4 Surprising Things Hindering Your Gut Healing

I get it, digestive problems suck big time. Maybe you’ve tried “everything”, or maybe you’ve been too overwhelmed to start. Here are 4 things to consider on your gut-healing journey.

Hidden Food Intolerances

Sometimes when I meet people and they find out I’m a nutritionist, they ask what they can do to help their digestive pain. One of the first things I say is to try eliminating certain inflammatory foods, to which they respond: “Oh I know I need to eat less sugar, but gluten’s not a problem for me and I eat cheese all the time without issues”.

Just because we don’t feel bad immediately after eating certain foods, like cheese, doesn’t mean they’re helpful. When you develop Leaky Gut, your body can become sensitive to any food you eat most often and taking a break from some of those foods can help calm the inflammation in your gut, so it can function better. 

Occasionally, I’ll have clients who really can’t seem to pinpoint the foods bothering them, so we’ll do a Food Intolerance Panel that tests for 90 different foods, to see which ones are causing issues. Food intolerances play a big role in both our immune health and energy levels also.

Stealth Infections

Clearing stealth infections is a HUGE piece of the gut-healing puzzle. This is because gut infections can cause massive amounts of inflammation, excrete toxins and waste and steal our nutrients! 

For example, H. Pylori, a normally friendly bacteria when balanced, can overgrow and create inflammation, causing damage to the stomach lining, affecting acid levels and causing heartburn, bloating and burping. If not properly addressed, it can eventually lead to stomach ulcers.

Parasite infections are another major reason for symptoms like abdominal pain, bloating, diarrhea, skin conditions and insomnia, and are one of the main causes of IBS. Especially if you’ve ever travelled to another country and things just didn’t feel “right” coming home, or you had food poisoning while away, this is a piece that must be addressed!

Worrying

Worry can feel like a viscous cycle when you have gut issues. You may often find yourself anxious about your digestion, which then fuels the fire and causes your gut to flare up even more. Working on retraining your thoughts around your health is crucial for this reason. In order to truly heal, we need to acknowledge those thoughts when they come, without letting guilt creep in, stop them in their tracks and change them right then and there.

Worry and fear (aka anxiety) shut down our digestive process. The body is smart and it knows that when we’re being chased by a (maybe imaginary) tiger, it’s not the optimal time to be sitting down for a meal. Fear destroys our gut health overtime.

Overexercising

Exercise is a stressor, usually a good one, but it can be easy to overdo it if you’re dealing with gut issues or chronic fatigue. If you often feel anxious, have an “anxious stomach”, are frequently dragging yourself through the day, or have adrenal or thyroid issues, you may need to tread lightly when it comes to exercise.

Our nervous system, including the brain and spinal cord, is our body’s control panel and it affects every single biological process that occurs in our body. It’s intimately connected to our gut health, as there are trillions of nerves throughout the digestive tract sending signals to and from the brain.

If you’ve had long-standing digestive problems or fatigue, consider dropping the “chronic cardio” and HIIT classes and exploring yoga and more calming forms of exercise.

Additionally, if weight loss is a goal, but you have high stress levels, this will stop you from losing weight. Slowing down can help!

If you feel like you’ve never been able to pin point the root of your digestive problems, I’d love to help you create a plan back to digestive wellness. Contact me here.

Asher Kleiber

Registered Holistic Nutritionist

flourishnaturalwellness.com

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