The Dr. Hyman Show - What's Causing Your IBS And How To Heal Your Gut

Starting point is 00:00:00 Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. So your ecosystem in your gut plays an enormous role in your health. And when your gut bacteria are out of balance, you're out of balance. And you don't have enough healthy bacteria. It makes you systemically sick. Hey everybody, it's Dr. Mark. Something I get more and more excited about every year is personalized medicine. When I began practicing functional medicine over 20 years ago, it was clear to me that we may have to look at how unique

Starting point is 00:00:30 each body is. Now with technology advancing in so many amazing ways, we can truly take that concept to the next level. Now, one of the tools I recently discovered that can help us all do that is InsideTracker, and we can do it from home. It was founded in 2009 by top scientists at MIT and Tufts and Harvard. InsideTracker is a personalized health and wellness platform like no other. It's purpose-built to give you a longer, more productive life. Their cutting-edge technology analyzes your blood, DNA, and lifestyle to give you highly personalized recommendations. Then, using the app, you can track your progress every day. InsideTracker tells you what to do and why.

Starting point is 00:01:05 So your health goals are clear and actionable, and most importantly, based on exactly what your body needs. My team took InsideTracker for a spin and they really loved it. They discovered some important things about their health that led them to stop procrastinating when it came to certain parts of their health. Like, for example, finally taking vitamin D supplements after seeing they were deficient or eating more iron-rich foods due to low ferritin and hemoglobin,

Starting point is 00:01:29 or making an effort to embrace stress reduction techniques after seeing high cortisol levels. Now, health isn't black and white, and your wellness shouldn't be either. If you're curious about getting your own health program dialed into your unique needs, I highly recommend checking out InsideTracker. Right now, they're offering my community a 31% discount at InsideTracker.com forward slash Dr. Hyman. That's D-R-H-Y-M-A-N. That's I-N-S-I-D-E-T-R-A-C-K-E-R.com slash Dr. Hyman. That's D-R-H-Y-M-A-N. And you'll see the discount code in your cart. Now, I'm a big proponent of practicing what you preach. And when I sit down to record a podcast, I truly believe in the information that I'm sharing because I usually try it myself.

Starting point is 00:02:08 And that's why I'm so excited to share with you about AG1 from Athletic Greens. I use their incredible supplements every day to keep myself feeling and functioning at my best. Even with a healthful diet, it can be super hard for your body to get all the nutrients you need throughout the day. AG1 helps me fill the gap by providing 75 different vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients you might be missing. But unlike lots of multivitamins on the market, AG1 uses high quality ingredients that your body can actually absorb. I've incorporated AG1 from Methylated Greens into my daily routine because it's something small and I can do it every day to optimize my health. It gives me a natural source of energy and focus and at just three bucks a day, optimize my health. It gives me a natural source of energy and focus

Starting point is 00:02:45 and it's just three bucks a day. It's cheaper and more effective than drinking espresso. I'm excited for you to experience the same benefits I have with Athletic Greens. Right now, they're going to give you 10 free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com forward slash hyman. Again, that's athleticgreens.com forward slash hyman. And now let's get backreens.com forward slash Hyman. And now let's get back to this week's episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome to The Doctor's Pharmacy, a place for conversations that matter. And today I'm bringing you a new feature of The Doctor's Pharmacy called

Starting point is 00:03:21 Health Bites, where I teach you how to improve your health by taking small steps that can lead to significant changes in your health over time. Today, we're talking about really important strategies to eliminate or fix or heal irritable bowel syndrome, which affects so many people, and also how to just help upregulate your gut health, because we all have issues with our gut.

Starting point is 00:03:43 In fact, gut health problems affect about 80% of Americans. It's the most common reason people visit the doctor for their gut stuff. Everything from reflux to food allergies to inflammatory bowel disease to irritable bowel. These are just so common. And basically, we're a population that has a really messed up microbiome. So let's talk about how do we fix that. So let's first start, what is irritable bowel syndrome? Syndrome is basically a thing that doctors don't know what causes. So we can say syndrome, like polycystic ovarian syndrome, or irritable bowel syndrome, or chronic eating syndrome. It basically means it's a collection of symptoms. We have no idea what's going on. And we just say, well, it's a syndrome. The truth is we do know a lot about what causes IBS or irritable bowel syndrome.

Starting point is 00:04:25 I treat this all the time. In fact, I've had it. It's no fun. And it can come in all kinds of sizes, shapes, and flavors from bloating and distension, getting what I call food baby. It can cause you to have diarrhea or constipation or alternating constipation and diarrhea, cramping, discomfort, distension. It's just nasty. Maybe you have to run to the bathroom after you eat. It's just not a

Starting point is 00:04:51 good scene. So, you know, what are the causes of this problem? And from traditional medicine, there's really no quote known cause. But in fact, from a functional medicine perspective, there are really clear causes. And we now understand the gut more than we ever have. In functional medicine 15, oh gosh, 30 years ago, we were talking about the gut and the microbiome. We didn't use that word back then, but we were talking about gut health and dysbiosis. And now that word dysbiosis is really now in the traditional medical literature and essentially it means imbalances in the ecosystem of the bugs that live in your gut and there are a lot of things that cause imbalances it can be from uh the environment environmental toxins are a big cause the use of a

Starting point is 00:05:38 lot of drugs antibiotics big cause a lot of people are born by c-section. Sometimes they're necessary, but they still affect the baby's microbiome because they don't go to the vaginal canal and be colonized. There's often challenges with breastfeeding that women have. And that formula feeding can often cause imbalances in the gut floor because they actually feed the wrong bugs. And we see this in a number of different studies. There's often people who have an intestinal infection, for example, like a parasite or traveler's diarrhea, and you can get irritable bowel after that because it destroys the microbiome. Obviously, all the drugs and gut-busting drugs we take, antibiotics, the anti-inflammatories, the acid-blocking drugs,

Starting point is 00:06:22 even the birth control pill can cause yeast overgrowth. Steroid drugs, many, many drugs tend to cause gut imbalances. We can pick up different bugs like parasites. And also we can get heavy metals. Heavy metals create a big injury to the gut. I had that myself. I had irritable bowel for almost 10 years because I had high levels of heavy metals and it took me a long time to get them out. So there's a lot of reasons. It can be bacterial overgrowth. That's a big one. We didn't even have a term for that when I was in medical school, but bacterial

Starting point is 00:06:53 overgrowth is a really common phenomenon where the bacteria migrate up into the small bowel. You're supposed to have them in your large intestine, but there's not supposed to be a lot of bacteria in your small intestine, you know, buggering your stomach, your large intestine, but there's not supposed to be a lot of bacteria in your small intestine, you know, bug in your stomach, your small intestine. And that when you get that, it basically causes your body to ferment the food that you're eating, all the starches and the sugars that you eat. And you get this boo baby bloating after you eat. It's a really common symptom. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. So there's all these different conditions that can happen that drive problems. And then often food sensitivities are a big factor. There's a lot of reasons for that. We get leaky gut, we get damaged

Starting point is 00:07:34 our gut lining, and that creates this whole reactivity to foods that link across the gut lining and your immune system reacts to them, creating inflammation and all these other symptoms. So it's not fun. Irritable bowel is not fun. And it also has been linked to things like fibromyalgia and all kinds of other issues. So we're going to talk about what you can do about it, how to identify the big triggers. Now, a lot of times, and we'll talk about a few pieces of this, a lot of times food sensitivities are a big factor. And often it can be dairy, lactose intolerance is a big one. It can be gluten, which often cause a lot of gut issues. A lot of things that people eat in their food, like food additives, can cause problems. Carrageenan, which is a thickener in gum, can cause a lot of leaky gut issues and leads to more food sensitivities and more irritable bowel.

Starting point is 00:08:28 Also sugar alcohols. I remember when someone gave me a chocolate bar it was full of maltitol which is a sugar alcohol has no sugar in it and zero calories but caused huge fermentation of problems problems in my gut when I was quite sick so it's not good. So how do you do that? Well, how do you kind of know what to eliminate, what foods are reactive? I created something called the 10-Day Detox Diet, which gives you most of the common allergies, gluten, dairy, sugar, obviously processed foods, grains and beans for a short time. And often it gives the gut a rest, reboot, and then you can add things back and see how you do. We call this

Starting point is 00:09:04 an elimination diet. And there's many forms of it, but it's the gut a rest, reboot, and then you can add things back and see how you do. We call this an elimination diet. And there's many forms of it, but it's the best really test for food sensitivities. There's also lab testing. We can do lab testing for different antibodies against foods. That can be helpful, but it's not definitive. The most common foods that I find people have, and ideally you should, I say, tend to detox, but it should be about three months to get off these foods. Gluten, dairy, eggs, corn, soy, peanuts, they're most common. Grains and beans, you see foods often are a problem, and then you can kind of introduce them one at a time.

Starting point is 00:09:35 So let's talk about how gut issues, or we'll call it dysbiosis, leads to problems in the gut. Now your small intestine is basically this absorptive surface. It's the size of a tennis court if you lay it out flat, maybe two tennis courts. And it's one cell thick. And it takes basically the food that you break down inside your stomach through digestive enzymes and all kinds of other things. And the basic building blocks of amino acids, sugar, fatty acids, they get absorbed across the gut lining and they get

Starting point is 00:10:10 absorbed through the cells. But sometimes when there's damage to the gut from all the reasons I said, you get the separation of the cells. We call that leaky gut. And then food particles and bacterial particles leak in between those gaps. We call them tight junctions that kind of get loose. And then you get this reactivity to food because 60 to 70 percent of your immune system is in your gut. Why? Because that's where you put all this foreign material every day and your immune system is supposed to help you deal with foreign material. So that's really important to understand that you you have this really delicate lining and it can be disturbed and that leads to this whole imbalance. And when that one cell layer is sort of disturbed and you get breakdown in the mucus layer or the lining breaks down from

Starting point is 00:10:55 too much stress, too many antibiotics, too many inflammatory drugs like aspirin, ibuprofen, steroids, maybe have crappy diet, processed food usually affects it, sugar, starch, food additives, alcohol, then your immune system starts to get exposed to all these particles from food and bacteria. And that creates inflammation throughout the body that can cause weight gain, fluid retention, headaches. It's not just irritable bowel. It can cause widespread problems, arthritis, asthma, immunity, mood disorders, cognitive problems, hormonal disorders. It's huge. So your ecosystem in your gut plays an enormous role in your health. And when your gut bacteria are out of balance,

Starting point is 00:11:36 you're out of balance and you don't have enough healthy bacteria. It makes you systemically sick. So one of the things that I find most helpful as I treat my patients is I always start with the gut. You know, we really help them get a healthy gut because when you do that, a lot of other problems go away. Autoimmunity, mood disorders, hormonal disorders, weight disorders. I mean, even in animal studies, when they have imbalances in the gut flora, you can see that these animals will gain weight. When you fix it up, they lose weight. And they've done even fecal transplants from non-diabetics to diabetics, and it improves their blood sugar simply by changing the gut flora. So it's super important. Now, there's another thing that's

Starting point is 00:12:15 really important is how do you test for this? Now, I do a lot of stool testing. I do what they call organic acid testing, food sensitivity testing. So I use a lot of stool testing i do nickel organic acid testing food sensitivity testing so i use a lot of different things to look at what's going on in the gut i check for gluten antibodies i check for sometimes true sensitivities through cyrix testing i like that lab pretty much for looking at the iga and igg antibodies against food so the different antibodies your body makes against different food particles, you can kind of see what's going on. It's not a true allergy.

Starting point is 00:12:48 It's more of a sensitivity. And then I look at stool. I really look at stool very carefully, looking at digestive enzymes, the immune system in the gut, something called short-chain fatty acids, which are important for keeping the gut healthy and the main food for the gut lining and regulates immunity. And they're produced by healthy bacteria. So when you don't have healthy bacteria, have very low short-chain fatty acids like butyrate. And this is something we can measure on a stool test.

Starting point is 00:13:14 We also look at genetic testing. We call it PCR testing for microbial RNA. We can tell what species of bugs are there or not there. For example, acromancy is a very important keystone species that makes sure you have a good mucus lining, regulates immunity, your response to chemo drugs can help in regulating weight and so many different things. So it's a really important bug. I also do stool culture so you can look at how much healthy bacteria, if there's weird bugs growing, if there's yeast growing.

Starting point is 00:13:46 We do PCR testing and antigen testing for parasites. So we can get a really good, comprehensive look at the stool and what's going on in there. And it's changed, obviously, from day to day and what you're eating. But we can get a really good handle on the overall ecosystem. And then I can optimize treatment. It's not just looking at the bacteria. It's looking at all the other factors. And then we look also at organic acid testing because in your urine, we can find metabolites from the bugs that get excreted if they're bad bugs. So we can look at

Starting point is 00:14:16 metabolites from yeast or various bacteria that are not human metabolites. We can see if they're there in your urine, we know there's this overgrowth of bacteria. So I use a lot of different things. We also do breath testing because we want to know if you have bacterial overgrowth. We give you a drink of a fermentable sugar and you can see by clicking your breath whether you make too much hydrogen gas or methane. You know, we talk about calcium, but humans also can produce methane and it's this fermentable um byproduct that that comes out of your body having uh too much starch and sugar and fermentable carbohydrates that get basically fermented just based like like beer or wine or it's like you know if you're you have an apple cider container in your fridge and it it gets, it blows up. That's because, and you leave it there for a while, basically, it's because the yeast are fermenting all the sugars in the apple cider.

Starting point is 00:15:10 So the same thing happens in your gut and you get this food baby thing. So we can tell, and the treatment's different for different bacterial byproducts like methane or hydrogen, we'll talk about in a minute. So SIBO is huge. It's a big cause of IBS. There's a lot more research on this over the years. And if you have bacterial overgrowth, you can have that with other things. You can have parasite issues. You can have SIBO, which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, but you can also have SIFO, which is small intestinal fungal overgrowth. And we're going to talk about that

Starting point is 00:15:42 in a minute. It's so common. So most of your bacteria, like I said, should be lower down, but they migrate up and we really have to take care of them. And there's a lot of ways to treat the bacterial overgrowth, herbs and medications. And I'll talk about that in a minute. So when you have yeast overgrowth, which is also common, you actually can tell people have that from a lot of other clues. They might eat a lot of sugar, they might have diabetes, they might have been on antibiotics, they might have been on steroids, they might have other fungal symptoms like dandruff or fungal nails or anal itching or various kinds of skin rashes that are fungal. And you can tell from someone's history about the likelihood of this fungal overgrowth.

Starting point is 00:16:31 But it's pretty common and it can cause constipation, more constipation, SIBO. I mean, sorry, SIFO or irritable bowel. And there's a lot of ways to treat it. I use a lot of herbs in response to oregano, thyme, and other really great herbs you can use for fungus. There's great probiotics like Saccharomyces that work against yeast. And sometimes you need to use an antifungal

Starting point is 00:16:57 like a Diflucan or Nystatin, Sporinox. If you have bacterial overgrowth, you might need other herbs as well. I use biocidin, Candabactin, ARNBR for metagenics. But sometimes you need antibiotics like rifaximin, which is a non-absorbent antibiotic. It's now approved for irritable bowel syndrome. And also something called neomycin if you have more methane. I use Trantil, which is a a combination of herbs also works for methane sebo

Starting point is 00:17:26 and methane sebo tends to cause more constipation so you can tell kind of your diarrhea your valve or constipation or about like they have different different phenomena going on so uh we use a combination of things and not just the antibiotics or any fungals but a whole gut repair program so it's not just about killing the bugs. How do you heal? And I see this a lot, you know, when people have various kinds of treatments for SIBO by conventional doctors, they'll just give me antibiotics and they won't do a whole gut repair program.

Starting point is 00:17:58 So in order to reboot your gut, you need to get really clear about how to get rid of the bad stuff and put in the good stuff. So the get rid of the bad stuff is, we call this the FIBAR program, or I call it the weeding, seeding, and feeding program. We weed out the bad stuff. So that's food sensitivities. If you have a parasite, we treat that. If you have SIFO or SIBO, we treat that. That's the first step.

Starting point is 00:18:22 The second step is to replace the things that need to be replaced you might need digestive enzymes you might need hydrochloric acid you might need some prebiotics to kind of fertilize the good bugs um so it's really important to you know and do that and then um you clearly want to get rid of all the things that you need to treat whether it's the bacterial overgrowth yeast overgrowth the parasites and then you want to kind of repopulate the gut with healthy bacteria. That's the repopulate or re-inoculate phase of the repair program. And that's where we give probiotics. And there's all kinds of different probiotics out there. And we're learning so much about how to customize probiotics treatment, how to personalize it.

Starting point is 00:19:06 It's really different depending on what's going on for you and what your health issues are. There's a lot of science now on how we can personalize probiotics. So you basically want to sort of start slowly. By the way, if you have SIBO and you take a lot of probiotics or prebiotics, it's going to make you sick. The bacteria in your small intestine are going to fight with the bacteria you're putting in there. And they may be fertilized by the prebiotics because they'll eat that stuff too. And so you'll end up getting worse. So the first thing is to get rid of the bad stuff.

Starting point is 00:19:38 And so it's an elimination diet. It's killing all the bad bugs. It's giving more enzymes and probiotics. And then we do kind of a gut repair program. We use a lot of compounds like polyphenols, which are really important for feeding the good bugs, green tea, pomegranate, cranberry, olive extract, prickly pear, all kinds of compounds that we use from phytochemicals that help feed the good bugs. We use zinc, fish oil, even permos oil or GLA, glutamine, all sorts of compounds. We use immunoglobulins, like I use SPI Protect for more than one molecule.

Starting point is 00:20:16 There's a really good dairy-free immunoglobulin like Clostrum that helps rebuild the gut. So we use a whole series of things to help restore, repair, and renew the gut. So the key is if you really wanna have a healthy gut, you kinda have to figure out what's going on. You might need help with a functional medicine doctor. You might need stool testing, but often just an elimination diet, some basic herbal therapies,

Starting point is 00:20:40 some pre and probiotics are great. And I, you know know the way I approach this is I start with getting rid of the things that people need to stop which is an elimination diet getting rid of processed foods getting our sugar eat foods sometimes I recommend digestive enzymes and recommend adding in fermented foods I recommended dealing with your stress because the mind-body connections huge so there's all these really simple ways that you can reboot adding in fermented foods. I recommend dealing with your stress because the mind-body connection is huge. So there's all these really simple ways

Starting point is 00:21:08 that you can reboot your gut on your own. And I can't tell you how many people have just followed these guidelines and gotten better. That's not to say that if you really are struggling with bad overgrowth or parasites or yeast that you don't need some medical care. Sometimes you do, but most of the time you can fix your gut on your own.

Starting point is 00:21:23 And I've created a product called Gut Food, which is a combination of prebiotics, probiotics, and polyphenols that I invented after I had severe gut issues. Not only irritable bowel, but I ended up having inflammatory bowel disease after an antibiotic I took for a dental infection. So I had to really figure this out. And it's really simple. All you should do is just pay attention to what you're eating, eat a whole foods diet, eat pre and probiotic foods. And if you're struggling, make sure you get help, because this is really a fixable problem. And so I think, I'm sorry for all of you,

Starting point is 00:22:03 irritable bowel is pretty common, but the good news is it's one of those things with functional medicine that can really help and really fix. And that's it for this week's Health Byte. And if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to share it with your friends and family. Leave a comment. We'd love to hear how you've dealt with your gut.

Starting point is 00:22:17 And we'll see you next week on The Doctor's Pharmacy. Hey everybody, it's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into The Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do and introducing you all the experts that I know and I love and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing, which is called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter. And in it, I share my favorite stuff from foods to supplements, to gadgets gadgets to tools to enhance your health. It's all the cool stuff that I use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health.

Starting point is 00:22:51 And I'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter. I'll only send it to you once a week on Fridays. Nothing else, I promise. And all you do is go to drhyman.com forward slash pics to sign up. That's drhyman.com forward slash pics, P-I-C-K-S, and sign up for the newsletter, and I'll share with you my favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health and get healthier and better and live younger longer. Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This

Starting point is 00:23:24 podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their Find a Practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.

The Dr. Hyman Show - What's Causing Your IBS And How To Heal Your Gut

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.