Do you have the guts to get healthy?

Understanding your gut is going to be the subject of a series of posts, and more than likely, a book will have to follow. When referring to the gastrointestinal system or the digestive system from this point forward, I will simply refer to the collective systems and structures as the “gut.” I plan to put forth an argument that the gut must be considered when discussing diseases that include (but are not limited to):

• Autoimmune disease (there are 80 to 100 known autoimmune diseases)
  • Thyroid disorders, such as Graves and Hashimoto’s
  • Multiple sclerosis
  • Lupus
  • Sjogren’s
  • Psoriasis
  • Vitiligo
  • Colitis, Crohn’s, and celiac diseases
• Heart disease
• Diabetes
• Arthritis
• Asthma and allergies
• Eczema
• Depression/anxiety
• Neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s
• Persistent post concussion syndrome (CTE)
• Autism
• Vaccine injury (Yes, it does actually happen.)
• Food addictions

We also need to consider the gut when discussing common, chronic symptoms, even if there has been no specific diagnosis of disease. Symptoms include:

• High cholesterol
• Chronic pain syndromes
• Gas/bloating
• Reflux
• Fatigue
• Weight gain
• Depression/anxiety
• Thinning hair
• Acne
• Sleeping disorders
• Mood disorders

I know, it seems I’m saying all of our health problems can be traced to the gut. Well, that’s only partly true. Many diseases are not caused by gut function but may be perpetuated or made worse by gut function. We will discuss this in this post and upcoming posts.

What I am going to discuss here is best understood by those of us healthcare providers who are concerned about causes, restoring health, and who are focused on understanding the body as it functions as a whole (holistic). Believe it or not, the profession least likely to pick up on this paradigm shift are MDs who specialize in gastroenterology. (I know, it sounds crazy. That’s because it is.)

Gastroenterologists spend half of their entire education on diagnosing the presence or absence of diseases related to the structures of the gut — the esophagus, stomach, small intestine, colon, supporting structures, etc. The other half of their education is spent managing diseases with medication and/or surgery. Very little attention is paid to the connection between gut structures and diseases, disorders, and symptoms of other body systems. After all, the other systems of the body have their own disease labels and specialists who have their own methods to manage and treat diseases. Each disease, disorder, or symptom has its own specialist with his or her limited scope. This is what we have created over the past 100 years of medicine. These doctors are excellent at crisis care and disease management, and they are horrible at health restoration, reversing chronic disease, and health challenges.

What we need are generalists interested in health promotion and not so much disease management. That is the space where I believe the functional medicine or functional wellness practitioner resides. Yes! You are in the right place.

I have been educated as a chiropractor. (This is the most important reason why I practice the way I do and why I get the results I get, the topic of another post, for sure.) A chiropractor is educated in understanding the primacy of the nervous system for human health. The nervous system was so important to me that I spent an additional 3 years getting additional credentials by completing a postgraduate neurology program. I have an expertise in understanding and applying principles of functional neurology and neurochemistry.

It is through this education that I was able to understand that the most significant amount of neurological activity in the body and at the level of the brain is dedicated to the function of the gut. Let me explain why this makes perfect sense.

The brain is incredibly selfish. Nothing is more important to the human brain than the health of the human brain. It is a system that serves itself, and in doing so, it ensures that everything it controls (all of our bodily functions) remains healthy. Your brain is 3 percent of your body weight, and at times, it uses 30 percent of our fuel (oxygen, glucose, and nutrients). It is so dependent on this fuel that you cannot live for more than a minute or so if you were to cut the flow of fuel to the brain. Therefore, the most important organ system to keep the steady flow of fuel available to the brain is the gut. Over the past decade, scientists have identified that the nerve network around the stomach and small intestine is more extensive than the nerve network in the brain itself. Think about that for a moment.

We must all learn what we need to know about our own gut health. You have a responsibility to have a basic level of knowledge, and I have a responsibility to teach and make it understandable to everyone who makes the choice not to become a doctor but who wants to be healthy without being dependent on doctors, insurance companies, antiquated educational systems, and government agencies. We are talking about achieving health independence.

Thanks for reading!

 

Share your comments below! If you have the guts 😉