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Ep. 96: The Invisible Cost Of Gut Symptoms · 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.
• 0:54
  Most people that have gut issues think that they're just about discomfort, but the real cost is the decisions that you stop making because of your gut issues.
• 1:04
  And I know this personally.
• 1:07
  So welcome to the next episode of the Love Your Gut podcast.
• 1:11
  I am your host, Dr.
• 1:12
  Heather Finley.
• 1:13
  I'm so excited that you're here and this is a really important topic.
• 1:18
  In my early twenties when my GI issues were at their worst, my stomach dictated my life.
• 1:24
  I said no to plans all the time, not because I didn't wanna go, I did.
• 1:29
  In your early twenties, you should be saying yes to everything, to traveling, to being a bridesmaid in all the weddings.
• 1:35
  To going on dates, all the stuff, but I didn't know how my body or my gut would behave.
• 1:42
  I remember I tell this story a lot, but I remember uninviting, my now husband to events, even things like weddings as my plus one, not because of him.
• 1:52
  He's amazing but because I was so bloated and so uncomfortable and already exhausted.
• 1:58
  Honestly embarrassed about how I had to eat in social situations like that because the thought of sitting somewhere, feeling trapped, trying to pretend I was fine.
• 2:09
  Getting bloated, just wanting to go home after that is what gut symptoms do quietly.
• 2:15
  They don't just hurt you internally.
• 2:17
  They really shrink your world.
• 2:19
  You start planning your life around bathrooms.
• 2:22
  You check menus days in advance, and if plans change, God forbid last minute that your day.
• 2:29
  You choose clothes based on how much bloating they can hide.
• 2:33
  You leave events early or you're there physically, which is often what I would do.
• 2:37
  I would stick it out.
• 2:38
  I'm not a quitter for sure, but I would be there physically, but never fully relaxed.
• 2:43
  And maybe the biggest one is you're constantly scanning your body.
• 2:47
  Is my stomach okay?
• 2:48
  Can I eat this?
• 2:49
  What happens if I do?
• 2:50
  How long until I feel uncomfortable?
• 2:52
  That all takes energy.
• 2:54
  That's not.
• 2:55
  Just physical discomfort.
• 2:57
  It's mental bandwidth, it's safety, it's trust in your body.
• 3:01
  Most people don't realize how cluttered their mind is with food and symptoms until it's not anymore.
• 3:09
  I certainly didn't.
• 3:10
  I thought that all everybody thought like this and everyone was thinking about their food and body, and I remember so many instances of.
• 3:18
  Friends just like looking at the menu and ordering right away, or saying I'll just order what she has that sounds good.
• 3:25
  And not even like looking at what the ingredients were and thinking that would never be possible for me.
• 3:31
  So what's important to understand is that this constant vigilance doesn't just come from nowhere when your digestion feels unpredictable.
• 3:39
  Your nervous system stays alert when symptoms flare.
• 3:43
  Without warning, your body learns to brace itself.
• 3:45
  When you've been uncomfortable for long enough, your system starts to protect you in the way that it only knows how.
• 3:53
  So that protection shows up as tension, hyperawareness anxiety around eating social plans, and over time the stress response affects digestion.
• 4:02
  Stress will change how blood flow is distributed.
• 4:06
  It will affect stomach acid, enzyme output, gut motility.
• 4:10
  It even influences immune markers that we see on stool testing or functional stool testing like secretory IGA, which helps protects the gut lining and regulate bacteria Low.
• 4:22
  Secretory IGA is something that I often see low.
• 4:26
  In our clients, which is many of them who have been pushing through for years, they're busy, they're high functioning.
• 4:32
  Like I said earlier, they're not quitters.
• 4:34
  They are the most disciplined people that you know.
• 4:37
  They're doing everything they can to keep life moving forward while their body just quietly absorbs.
• 4:43
  The cost.
• 4:44
  Stress also depletes minerals.
• 4:46
  Minerals are required for nerve signaling, for muscle contraction, for digestion, even making enzymes and even contraction of your gut muscles to move things through your gut.
• 4:58
  So when your reserves run low, digestion will slow.
• 5:01
  Food will sit longer.
• 5:02
  Bloating will increase, tolerance decreases, and your system becomes even more sensitive, and that is why.
• 5:11
  So many people feel like they're walking on eggshells with their gut.
• 5:14
  Why food feels so risky, why symptoms keep returning.
• 5:18
  Even after trying supplements or protocols or different elimination strategies, your body hasn't had the chance to rebuild capacity, and when digestion isn't supported.
• 5:31
  Um, or when your digestion is supported, something really meaningful, shifts your food that you're eating, stops feeling like a threat.
• 5:41
  Your nervous system doesn't stay on high alert.
• 5:44
  You can stop thinking about bathrooms when you leave the house.
• 5:48
  You choose clothes because you like them not to hide symptoms.
• 5:52
  You stay at events because you're comfortable and to engage and enjoy them, and that mental space comes back.
• 5:59
  Even think of this from a career standpoint, I know I definitely did not have the bandwidth or the capacity to build this kind of business while I was stuck in my GI issues.
• 6:10
  And we see that with a lot of our clients.
• 6:12
  They're not gonna go for that promotion, they're not going to start the business.
• 6:16
  They're not gonna do the thing.
• 6:18
  Because they don't have that mental capacity there.
• 6:21
  And that's actually the freedom that I bet you're looking for.
• 6:24
  Not perfectionism, not control, not a life organized around avoiding symptoms.
• 6:31
  Just the ability to say yes again without negotiating with your gut first.
• 6:36
  So if your stomach is deciding.
• 6:38
  What you say yes to right now that really matters and it's something that can change when your body is supported in the right order.
• 6:46
  I believe that your gut should support your life, not shrink it.
• 6:52
  If you have ever thought, why does this keep happening to me?
• 6:55
  You are not alone.
• 6:57
  I know I had so many instances on my journey where I would just look at other people and think like, how on earth can they eat?
• 7:04
  Whatever they want.
• 7:05
  How on earth can they like go on a trip and not come back with debilitating GI issues or how on earth can they just like have zero routine and have no gut issues?
• 7:16
  And I often would just compare myself to other people and that was my first problem is what do they say?
• 7:22
  Comparison is a thief of joy for sure.
• 7:25
  We even find that with clients in our program where I'm like, stay.
• 7:28
  Focused on your own story.
• 7:30
  Just because someone is getting faster results than you or even slower results, then you need to focus on what you're doing and stop comparing yourself to other people.
• 7:39
  That's the biggest thing, but this can be one of the more discouraging parts of gut work.
• 7:44
  You can do the test.
• 7:46
  You can take supplements.
• 7:47
  You follow the plan.
• 7:49
  You're an organized person.
• 7:51
  You're a high achieving person.
• 7:53
  And maybe for a moment things feel better because you're following this rigid plan.
• 7:59
  Then slowly, or sometimes even suddenly, maybe there's a trigger, like a sickness or a travel or something.
• 8:05
  Your symptoms return.
• 8:07
  And we hear this all the time from clients like, I cleared sibo, but I'm still bloated, or My tests were all normal, but I don't feel better, which I'm gonna record a podcast episode on that because the other day on my Instagram stories, I was talking about the difference between conventional and functional testing and why.
• 8:25
  When your conventional tests are normal, functional tests are the next best steps.
• 8:28
  So, sneak peek there.
• 8:30
  That is, that episode is coming.
• 8:32
  Sometimes we'll hear I, it worked for weeks and then everything came back.
• 8:38
  So what's happening here?
• 8:39
  It's easy to think that this is failure.
• 8:41
  Like, see, that didn't work.
• 8:43
  Or see I'm back to square one, but it's just physiology and I wanna explain this to you so you can have a little bit more grace for yourself.
• 8:52
  A lot of gut work focuses on what's living in your gut instead of fully supporting how your gut functions day to day.
• 9:02
  So what does that actually mean?
• 9:05
  A lot of people will treat infections like h Pylori or SIBO or any kind of bacterial overgrowth, parasites, et cetera.
• 9:13
  Without actually restoring digestion, they'll calm their symptoms without rebuilding their whole digestive capacity.
• 9:20
  They'll cut out foods without giving the body what it actually needs to tolerate food again.
• 9:26
  And when the underlying terrain of your gut stays the same, of course the body returns to the same patterns.
• 9:32
  You can think about digestion.
• 9:34
  Like a system that's been running on backup power for a long time.
• 9:38
  You can remove a stressor.
• 9:40
  You can clear something temporarily, but if that system is under-resourced, it can't maintain that change.
• 9:47
  That is where we see a lot of well meaning practitioners and clients fall short.
• 9:54
  People will work on calming their nervous system through breath work or meditation or mindset work, but their body is physically depleted.
• 10:02
  Their minerals are low.
• 10:03
  Their motility is sluggish.
• 10:05
  Their stomach acid is non-existent or low.
• 10:08
  Their gut lining is torn apart or leaky as the internet calls it.
• 10:13
  Most people are trying to calm their nervous system while their body doesn't have the raw materials required for nervous system regulation.
• 10:22
  And the nervous system can only regulate to the level the body can support.
• 10:28
  You cannot regulate what you don't have the resources for.
• 10:30
  I don't know a better way to say that.
• 10:32
  I see people, and this is why we see people doing protocol after protocol.
• 10:37
  Without ever creating a sense of safety in the body, when digestion has felt unpredictable for years, your system will stay guarded.
• 10:46
  Food will feel risky, symptoms will feel personal.
• 10:50
  Your body feels braced, and that bracing will change your digestion.
• 10:53
  So even when a protocol works temporarily, the body will eventually just return to what it knows, because that's.
• 10:59
  Safe, even if it doesn't feel good.
• 11:01
  So this is why symptoms can feel stubborn or really confusing or really frustrating.
• 11:06
  It's not that nothing works, it's not anything like that.
• 11:10
  It's that you did things in the wrong order, or that there were perhaps missing pieces.
• 11:15
  When the order is off, the results won't stick.
• 11:18
  And there's one more thing I wanna talk about because I hear this constantly.
• 11:23
  It's, I wanna feel better, but I just don't have the time right now and I get it.
• 11:28
  Most people with gut issues are some of the busiest, high functioning people that I know.
• 11:34
  They're managing careers, families, school, travel responsibilities.
• 11:38
  You're already stretched, but here's what often gets missed.
• 11:42
  Being too busy usually isn't about the time.
• 11:45
  It's about your capacity.
• 11:47
  When your gut is under supported, everything takes more effort.
• 11:51
  Thinking about food takes effort, managing symptoms.
• 11:55
  Takes effort.
• 11:56
  Recovering from meals, takes effort.
• 11:58
  Recovering from stress takes effort.
• 12:00
  You get the point.
• 12:01
  So of course, it feels like there's no space to do anything else because your life revolves around your symptoms.
• 12:07
  So waiting for life to quote unquote slow down.
• 12:10
  Rarely works because life doesn't slow down on its own.
• 12:14
  What actually happens is that symptoms will just slowly take up more room.
• 12:19
  So you're planning more, you're avoiding more, you're thinking more, managing more, not going for that promotion, and that management becomes its own full-time job.
• 12:28
  This is why so many people don't start support until they hit a breaking point.
• 12:34
  Most of our clients come to us, don't be this person, and they're like, I am.
• 12:39
  So desperate.
• 12:40
  I literally can't function.
• 12:41
  I can't tell you how many clients we've had where they're like, I had to quit my job.
• 12:45
  I had to stop working.
• 12:46
  I had to take a step back.
• 12:48
  Not because they didn't care, but because they underestimated how much energy their symptoms were already consuming.
• 12:55
  So supporting digestion and getting relief from your digestive symptoms is not just another thing to add to your plate, it's actually giving your body enough support to stop.
• 13:06
  Taking so much from you.
• 13:08
  When your digestion is working better, and I'm just grouping this all as a whole, but like when you're less bloated, when you're less constipated, when your acid reflux is gone, et cetera, et cetera, all meals will take less mental energy.
• 13:20
  All symptoms will stop interrupting your day.
• 13:23
  Recovery will happen faster, decisions will feel easier.
• 13:26
  Time doesn't magically appear.
• 13:28
  It's your most invaluable resource.
• 13:31
  Your capacity has to match.
• 13:34
  That capacity really changes everything.
• 13:36
  Most people think they don't have the time to heal when in reality their symptoms are using all of it, and that's the part that people don't always expect.
• 13:46
  When digestion is supported in a way that restores function, the biggest change isn't always physical first.
• 13:53
  It's mental food stops feeling like a constant calculation.
• 13:57
  You're not scanning your body before, during, after meals.
• 14:00
  You can leave the house, you can travel.
• 14:02
  You can choose clothes because you like them, and the mental space coming back is often the first sign that your system is shifting.
• 14:11
  So physically things will be more predictable.
• 14:13
  Bloating can resolve or become easier to understand.
• 14:17
  Bowel movements will become more regular.
• 14:19
  Energy will improve because the body isn't constantly compensating or bracing itself.
• 14:24
  You have more margin and that margin is what creates freedom.
• 14:29
  Like I mentioned at the beginning, I would not have ever done this what I'm doing now, had this big business with a lot of stuff going on and been able to manage it as a mom of three if I did not also simultaneously support my health.
• 14:49
  Your freedom with your life doesn't come from tighter rules.
• 14:55
  It comes from capacity.
• 14:56
  Capacity to adapt, digest, tolerate stress, tolerate life.
• 15:01
  And that's where you start saying yes again, yes to all the stuff that you have wanted to stay yes to.
• 15:07
  While life feels.
• 15:10
  Bigger instead of smaller.
• 15:12
  And that's really what sustainable gut support looks like.
• 15:15
  Not endless protocols, not organizing your life around symptoms.
• 15:20
  Support that restores function so that your body can do what it was designed to do.
• 15:26
  So this was a shorter episode, but hopefully potent for you if you're feeling called out, if your gut is deciding what you say yes to right now, that is information.
• 15:37
  It's not something that you need to push through or ignore, and it's not something that requires more restriction.
• 15:44
  Your symptoms are asking for support.
• 15:47
  That is the work that we do inside of gut.
• 15:49
  Together we take that mental load away from you so that you can stop micromanaging your day-to-day.
• 15:55
  And so that we can help you get to a point where your digestion is restored.
• 16:01
  We're rebuilding capacity.
• 16:03
  We're creating enough support that life opens back up.
• 16:07
  You're more present with your kids.
• 16:09
  You actually apply for that job.
• 16:11
  You start that business.
• 16:13
  You go on that trip that you've always wanted to go.
• 16:15
  I'll never forget, we had a client, Louise, who came to us and she said, I just wanna go to Europe and I just wanna eat pizza with no symptoms.
• 16:23
  What did she do?
• 16:24
  She did exactly that.
• 16:25
  With no symptoms.
• 16:27
  We've had so many dieticians in our program that said, I want to start my own business and I know I can't until I feel better.
• 16:35
  And I take that as a huge compliment that another dietician or health professional would come to me and say like, I know that when I do this.
• 16:43
  Then I'll be able to start the business, do the thing.
• 16:47
  So if you want deeper support, you can apply for one-on-one support.
• 16:52
  I will say it's the beginning of the year.
• 16:54
  This is when everything gets crazy.
• 16:57
  So submit your application, the link is in the show notes, or continue listening to episodes where you're gonna get more information.
• 17:04
  But if you really wanna make a change, get the one-on-one support and get together.
• 17:09
  That is what we specialize in.
• 17:11
  That is what we're good at.
• 17:12
  And we get it.
• 17:13
  Your gut should support your life, not shrink your life.
• 17:16
  And when you give the body what it actually needs, that freedom will follow.
• 17:22
  So thanks so much for listening in today.
• 17:25
  I'll see you next week on the next episode of the Love Your Gut podcast.