Latest / Inside the Apothecary / #Ep06 - Gut Health and IBS - Why You're Bloated, Constipated, and Reacting to Everything You Eat
Transcript
- Jaime: Hello, welcome to episode six of Inside the Apothecary. Thank you for joining us. And this week we are talking all things gut. So we are talking about some of the root causes that we see of some real common gut symptoms that people experience. We talk about what does it mean when it feels like you're reacting to everything you eat? What does IBS even mean? And is it really a proper true diagnosis? And does it mean you are stuck with IBS forever? MG Herbs: Thank you so much for being here with us today. If something in this episode resonated, just know there's always a way to explore it further and support your body the way it needs. You can find out more by going to the website nourishingapothecary.com or reach out if you're ready for more personalized care. Until next time, take care of yourself and keep listening to your body. Hey beautiful, I am so glad that you're here. Welcome to Inside the Apothecary, a space for real conversations about hormones, fertility and the body. This is where we learn to understand the body, not fight it. Jaime: the lining is really important, right? But then what you got to think about is what are we putting into our bodies? That's a really important component. And this is where looking at what people eat is really important. So I'm a big fan of a day on a plate. What's a standard day for you? But what I find really interesting, firstly, things I'm looking for are things like eating regular meals, and are those meals balanced? So, you know, I feel like forever we see women notoriously under-eat protein. We're going to talk about some clinical red flags that we see and why we might want to do some deeper testing and so much more. So welcome Mel. Thanks for joining me today. Welcome back. under eat healthy fats, very carb-y, right? And our world is set up to be carb-y. But what I always think is so funny is so often people present me a day, right? And I'm like, okay, well, that sounds good. But I'm like, you eating the same thing every day? And they go, yeah. So whilst day might look really good on paper, MG Herbs: because your body isn't broken, ⁓ it's communicating. take a breath, get comfortable and let's tune back into you. Mm-hmm. Hey, yes, so my pleasure. I am so looking forward to getting into why our gut is so important. Cause this is like a key foundation of naturopathic medicine. We always go back to the gut, you know, and lots of people will be like, why are you asking me questions about my gut? When I just, told you I have migraines or, you know, I said that I can't poo. Well, that's kind of gut related, but lots of people don't think it comes from the gut. like, it's cool. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jaime: Having a really good day, but the same day every day also leads to challenges. And this is what I love to describe to people, because this comes down to your microbiome, one of my favorite little topics to talk about. OK, I love to give people this analogy because I'm just such a big visual learner and I feel like this makes sense to me. So when we... Totally. And also just with everything, so often you guys think your symptoms are totally normal because they've been like this forever, but just because it's been like that forever and it's common does not mean it's normal. And so this is where when we ask you these questions and you say, ⁓ yeah, I only poo once or twice a week. That's not normal. MG Herbs: The microbiome begs for visual analogy, I feel. Yes, hit us with this, yeah. Jaime: I agree. Otherwise, it's just too big, right? It's just too big a topic. Okay, so like to compare your microbiome to a fish tank, right? So the fish are the gut bugs, which are the probiotics. The fish food are the prebiotics, which is fiber, which is fruit and veggies. If you only eat MG Herbs: Well, I love when people like, yeah, but that's like, I've always been like that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I like it. Mm-hmm. Good fiber. Well, that's fine. But also I can fix it. Do you want to poo every day? You'll feel so much better for it. We'll get things going. You know, it'll be good. It'll be good. But those unresolved gut issues, they can be beneath so many other chronic health pictures and so many other chronic health symptoms. But let's start with IBS because this is a real bug bear for both you and I. We get really like upset. There's IBS is just kind of lumped on people that don't have any other diagnosis. They don't have celiac, they don't have Crohn's. There's nothing. Jaime: Mm. Mm. Mm. Yeah, if you only eat a narrow range of fruit and veggies, and it's kind of same same every week, which I feel like is everybody that I talked to, you are only going to grow a few species of goldfish. But to get a rich tropical aquarium with all of the colorful fish, you need to feed a variety of different fruits and vegetables. Mm. Mm. MG Herbs: Yeah. Jaime: Now, coming back to this fish tank analogy, how I said about how you can get that intestinal permeability, right? Where you get that leakiness in the lining of your gut. Imagine that is like the, the walls of your fish tank are broken, right? So the fish are flying everywhere. Everything is kind of going everywhere. So sometimes what we need to do is go in and fix the walls of the tank and do some structural, you know, repair first. Then we can go and fix what's going on. MG Herbs: really to diagnose so they're told that they have IBS. Very frustrating. This isn't, you know, something that we love. What, what are you kind of telling people? Tell me how you have really great ways of explaining it to patients. So if someone comes to you and they're like, I've been diagnosed with IBS, what do you say to them? Apart from no. Mm-hmm. Jaime: So to me, IBS is like an umbrella term for a collection of different symptoms, but it's not explaining the root cause of what's going on with you. And that's where I think the fundamental issue is. So people will say to me, ⁓ but that's just my IBS. I'm like, mm. with the amount of fish that are in the fish tank. Right? But this is where it's important. MG Herbs: Yeah. Well, look, if the Yeah, no, I was just gonna say if the fish tank's leaking water, the fish aren't gonna survive. They're not gonna be very happy. Even if a little bit of water is still in there, but they don't have enough, you know, they're not gonna be happy. What about, I don't know if you go this far with said analogy, but what about like if you pour the entire contents of the fish food into the fish tank, which is leaking? Jaime: tell me more, we need to figure this out. Because it doesn't necessarily mean anything, right? So this is where in that initial consultation, like Mel's sort of alluding to, we're going to ask you all the questions, right? So how often do you poop? What are your poops like? When do you poop? Like, you know, what is the texture of your poop? Is there an urging to go? We get into the deep, nitty gritty poop talk. We want to know. MG Herbs: you Jaime: Yeah, and. Yeah. yeah. Yeah. So I think about this a couple of different ways, right? So one is that when I see a lot of people all of a sudden drastically increase the amount of fruit and veggies that they eat, right? They're like, I'm to go on a detox. I'm going to just really drastically increase it. And then they're like, ⁓ my God, I'm so bloated. Right. It's because they've literally dumped all this fish food in the tank and there's not enough little fishies to eat it. And so the poor little fishies are struggling. So that's one thing, right? MG Herbs: The smell, the color. I've got all kind of hand movements that I use and I'm like, is it like a soft serve? Is it a sausage? Is it like kangaroo poo? ⁓ yeah, I've got all the, all the things that I'm asking. Mm-hmm. Jaime: But it's all this is giving us little clues as to what's going on with you. Right. So we want to know is there, is it explosive, right? Is it pebbles, you know, or are you there for half an hour to get out some little peanuts, right? Like all of this is super useful information. And also for the ladies, we want to know, it change your rainy period? I'm always interested in knowing that information as well. MG Herbs: You Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jaime: But then on the flip side, and this is totally disgusting, but really important to understand everybody, if you don't feed those fish, right, they will start feeding on you and they start eating into the mucosal layer that lines your gut. And that also causes issues to the walls of the fish tank because the fish have got to eat. And if you don't give them food, they will start to find it anywhere they can. It's disgusting, but it's what happens. So. because that also gives us lots of little red flags as to things that might be going on in your body. And we want to know the symptoms around that. So you're bloating, nausea. We want to know if you ever, well, I mean, vomiting, you know, which obviously that's quite extreme, but we want to know if that's the case or that if that ever happens for you, we want to know about your burping and your farting. We want to know all of these things, right? Yeah. Yeah. MG Herbs: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jaime: Feed those fish, everybody. Moral of the story. Feed the fish. A variety of food, please. MG Herbs: I think that's a and like in terms of I think just mentioning in terms of fiber, it's not just like your Metamucil. We're not talking about just psyllium husk. What the specific type of fiber that these fish need is called polyphenols and that's a really high antioxidant based fiber, which only comes from your fresh fruit and veg. Basically, it's you know, you can have like five kilos of psyllium husk fiber, but there's no polyphenols. reflux is a big one, like indigestion, reflux. What's that other word for it? I had someone say to me the other day and I hadn't, yeah, I always think my nan used to call it that. It's like the older, old school, I always think gourd or reflux now, but all of those symptoms can fall within IBS and it can be you have chronic diarrhea. It can be you have chronic constipation. It can be you have both. So how, how is that like, you know, Jaime: Hop in. Mmm... Mmm... Mmm... to lately. Yeah. MG Herbs: So it's really important that they get all the food they need. Jaime: Yeah. That's why I say to people, yeah, it's not like people say to me all the time, ⁓ I want to have a fiber supplement. I'm like, no, eat your food and vegetables. Learn to love them. Learn to love them. Right. MG Herbs: all coming under one umbrella. The other thing is, right, let's just pretend for a minute, IBS is this thing and you get diagnosed with it. Just do it with food, yeah. Yeah, totally. And then, you know, you talked about the probiotics, which are the fish. Great, awesome. The prebiotics, which is the polyphenol-rich fiber. What about a postbiotic? Where does that come into your fish tank analogy, or is that too much? You don't have to stay with it. Like it doesn't have to be the end. We can fix it. Like generally, if you've got bloating, we address it. We fix it. We take it off the list. What else have you got? ⁓ reflux. Yeah. Okay. Let's do that. And sometimes that, you know, we can do it all together, but often we'll work through those symptoms and really try and fix it. You don't want to live like that. I want to live with IBS. I've had those symptoms with endo, know, like those awful kind of bowel symptoms. I don't want to live with that every day. Jaime: I just feel like ⁓ don't quite know where I would fit this in the analogy yet. ⁓ Hmm. MG Herbs: Well, I'm thinking. I'm thinking this is on like right now. This is, this is the first time I've heard the fish tank thing, right? From you. So if the fish are happy, they are going to have really nice like poos, right? In the environment. They're going to like let off good pheromones. They're going to make of the love I imagine. They're going to lay their fish eggs and they're going to have babies and whatnot. This is the best I can do. A postbiotic is basically what the fish can do. Jaime: Okay, paint a picture. Yeah. No, and you really don't have to. And it's just really sad when people have for so long and the doctors have just said, well, it's just your IBS. And, you know, shrug their shoulders and tried to give you some medication for it when not actually addressing the root cause of what's going on. Right. Mmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mmm. MG Herbs: So is it, you know, for my IBS patients, they will nearly always have some foods that they feel like upset them in particular. if they're fed the right thing. It's like they can go to work and fulfill their jobs. can... Jaime: Mm. Is it, is it kind of like also imagining the fish poo as like a fertilizer for the garden in the fish tank? MG Herbs: And a lot of people, they'll be like, doesn't matter what I eat. This is probably, this is a possibility. This might happen. But for some of those patients, they're like, every time I eat lactose, every time I eat gluten, every time I eat a mushroom, like they, you know, kind of trying to find, it can be anything. They're kind of trying to find the things that upset them and then avoid that. And that makes sense. Cause that's what we are, you know, programmed to do. Like you don't want to, if there's a rusty nail on the ground, you're not just going to keep on stepping on it. Like you want to try and avoid the Yes, I like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They have healthy poos, they have healthy energy, they get bigger, they grow bigger, they have babies. It's like their vitality, you know? So like if the fish are happy, all right, let's get rid of the fish. Basically, everyone knows about a prebiotic, which is a food for the probiotic. But what people mostly don't know is that there's a postbiotic, which is like a metabolite that your body produces and it's highly anti-inflammatory. So we want that postbiotic to manage Jaime: Right? Yeah. Mm. Yeah. Yeah. Mmm. Mm-hmm. MG Herbs: danger and the issue. What are you thinking in terms of avoiding foods if you have IBS? Jaime: Mm. MG Herbs: intestinal inflammation, is all of this stuff we're talking about, but it's also really important for your mental health. It's important for your hormonal health. There's so many things that this post-biotic can do. What we see is if you have cardiovascular disease and we get that post-biotic working, that post-biotic can actually manage your heart inflammation. Like that's amazing. That's so awesome. So we want this whole system to be working correctly, right? Jaime: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Look, for me, there's it's two different categories, right? So there's the people that say when I have milk in my coffee, I run to the bathroom. Right? That's very different to, ⁓ I don't know what it is, but I just feel like I have so many foods make me feel really bloated. I don't know. That's different. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And so it all comes from the gut, right? So this is where getting your gut health right is so important. So these red flags that we see of things not going wrong, of things not going right, IBS, all these symptoms, for us, kind of, it triggers our kind of thought process that something's not right at a deep core root level inside of you that we want to work on. So they in my mind, they're two and this is where we ask you these questions. They're very specific and very different set of circumstances. One, if you eat the dairy and you run straight to the toilet, well, I unfortunately don't think dairy is your friend. But if you are like, wonder what's going on. I can't quite figure it out. It seems to be everything. And so I've cut out glucose, I've cut out gluten and sugar and this and that and that blah, blah. But I'm still kind of sick. This is where we look. MG Herbs: Yes. Mmm. you Jaime: And often, so often, once we get this right, so many of your symptoms in your whole body start to improve. And I love to see that. Yeah. Yeah. MG Herbs: that to resolve, yeah, for sure. Jaime: deeper. And often there is issues with your intestinal lining. And that can be one of the big causes that I see in clinic. Is that something you see as well? MG Herbs: And you know, when we talk about that post-biotic improving the mental health, that is a really good kind of segue for us into the nervous system and the importance of the gut with our nervous system. ⁓ Because our nervous system really does influence our digestion and our motility, how we poo and what our gut's doing. It's so important for how we cope with stress as well. Yeah, I think like if I always try to explain to my patients, if you have those kinds of symptoms, when you have dairy, you have lactose intolerance. That's a whole different story. Lactose intolerance is a very specific enzyme deficiency, essentially, where you cannot break down the lactase in the milk. Cool. Sometimes we can fix it. Sometimes we can improve it. Sometimes you can have like some hard dairy and not wet dairy, you know, the stuff, but Jaime: Mm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. and I see that, you know, it's so I think it's really funny, you know, it's interesting when people say, ⁓ I get a nervous poo, I have to do a nervous poo, or, you know, there's a lot of I think some, you know, fundamentally, people do understand that there is a connection between their nervous system and their digestion. I just don't think people are able to understand or explain what that connection is. Mm. MG Herbs: Yes. If you are cutting out some of those big kind of food groups that generally people do, they cut out dairy because they think maybe it's dairy. They cut out gluten because they think maybe it's gluten. They may feel better for a short period of time because they've cut something out that's like a big kind of protein or peptide or inflammatory food that their body no longer has to deal with. However, Yeah. always think, ⁓ know, we're talking about the gut being the second brain. I'm like, no, no, no, no, hold on. It's, it's not the second brain. It's actually your first brain. Like it's doing so much more work than up here and ⁓ needs to work for up here to be good. So it's so important for our, for our head space. ⁓ Jaime: Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. MG Herbs: it doesn't last for very long and how long can you keep doing that and how many foods, you know, do you have to lose? Often what will happen is they also can't come back to those foods, you know, because the gut thing's still not fixed. So the lactose intolerance is very different too. think my people who come in and say like, I think I have food intolerances because of my IBS symptoms. Jaime: And do you want to explain Mel how the nervous system can impact like the motility of your gut? Cause I think that's really interesting as well. MG Herbs: ⁓ yeah, so it's all about innovation. Is that what you asked me? Sorry, totally missed it. ⁓ Jaime: Yeah, yeah, MG Herbs: Innovation. when we are looking at how these things are kind of created, if we go back to when a baby is kind of made, one of the first things that happens is the gut. And then the nervous system builds off that. when our, when we stress, when we're anxious, our nervous system basically sends a, know, message to our gut to empty, we get all this, you know, innovation. So it's basically like, all these I am a big believer, like I'm ever the positive kind of, you know, hopeful human that if we fix the gut, you can eat everything in moderation. And that's been my, my kind of experience personally as well. I can't, can't fix allergies so much, but food intolerance I think is actually a gut issue. It's not the food. It's what the guts doing with it. So. Jaime: Yeah. Yeah. And that's the goal as well, is we want to get you to the point where you can eat everything again. Right? In moderation. MG Herbs: little electrical impulses, these messages that make our bowel and we call it peristalsis. ⁓ sends water into our gut. And it's basically like a stress response where we out and our body will empty because no one can kind of run. In moderation, in moderation. I always just do my little buy it buy line, you know, you don't want to be having, you know, if you previously think you had issues with mushrooms, I don't want you to eat a kilo of mushrooms every night. Like we just got to take a, take a chill and just moderation is important. But yeah, like that's what I'm kind of seeing in clinic. Don't know if that answered your question. on a full tummy. We need it to be emptied. We need to like go. So generally that is what's happening when you do get those butterflies. It's also a signal, it's primitively that there's a, there's a problem. There's an issue. So, you know, things aren't right. We feel it in our gut. You know, those old kind of sayings, that's where that comes from. Jaime: Yeah. So when it comes to that, right, so often for me, when I'm seeing these cases where people feel like they are bloated all the time, no matter what they ate, right, I'm always kind of going, when did that start? And kind of try and think about what potentially alluded to this, right. And one thing that I often have seen is when women have had a really chronic stress or chronic issue with like their Mmm. Mmm. Yeah. Yeah. think it's also really important to understand that a lot of like times people see weird things in their gut and often they want to jump to, they think it's something like parasites or they think they need to do a type of cleanse and they're like, I just need to do a gut cleanse. I just need to do a parasite cleanse. it's so often ⁓ what, or people don't quite understand what it really is. MG Herbs: Mm-hmm. Jaime: like anxiety, so like their nervous system dysregulation, or they've been through another type of stress, which is chronic pain. What I feel like happens in a lot of these instances is what we call intestinal permeability. Right? So the way that I like to describe that is your intestinal tube is like a snake, right? But it's kind of like a hose, right? All kind of together. When your body has been under a lot of stress, that MG Herbs: Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah, a parasite cleanse is really damaging for the most part. It's not something that I go in and do really at all in clinic. If I am treating a parasite, it's not a parasite cleanse. We come at it from a very different perspective. Jaime: hose starts to unravel a little bit and starts having like little gaps. Right? So what happens is bits of food particles that should be contained in that tube start to enter out into your abdominal cavity. In your abdomen is a very sophisticated immune system. So all of sudden it sees that little bit of mushroom and it's like, ⁓ you don't belong here, Mr. Mushroom. I'm going to tag you as the enemy. And the next time you eat the bit of mushroom, your body goes, ⁓ attack. MG Herbs: even you know when you buy something that's called like parasite cleanse, it tends to be doing is it's So it's addressing like overgrowth issues. can, ⁓ know, have herbs that are specifically anti-parasitic, but they don't work in the same way that like, I think people think that we're just going to go in and like, you know, wipe everything out and kill everything like antibiotics. And it doesn't work like that. These things are, they can be selective for very, our herbs communicate the Jaime: And so that bloating is often your body just sensing and going under attack at anything and everything, which is why I feel like people often say, no matter what I ate or when I eat anything, any, if a sip of water, I'm bloated. Right? So what we want to do is we want to go in and we want to work on repairing the damage that's been done throughout the digestion track to seal it all back up and heal it all back up. And so then MG Herbs: in a really cool way. know doing like a ⁓ broad spectrum paracyclone is very different I think to what you would get from a naturopathic paracyclone. And I'm saying this in those little bunny ear things because it's it's they're two different things to me. Jaime: Yeah. Same. agree. And also we wouldn't even think about touching something like that unless we've seen it in a gut test, unless we've seen it in your microbiome. No. The bloating goes down and all of a sudden you're able to eat these foods without that reaction, without an entire battle going on in the background. MG Herbs: Yeah, so we don't assume yeah, for sure. Like, ⁓ yes, there's nothing that would make me think. Yes. ⁓ yes, you present with a parasite unless know that you have a parasite because you you got it ⁓ it's come back positive on a test or there was a really specific kind of scenario where you're like, I went somewhere, I got sick, I haven't been right since. ⁓ I go, okay, but also I'm still not going to do a parasite cleanse. I'm going to build your gut back up. I might try and crowd some things out, but we can test all of this and then we make the treatment very specific. Jaime: Yep. Yes. Mmm. Yeah. Yeah. And often with this complicated, yeah. And often with these complicated gut pitches, you, you, it needs to be a personalized approach for you. And like Mel said, yeah, it's a phasic approach. It's not just like going in one hit wonder, bomb done. MG Herbs: We also do it in phases. we've done a very high overview of like. Here's the gut. It's a fish tank. These are the linings. This is the microbiome. There's like a zillion other things going on. So there is no way that we can address all the issues that the possible parasite infection has caused in like one protocol. would be a changing protocol. And for myself, you know, it took me three years to heal my gut and fix my gut. So it takes time, you know, it just, takes a really long time to do this. Your gut. Jaime: Mmm. Yeah. Yeah. MG Herbs: is essential for you to live. If we can't get nutrients out of our food, if we can't digest things, if we can't create neurotransmitters and hormones and all that kind of stuff, then we're not going to have a very good life, if at all, right? So to effect change in the gut takes a lot of time because your gut is really good at protecting itself even when it's unwell. Jaime: Mmm. Mmm. Mm. Yeah. Yeah. Should we talk about though, what are some like clinical, like actual red flags? Because there's red flags to us that like, ⁓ there's something we want to work on, but then there's like actual proper clinical red flags. MG Herbs: you Yeah. Uh, we're just talking about in general in terms of the gut. just making sure we're getting off the parasite. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just so I listen as a clear as well. Yeah. Yeah. I think what I'm Jaime: in terms of the gut. Yeah, no, in general, terms of the gut. Yeah, yeah, yeah. MG Herbs: really worried about is like, I'm worried about all those IBS symptoms. I don't want to minimize that because that's what that can really affect someone's quality of life. But if there is blood in your stool, I asked this question to most of my patients, but especially my men, men in their ⁓ I really want to make sure there's no blood in their stool, right? Because we're seeing an incidence a high climb of bowel issues in our young men. So often I when the answer is yes, they're like, ⁓ yeah, but it's been there for a while and I'm like no no no no no if there is any if there is ever a red flag I don't care if it's bright you know I want it to get checked yes it could be a hemorrhoid yes it could be coming from very low in the anus but I need it to get checked so blood in the stool is a big one for me what about for you Jaime: Yeah. Any, the vomiting, persistent vomiting and rapid changes in weight loss, weight loss or weight, yeah, weight loss, especially, but really like the vomiting and the weight loss ⁓ for no apparent reason. I definitely want to go get that checked. That's a biggie. Sometimes lots of weird pain and persistent, weird pain again. ⁓ MG Herbs: Mmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jaime: This is where, you know, we work with doctors, right? Like, we always err on the side of ruling out anything scary. Always. Big fan of doing that. Big fan. MG Herbs: Yeah, for sure. yeah, I'm not. Yeah, we don't think we can fix everything. No, we're not saying that at all. We need to make sure that. Jaime: Absolutely not. MG Herbs: I want to make sure that my patients have the best of all medicine, you know, for them. we always go back to your GP, please tell them that's happening. Let's get it checked. Cause you and I, we can't check blood in the stool. don't, you know, we don't give out colonoscopy referrals. We're not working with gastroenterologists. So that's where our GPs really are amazing. And they come into play pain, pain, pain, always, always. Jaime: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And look, I think, yeah, often our clients are coming and seeing us because they've been to the GP, the gastroenterologist, they've done all the tests and everything looks fine, air quotes from their point of view. And then that's when they kind of come and see us. And that's when we can kind of really get stuck into, do we need to do additional testing or, you know, can we just kind of go straight in and try and get stuck into what we think's going on? MG Herbs: you And you know, that's great if that's the case and they have done those investigations and nothing is wrong. That's frustrating for those patients, but it is a good thing. It doesn't mean there's nothing wrong, you know. They are ruling out disease states for the most part. And if you don't have Crohn's or you don't have, you know, a funky gallbladder or like a pancreatic, I don't know what, or, you know, like insufficiency or an infection or something like that's ideal, right? Jaime: Yeah. MG Herbs: should have bloody bowel cancer, but we want to make sure if you do, we know really early so we can treat it. And then some of the other symptoms I'm thinking of are, you know, going to the toilet at night when you need to wake up to poo in the night, not not ideal. We want to have our poos roughly to be kind of the same ⁓ same consistency, have a bit of a routine to them each day. ⁓ Jaime: Mm. Absolutely. Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. Mm. Mm. Mm. MG Herbs: The other thing that concerns me, you know, people will be like, yeah, do you poo every day? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like three, four times a day. Well, that's probably a little bit too much for me. I'm, you know, then I'm going to ask like, what's the poo like obviously, but I don't know about you, but I don't, I don't think people should have to be pulling four times a day. Jaime: No, and I often have had clients, yeah, six, seven, eight, nine times a day. That's a lot, a lot. and again, just because this has been normal for you ⁓ common for you, doesn't make it normal. And also again, ⁓ would you want to have that all the time? MG Herbs: Yeah, yup, yup. I don't have time for that, honestly. know, so one of the reasons I'm so passionate about bowel cancer stuff is because my husband, you know, from a very young age has had numerous polyps and some of those have been precancerous. So before he went for his first colonoscopy, he would poo all the time. Jaime: No. MG Herbs: like all the time, like it's a running joke in my family. Sam's in the toilet. So I hope he doesn't mind me sharing that. I'm sure it's fine. We share everything. But, he, you know, he was pulling like six, maybe seven times a day and it wasn't, you know, anything crazy. There was no real other symptoms, but he, when we first got that first colonoscopy, which we had to fight for cause he was early thirties. ⁓ they didn't want to do it, you know, we did a bowel kit first, which you can buy from Jaime: and Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. MG Herbs: chemist you can buy a bowel kit from any chemist for around $65 in Australia and you can then test for blood that's what that does. You can also go to your doctor and get a bowel kit often they'll be under Medicare then if you are over the age of 45 it got reduced a couple years ago from 55 to 45 you get a free kit every year. Jaime: Mm-hmm. MG Herbs: So like, just, you know, just so you know. but yeah, we fought for the bow kit. No, I bought him the bow kit and then we fought for the colonoscopy because it was positive and they were like, they were like, yeah, you'll be fine in and out. See you later. When they rolled him out, they were like, you won't believe what's in there. Like you would not believe what we have had to do. So the other thing is that was his normal, you know, his whole life. And now he just poos like once or twice a day and we're like, ⁓ Jaime: Mmm. Well, yeah. Hmm. Mmm. ⁓ MG Herbs: like he has so much more time we don't spend so much less on toilet paper like there's lots of benefits here so people please joke but it's important Jaime: you Absolutely. And it really is. And there's so many different set of circumstances I could think of that we've been able to bring back to normal. Like it doesn't have to be that way. And especially if you're one of the people that was only pooping once or twice a week, once you start getting that blissful once or twice a day poop, you don't even know yourself. You, ⁓ my God, you feel better. You look better. Like, and the same thing with the bloating. MG Herbs: Yeah. Totally. Yeah. you you Jaime: So many women are bloated, but I think also just coming back to the bloating thing, right? Because this is something I also, also always say to my clients as well what I think is really interesting is like we said about the connection between the nervous system and your gut, right? Coming back to that, if you're in a state of extreme stress a lot, right? When you're in that state of stress, you're in a fight or flight, you switch off digestion because not the priority. So if you're one of those people that's stressed all day, MG Herbs: Yeah. Jaime: and you are eating at your desk while you're working and you're stressed and you've got a million things on your mind or you're eating while you're over the sink because your kids are going crazy and you're just trying to shove in some food. Well, no wonder you're bloated because you're in a state of fight or flight, you switch off your digestion cause it's not a priority. So what I say, so no wonder, I honestly think that's one of the reasons why women everywhere walk around bloated, right? What I say to everybody is before you go to eat, I want you to stop. Take a deep breath. Just take a few deep breaths and bring that body from that really stressful, unified-or-flight sympathetic nervous system state to the calming rest and digest nervous system state. Right? Because digestion begins at the thought of food. So if we are running around like a crazy person doing everything, well, we're not going to be digesting properly. So we want to get ourselves into that calming rest and digest nervous system state. So you can digest your food better. Yeah. MG Herbs: Mm. Mm-hmm. for sure. There's a couple, there's a couple of things there, right? Too. Cause if you are stressed, sometimes your body will just stop everything and then it won't move at all. So sometimes, you know, I spoke before about all that extra innovation and it can go the other way as well. So your body can just like be really stubborn and hold onto everything just in case, just in case, just in case. And then we see no poo, which can play into the constipation picture. But you know, I always think the bloating thing, it's like, it's like the food comes in and nothing's ready. Right? So looking for your. Jaime: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah MG Herbs: windows of hunger is also important. If you have no windows of hunger, we need to talk, you know, we've got to get that sorted. The communication is not on something's not working. If you have to skip your window of hunger, like I had a nurse the other day and she was like, if I'm in the OR, just can't, I can't eat, I can't drink, can't do anything. Sometimes an operations plan for two hours and then we go in and we're like, well, shit, we're going to be here for eight hours. And that's just her work. So we have to work around that. But you have a choice and you're Jaime: Mmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. MG Herbs: sitting at your desk and you're like, I'll just push lunch back, I'll just push lunch back and we can do that. Like, you know, we can go for lunch and it wouldn't be that life or death situation. Then when you feel hungry is the best time to eat. That's your window of hunger is really important. If you eat outside that window of hunger, we eat, it sits, it wasn't ready, there's nothing to chew it up. It sits in it ferments and some of the bad bacteria in your gut might feed on it. Jaime: Mm. MG Herbs: produce gas, you know, and then that can also be some of that bloating picture. I like that. I like that. Jaime: Yeah, digestion begins at the thought of food, right? So I say to everybody, like, if you were to go get in the car and drive to go get a steak, and you're thinking about that steak, your body is going to get your digestion primed for the steak, which is different if you're going to get in the car and go get an ice cream and you're thinking about that ice cream. Right? So when you just grab something and shove it in, like Mel said, your body's not ready for it. So take a few deep breaths and look at your food. MG Herbs: Hmm. Yeah. Jaime: Think about it for a second and that will get your body ready and primed to be at its best place to be able to digest that food. And you'll see the difference it makes. Like I'll notice sometimes at the end of the day, if I feel a bit bloated and I'll think and look back on my day and I'm like, ⁓ yeah, that's right. was so stressed. I did everything I say don't do. Note to self, slow down tomorrow. Take my deep breaths. Get more mindful when it comes to my food consumption. MG Herbs: Mm-hmm. Jaime: Okay, as we finish this conversation, one thing I think is really important to understand is that IBS isn't a specific diagnosis, it's a collection of symptoms. What we always want to try to figure out is the root cause of what's going on, and then work out a personalized plan to get your gut health back on track. And it truly is possible, even with the most complex gut health pictures. MG Herbs: Mm-hmm. Definitely. you know, we could do like a Joe Rogan three hour podcast on this, but in clinic, it's something that we see really often. And people feel like they react to everything that they eat. They slowly start to remove all their food. And then most of the time they end up with this really restricted diet and the food wasn't even the problem in the first place. It's the environment of the gut that is, you know, the issue there. And when the digestion and the microbiome, the gut lining, the nervous system, when everything's out of balance, the gut's going to be super. Jaime: Mm. Mmm. MG Herbs: ⁓ reactive and it's all going to get worse. Jaime: Yeah. And so this is why the restrictive diets are so rarely the answer, the long-term solution, right? So yes, food FODMAP might be helpful in that really short term, even though I don't really use it at all anymore, but these were only ever supposed to be short-term strategies. And we want to get you to the point where you have that autonomy in choosing what you want to eat. And that's the ultimate goal is for you to be able to eat everything that you want to in moderation. MG Herbs: . Definitely. And we want to investigate what's really driving the symptoms so we can we can fix it, you know Jaime: Yeah. MG Herbs: God health is so deeply connected with our entire, you know, rest of our body and wellbeing. It's connected to like inflammation, immune system, how we absorb our nutrients and our overall wellbeing, like how we, you know, enjoy life every single day. So when we are trying to take the time to understand that, you know, and look at what's happening beneath the surface, beneath the fish tank, I'm not sure. We can, you know, move beyond those symptoms, the symptom picture, we can start to tick them off and we can begin supporting like healing overall for each and every single one of our patients. And I love that. Jaime: Yeah. And as always, if your symptoms are like unexplained weight loss, blood in your stool, persistent vomiting, any of those fear ongoing stuff, please do get it investigated. Go talk to your doctor, rule anything out that's really important, right? Because like we said, they are proper big red flags. So you definitely want to get that checked out. Always go and consult with your medical team. MG Herbs: They're going to know. Jaime: but that's pretty much it. So thank you once again for joining us for this episode of Inside the Apothecary. ⁓ we look forward to continuing these amazing conversations with you in the future. So stay tuned for the next episode. Thank you very much. Bye guys. Bye. MG Herbs: Yeah