Latest / Love Your Gut / Ep. 128: Why did my results not last? (constipation, SIBO bloating, low ferritin, etc)

Transcript

Ep. 128: Why did my results not last? (constipation, SIBO bloating, low ferritin, etc) · Love Your Gut

• 0:03
  Dr. Heather Finley: Welcome to the Love Your Gut Podcast.
• 0:05
  Dr. Heather Finley: I'm your host, Dr.
• 0:06
  Dr. Heather Finley: Heather Finley, registered dietitian and gut health specialist.
• 0:10
  Dr. 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.
• 0:21
  Dr. Heather Finley: I've dedicated my life to understanding and solving my own gut issues.
• 0:25
  Dr. Heather Finley: And now I'm here to guide you.
• 0:28
  Dr. Heather Finley: On this podcast, I'll help you identify the true root causes of your discomfort.
• 0:33
  Dr. Heather Finley: So you can finally ditch your symptoms for good.
• 0:36
  Dr. 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.
• 0:43
  Dr. Heather Finley: So if you're ready to learn a lot, gain a deeper understanding of your gut and find lasting relief.
• 0:48
  Dr. Heather Finley: You are in the right place.
• 0:50
  Dr. Heather Finley: Welcome to the love your gut podcast.
• 0:55
  Have you ever had the thought,"I felt so much better after my protocol, but then my results didn't last"?
• 1:02
  I was on office hours a couple weeks ago chatting with a new client of ours, and she was talking, directly about this.
• 1:09
  She was saying,"In the past, I've done protocols, and I feel great, and then my symptoms start coming back." And I hear this actually all the time, with clients that we work with and clients that I talk to on discovery calls.
• 1:25
  "I felt amazing after antibiotics, iron infusion, SIBO protocol," insert protocol here,"but then my bloating came back.
• 1:32
  My constipation came back.
• 1:34
  My, uh, my numbers improved, but six months later, I was right back where I started." Maybe you've thought,"Well, the supplements worked for a while.
• 1:43
  the elimination diet helped until it didn't." And I understand the frustration because usually you're frustrated because it's not that you're doing nothing, right?
• 1:55
  You are probably doing so much.
• 1:57
  You're listening to podcasts like this one.
• 1:59
  You're Googling.
• 2:00
  You're ChatGPT-ing.
• 2:02
  You're trying supplements.
• 2:03
  You're cutting out foods.
• 2:05
  You've probably worked with a handful of practitioners.
• 2:07
  You've done protocols, and those things have possibly helped you, and that's exactly what was happening with this client.
• 2:14
  She had done work on her gut and her thyroid before.
• 2:18
  She had iron issues.
• 2:19
  She had done protocols before, and she had experienced improvement, so her frustration wasn't,"Nothing has ever worked,"'cause that wasn't true.
• 2:29
  It was,"Why doesn't it last?" And I think that's a much more interesting question because you know that you can get results.
• 2:37
  They just didn't have anywhere to stay.
• 2:40
  So today on this episode, that's exactly what I wanna talk about, why this happens.
• 2:45
  Because sometimes what you're missing isn't another supplement or another protocol or another test or another podcast or another piece of information.
• 2:53
  Sometimes the problem is that you have spent years collecting tiny little pieces of the puzzle without having somebody to help you put the whole puzzle together.
• 3:04
  Now, what do I mean by that?
• 3:07
  Even once you have the right plan, there is a piece that I don't think we talk about enough, and that is staying with the process when it gets uncomfortable.
• 3:16
  Now, before you turn this episode off, I promise this is going to be so helpful, because lasting results don't just require knowing what to do.
• 3:27
  They require knowing what to do next.
• 3:30
  They require knowing when to keep going, knowing when something needs to change, and then having someone who can help you see the bigger picture when you're standing way too close to it.
• 3:42
  You are so emotionally invested in your results, obviously, so it's hard to sometimes zoom out.
• 3:50
  Imagine your tire has a slow leak.
• 3:53
  So imagine you're just driving down the road, and your tire pressure light comes on.
• 3:57
  So you pull into the gas station, you check the tire, it's low, you put some air in it, the light goes off, your car is driving great again.
• 4:03
  Problem solved, right?
• 4:05
  Except three weeks later, the light comes back on.
• 4:07
  So you pull over, you add more air, blah, blah, blah.
• 4:10
  The car drives great again.
• 4:12
  Then it happens again.
• 4:13
  So eventually you're just gonna buy one of those portable air compressors and keep it in your trunk because you know how to manage the problem.
• 4:21
  You know exactly how much air your tire needs.
• 4:24
  You know how often to check it.
• 4:26
  Maybe you've even Googled the ideal tire pressure.
• 4:29
  You've watched YouTube videos.
• 4:30
  But what's the actual problem here?
• 4:33
  The question is, why does the tire keep losing air?
• 4:37
  Maybe there's a nail in your tire.
• 4:39
  Maybe the valve stem is leaking.
• 4:41
  I am not a car expert.
• 4:42
  But, you know, all the things.
• 4:43
  Like maybe there's a problem with your rim.
• 4:45
  So you're not doing anything wrong by putting air in your tire, um, because it works, right?
• 4:52
  So you're not wasting air.
• 4:53
  It's getting you farther down the road, but it's...
• 4:57
  you're not fixing the reason that the air is escaping.
• 5:00
  And I think that is exactly what happens to so many people when they're fixing health issues.
• 5:07
  They're trying so hard to get rid of the uncomfortable symptom as fast as they can that they're not spending the time to actually resolve the symptoms for good, and that's what you want, right?
• 5:20
  You want long-term relief.
• 5:22
  So we get really good at refilling the tire.
• 5:26
  Rifaximin, antibiotics, elemental diet, digestive enzymes, restrictive diets, iron infusions, whatever it might be.
• 5:34
  And I'm not against any of those interventions at all.
• 5:38
  But if you finish a protocol and you're already wondering what you're gonna do when your symptoms come back, that's a very different problem, because what happens next is then you start piecing things together.
• 5:49
  Maybe I need a stronger antimicrobial.
• 5:51
  Maybe I should add oregano.
• 5:53
  This person on Instagram said I need this.
• 5:55
  ChatGPT says this.
• 5:57
  Someone else says I need a parasite cleanse.
• 5:59
  The amount of times I've gotten a text in the last, like, couple weeks from friends asking me if they should do a parasite cleanse, I'm like,"What's going around on the internet?" But You know, maybe people are saying it's mold.
• 6:11
  Now you're taking, like, all these supplements, and you're eating so few foods, and you're not really sure what intervention is doing what.
• 6:20
  You've got a lot of information, but you don't have a strategy, and I think that that is a very important distinction because more information does not automatically create better outcomes.
• 6:32
  Sometimes it actually creates more confusion because every new piece of information gives you another thing that you could change.
• 6:39
  So eventually you're standing on the side of the road with six different air pumps and three tire gauges and a YouTube tutorial, and you have absolutely no idea what you're doing, and at some point, you need someone to look at your whole tire.
• 6:53
  So where is the leak?
• 6:54
  When we work with someone who has recurring SIBO or digestive symptoms that improve and then return, we have to start asking different questions.
• 7:05
  We're not asking,"How do we get rid of bacteria?" We're asking,"Why do you have that?
• 7:11
  What environment allowed this to happen in the first place?" So we're gonna look a couple places.
• 7:16
  So we're gonna look for the nail.
• 7:18
  One of the biggest things is motility.
• 7:22
  Your small intestine has something called the migrating motor complex.
• 7:25
  You can think of it like your intestinal street sweeper.
• 7:28
  So between meals, there's these waves of muscular contractions that move through the small intestine and help clear leftover food and debris and bacteria.
• 7:37
  And if that system isn't working well, bacteria have more opportunity to accumulate where they shouldn't.
• 7:43
  So there's lots of reasons that motility can slow down: grazing all day, thyroid function, stress, iron, m- mineral status, potassium.
• 7:53
  This is one mineral I talk about a lot because your GI tract is essentially one long tube, and muscles require appropriate electrolyte balance to contract.
• 8:04
  I go a lot deeper on this in episode...
• 8:06
  I believe it's 65, if you wanna listen to this after that.
• 8:09
  But here's the point.
• 8:11
  You can dramatically reduce someone's bacterial load.
• 8:15
  You can make them feel significantly better.
• 8:18
  But if their underlying motility hasn't changed, you're filling the tire still.
• 8:23
  So the next piece that I wanna talk about is your gates and guards.
• 8:29
  Another potential leak is stomach acid, so bile.
• 8:33
  Stomach acid, bile, pancreatic function, and your ileocecal valve.
• 8:38
  These systems help to break down food.
• 8:42
  They help to protect the digestive tract.
• 8:44
  They keep things moving in the appropriate direction Your colon is supposed to be and contain enormous amounts of bacteria, and your small intestine isn't supposed to contain nearly as much, so we need appropriate barriers and movement between those environments.
• 9:02
  So one thing that we often tell our clients and see is that they've done a lot of protocols for their colon and their small intestine, but nothing upstream.
• 9:11
  And if digestion isn't working well, simply killing bacteria downstream is not going to create lasting change.
• 9:18
  So again, you can refill the tire, but if the valve is leaking, you're gonna be going back to the gas station, right?
• 9:25
  Another thing that we often see as a malfunction in this tire system would be your nervous system or the rims.
• 9:33
  You can have a perfectly good tire, but if your rim is bent, if the, the tire can't create a good seal, you're gonna continue losing air, and that's where I think the nervous system gets overlooked.
• 9:47
  Years of digestive symptoms can make you incredibly vigilant, hypervigilant.
• 9:53
  You wake up, you check your stomach, you evaluate every bowel movement.
• 9:56
  You worry about how you're gonna feel.
• 9:58
  You check the menu.
• 9:59
  You're constantly on alert.
• 10:02
  You are immediately blaming food for every problem you're having, and food becomes something that you have to manage.
• 10:09
  Your body becomes something that you have to manage, and your nervous system learns,"We have to protect ourselves." And meanwhile, digestion actually works best when your body has the capacity to enter rest and digest.
• 10:21
  So that does not mean that your SIBO or digestive issues is caused by anxiety.
• 10:26
  It doesn't mean that your symptoms are all in your head.
• 10:29
  What it means is your nervous system and digestive system aren't separate from each other, and this is where treating chronic gut symptoms can actually get very uncomfortable because sometimes getting better requires being uncomfortable.
• 10:45
  I think we spend an enormous amount of our lives trying to avoid discomfort.
• 10:51
  But let me be real with you.
• 10:53
  Life is not 100% comfortable.
• 10:56
  Life is closer to 50/50.
• 10:57
  There's gonna be great days.
• 10:59
  There's gonna be hard days.
• 11:00
  For every great thing, there can be a hard thing, and this is...
• 11:04
  There are gonna be meals where maybe you feel amazing Maybe you feel a little bit bloated.
• 11:10
  There are gonna be weeks where your digestion is fantastic.
• 11:13
  When you travel, maybe you sleep terribly, you eat differently, you get constipated.
• 11:19
  And part of getting better is learning that discomfort doesn't always mean you're gonna be like that forever, or danger.
• 11:28
  That's really important, because sometimes you have to get uncomfortable to eventually be comfortable.
• 11:34
  If you have restricted food for years, adding food back in can be uncomfortable.
• 11:41
  If you've been afraid of bloating, tolerating a little bit of temporary bloating while you're increasing your fiber and variety in your diet can be uncomfortable.
• 11:51
  Changing your meal timing is uncomfortable.
• 11:53
  Eating more food is uncomfortable.
• 11:55
  Doing less, for all my Type A, uh, hyper-independent, uh, firstborn daughters, doing less and resting can be uncomfortable.
• 12:05
  Not always trying to reach for something to save you, right?
• 12:09
  Not immediately reaching for another supplement or thinking something's wrong when you have a bad day.
• 12:15
  This is one of the biggest reasons that I believe in support and accountability, because when you're the one experiencing the discomfort, it can be really hard to tell the difference between something is wrong and I need to change course, and this is uncomfortable, but I'm actually moving in the right direction.
• 12:33
  Those are completely different things, completely different outlooks, and Google cannot tell you which one you're in.
• 12:39
  A podcast like this even cannot tell you.
• 12:42
  AI cannot do that.
• 12:43
  It doesn't have a soul.
• 12:45
  AI and Google can give you an incredible amount of information.
• 12:50
  You can ask it what causes SIBO.
• 12:51
  You can ask it about your symptoms.
• 12:53
  You can train it to be a health coach.
• 12:55
  You can learn about everything.
• 12:58
  But information is not the same thing as having somebody who knows your story, watches how you are responding over time and can say,"Don't give up," or,"No, this actually isn't something that I want you to push through.
• 13:13
  We need to adjust." That is coaching.
• 13:16
  That is accountability And I think sometimes we misunderstand accountability as somebody making sure that you did your homework, but that's not how I wanna think about it.
• 13:27
  Good accountability helps you to just stay in the process long enough to see the outcome.
• 13:34
  I'll be honest, I experienced this myself this year.
• 13:37
  I experienced this in a completely different area of my life this year, but I wanna share it with you.
• 13:42
  I invested last October or November, I can't remember, but I invested a significant amount of money into a training because there was something that I wanted to get better about.
• 13:54
  And number one, side note, so grateful that when I told my husband I wanted to do this, he was like,"I trust you." He knew that if I invested in it, I would follow through, and I knew that if I invested in it, I would follow through because I knew that he would support me.
• 14:13
  So as a side.
• 14:14
  But here's the thing, paying that money did not transform me.
• 14:19
  Getting access to the training I was doing did not transform me either.
• 14:23
  The information alone did not transform me.
• 14:26
  I could have watched every module.
• 14:29
  I could have taken all the notes.
• 14:31
  I could have saved every template.
• 14:33
  I could have probably downloaded it all and put it and made it into a Cloud skill, right?
• 14:38
  I could have known exactly what I was supposed to do and still walked away doing things exactly the way I had always done them.
• 14:46
  Why is that?
• 14:48
  Because the transformation happened when I started applying the information and somebody gave me feedback,"Try this this way." So I changed it, then I tried again, more feedback, adjustments, and it was uncomfortable.
• 15:02
  I seriously remember one of the calls I went to, and I was sweating, like literally sweating.
• 15:09
  I had to take a shower after because I was like, you know that like nervous sweat?
• 15:13
  I was so nervous.
• 15:15
  And the feedback challenged the way that I had always done things.
• 15:20
  S- it's so easy to want to go back to what feels familiar, even if you know you don't wanna be there, even if you know you want to be better.
• 15:28
  Sometimes I probably would've just given up too early if I'd been doing it by myself.
• 15:34
  And so that experience reminded me that information was not the transformation.
• 15:39
  Application was a part of it.
• 15:42
  But even the application wasn't the whole thing.
• 15:44
  It was the process It was first information, then application, then feedback, then adjustment, then the hardest part, consistency.
• 15:55
  That's where the transformation actually happened, and your health is no different than this.
• 15:59
  This is why piecing it together is gonna keep you stuck.
• 16:03
  This is why I don't want you spending the next five years becoming an expert at managing your symptoms.
• 16:10
  I don't want you carrying that portable tire pump everywhere you go, and I definitely don't want you buying a new pump every time your tire gets low either.
• 16:17
  At some point, you have to stop asking,"What else can I try?" And you have to find the actual strategy.
• 16:24
  What are we working on first?
• 16:25
  Why?
• 16:26
  How do I know if it's working?
• 16:28
  What if my symptoms temporarily increase?
• 16:30
  What are we watching?
• 16:31
  When do I stay the course?
• 16:32
  When do we change?
• 16:33
  All of those things you need help with.
• 16:36
  That is very different from piecing together a protocol.
• 16:40
  That is a big part of what we do inside of Gut Together.
• 16:44
  We use functional testing so that you know exactly what's causing your symptoms.
• 16:50
  We're gonna look at minerals, digestion, motility, microbiome, nervous system.
• 16:56
  But here's the thing, as much as I love functional testing, the value is not the information, not having access to more information.
• 17:04
  I already said that earlier.
• 17:05
  We live in a world of endless information.
• 17:08
  It's having someone help you make sense of the information and put it in the right order.
• 17:14
  So for every client, that's gonna look a little bit different because it depends on your capacity, your nervous system, your minerals, your digestion.
• 17:25
  We have to make sure you have adequate nutrition on board, blood sugar, sleep.
• 17:29
  I mean, so many things.
• 17:31
  We have to address the places that digestion has broken down, whether that's stomach acid or bile or pancreatic support, infections, overgrowth.
• 17:40
  We have to rebuild food variety to help you become more resilient.
• 17:45
  And throughout the process, we have to watch.
• 17:47
  We have to get feedback.
• 17:48
  We have to adjust because your body isn't just a static lab report.
• 17:53
  The goal isn't a tire that can never lose air, and this brings me back to the tire.
• 17:58
  So fixing the leak doesn't mean your tire pressure will never change again.
• 18:02
  When it gets cold outside, the pressure's gonna drop, right?
• 18:05
  You still maintain your tires.
• 18:07
  Yes, you could hit another nail someday.
• 18:09
  Gut health is the same.
• 18:10
  The goal isn't I will never be bloated again.
• 18:12
  That's not realistic.
• 18:14
  The goal is that you go on vacation, you get a little constipated, you come home, and you recover You have a stressful week, and you notice your digestion is a little off, but it doesn't become a six-month spiral.
• 18:26
  You eat a holiday meal.
• 18:27
  We have the holidays coming up.
• 18:29
  Three months from now or less is Christmas.
• 18:31
  Actually, three months from now is the new year.
• 18:33
  That's crazy.
• 18:34
  You eat a big holiday meal.
• 18:36
  You feel bloated.
• 18:36
  You don't think,"My SIBO's back," right?
• 18:39
  You know what your body needs, and maybe even more importantly, you trust your body.
• 18:44
  I remember how much mental space my own symptoms used to take up, and I don't think I fully realized how much energy I was spending thinking about my body until I wasn't anymore.
• 18:56
  How will I eat?
• 18:57
  How will I feel?
• 18:58
  Did I go to the bathroom?
• 18:59
  Why am I blo- Like, all that stuff.
• 19:00
  Do I need another test?
• 19:01
  That is so exhausting I don't want you to become better at living around your symptoms.
• 19:07
  I want you, I want your symptoms to take up less space in your life.
• 19:12
  So that leaves me with, if your results didn't last, if you've done a protocol and protocol and protocol, all the things, and you keep thinking,"Why didn't my results last?" I don't want your immediate conclusion to be,"Nothing works for me." Maybe what you did did actually work.
• 19:28
  The air you put in the tire wasn't wasted.
• 19:31
  It got you down the road.
• 19:32
  But na- maybe no one ever looked for the actual leak, or maybe you've identified pieces of it, but you've been trying to repair the tire by yourself with instructions that don't match the tires that you have.
• 19:44
  Maybe you have the plan, but every time the process becomes uncomfortable, you understandably change something.
• 19:51
  You stop something.
• 19:51
  You restrict.
• 19:52
  You start looking for another answer.
• 19:53
  So I want you to ask yourself,"How many times have I refilled the tire?
• 19:57
  Has anybody actually looked for the nail?
• 19:59
  Am I following one strategy, or am I piecing together information from 10 different places?" And then finally, when this gets uncomfortable, do I have someone who can help me know whether it's time to change the course or whether I need to keep going?
• 20:14
  Because sometimes that is the main question.
• 20:18
  Sometimes you've been missing that strategy, the order of operations, the feedback, because information can tell you how to put air in the tire.
• 20:26
  But lasting change in your gut health comes from finding the leak, from repairing it, learning to trust your car enough to actually drive again.
• 20:35
  So if that is the kind of support that you're looking for, please apply to Gut Together.
• 20:41
  We would love to support you.
• 20:43
  This is always our busiest time of the year as we start heading into the holidays and people looking back and realizing,"Man, I'm still in the same place that I was in January, and I swore that this year was gonna be different." So do not wait until January 1st, because you can start now, and you can have support throughout the holidays, and you can feel better by the holidays.
• 21:05
  So I will link the application in the show notes.
• 21:08
  I hope that this episode was helpful and just gave you a different perspective, of knowing that it's okay to be uncomfortable, and sometimes that actually means you're moving in the right direction.
• 21:18
  So I will see you next week on the next episode.
• 21:22
  Thanks for joining.