Dr. Alison discusses how your gut health impacts your weight, metabolism, and health. If you suffer from IBS, constipation, bloating, or acid reflux and struggle with losing weight, this podcast is for you!
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Hi, this is Dr. Alison. And today we are talking about digestion and weight loss. So if you had any type of digestive issues like heartburn, constipation, diarrhea, IBS, Crohn’s ulcerative colitis, you might find that you have a harder time losing weight. And there’s quite a few reasons for that. So we’re going to go through what they are and then how to work with them. And again, before I like to get started, since we’re talking about weight loss is I would like to invite you to join my free five pound weight loss challenge. It’s a week long program. That’s going to be ongoing. So if you don’t get to catch live version and just join us again, we’ll be doing lots of prizes and things like that. And you get to learn all of the top functional medicine tips on losing weight without taking pills or starving yourself.
Okay. So let’s, let’s dive into digestion. Okay? So the main reason why you aren’t losing weight, if you have digestive issues is because you aren’t absorbing the nutrition from your food. So we break down food into his individual components. We have acid in our stomach. We have enzymes from our pancreas and our small intestines that break down food. And it allows ourselves to absorb that, use it to go to work for energy, everything like that. So, number one thing that I like to do for people is get them on a good digestive enzyme because that helps them break down food. So digestive enzymes are things that our body makes, but we’re just taking them in a supplement form because stress porta justice, power and foot infections can affect how well we digest. So when we take enzymes that help support the natural digestive process.
I love TerraZyme from doTERRA because it has all of those enzymes in it to break down proteins, fats carbs, keep the stomach calm, help the lining of the stomach and the intestines be soothed as well. I do like to bypass the gut with nutrition when we have these types of issues, when I can, until we build back up, because you can start taking all these supplements, but if you’re not digesting them, if you’re not breaking them down, you’re not going to get that nutrition into your body. So things like nutritional patches from patch MD are great. Liquids are also very helpful because you don’t need as much digestive power or Ivy. Nutrition can also be very helpful because it’s just going right into your bloodstream. You don’t have to have that power to break it down. Another reason why you can’t lose weight with digestive issues is because of inflammation and it builds up in our gut and then it transfers out into our whole body.
And when we have inflammation that causes a stress reaction and immune system flare, and that keeps the weight on it keeps fat on. And it’s a protective measure. Absolutely. Which is frustrating because you might not even feel the inflammation, but when we have digestive problems, it does cause inflammation. So of course, I start with enzymes, which I’ll talk. I pretty much talk about enzymes every time I was talking about digestion because they’re so, so, so important. And that’s where I start, but I also love to use herbs like tumeric ginger peppermint. I like to use them in the verbal form as well as essential oils as a daily supplements and inflammation can weaken digestion. And that can cause it bloating gas distention. So you don’t fit in your pants. You don’t feel good. You can’t lose that belly fat and inflammation has a really big reason why, so alcohol processed foods and soda, I would say I’m a number one thing that caused inflammation, as well as the strain, the lining of the gut and the good bacteria.
So gas and bloating typically come from not digesting proteins and fats.
My questionnaire, my new patient questionnaire is do you have gas within 30 minutes of eating? And that’s usually carbs and starches not digesting those really well. And sometimes that looks like acid reflux coming up, or sometimes you might feel bloated your stomach. That top part is distended, right? When you eat, if you have gas within like an hour to 90 minutes after eating, that’s usually proteins not being well digested. So we need to break down those easier. And then if you have gas all night long, those typically fats not being broken down so we can know like how to take enzymes, which enzymes to take more of based off of how you’re feeling when you’re having gas. Okay. And the last thing I’d like to talk about is infections will absolutely affect your digestion as well as keeping weight on because your body has to protect itself.
And then there’s so much inflammation. So will taking a probiotic help you lose weight and I’ll say most likely, no, but it will help support your gut, right? So we have to start with testing, right? And that’s what we do in functional medicine is all these tests, tests, tests. So I love the GI map from diagnostic solutions and what it looks at is like six pages of information. It’s amazing. And of course it looks at good bacteria, healthy bacteria. What levels are there? What do you need more of as well as opportunistic bacteria? So we say bad bacteria, but really all of the bacteria that’s in our gut is supposed to be there. So we want to know, is it too much too little? Do we have the right levels? Are they cohabitating correctly? So it also looks at viral infections, fungal infections, like candida.
There’s a huge list as well as bacterial infections because those infections are easy to miss, as well as parasites. They look for eggs as well as worms, and which is really, really important and protozoa because a lot of protozoa tag along with bacterial infections and they create that what’s called biofilm and you’ll have a bunch of bacteria huddle together and viruses, and they kind of have a party and they’ll make a coating above them, kind of like an umbrella, like an M and M shell over them. And it’s really hard to penetrate and then more will come on and more will come on and you’ll start building these layers of biofilm. And that’s why when you do a gut healing program, where you remove is the number one. So you’re trying to get rid of this bacteria and fungus and a biofilm will pop up and you’ll feel horrible.
Like, Oh my gosh, I’m so sick, my belly and my belly, and then you’ll feel better. And then a week later, another one pop in and be like, Oh my gosh, I’m going through this again, this isn’t working something is wrong when actually it is working because you’re busting through all of this biofilm and that biofilm increases inflammation. It reduces your ability to digest and absorb. So making sure that you don’t have these types of infections is really, really important. The other thing that I really love about the GI map is that it tells us your inflammation levels. It tells us a couple of enzyme levels. So we know where at how are you digesting fats. It also tells us about hormone levels cause they have some enzymes in there that affect estrogen. So that’s great to know as well. And like I said, calprotectin, which is a great inflammation marker, especially for things like cancer or colitis or Crohn’s, we can monitor that as well.
So this will help you decide where you start with a gut clearing program instead of just doing everything or nothing. Like if you’re just taking probiotics and nothing’s helping, it might be because you’re actually feeding the bad bacteria instead of getting rid of the bad bacteria. So starting with this test is a great place. If you have any kind of digestive issues. So that way you can focus in on what is causing it, why get rid of it and move forward. Okay. And then it also will help you decide what type of probiotics you should be taking, which is great. So thanks for tuning in today. And I would love for you to join our free 500 challenge. And if you want personalized help, I am here for you. So you can schedule a consultation with me. It’s free. We go through your challenges, what your goals are, what your symptoms are, what’s worked, what hasn’t worked, let’s make a game plan so that we can start to move forward. And then after that you feel lack of paperwork. We get your blood work done, any lab work that might be needed, and then we start your 90 day care plan. So I’d love to hear what questions thoughts you have and we’ll see you next time. Thanks for tuning in.
