Is Your Digestive System Making You Sick?

By Dr. Mark Hyman
HuffingtonPost.com

There might be something wrong with your inner tube, and it could be making you sick and fat.

You may not even realize you have a problem ... but if you have health concerns of any kind or you are overweight, your inner tube could be the root cause.

Of course, I'm not talking about a beach toy. I mean the inner tube of life -- your digestive system!

It is likely that you suffer from (or have suffered from) some type of digestive disorder -- irritable bowel syndrome, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, heartburn, reflux, gas, and other things too gross to mention in print.

And you are not alone. More than 100 million Americans have digestive problems.

Two of the top five selling drugs in America are for digestive problems, and they cost us billions and billions of dollars.

There are more than 200 over-the-counter (OTC) remedies for digestive disorders, many of which can create additional digestive problems.

Visits for intestinal disorders are among the most common reasons for trips to primary care physicians.

And that's not even the worst news.

Most of us (including most doctors) do not recognize or know that digestive problems wreak havoc in the entire body, leading to allergies, arthritis, autoimmune disease, rashes, acne, chronic fatigue, mood disorders, autism, dementia, cancer, and more.

So having a healthy gut means more than simply being free of annoyances like bloating or heartburn! It is absolutely central to your health. It is connected to EVERYTHING that happens in your body.

That's why I almost always start helping people treat chronic health problems by fixing their gut, which is what I want to help you do today.

Today , you will learn how you can find out if you have a problem with your gut (though many of you won't need me to tell you -- your gut will speak for itself!), and I will give you 7 simple steps you can take today to heal your inner tube of life.

How Your Gut Keeps You Healthy or Makes You Ill

The health of your gut determines what nutrients are absorbed and what toxins, allergens, and microbes are kept out. It is directly linked to the health of your whole body.

Intestinal health could be defined as the optimal digestion, absorption, and assimilation of food. But that is a big job that depends on many other factors. Let's look at a few of them ...

First, there are bugs in your gut that form a diverse and interdependent ecosystem like a rainforest. In fact, there are 500 species and 3 pounds of bacteria in your gut which form a HUGE chemical factory that helps you digest your food, regulate hormones, excrete toxins, and produce vitamins and other healing compounds that keep your gut and your body healthy.

This ecosystem of friendly bacteria must be in balance for you to be healthy.

Too many of the wrong bacteria, like parasites and yeasts, or not enough of the good ones, like Lactobacillus or Bifidobacteria, can seriously damage your health.

So keeping a healthy balance of bugs in your intestines is one factor to good gut health.

Second, there is your gut-immune system. Your entire immune system -- and the rest of your body -- is protected from the toxic environment in your gut by a lining that is only ONE cell-thick layer. If spread out, this lining would take up a surface area the size of a tennis court, and the entire thing is covered by a sewer!

If that barrier is damaged, you can become allergic to foods you may normally be able to digest perfectly well, you will get sick, your immune system will become overactive, and it will begin producing inflammation throughout your body.

Filtering out the good molecules from the bad molecules and protecting your immune system is yet another important factor in gut health.

Third, there is your second brain -- your gut's nervous system. Did you know your gut, actually contains MORE neurotransmitters than your brain? In fact, the gut has a brain of its own. It is called the "enteric nervous system" and it is a very sophisticated piece of your biology that is wired to your brain in intricate ways.

Messages constantly travel back and forth between your gut-brain and your head-brain, and when those messages are interfered with in any way your health will suffer.

Fourth, your gut also has to get rid of all the toxins produced as byproducts of your metabolism, which your liver dumps into bile. If things get backed up when you are constipated, you will become toxic and your health will suffer.

And last but not least, your gut must break down all the food you eat into its individual components, separate out the vitamins and minerals, and shuttle everything across the one cell-thick layer mentioned above so it can get into your bloodstream and nourish your body and brain.

Your gut has quite a lot to manage. Even in perfect world it is hard to keep all of this in balance. But in our modern world there are endless insults that can knock our digestive systems off balance; it is that much more difficult to maintain excellent digestive health.

How to Know if Your Gut is Out of Balance

To fix your digestion, you first need to understand what is sending your gut out of balance in the first place. The list is short:

• Our low-fiber, high-sugar, processed, nutrient-poor, high-calorie diet, which causes all the wrong bacteria and yeast to grow in our gut and damages the delicate ecosystem in your intestines

• Overuse of medications that damage the gut or block normal digestive function -- things like acid blockers (Prilosec, Nexium, etc.), anti-inflammatory medication (aspirin, Advil, and Aleve), and overuse of antibiotics, steroids, and hormones

• Undetected gluten intolerance, celiac disease or low grade food allergies to foods such as dairy, eggs, or corn.

• Chronic low-grade infections or gut imbalances with overgrowth of bacteria in the small intestine, yeast overgrowth, parasites, or even more serious gut infections

• Toxins like mercury and mold toxins, which damage the gut

• Lack of adequate digestive enzyme function, which can come from acid-blocking medication use, or zinc deficiency

• Stress, which can alter the gut nervous system, cause a leaky gut, and change the normal bacteria in the gut

What happens then is obvious. You get sick.

But what's important to understand is that many diseases that seem to be totally unrelated to the gut -- such as eczema or psoriasis or arthritis -- are actually CAUSED by gut problems. By focusing on the gut, you can get better. Here is an example ...

Can Eczema Start in the Gut?

Allison, one of my patients who suffered from eczema -- a weepy, red, oozing, scaly, itchy rash -- all over her body is perfect example of what can happen when your gut is out of balance and the extraordinary level of healing that can occur when you fix your digestion.

This woman, who saw doctor after doctor, put salves, lotions, and potions on her skin and gave her steroids and antibiotics. But none of them ever addressed the underlying cause of her problem.

Allison was 57 years old and had been suffering from severe, unrelenting eczema for eight years. She ate a high-sugar diet and had a history of frequent vaginal yeast infections.

When I saw her, I checked her gut and found she had a leaky gut -- that one-cell thick lining in her intestines was breached and wasn't working properly. She had developed 24 IgG food allergies, and her stool had no healthy bacteria and an overgrowth of yeast from years of taking antibiotics. She also had very high blood levels of antibodies against yeast.

So I helped her heal her gut. I asked her to stop eating the foods she reacted to, told her to stop feeding the yeast in her gastrointestinal tract by cutting out sugar and refined carbohydrates (which they thrive on), and killed the yeast in her gut with antifungal medications and herbs. Then I helped her rebuild her ecosystem of healthy bacteria with probiotics and provided here with healing gut nutrients that allowed her intestinal lining to resume its normal function.

The result?

Her eczema disappeared for the first time in eight years -- and it stayed away!

You can experience the same thing Allison did. You may be able to heal from many of your chronic symptoms simply by fixing your digestion. Here is how you do it.

7 Steps to Optimal Digestive Health

To heal your inner tube of life you simply need to:

1. Eat whole unprocessed foods. Make sure to include plenty of fiber from foods like vegetables, beans, nuts, seeds, and whole grains.

2. Eliminate food allergies. If you think you have food sensitivities, try an elimination diet. Cut out gluten, dairy, yeast, corn, soy, and eggs for a week or two and see how your gut feels and what happens to your other symptoms.

3. Treat any infections or overgrowth of bugs -- Parasites, small bowel bacteria, and yeasts can all inhibit proper gut function. You must treat these infections if you want to heal.

4. Replenish your digestive enzymes. When you don't have enough digestive enzymes in your gut, you can't properly covert the foods you eat into the raw materials necessary to run your body and brain. Take broad-spectrum digestive enzymes with your food to solve the problem.

5. Rebuild your rain forest of friendly bacteria. Take probiotic supplements. They will help you rebuild the healthy bacteria so essential to good gut health.

6. Get good fat. Take extra omega-3 supplements, which help cool inflammation in the gut.

7. Heal your gut lining. Use gut-healing nutrients such as glutamine and zinc to repair the lining in your gut so it can resume its normal function.

Fixing your digestion may take some time, but it can be done. And it is absolutely essential if you want to achieve vibrant health. So work on your inner tube of life using the steps above and watch as your symptoms (and those extra pounds) disappear.


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