I am becoming more of a lover of naturopathic medicine by the day.  I literally have fears of waking up a few years from now in a remote forest, wearing just leaves, listening for the sound of deer while I’m foraging for herbs.  Seriously…because this passion is getting out of control.

However, there is a fair amount of nonsense out there, too, so you have to be careful when you begin to look for answers for every day ailments outside of the traditional medicine network.  First, know that whatever you choose to go with it is not as potent as a drug so it will take longer to work and you will have to play with the dosing.  Second, start with well known and proven cures before venturing into the land of weird and bizarre.  And lastly, if it sounds wacked out, it most likely is wacked out and at that point you should use it for pure entertainment purposes only.

The following is a list of things you may not have thought of to help you with your digestive and gastric issues:

Aloe Juice

I have no idea what this tastes like, but the sound of it makes me want to want to wash my hair with it not drink it.  Odd.

• It’s good for soothing GI distress.
• It’s the only plant source of Vit B12.  Who knew?
• Get it organic and uncooked.
• If you can, get it with glutamine added.

Prebiotics

Most of us have heard of probiotics, but prebiotics help your probiotics work better.  Now are you actually following that loop?  You will take probiotics to help you digest food and promote good bacteria in the gut and you’ll take prebiotics to help the probiotics flourish.  Really right now?  What’s next?  Postbiotics?  “No flushing necessary folks; this supplement obliterates your food right in the colon.”

• A mix of both pre and pro biotics is known as symbiotics.
• For probiotics, make sure you get one with 2-6 billion cultures and at least 2 strains.
• Doing one without the other is nowhere near as effective as taking both.

Enzymes

I ended up doing so much research on these that they’ll have their own series soon.  The biggest thing to know right now is:

• Should contain protease, amylase and lipase.
• If this is a tummy acid problem, get an HCl based one.

Fiber

I am partial to a particular fiber product that I have been promoting for years now.  I love it.  No…seriously…I love it.  I do not get paid by them nor am I an affiliate of any kind.  I just love them.  www.drnatura.com Do NOT look at the website photos while eating lunch.  I’m just warning you.  Also:

• Get a product with both soluble and insoluble fiber.
• Do not use Metamucil which is probably the least effective product ever.  Go to Whole Foods and find one.
• Borage, flax or rice fiber should be in the ingredient list somewhere.

Antioxidants and Amino Acids

The word antioxidants makes me want to stick a fork in my eyeball.  Probably one of the most bastardized words in the food marketing industry today.  It’s a runner up to “all natural” which nowadays really means, “you can’t prove it one way or the other, so there!”

• Zinc is a mineral that gets overlooked way too many times when it tends to be the culprit.  Take note of him.
• Glutathione.  Not sure what series he’ll show up in but he’s worth the write up.  Big benefit putting him in your diet.
• Arginine enhances wound healing and works well in the GI tract.
• Glutamine is a must if you find yourself constantly getting sick or just overall, general malaise.  You want to go high dose with this, though.  Don’t mess around on the 5g end.

This wraps up the gut series.  I purposefully left off any dosing or specifics because I do not want you to use this site for that.  When it comes to medicinal issues, I want to steer you in the right direction but not lead you to the water to drink.  You need a good doc to work with or at least a good doc’s website.  Cool?

Also, the thyroid is its own series coming soon, too.  It’s way too big of a deal to lump into this series.  Hang tight for it.

Not sure what’s coming up next.  Stay tuned to find out.  Woop woop!!

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I went to school for biomedical engineering at Northeastern University and at that time it was not an actual major because it was just bursting on to the scene of engineering so I had to major in both mechanical engineering and biology to make it happen.  At Northeastern, you had the option of doing Co-op jobs for full quarters (they were a quarter based school back then) with top companies that came to campus to recruit cheap labor.  The thing that most people do not realize about Co-op jobs is that they really are more like temp work than internships.  So you go work for someone for 3 or 6 months and then go back to school.  It was very intimidating to be honest.

Because I had a dual degree focus (I dropped Biology my senior year—long story) at that time, I could take anything for a job because I had such an eclectic background so I chose to work in a biomedical company on the manufacturing floor doing quality assurance.  The man who interviewed me for the position was the nicest guy ever and I was to work directly for him which made it a no-brainer as to my decision of whether to work there or not.  He seemed so laid back and he had a great sense of humor.  Part of me thought that would be bad for both of us because we’d never get anything done laughing our heads off.  Well it was not to be because the first week of me being on the job, my cool guy bled out on his bathroom floor and went on a 6 month sabbatical that he ended up making permanent by not coming back.  Why did this happen to the nicest guy ever?  NSAIDs.

NSAIDs, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (aka Motrin, Advil, Aspirin and Aleve), are over the counter miracle workers that help every athlete/gym rat through their injuries and painful times.  They are essential to our everyday living but they are as caustic as a mofo.  For most us, we pop them like candy:  800 mg here, 600 mg there…400 mg every 4 hours til the inflammation goes down.  Very few of us ever think of the long term effects of these drugs and yet they do some serious damage long term.

Most of the time that I talk to folks they will say, “I never take anything.  It makes me sick to my stomach.”  Or they’ll say they ‘don’t like to take anything.’  But then in casual conversation, they’ll tell me they’re popping Motrin like breath mints.  Umm…which is it?  And why would I care?  Here are the last of the gut ailments I see you ladies with:

Chronic Erosive Gastritis

What is it? Inflammation of the stomach or said more succinctly:  OUCH!

Normal Causes: H. Pylori in the gut but it needs a catalyst.  H. Pylori alone won’t do it.  Typically stress triggers it.

Notable Cause: Too long of exposure of tummy to NSAIDs irritates the lining of the tummy.  The mucous layer is slowly removed which in turns exposes the lining to these drugs and over time it is debilitating.

Leaky Gut Syndrome

What is it? Mucous lining of the small intestine becomes too porous allowing food to get through.  In other words, the screen door blew off the house and now the bugs are getting in.  Ewww.

Normal Causes: Stress, eating too fast, overeating.

Notable Cause: NSAIDs causing irritation of the intestinal tract.  Using them for long periods of time blocks the body’s natural ability to repair intestinal lining.

Gastroesophageal Reflux (GERD)

What is it? A digestive disorder in which partially digested food from the stomach, along with hydrochloric acid and enzymes, back up in the esophagus.  Liken this to a nasty traffic jam in the chest.

Normal Causes: A sphincter gives way allowing things to come back up.

Notable Cause: NSAIDs.  They irritate the lining of the esophagus the same way they do the lining of the tummy and the intestines.  OY!

The treatment looks the same for all them:  BACK IT DOWN.  Very simple…see?  But who really knows it’s not that simple and it’s not that cut and dry either?  Here are some things we need to think about:

• We are high stress by nature so we are prone to GERD and gastritis.
• Working out too close to when we just ate exacerbates GERD.
• Researches think that 2/3 of all autoimmunes come from activity in the gut.
• We are more than likely creating our food allergies from our own food that we eat because it keeps passing through our intestines undigested.
• There is no diagnosis for leaky gut but they assume you have it when you keep cropping up with more and more autoimmunes.
• It would be wise for us to rotate the NSAIDs we use:  Motrin vs. Aleve vs. Tylenol so that we can avoid this from happening as much as possible.
• If we don’t need to take them, don’t.  Save them for injuries and severe PMS.
• When we do take them, keep track of how much and how often.  This is the easiest way to spot abuse.
• There is no limit as to how much is too much—it’s highly individual.

My guy ended up being alright and he came by to visit me on my second Co op at that company.  I often wonder how that would have turned out had he stayed because essentially I took his job while he was gone.  So much for being trained…  I was thrown right in to the lion’s den.  But I learned at an early age how destructive these seemingly innocent OTCs can be.  Like I mentioned in the first post of this series, we are supposed to be the healthy ones.  Be mindful of what you are doing/eating because many of the fixes of these problems we already put in practice so we escalate straight to medical intervention.  Let’s avoid that shall we?

More to come!! Hang tight! Woop woop!

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We are in the middle of the gastrointestinal nightmare series defined by bloated bellies and leaky butts (yeah I said that…what are you gonna do about it?) so I feel obligated to ask the one question I always feel is necessary:  Is it worth it?  Seriously.  Is all the worry, stress, hustle and bustle worth it in your life when it is all said and done?

Back in the day, and I mean back in the day, I was at UMass Boston taking an exam to get my ACSM personal trainer certification.  I think at the time I was also a stay at home mom, group fitness instructor, NASA astronaut, part time pastry chef, Red Cross volunteer and candy striper.  Honestly, there wasn’t much I wasn’t doing during this time.  I had supernatural powers and supernatural energy.  But I was missing some major medical signs that all wasn’t well in Dodge (I really had a knack for this—what a clown I was) because I routinely had a “nervous belly” and really didn’t do much to fix it.  So here I am in the middle of an exam and I have to “go”.  No…I mean GO.  Like right then.  Pronto.  Clear a path.  No turning back, it was coming.  And I remember the proctor not wanting to let me go but I think the sweat on my forehead told him something wasn’t right and he acquiesced.  This was one of those situations where I knew that I wasn’t going to use a bathroom in the building that was within 2 floors of where that test was being taken.  Is anyone hearing me right now?   I believe on that day I cleared out all vegetation within a 3 mile zone of the school.  I lost some of the information I studied that day in the bathroom.  It was tragic.  It was humbling.  And when I finally went to the doc, it was IBS.

What Is Our Gig?

Why do we feel it so necessary to overachieve on a level that is almost comical?  I talk to some of you and wonder how you have time to actually go to the bathroom never mind anything else.  There comes a time when we have to take a long hard look at ourselves and say, “What do you think you’re proving right now because nobody notices what you’re doing but you.  Either I get over the martyr routine or I need to demand recognition.  But enough is enough.”  Most of us have been this way since birth but at some point, this took a wrong turn and started to become caustic.  We are adrenaline junkies.  We live on the high of psychoticness but guess what?  Your body can’t keep up and it’s starting to show.

Sorry, I Have To Say It

If you have ever said to someone in defense of your insanity, “if I don’t do it, it’ll never get done” or “I’m the only one who knows how to…” or “no one else will help me, can help me, is competent…etc”  I have 3 words for you:  Get. Over. Yourself.  I am not saying this to be rude—I am saying it to save you.  It is the best thing anybody ever said to me because I was the QUEEN of Savioritis.  If you think that the world will stop revolving if you step off it, you are sadly mistaken.  You are not your family’s savior.  You are not your work’s savior.  You have not been commissioned by the US Govt to make sure all of America is getting along just fine.  Trust me, the world will keep on keepin’ on without you solving the Cuban Missle Crisis.  Please stop auditioning for work on the Bodie Plantation and start living life.  Your family and your colon will thank you.

Shaken, Not Stirred

Coming home every night to chaos and mayhem only to “unwind” by having a glass of wine is like going to Chuck E Cheese to have an intimate dinner with your man.  Alcohol is a stimulant and is about as effective at relaxing you as a colonic performed with a garden hose.  Yes, you have an initial giddy phase where you feel loose and happy (accidentally start snapping photos and over sharing on FB—we know, we know) but then it wears off after you face plant into your bed at night and then spend at least an hour or two staring at the ceiling.  This does nothing for your stress levels except to raise them even higher.  There has to be something better like reading, meditating or deep sea diving.

I’m Continually Amazed

I wish I had a dollar for every time someone said to me, “How do you know what I am thinking?  It’s like you’re in my head.”  Do you want to know how?  Because I was you but on crack!  Whatever you do now, I did on a level that defied logic and gravity.  I had ISSUES.  No…I-S-S-U-E-S.  My husband can look at me at times and just shake his head.  It’s a shame.  I say all that so I can emphasize this one point:  slowwwww dowwwwwwn.  Please.  You will miss your children’s lives, your husband’s life, your own life and your colon if not.  Ninety nine percent of all our gastric trouble is self induced by our hectic lifestyle—I just totally pulled that out of my arse but if it scares you even just a little bit to slow down, I’ll stand by it.   I no longer suffer from IBS, constipation and so on (although I can occasionally levitate in my office, just sayin’) and it is because the pace of my life changed, not the quality of my food.

We need to talk supplements and thyroid.  More to come!!  Woop woop!

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I know—no, really…I know!—that I can be a nag about certain things.  I’d be amazed if you did not know that I was a psycho about good fat in your diet or variety in your meal plan.  In fact, I’d think there was something wrong with you if you didn’t know that about me.  But there really are reasons for the broken record lectures that come out of my lap top every week.  This series would rank up there as one in the top 3 reasons I am the psycho I am about the way you diet.  Not just that you diet, but exactly how you do it.  Most folks focus on just your body, others focus on your body and your general health; I would say I focus on your acute symptoms first, general health second, emotional stability third and body fourth because I have seen the damage first hand when the (outside of the) body is the top priority.

Variety is my bat and your menu is my ball and I literally beat the living tar out of it every week.  Occasionally I’ll get a homerun, but for the most part I’m just swinging at it hoping for a line drive (for you to change anything).  Eating the same thing every day, day in and day out is boring, restrictive and will make you manic.  But more importantly, it sets you up for food allergies and intolerances that once they set in, you have most of them for a long time or for life for some others.  Nothing is worse than having a favorite food that you can no longer eat because you ate too much of it and now it either makes you sick or makes you sick when you eat something else with it.  Ok, well I lied.  There is something worse.  And that would be developing an autoimmune disease or condition because of the foods that you are eating such as Crohn’s disease, diverticulitis, gastritis, IBS or Ulcers.

Each one of these conditions have no real known cause as to why you have them but all of them can be triggered by food allergies/sensitivities.  Crohn’s typically runs in families but just because your parents have it does not mean you will.  What really needs to happen is that you provide it with the right environment to thrive and then it will kick in when it’s ready.   Ulcers are very much like that, as well.  They are caused by H. Pylori bacteria that flourish in our stomachs but not everyone who has H. Pylori has ulcers.  This means that we needed to get our bodies in such a rut/mess that we cultivated that condition.  I would hate to know I brought something as painful as ulcers into fruition because I insisted on eating XYZ every day.   We would like to think that because we are eating so “healthy” that we no longer have to worry about these things.  Only people who eat crap get these things.  Wrong!  Oh so wrong!

One of the requirements to work with us is to fill out a health history questionnaire.  In that questionnaire we ask if you have any medical conditions that we need to know about.  Time and time again, form after form you will see someone list a gastrointestinal condition as something they are struggling with.  Shoot down to the section on food and they will say, “Every day I have…”  and proceed to give me their food diary.  Is this their fault?  No.  No one talks about variety the way they should and most of us are happy we eat something never mind trying to mix it up.  But now that you do know, you are responsible for your health and you need to get to mixing it up!

Here are some things that you need to know when it comes to these five conditions:

Do not stack slow metabolizers

I talk about this as ‘caustic combos’.  These are foods that are not bad but should not be eaten close to each other.  Salmon, steak, sword fish, beans and pasta come to mind when I think of these.  They are foods that typically take a long time to move through the colon.  Therefore, eating them on the same day or having them day after day is not a good idea.  Slow motility (the amount of time food spends in your colon) is a major factor in diverticulitis and IBS.  The longer food sits in your colon, the more damage it can do.  And yes, we eat a lot of fiber but that means nothing.  Constipation is out of control among clean eaters (hence this series).

Binge on more than just chocolate

Chocolate is mucus forming and can really do a number on the colon.  Mucus is a primary symptom of IBS which basically says that there is major inflammation somewhere.  Say you work out and do not replenish your water adequately.  Then you come home a little later and have a salmon salad for lunch.  Now you’ve jammed up the highway during a drought season.  Then you lose your tree that night on some chocolate (I know…you’d never do that).  Now you have a chief aggravator waiting its turn for exit in your colon while sitting behind pink stucco.  Great.

Easy on the offenders

Dairy, wheat/gluten, egg whites, nuts, soy, popcorn, chemicals in food, caffeine (yoohoo diet coke lovers), chicken and fructose/sweeteners of any kind are known allergens.  Eating them in large quantities is just asking for trouble.  Back in the day, Walden farms marinades were all the rage.  Then people started cropping up with all kinds of health issues—not because there was something wrong with the marinades, but because they were going through a bottle a week.  It was crazy.  I am sure Walden Farms did not want people eating their product on that level.  But that’s what we do, we KILL foods we love.  KILL them dead!  We eat them until their pouring out of our skin.  So much of what we go through is incredibly preventive.

Listen, if you made it this far….wow.  There is more.  We need to talk symptoms of the above, supplements for everything and thyroid stuff.   This goes much deeper than you think.  Woop woop!

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There comes a time when an issue is so worth discussing that we have to look past the embarrassment factor that it may cause.  When I first started eating clean, I never thought about anything but the outcome.  All I cared about was what I was going to look like when I reached goal and the methodology behind what I was doing to get there (remember, I started this to do what I do now for a living, not to just look good).  I had no idea that I could crave foods more than a pregnant woman in her 9 month or after a period of dieting hate chicken with a passion reserved for mean people and animal abusers.  But what was the real shocker was the gastric disturbance caused by all of the veggies and artificial sweeteners in my diet.  Even after I cleared out all the sweeteners, I could still level a 4 story building with one shot if I wasn’t careful.  You know it’s clinical, when you are burning so many candles that you change the temperature in the room that you are sitting in.  That’s serious business right there.

This is going to be a TMI series at some points and a great help at others.  What I have found in the clean eating community is an abnormal amount of gastric issues when they should be cleared up with our initial diet change.  IBS, heartburn, constipation, Crohn’s disease, gastritis and so on are rampant amongst the ranks and it seems as if it shouldn’t be.  So I want us to take a look at what we are doing right, what we’re doing wrong and what we don’t even know that we are doing that is furthering these conditions.  Whenever you read a book on these conditions, the first thing that they tell you is to clean up the diet and we have already.  So what gives?

I will be talking about these conditions and how they affect us both physically and emotionally because both play a role in our overall health.  Since we tend to be type A folks, we have to look at what that does to our stress levels and our colons alike.  Most of us at some point in our dieting careers are like wound up balls of yarn waiting to unwind at any moment.  That does a number on us long term and since adrenal fatigue is a concern nowadays, we need to be prudent in the way we relax as much as the way we diet.

I won’t be starting this series until Monday.  There will be no blog on Thursday and the Friday audio post will not be posted until Saturday afternoon.  I owe you sweet and savory so I’ll be getting that on the blog this weekend.  If you have anything you want to see covered in this next series, hit me up at Jodi@trans4mationstation.com.  Cool?  Woop woop!

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