Latest / Love Your Gut / Ep. 110: Why It Feels Like Food Sits In Your Stomach Like A Brick
Transcript
- 0:03Dr. Heather Finley: Welcome to the Love Your Gut Podcast.
- 0:05Dr. Heather Finley: I'm your host, Dr.
- 0:06Dr. Heather Finley: Heather Finley, registered dietitian and gut health specialist.
- 0:10Dr. Heather Finley: I understand the frustration of dealing with GI issues because I've been there and I spent over two decades searching for answers for my own gut issues of constipation, bloating, and stomach pain.
- 0:21Dr. Heather Finley: I've dedicated my life to understanding and solving my own gut issues.
- 0:25Dr. Heather Finley: And now I'm here to guide you.
- 0:28Dr. Heather Finley: On this podcast, I'll help you identify the true root causes of your discomfort.
- 0:33Dr. Heather Finley: So you can finally ditch your symptoms for good.
- 0:36Dr. Heather Finley: My goal is to empower you with the knowledge and tools you need so that you can love your gut and it will love you right back.
- 0:43Dr. Heather Finley: So if you're ready to learn a lot, gain a deeper understanding of your gut and find lasting relief.
- 0:48Dr. Heather Finley: You are in the right place.
- 0:50Dr. Heather Finley: Welcome to the love your gut podcast.
- 0:55So here is my question for you.
- 0:57Do you ever eat a meal and feel like it just sits there?
- 1:01Like the food is not going in there?
- 1:03It feels like a brick is in your stomach.
- 1:05You feel like you swallowed a bowling ball.
- 1:08Some people finish a meal and they feel energized.
- 1:11They move on with their day, they're productive.
- 1:14And then there's you maybe undoing your jeans, wondering if you can justify an app on your office floor.
- 1:21If that resonates, you are in the right place today.
- 1:25I wanna talk about this because it's something that I hear about constantly, and I think honestly it gets brushed off way too easily.
- 1:33So if this resonates.
- 1:35You're gonna love today's episode because here's what I want you to understand before we even get into the science.
- 1:41This symptom is one of the most exhausting symptoms to live with, and I think it's exhausting partially because of what it starts to do with your relationship with food.
- 1:53You start fearing meals, you start avoiding social situations.
- 1:57You know, can, can we not go to that restaurant?
- 2:00I just, I don't know how I'll feel.
- 2:02Maybe you start eating less and less because eating less means fewer symptoms.
- 2:06Right?
- 2:07Except it usually makes things worse.
- 2:10And then there's just this quiet fear underneath it all of like, what if this is just how my body works?
- 2:15What if something is wrong with me?
- 2:17I wanna address that today because this is usually a sign that your body is, is not broken.
- 2:24It's just a sign that digestion is slowing down, and that is a very different problem than broken.
- 2:30The analogy that I want you to hold onto for this whole episode is your stomach is supposed to function like a blender.
- 2:37A washing machine, a conveyor belt all at once.
- 2:41It breaks down food, so it, it blender arises it, it turns it sterilize.
- 2:45It moves it through.
- 2:46That's a lot of jobs.
- 2:48But for a lot of individuals that we work with, their digestive system feels more like a storage closet.
- 2:55Food piles up.
- 2:57The pressure builds fermentation starts and symptoms ripple downstream in ways that might seem totally unrelated until you start to understand how they are connected.
- 3:08So that is what I wanna talk about today, what's actually going on.
- 3:13I wanna talk about first, what normal digestion should actually feel like.
- 3:17And I wanna start here because I genuinely think most people have forgotten what good digestion even feels like, or at least those of you that listen to this podcast.
- 3:28And I'm not saying that to be harsh.
- 3:30I'm saying that because when you've had symptoms for years, you adapt, you stop comparing yourself to a baseline that feels good because that baseline was.
- 3:39So long ago.
- 3:41So just as a reminder, after a meal, you should genuinely feel satisfied.
- 3:46You should feel calm, you should feel full.
- 3:49You should not feel tired.
- 3:51You shouldn't feel nauseous.
- 3:53You shouldn't be bloated for the next six hours, and you should be able to eat again at a reasonable time three to four hours later, not waiting from breakfast until dinner because you're still full.
- 4:05That is the goal.
- 4:07That is the general trajectory that we're looking at is every couple hours you are hungry, and obviously there's other components to this, like blood sugar and stress hormones and all the things that's not necessarily what we're focusing on today.
- 4:21But this here is what your stomach is actually doing.
- 4:25When it's working well, it's breaking down food like that blender.
- 4:30It's churning, it's contracting, it's sterilizing, incoming food with stomach acid.
- 4:35It's.
- 4:36Signaling the pancreas and the gallbladder to re release enzymes and bile.
- 4:41And then it's releasing that food into the small intestine at the right pace through a valve called the pyloric sphincter.
- 4:49So if any single step in that process slows down or breaks down, food can literally just sit there longer than it should, and that's.
- 4:56When you get that heavy brick and stomach full, pressured, nauseous feeling, that just won't go away.
- 5:02So let's start at the top with the first domino, and I have a couple recent episodes on this, so I'm not gonna go too much into it because you can go and listen to this more in depth.
- 5:13But I wanna talk about stomach.
- 5:17So when most people hear stomach acid, they immediately go to reflux.
- 5:21They think I have too much stomach acid.
- 5:22That's why I have heartburn.
- 5:24And this is honestly one of the most widespread misunderstandings in GI Health because for many people, and I would argue most of the people that we see clinically, the problem.
- 5:35Is either the opposite or it's more of what I talked about last week of like sphincter and kind of mechanical issues.
- 5:42So low stomach acid is one of the most common and missed drivers of that food just sitting there feeling.
- 5:49So how I like to explain it is trying to digest a meal without enough stomach acid is like trying to cook a roast in an oven that never fully heats up.
- 5:59Gross, right?
- 6:00The food never fully breaks down.
- 6:02That texture stays intact.
- 6:03When you cook a roast, you want it to like break apart with a fork, right?
- 6:08That's the most delicious kind of food.
- 6:11That protein doesn't cleave properly, and instead of this like properly broken down, processed meal moving through your GI tract, you get a partially broken down, slow moving mass that creates pressure and gas and fermentation.
- 6:27And so these symptoms of low stomach acid are honestly identical to what people usually assume is too much acid, that heaviness, bloating, burping, reflux, constipation, undigested food in your stool.
- 6:39And if you've been on a proton pump inhibitor, any kind of ant acid medication, Pepcid, omeprazole, et cetera, for a long period of time, and you're still symptomatic, this is worth paying attention to.
- 6:53So why does stomach acid get low in the first place?
- 6:56A few big ones.
- 6:57Chronic stress, this is a huge one.
- 6:59Rushing your meals, eating on the go undereating.
- 7:02Long periods of chronic dieting, uh, especially like long term restriction.
- 7:08This doesn't even mean an eating disorder, although we do see a lot of people post eating disorder recovery, but just long periods of chronically undereating because of GI issues.
- 7:19It can be a chicken or egg scenario.
- 7:21Postpartum depletion, low minerals, especially sodium and zinc, potassium chloride, h pylori, infections, and then long-term and acid use.
- 7:31So I wanna make a really important connection here that I see play out constantly in our gut together.
- 7:38Clients, a lot of people come to me trying to eat.
- 7:42Healthier, quote unquote.
- 7:43They started eating more salads, more raw vegetables, more high fiber foods, more dense proteins, and they feel worse.
- 7:51They're convinced that those foods are somehow bad for them or that they just have all these food sensitivities or that their body can't handle healthy food.
- 8:00But what's happening is that in many of those cases, these quote unquote healthy foods require robust digestive capacity, so salads, raw vegetables, dense proteins, higher fiber, they are harder to break down for a variety of reasons.
- 8:16And when digestion is underpowered, these foods create more symptom burden, not less, not because the foods are the problem, but because digestion needs to be supported first.
- 8:28Now let's talk about the next thing, which is poor stomach emptying.
- 8:32When food just sits in the stomach, because I think this is a mechanism that most directly explains that brick in your stomach sensation after your stomach does its initial work, the food that's now partially digested and mixed with stomach acid into what's called chime.
- 8:50Is supposed to gradually empty into the small intestine where nutrient absorption happens.
- 8:55So there's a whole regulatory process around that timing and how fast food empties, depending on the composition of the meal, how much fat, protein, all these signals coming from the small intestine.
- 9:07So when that emptying slows down, foods stays in the stomach longer than it should, and those symptoms of sluggish.
- 9:14Stomach emptying are very specific.
- 9:16That fullness that lasts for hours, that nausea, upper gi bloating, reflux, burping, poor appetite, pressure after meals that downstream constipation.
- 9:28I wanna give you an important distinction here.
- 9:30This is not the same thing as gastroparesis, which is a more severe condition where stomach emptying is significantly impaired.
- 9:39This is often connected more to like diabetes, nerve damage, other underlying conditions.
- 9:44If you're having severe symptoms like vomiting frequently.
- 9:48Losing significant weight, please get evaluated.
- 9:51I'll talk more about red flags towards the end of the episode, but many people have sluggish stomach emptying patterns that don't show up on standard testing.
- 10:00They haven't clinically been diagnosed with gastroparesis, although we have seen many clients with gastroparesis and they've been diagnosed with it and it can completely resolve.
- 10:11So it's more of just this functional slowdown than a structural problem.
- 10:16So this is like the oven is working.
- 10:19It's just working at like 60%, not a hundred percent.
- 10:22So the analogy that I keep coming back to is imagine a highway exit that's partially blocked.
- 10:28People are still getting through.
- 10:30There's literally nothing more frustrating, right?
- 10:32Like you're so close to your destination, but then there's a backup and it just.
- 10:37It is taking forever to get there.
- 10:38So traffic isn't fully flowing at full capacity.
- 10:42You can like see where you need to go, but there's one lane and you can't get there.
- 10:47That is what sluggish stomach emptying looks and feels like.
- 10:52And here's what makes this so important to understand.
- 10:54The digestive tract is a one continuous.
- 10:58Muscular tube.
- 11:00So if movement is slow at the top, it usually is slow downstream as well.
- 11:04And this is why so many people who complain about constipation or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or chronic lower GI symptoms also have upper stomach heaviness or upper GI issues.
- 11:17It's not a coincidence.
- 11:19It's because the same system is expressing this whole slowdown.
- 11:24The next thing that I wanna spend a few minutes talking about is that digestion is energy expensive.
- 11:31And this is an interesting concept.
- 11:34I think this reframe is genuinely surprising to most people, and it changes how you understand why this is happening.
- 11:43A lot of people assume that digestion is automatic, like breathing, your body just does it, but digestion is actually one of the most.
- 11:50Energetically expensive processes that your body does.
- 11:54Think about all the things that it requires, producing stomach acid, producing enzymes, contracting muscles throughout the GI tract, moving food, absorbing nutrients across the intestinal wall, regulating blood flow to the gut.
- 12:07I could go on.
- 12:09But you get the point.
- 12:10Your body treats digestion like a luxury budget item, and when the body is running on empty, when your internal energy bank account is depleted, it starts cutting expenses and digestion is one of those first places that it gets cut.
- 12:27So this is exactly why symptoms show up so consistently in specific populations, burn out women, postpartum moms, women with low ferritin, people under chronic stress, people who are undereating, even healthy undereating, like they're eating healthy foods.
- 12:45Just not enough over exercisers.
- 12:48People running on caffeine in a few hours of sleep.
- 12:51Here's the thing that you can remember.
- 12:53A lot of people are trying to force food into a digestive system that's functioning like it's on low battery.
- 13:01The food comes in, but the system doesn't have the resources to process it.
- 13:06You, your, the phone never fully charged, if you wanna think about it that way.
- 13:10So when we see this pattern clinically, one of the first things that I'm gonna think about is.
- 13:16Where is this person's energy actually going?
- 13:18Because if everything is going towards survival, towards stress responses, towards propping up a depleted system, the digestive system will get the leftovers.
- 13:30So this brings me to what I think is one of the most important sections of this episode, and I wanna be really clear about something before I start.
- 13:40This is not me just saying that your symptoms are anxiety because they're not.
- 13:44This is just physiology.
- 13:46You cannot be in a full flight or fight and fully digest food at the same time.
- 13:53There's just no way around it.
- 13:54These two things are incompatible.
- 13:57So when your brain perceives a stressor, and I wanna emphasize that stressor does not mean a tiger is chasing you.
- 14:05It just means traffic.
- 14:07A stressful meeting, a difficult conversation to-do list that never ends.
- 14:11The body is going to redirect resources towards survival, so that means less stomach acid, slower emptying, reduced enzyme output.
- 14:20You get the point, reduced blood flow to the gut, slower motility.
- 14:24So stress changes are physiology.
- 14:27Your symptoms are a physiological response.
- 14:31Not just a character flaw.
- 14:32They're not a character flaw at all.
- 14:34So let me explain the vagus nerve because it is one of the most underappreciated structures in GI health.
- 14:42The vagus nerve is essentially the communication highway between your brain and your gut.
- 14:47It runs from your brainstem down through your throat, your heart, your lungs, your stomach, your intestines, and it's a two-way road.
- 14:53So information goes both ways.
- 14:55Your, your gut is actually providing even more information to your brain than your brain, to your gut, which is wild.
- 15:02So the vagus nerve helps to regulate stomach acid production, contractions, motility, bowel movements, digestive signaling.
- 15:10So when that vagal tone is poor and when that communication is disrupted or suppressed, you'll see more bloating, constipation, nausea, reflux, food, sitting that tight throat, chest sensation that a lot of people will describe.
- 15:26So the part that I want you to think about that's really important here is that modern life is almost perfectly designed to tank our vagal tone, which is why we have to overemphasize this with our clients.
- 15:39Eating while scrolling through your phone, eating in a car between meetings, working through lunch, rushing every meal, chronic stress.
- 15:47Doesn't have a clear off switch.
- 15:50Overscheduling sleep deprivation.
- 15:52A lot of people I see aren't just dealing with a gut problem.
- 15:55They're dealing with a nervous system that has been in chronic survival mode for so long that it doesn't know how to downshift anymore.
- 16:03And until that piece is addressed, the digestive system can't fully.
- 16:07Come back online.
- 16:08And what I also want you to hear from this is that doesn't mean that it's, if you have a busy life, it's impossible to heal.
- 16:15Take it from me.
- 16:16I'm a mom of three.
- 16:17I'm an entrepreneur.
- 16:19I have a very busy life, a very full life.
- 16:23And yet.
- 16:25I have found by specific tools and specific supports, ways to support my nervous system so that I'm not living in a chronically fight or flight state.
- 16:37Now, that doesn't mean that I'm perfect at this all the time because nobody is.
- 16:42But nervous system regulation does not have to be complicated.
- 16:46And a lot of people will use the excuse of like, well, how nice for you?
- 16:51I'm too busy for that.
- 16:52If you find yourself saying that the, the harsh reality here is that you need it more than anybody else.
- 17:00And I used to have that mindset too, of like, I'll sleep when I'm dead, or, yeah, must be nice.
- 17:06Or I don't have time for that.
- 17:08You, you have to make time for that.
- 17:12Otherwise your body will get you to the point where it forces you to make time for that.
- 17:17So I just wanna pause here and say something that I think you need to hear.
- 17:22If you have gone to doctors, you've had endoscopies, you've had standard blood work run, and you've been told that everything looks normal, I believe you, that something still feels wrong because standard GI workups are designed to rule out disease.
- 17:37They're designed to rule out tumors, ulcers, severe inflammation, structural abnormalities.
- 17:43These are important and they should absolutely be done when symptoms warrant them, but they're not going to assess your microbiome health, your digestive capacity, your stomach hazard levels, your motility patterns, mineral status, nervous system regulation, bacterial overgrowth, h Pylori, et cetera.
- 18:01So normal labs don't mean optimal function.
- 18:04They mean that the markers tested are within standard reference ranges.
- 18:08That's a completely different thing.
- 18:10So this is why functional testing can change the picture.
- 18:13So often for people who've been told that there's nothing wrong, not because they're conventional doctors miss something obvious they didn't, but because the questions that we're asking are just different.
- 18:25So you can very much have underlying issues, even if your tests have been normal.
- 18:32So let me just share a little story, a client story that I think just pulls all of this together.
- 18:38We had a client who got to the point that she was scared to eat.
- 18:42Every meal felt heavy.
- 18:43She looked pregnant by dinner.
- 18:45She had that upper stomach pressure, bloating that wouldn't quit.
- 18:48Rosacea, reflux.
- 18:50She had endoscopies, she'd done GI workups, everything was normal.
- 18:55Her doctor was a little bit stumped and she started to wonder like, well, maybe this is just how I am.
- 19:01So after about 18 months of going in circles, trying different medications, trying all these things, she started working with our team when we ran a GI map.
- 19:11Which is a functional stool test that looks at what's actually living in the gut and how well digestion is functioning.
- 19:17Here is what we found.
- 19:19She had h pylori, which is a bacteria that lives in the stomach lining.
- 19:23And the thing about h pylori is one of the ways it survives is by suppressing stomach acid because stomach acid is actually.
- 19:30What would kill it?
- 19:31So the bacteria essentially turns down the acid to protect itself, which meant her stomach was already starting with a compromised ignition switch before even food arrived.
- 19:43She also had low levels of good bacteria that are supposed to be there, plus some opportunistic or unwanted bacteria that we're filling in those parking spaces.
- 19:53If you've heard me talk about the gut before, you know, I often compare it to a parking lot.
- 19:57We want good bacteria parked in our parking lot.
- 20:00So the bacteria in her gut were the kind that ferment and produce gas and create that pressure and bloating.
- 20:08Her digestive enzyme output was low, meaning that food wasn't breaking down properly.
- 20:12Even once it left the stomach, her immune system was elevated and reactive, and that makes sense when the gut lining is under chronic stress.
- 20:22So if you put all that together and every single symptom she had it.
- 20:25Really did make sense.
- 20:27That heaviness, that pressure, the reflux, the bloating, none of it was random.
- 20:31It was all connected.
- 20:32Her body was doing exactly what a body does when digestion is compromised at multiple levels at once.
- 20:40So here's where I wanna be honest with you.
- 20:42The answer was not just, oh, we'll take these supplements for h pylori and move on.
- 20:47I see that approach a lot and people often come to me frustrated because they treated an infection and they still felt terrible or it came back.
- 20:56That's because that infection was one piece of a bigger picture.
- 21:00We had to rebuild that whole environment, support motility, work on the nervous system, help her body to feel safe, to digest and heal.
- 21:11And then restore the microbiome in the right order.
- 21:13So the sequence matters a lot more than most people realize.
- 21:17You can do all the right things and still not get results if you're doing them in the wrong order or if you're skipping those foundational pieces.
- 21:25So by the time, by the end of her time and gut together, she wasn't just eating without fear, she was eating things she hadn't touched in years because her system was actually working.
- 21:36So you're probably thinking, what do I actually do about this?
- 21:40I wanna frame everything that follows around.
- 21:42One principle is that we have to support digestion from the top down.
- 21:47The impulse most people have is to treat the symptoms wherever they feel them, right?
- 21:52Bloating, address the bloating, constipation, address the constipation.
- 21:55But if the slowdown is starting at the stomach level, those downstream approaches are gonna keep producing these mediocre, piecemeal results that you don't want.
- 22:05So number one, start with meal hygiene.
- 22:08I know this sounds way too simple to matter, but I genuinely know and see that it makes a meaningful difference.
- 22:15So slow down before your meals.
- 22:17Take a few deep breaths, not just as a ritual, but as a way to.
- 22:22Signal to your nervous system that you're safe.
- 22:24It's time to digest.
- 22:25Chew your food more thoroughly than you think You need to sit while you eat, and when possible, don't eat while you're scrolling, working, driving.
- 22:34This is not gonna be a perfect thing all the time, but these things work because they actually activate your parasympathetic nervous system that rest and digest state you cannot fully digest in fight or flight.
- 22:46So even small changes to your meal environment can have a real effect on your digestive output.
- 22:52Number two is support the vagus nerve tone.
- 22:55So this sounds kind of esoteric, but it's very practical.
- 22:59Humming, singing, gargling with water, walking after meals, getting morning sunlight.
- 23:04These are all evidence-informed vagal nerve supports, and several of them are just enjoyable.
- 23:10Walking after a meal is something that I love and recommend across the board even five, 10 minutes.
- 23:16Supports motility and blood flow to digestion.
- 23:20Next up would be support stomach acid and digestive function.
- 23:22So adequate protein intake matters here.
- 23:25Minerals matter here, digestive bitters can be helpful.
- 23:28Digest the bitter foods can be helpful.
- 23:32Addressing chronic stress is not optional in this picture.
- 23:35And then treating any underlying infections like h pylori, next, support motility.
- 23:40So walking after meals.
- 23:42Yes, I'm mentioning that.
- 23:43Mentioning that again.
- 23:44Hydration, electrolytes.
- 23:47Minerals, regular meal timing.
- 23:49Your GI tract has a circadian rhythm and consistent meal.
- 23:53Timing helps adequate meal spacing, so not grazing all day long.
- 23:59Anything that supports regular bowel movements because upstreams, slowdowns and downstream slowdowns are usually connected.
- 24:06And then consider testing would be next if you've been dealing with this for a long time.
- 24:11Or strategies above aren't moving the needle.
- 24:14This might be a situation where functional testing genuinely changes the picture.
- 24:19A GI map can help identify h pylori, microbiome imbalances, digestive enzyme output, and then just look for any immune or inflammatory markers.
- 24:30HTMA can reveal the mineral components and thyroid patterns stress patterns, et cetera.
- 24:37So that's worth discussing as well.
- 24:39Before I wrap, I, I do think it's worth mentioning and I wanna be clear that there are symptoms that should be medically evaluated right away.
- 24:47If you are experiencing severe or frequent vomiting, rapid weight loss, difficulty swallowing, abdominal pain, you're vomiting blood, black tarry stool, please.
- 24:58Go see a GI doctor.
- 25:00Those symptoms go beyond what we're talking about today, and you need a proper workup.
- 25:05So let's just close it out.
- 25:08If you feel like food sits in your stomach after every meal like a brick, your body is not failing you.
- 25:15Your digestion is likely just underpowered.
- 25:18It's slowed down, it's stressed out, it's depleted.
- 25:22Or maybe you're stuck in a survival mode pattern and doesn't know how to exit.
- 25:27All of those things are very understandable and all of them have.
- 25:31Things that you can do to move forward.
- 25:34A lot of people will spend years trying to fix bloating at the bottom of digestion without realizing that it's starting at the very top.
- 25:42So that's the thing that I want you to walk away with today.
- 25:45If this episode was a light bulb moment and you wanna understand more about what is going on in your gut.
- 25:51You can head to the show notes.
- 25:52I've linked my gut health quiz.
- 25:54This can help give you a sense of where to start, what your symptoms might be pointing to, and then if you're ready to get one-on-one support, you can learn more about gut together there as well.
- 26:05As always, please share this episode with someone you think needs to hear it.
- 26:09If you're enjoying the podcast, a review means the world.
- 26:13It helps this show to find the right people who need it.
- 26:17And we also do a monthly giveaway.
- 26:19So when you submit, you review, you just.
- 26:22Email your review to Happy Gut at Dr.
- 26:25Heather Finley dot co.
- 26:26We pick a winner every month to win an HTMA test and consult.
- 26:30So definitely do that if you wanna test out some mineral testing and get some support there.
- 26:35But I'll see you next week.
- 26:36Your teaser is next episode.
- 26:38We're gonna talk about why healthy foods can sometimes make bloating even worse.
- 26:43Yes, it's really counterintuitive, but I think it's really important to talk about in this space.
- 26:48So see you next week on the next episode.
- 26:50Have a great rest of your day.