Gut and digestive health

Fun facts!

The gut is home to 75% of our entire immune system, know as the GALT (gut associated lymphatic tissue).

It is also has the second most dense part of our nervous system, after our brain.

The gut also homes the complex gut microbiome, which is comprised of approximately 100 trillion (that’s right, trillion) microbes, mostly bacteria but also viruses and yes, even parasites are normal parts of the human gut microbiome!

Because the vast majority of our immune system and nervous system is intimately involved with our gut, almost all other health symptoms and diseases can be affected by our gut health and what we eat. Of course gut symptoms and gut diseases are affected by our gut microbiome, gut nervous system what we eat.

But we now know that almost all other conditions can have roots in a disrupted gut. Everything from heart disease and diabetes, mental health issues and hormone issues, autoimmune diseases and other inflammation-related conditions, skin conditions, brain fog and conditions such as POTS/dysautonomia, CFS/ME/FM can be created or influenced by our gut.

Of course any gut symptom, including, most commonly IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), IBD (inflammatory bowel disease) and reflux.

It’s important to note that IBS isn’t any one condition, but an umbrella term for most gut and digestive ailments that are not autoimmune-inflammatory bowel disease. Symptoms can range from constipation to diarrhea, and include bloating, abdominal pain and reflux. But remember, this term is descriptive of your gut having symptoms (it’s irritable!), not diagnostic of any underlying pattern of symptoms or causes.

If further testing such as a colonoscopy or small bowel imaging study show you have inflammation in your small or large intestine, then you would be diagnosed with IBD (Inflammatory bowel disease). IBD includes Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis and a broader spectrum of inflammatory bowel conditions in-between.

These are autoimmune diseases, where our immune system mistakenly attacks our own gut tissue. Imbalances in the gut microbiome, to foods and with the gut nervous system can be both triggers and exacerbators of IBD.

Unlike IBS where addressing the gut microbiome, diet and stress almost always are able to resolve the condition, if you have IBD, you will always have autoimmune antibodies against your gut. Though in Functional medicine, the aim is to get you as close to symptom free as possible.

Leaky gut, or more formally called “intestinal permeability,” is when the junctions between the cells of our intestine get wider (or “leaky”) in order to allow in more immune molecules in order to address a perceived threat.

Importantly: If you have leaky gut, it is due to other causes. So don’t just treat leaky gut with supplements and regimens, get to the root causes!

Causes of leaky gut include:

• Gut microbiome imbalances (too many bad microbes, too few good ones)

• Gut microbiome infections

• Food reactivities (both intolerances and/or allergies)

• Stress. The gut is the 2nd most innervated place in the body after the brain, and directly communicates with the brain! Stress involves molecular responses from the hormone, immune and nervous system, and these greatly affect the gut in many people, though some of us are more sensitive to this than others, we are just wired that way, and so it becomes even more important to work on stress reactivity, trauma and stress resilience.

Besides gut conditions, intestinal permeability is linked to many other health conditions. Researcher Alessio Fasano, pioneered research to identify the molecule, zonulin, that is responsible for cueing intestinal permeability. His further research demonstrates that leaky gut is either or both the cause or a result of possibly every other health condition.

InHealthRVA is all about working to figure out what is going on in your body as a whole working system, how that is contributing to your health issues and what we can do to resolve these issues and allow your body to restore to full wellness.

For the gut, this means we do advanced gut microbiome studies to look at the gut microbiome, functional gut health markers, inflammation and digestion. We primarily use Genova’s GI Effects, SIBO tests and organic acids tests.

We combine testing with a full nutrition, lifestyle and stress questionnaire to determine what is contributing to any possible gut dysregulations and design personalized protocols utilizing nutrition, herbs, supplements, stress management. Then we follow you through your journey, making amendments based on your response, and peeling back the layers until we get you to your full health potential!

Rarely. Despite its popularity, we do not find food sensitivity testing to be particularly useful.

First, if you have food sensitivities, it is due leaky gut aka intestinal permeability which is caused by gut microbiome imbalances or outright infections or gut nervous system issues. Identify and resolve these issues in order to address food sensitivities.

Second, anyone who has gut or inflammation-related health issues (anywhere in the body), benefits from being on a hypoallergenic, whole foods diet, such as Ancestral eating or Paleo. We expand, as the gut and body have healed, by rotating in foods one at a time to test tolerance. No testing needed.

We have found almost universally that by testing and treating gut and digestive imbalances, healing the gut through a whole foods diet and addressing underlying stress and trauma is the best method to healing food intolerances and leaky gut.