We can also eat food that we pulled right out of the ground, so carrots that you grow in your own backyard, or zucchini that you grow, that you wash it, but it still has those microbes from from our clean soil. And as you start bringing in those microbes, those are the ones that want to come and move in and stay. And of course, then you've got all this good food and your real friends. And now, over time, you start to really have this thriving party in your get this, you start to get into this happy cycle of, it's self rejuvenating and it's self restoring, but if it's been totally wiped out, then sometimes you do have to pay people to come sometimes you do need to start with a probiotic. But it's definitely oversimplified to say, like, oh, you should take a probiotic for the rest of your life, and you'll be fine. That's way oversimplified. And I think you can feel a little bit better, but to really rehab. Gut and to get all of those positive effects we're looking for, you really need your own diversity and your own native diversity. Will you comment for a moment on the diversity in a probiotic? Because there's so many different probiotics, and they all have sort of some of them will have overlap of strains, but there's different strains there. Will you comment just on that importance of diversity that may or may not be there in a probiotic.
Yeah, typically probiotics will have lactobacillus and bifidobacter, and those are big phylas that incorporate a lot of different strains, and the variations on those strains and yogurts that we eat will have lactobacillus in it. And when we talk about a probiotic capsule versus a food like a yogurt, we're talking about a million, millions of color colony formulating units in food, and billions of Colony formulating units in capsules, which I don't think is is linear, but it does say that we use capsules more therapeutically, more therapeutic times, we're trying to eat foods that are fermented more frequently, so that it's just part of continual influx of good, solid friends who want to come to the party, you know, and join the enjoy and live in the in the environment and and so those are Very common. There's other strains that you know are constantly under study and trying to figure out. It's a little premature to say this one's going to solve the problem for depression, this one's going to end anxiety. We don't, we don't really have that. I think there's some hope that some things are going to produce better metabolic health and all kinds of things. But it's an ecosystem. It's like the rainforest, if we can think about it, if the whole ecosystem is healthy, then then the the environment provides a space to really promote our own personal health. And so it's so hard in our society, in our medicine, not to think literally, but we have to think. We have to think about the bio ecosystem in a very complex way to think about what what promotes health. But there's other I mentioned, Saccharomyces boulardii. It's been a really well tolerated microbe and people. There is some studies to show that it helps with when you're on an antibiotic, to help balance the good microbes while you're on the antibiotic, or for the months, month or so after that, that treatment, and then men see as another microbe that's hot all over the news and that is linked to better blood sugar levels and better metabolic health and and better mucosal lining of the gut and and it may be Part of that, but it's, it's, I think, too simple to say that it is. That's what, exactly what it does. It's part of this ecosystem, and yes, it's a healthy part of the ecosystem, and we're slowly collecting more and more identities of different microbes that are healthy, healthy part of the ecosystem. And the more you feed, the more rich the ecosystem is and healthy health provide for writing, yeah, as the more you nurture that gut, the more you get those microbes finding their way in. Yeah, I think that's great. And we had a question from Instagram of someone who said, I've been on antibiotics for three months. How do I heal my gut and how long will it take? Well, you mentioned saccharomyces boulardii, which is a mouthful. Some people abbreviate it to s ballardi, so you can find that. But what will you comment on like? What does that rehab look like for someone who's been on antibiotics, and just for anyone in general, how long that can take and what that looks like?
Yeah, I think that's a good point. I mean, someone who's just freshly been on antibiotics can really appreciate the difference, potentially, from their gut before they've been on it after, and other people have been on antibiotics 10 times in their lifetime, and may not have noticed it because they weren't paying attention to their gut, but maybe in a similar place as someone who's just been on three weeks of antibiotics. So thinking about everything we've talked about really trying to look at the whole gut. You know, when I think about healing the gut at that point, I would think about, are there triggers in what you're eating every day? Are there processed foods or high sugar foods? Do you have food sensitivities that you you know of or can identify and removing those re inoculating So these, these prebiotic foods, fermented foods, taking a probiotic. I like the s ballardi as an option to start with, because it's well tolerated and repairing the gut lining. So a lot of the foods we're talking about are repairing our gut lining. But there's also a supplement called L glutamine that we use really frequently in doses as high as three or four grams to really be available. It's an amino acid that that is a fundamental fuel for the gut cells turning over and we really return over this single line of gut cells that goes from our mouth all the way to our our bottom every three to five days. So it's crazy. It's hard to think about. It's just a very active. Cell line and and l glutamine is critical for that process. So while we're healing the gut, we often add that in to that aspect and in replacing anything missing. So some people are low on things like vitamin D, that's really good for the gut lining, other vitamins, minerals, nutrients. We get them through food, but sometimes we'll add zinc or vitamin D or other things to really help that gut lining healing. And then I said, remove, repair the gut lining, re, inoculate, replace anything missing. And then, and then restore. And restore is all that autonomic nervous system, balance, breath, exercises, eating in a supportive way for your gut?
Yeah, I love that. And it can, I think, as you mentioned, those cells turn over quite quickly, and so the initial repair people can feel better pretty quickly. I know we've both had patients with chronic diarrhea or chronic IBS, irritable bowel syndrome, where they say, Oh, I've been I've had a messed up gut my entire life, and it can turn around within weeks. Now, it takes a long time to rehab it and to get it to stay there and to nurture it, and to grow this microbiome in a way that's lasting and to help the gut be more resilient. But just in terms of like symptom resolution, it can be pretty quick that people start to get better. I think really chronic constipation, like terrible constipation is one of the more difficult things that that I have faced with that that can be a little bit slower finding what works for people, but in terms of stomach aches, bloating, heartburn, diarrhea, you know, the women who show that they look pregnant by the end of the day, those can be somewhat quick to to start to get under control. Would you agree with that?
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, she, she also mentioned, or he or she also mentioned that, that this is how long will it take, and it really varies. Yeah, I think the more wraparound care you take, the more you think about all those five R’s I just mentioned, or head to toe, or head to head to bottom, that we are going through, really using multiple facets of your health to heal this gut in that and not just one supplement. And say, How long will this one probiotic help take? Yes, I think that's so important, and I see that a lot of people who say and no blame, because, like, why would they know? I mean, they're doing the best they can to feel better. But one of the things that you and I do to guide patients through is to say, Okay, let's get you feeling better, usually with a combination dietary changes and supplements, but then let's rehab. Let's make sure that you're gradually adding in those steps that we talked about for the rest of the podcast. Let's gradually add in those steps so the tissues and the and the microbiome actually become more resilient, that the body is actually starting to work on its own. And I see patients who go through sort of a gut rehab that I do, and you do something similar, and they feel great, and then they stop everything, and they don't come back, and then they come back four months later, and they say, Oh, it was great for a while, and then it came back. And that's because the supplements that we use in those those dietary changes we use can be very, very powerful, but it takes longer than that for a lot of people to really rehab the tissues and the microbiome. Absolutely, will you just do those bullet points again for the five hour protocol? So functional medicine very frequently uses a five hour gut rehab protocol? Will you just spotlight those one more time? Absolutely, because I think it's important to think about how you're addressing each one when you're thinking about healing your gut. And so this is the approach that we take to to regrow and rebalance and rehab. None of those are the right ours, but yeah, so the five R’s, the first thing is remove, move any triggers and well, and I can go through them quickly, or I can expand on them, but, but we're going to remove triggers. We're going to repair the gut lining. So start there, go with remove, and we don't have to go into too much detail, but we're removing inflammatory foods like sugar and alcohol, and then we're removing commonly sensitizing foods. Will you review those ones that commonly sensitize? Yeah. So the initial approach that I'll often take is an illumination diet. We'll eliminate things like added sugar, gluten, dairy, corn, soy, shellfish, peanuts, eggs. Actually, some people are find those inflammatory and alcohol, caffeine, and we'll take some time, ideally at least 21 days we're off of that before reintroducing things, one at a time, in a mindful way, again, giving us the opportunity to be mindful about what we're eating and how we how it makes us feel.
So that's the Remove portion I I like to emphasize that it's a science experiment. I think it can trigger people's if, if women have had, I deal with women, if people have had any sort of disordered eating patterns or or nudge or leaning towards orthorexia, where we kind of get fixated on only healthy foods or clean, quote, unquote, clean foods and not unclean foods. It can be a little bit triggering to do this elimination. So I like to remember this is just a science experiment we're seeing how your body responds in this set of circumstances. Dances. Otherwise we get turned our brains do funny tricks, of like, that's a bad food. It's like, corn isn't going to be bad for everyone. Dairy is not going to be bad for everyone, but it can be quite inflammatory for lots of people. So having that science experiment of, let's just see. Let's just see. Yeah, exactly. Otherwise, when we try to reintroduce it, it can mess with our brains a little bit absolutely and I and so I've I actually teach a course, and I use illumination, because I think illuminating what foods really make us feel great and optimize our health, and focusing on not only what we're going to take away during this 21 days, but what are we adding in? What do you herbs, spices, nuts, seeds, legumes, things that maybe we hadn't thought about that actually reduce inflammation for some people and and give us more nutrients than we've had in a long time, completely and more fiber we've had in a long time. Yeah, and that's not actually one of the ours is to add in all of the good things, necessarily, but, but it is important to say, Okay, we're cutting out corn and dairy and gluten, but then there's nothing else to eat except for vegetables and meats and nuts and seeds. If you leave those in, yeah, and then replace, we'll get to replace, because it does fit into the R, replace. So, yeah, remove. So we'll remove. And it's a process, and it takes a little effort, but it's temporary, and it's really a great science experiments, super valuable. And then replacing anything missing. So I mentioned sometimes it's vitamin D, magnesium, our common nutrients we see deficient in, but also the wide variety of colors of the plants. And so trying to replace those while we while we're thinking about it, and digestive support as well. Sometimes I think, yeah, and I'll find that some people have low digestive enzymes, and we can measure that in the stool, or we can sometimes deduct it from from their clinical setting. And so replacing digestive enzymes, as we had talked about, and then there's repairing the gut lining, and that is also done with a lot of the foods that we're adding in. It's done with L glutamine, as I mentioned, good hydration gut lining is supported by vitamin D, zinc. There's nutrients that we need in our gut to keep it healthy and then re inoculate. So this idea of fermented foods, probiotics, prebiotics and a wide variety of fiber and then restore, is mind body connection. It's life balance, life work balance. It's breathing exercises, mindfulness, and we haven't even mentioned it yet, but it's restorative sleep, yes, and that's a big piece of getting supporting our own circadian rhythm to have that help us be in a state of good digestion. Awesome.
So if someone's listening and they say, Gosh, I wonder if I need to do this, how would someone know if they should do some sort of 5r some sort of gut rehab or support for the gut
Well, yeah, the obvious symptoms are gut symptoms. Yeah, you know, a conservation diarrhea, of bloating, heartburn, things not not feeling good when they're eating certain foods, feeling like I might have a food sensitivity, those kind of things. But then the gut, as we mentioned at the very beginning, is critical for all our of our health. And so a lot of people will find me if they have inflammatory skin conditions, joint pains, autoimmune disease, headaches, brain fog, you know, just vague symptoms that that we often don't have a quick fix for in our conventional medical setting, yeah, yeah. And they all, they all generally get better when we heal the gut, yeah, or at least to a certain extent. I did a internal study on a nutrition class that I teach that we just sort of describe this elimination, reintroduction and after, 150 people, the average improvement in symptoms that I measure before and after was 40% and in money, some people improved much more than that. So it's really like it's really empowering to think we have it within each one of us to feel better and do something that. It sounds intimidating sometimes, but with a tiny, you know, a little bit of guiding, it's really not that hard well. And
I think it's such a great story, because if you think about, if you go to your doctor and you say, I've got eight symptoms, you know, I've got bloating, I've got eczema, I'm tired all the time. I get headaches, I've got, you know, diarrhea from the our conventional training, mostly what we have in that situation is we can say, Okay, well, I've got a medication we can give you for your headaches, and then I've got another one you could take to get your diarrhea to go away the bloating. You could try this other medication I have and your fatigue, you know, maybe you're depressed, and so we get this flavor medication for that, right? And here's another pill, and that's not to make fun of our conventional colleagues, because that's the way we were trained. And there we're just not trained in past that so, but we like our functional training, and in our functional training, we can say, Okay, let's start with a gut rehab is every. One going to get better? No, frankly, no. Not everyone is going to get rid of all of their symptoms, but if you do a gut rehab and 40% of your symptoms go away, then we can really start to narrow down and say, Oh, okay. Well now let's figure out. Your headaches are gone, your Bloating is gone. Let's get back to that fatigue. What else could be causing that fatigue?
But if we're not doing that gut reset, then, then we're doing the same thing. We're like, Okay, well, maybe you could take this supplement for headaches and this supplement for bloating and this supplement for fatigue, but instead, we kind of come down to the root of the problem and really start to boost the repair mechanisms of the body. We start to boost the resilience of the body. And 40% like, of course, we all wish it was 90% everyone got better with a gut rehab. But that's a big chunk out of systems, and it helps us as medical detectives to say, okay, great, we've we can kind of check that box. Now, let's move on to our the rest of our investigation to see what else is going on.
Yeah, it is a wonderful place to start. Yeah, really is awesome. I think what I want to do in our last couple minutes, I want to do a couple just rapid fire questions for you. I'm very talkative, so rapid fire is hard for me, but I'm going to try to stay out of it. So number one is thoughts on, what is normal? Constipation or not? What is what is normal?
So normal is having a daily bowel movement, I know, or more or more, yes, absolutely, at least a daily let bowel movement, and not one that takes a lot of strain to have your body naturally allows it to happen. Some people will say, I have a bowel movement once or twice a week, and that's normal for me. The problem with that is, as as we mentioned at the beginning, one of the roles of the GI tract is to get rid of toxins and get rid of waste that we don't need. And if we allow it to sit there and not move through in 1224, hours, then it has the opportunity to absorb back into the body and create more toxins for the the detox liver our body to have to deal with again. And so, so really, being able to get to the point that that you having a daily at least bowel movement is critical. And the other thing is, even if it doesn't feel like that's the problem that may be triggering us to say, what is underlying that, what's the root cause, because something else might be going on that that is going to eventually cause other disease processes to kick in in the body, if we don't address the bowel movements, and if you can get them pooping more regularly, I think most of them actually do realize, like, I didn't realize I was uncomfortable. I don't realize I was bloated, but now I'm I'm not thoughts on parasite cleanses.
Oh, interesting. Just a tiny question. Yeah, that's a complex so it seems like there's a big wave of interest in it on social media. Anyways, I It's interesting. My personal experience working. I do extensive stool testing in my clinic, and I do look for all kinds of abnormalities in the stool, including overgrowth of microbes and viruses in yeast or candida, parasites, worms, these things, and it's rare if ever that I find a parasite. So the idea that a parasite cleanse without finding evidence that that's the triggering cause of symptoms, to me, has some concern, because some of those parasite cleanses can be quite toxic, so I don't recommend them just to do on your on your own as a I wonder if this will help.
Yeah, yeah. I agree with that for the most part. I think, I mean, I do agree with that. I think that the idea that we all have parasites, and that's what's making us so sick, I think, is vastly oversimplified. I think it's not eating enough vegetables, not gonna have sleep, and, you know, it's all of those things that are more likely to help with long term feeling better. I think a lot of parasite cleanses come with dietary changes or with flushes that just kind of move everything through. And I think most people feel a little bit better, if you just, you know, eat really clean and move everything through. So I think some people do feel better, but parasite cleanses are such a wide array, like you mentioned, there's some that have things that can be a little bit damaging to tissues, and some that are more herbal, and so I don't recommend doing it without someone who knows what they're doing. Along those lines, what about a detox cleanse?
So detox cleanse is a way to really help promote the liver, the detox pathways in the body, to do their job, and by providing the nutrients them, the vitamins, minerals that are commonly used in phase one and phase two of liver detox. And that's maybe more than people are sort of aware of, but, but the liver does take particles in our body and helps escort them out through our GI system, through our in and so in order to do that, we can promote that by giving a lot of those fight those nutrients, supplements. And what they are, are things that we find in cruciferous vegetables, variety of fruits and vegetables. So it's just giving a big bolus. I typically don't do it until I've checked out the gut. Make sure some. Has a really healthy gut that they can eliminate things once we detox. Because when during a detox, you're really stirring things up. And so some people can have body aches and headaches and not feel great during it, but then, then it can really help clear things up afterwards. Yeah,
I agree. I agree.
I think the gut rehab that you described is nature's detox. You know, I think avoiding putting burden onto the body by avoiding inflammatory foods and alcohol and sugars and then eating a ton of vegetables is a pretty great way to detox and drinking plenty of water. Sometimes you do use additional detox support as a big kick in the pants for the body to say, okay, you've got a you've got a lot of burden in there. Let's, let's help you move things through. But it's, it's not a long term solution. I mean, it only lasts as long as it lasts, and then slowly you, you sort of re accumulate. So eating those vegetables is sort of how we keep that going. Have ongoing detox, in addition to sweating and exercise and sleep and all of those ways. Absolutely. Yeah. Wonderful. Will you as our final thing here, will you just recap for us why you are so passionate about the gut, in terms of the the whole body system, in terms of our whole body health, and what your kind of big takeaways would be for women who are listening?
Okay, great, absolutely. I think what's what's amazing about the gut is it's sort of the central space for our healing, and we have so much more control. Each one of us has so much more control over the health of our gut than we think we do. And knowing that there's this wraparound care, this a way to address multiple things at the same time that are all supporting our gut health can be done at a low cost. It might take a little guidance at first, but then you're doing it on your own, and you're able to impact your own health. And so knowing that there's ways to connect with this mind body bridging and allow yourself to know when you're in a supportive place for digestion and when you're not, and how to get how to shift, how to have a mind body shift. Those are things that we all have the power to do at home, by our you know, ourselves. And I think that's really wonderful and and I think the the ability to take a wrap around approach to this is, is something we don't, we don't necessarily think about in our society or conventionally in our medical systems. And so I just want to know that everyone out there that there's a solution to a lot of gut issues, a lot of inflammatory process, a lot of autoimmune conditions that have been simmering in the body and in and we don't have to just wait for more symptoms to come. Yeah, it's very empowering, and it's not it the whole process is long, but, but there's, there's really good gains that can be done quite quickly. Absolutely, is there anything else you you want to share at all? I just want to thank you for letting me have the chance to chat about this. And I've just, you know, as we talk. I just think it's wonderful to have a commonality in this type of medicine, and I really appreciate the effort you're doing to get the word out beyond the clinic wall. So I really appreciate Tricia, thank you so much. We're so happy to have you here. Tell us how people can find you if they want to work with you, or they want to get your assistance, where can they find you?
Well, great. I'm at Pinnacle Health, which is on 1515 south, 1100 east in Salt Lake City, just north of Sugar House. And I do one on one clinic visits. I also teach the mind body bridging class. My next class starts on Tuesday next week, which is a five week class. And then I also teach the anti inflammatory nutrition class. And that next one starts in January. Can people come to your classes if they're not seeing you as a patient? They can.
And I actually think it's a wonderful way to see if they if they like how I think and how we do things. And sometimes they like you said, people get completely better from doing something very foundational, and then they can decide if they need more functional medicine consultation or not, which we love as doctors. I think if we could work ourselves out of a job because people took such great care of themselves and they didn't need us anymore, we'd just go hiking or something. Absolutely I love that thought. Well, wonderful. Thank you so much for being here. Great. Thanks, Mallorie, it's great to be here.
Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. A huge thank you to our guest for sharing their insights and time with us. We are grateful for the incredible support from our sponsors and to all of you listening. We couldn't do this without you. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing on your favorite platform. You can find us on our website, uplift for her.com, YouTube, Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you love to listen. And if you found value here today, please share this episode with someone who would benefit from it. Leave us a comment or give us a review. It really helps us reach more listeners like you. Thank you for being part of our community. Stay tuned for our next episode. This information is for educational purposes only and not intended to be medical advice.
