Food Isn’t Enough
food is critical to your health.
“You are what you eat, right?”
Yes. And no.
You can eat the healthiest, cleanest diet (and this will quell inflammation quicker than anything else and why we start with food always) but if your gut is functioning at 30%, 50% or even 70%, you will not experience the full benefits of that healthy, clean diet.
The new adage:
“You are what your body can do with what you eat.”
Because if your system isn’t working properly, you won’t be absorbing the vitamins and nutrients from those foods – vitamin D deficiency is a large issue in the chronic illness world, as is anemia and other nutrient depletions – and that food will just putrefy in the gut attracting unwanted overgrowth and infestation. Yuck!
Even when you change your diet to the best possible scenario but haven’t addressed dysfunctions (listed below), foods will continue to be a trigger for your inflammation.
If this correlation between food, and your pain, headaches, constipation, eczema, insert symptom/diagnosis here (aka inflammation), has not yet been made, I assure you it is happening. You don’t get symptoms until the gut dysregulates. …back that up even further to the nervous system but that’s for another blog post.
You absolutely cannot assault your system with inflammatory foods every time you eat and think the body is being given a fair chance at healing.
It would be like walking on a broken ankle when you have been explicitly told to keep it elevated for an extended period. And depending on how bad the break (or how long your gut has been jacked and your body dysregulated) will determine how long the healing process is going to take.
For example, if you have had eczema since high school, constipation since elementary school and a dysregulated nervous system since in utero, those things aren’t going to go away in a 10 week period.
FUN FACTS:
- Inflammatory foods ie food sensitivities are different for every person
- Even healthy foods grown in nature can be inflammatory ie create food sensitivities
- There are fundamental similarities in the autoimmune/chronic illness world with
inflammatory foods-which is why certain diets can be enlightening as to your own health
and healing
- Food sensitivities are still unique to each person. …worth repeating.
BUT, only changing the diet and not addressing any of the below listed issues that have caused the gut or your system to be dysregulated will create additional food sensitivities/symptoms/diagnoses as the reason foods have become inflammatory in the first place has not been addressed.
So, we need to change the diet to most likely a different version of what you have been taught as healthy WHILE ALSO rebuilding the gut and addressing any of the following.
FOR YOUR INFORMATION:
Everyone has their own combination of the things listed below, and each one of these can be bulleted out into many things, which is what makes my job creative and interesting. We heal in layers. And we continue to peel back until we reach our health goals.
-
Any infection in the sinuses or mouth gets swallowed hundreds of times a day down into the stomach. This is anatomy. And gravity. If you don’t have the acid in your stomach to burn off these infections, they make their way into your digestive tract where they take up residence. Nothing will heal below unless it’s addressed up top.
-
Same as Sinus Infection
-
When your body is in fight, flight, freeze, appease, this is meant to be a temporary state when we are running from a tiger. Our digestive system completely shuts down as it is not concerned with digesting our lunch if we are about to die. You see where this makes sense.
In a very technical sense, our brilliant body’s innate response to this state of hyperarousal, which causes acidity in our blood, is to lower the acidity in our stomach to regulate our overall pH. This is a perfect solution for the short term in order for equilibrium (the state our system is always striving for). When stress becomes chronic, however, this significantly decreases our ability for health.
-
If we don’t have enzymatic activity or acid for digestion, we aren’t able to break down our food. If food isn’t broken down into the smallest particles, proteins into amino acids, fats into fatty acids, carbohydrates into glucose, then those larger particles can’t be absorbed. Our bodies only recognize certain sizes to use for nutrient repletion. If those sizes aren’t available, then we don’t get the benefits of that food. Again, it’s not what you eat, it’s how well your body can break it down.
-
Even a small amount of inflammation in the intestines can reduce enzymatic activity. Too many bad bugs in your microbiome can hinder enzymatic activity. Acid is also what triggers your digestive enzymes to release which helps you process various carbs, as well as allows bile from the gall bladder to release which helps you process fats. If there isn’t enough acid in the stomach to trigger these, your small intestines are struggling to extract and absorb. Without proper enzymes here, your food is essentially feeding bad bugs and exacerbating gut issues. Enzyme deficiencies result in malabsorption of macro and micronutrients, overgrowth of bacteria or yeast, constipation and/or diarrhea, bloating, gas, pain and long term nutrient deficiency issues like fatigue, mental health issues, hormonal imbalances and the list goes on.
-
Researchers studying this, Dr. Alessio Fasano at Massachusetts General (Harvard’s teaching hospital) being the leader, equates gluten with the gateway to all chronic illness. Scientists in general studying this believe that in the coming decades it will have the same warning as cigarettes. This is how detrimental gluten is to our systems. Not only is it highly inflammatory in and of itself but it is a crop that is heavily genetically modified (GMO) and sprayed ridiculously with pesticides and herbicides. These two things disrupt our microbiome and kill off not only the bugs on the plants but the bugs in our gut as well – bugs that keep us healthy.
Gluten also creates an overproduction of a protein called zonulin which turns into boulders holding open our intestinal lining. What should be called ‘tight gap junctions’ in our intestinal lining, regulating our intake of vitamins and minerals at those amino acid/fatty acid/glucose sizes, we now allow everything into our blood stream because of those boulder like proteins creating leaky gut. Even what is known as Einkorn wheat (or the wheat of Jesus) can cause inflammation in those with a compromised intestinal system.
-
Toxins can be qualified as our self-care products, our household cleaning products, air fresheners, clothing detergents, herbicides and pesticides sprayed on or genetically modified in our food, pollutants in our air, water, and even organic foods only must meet certain levels, synthetic drugs, plastics and their xenoestrogens, and the list goes on… This also includes mold, volatile organic compounds (VOC), heavy metals, etc.
When toxins enter our body through any of our barriers like our lungs, skin, eyes, mouth, vagina (yes toilette paper, tampons/pads and underwear matter in our most absorptive parts ladies) our systems become increasingly “full”. This fullness creates stress on our nervous systems as we didn’t evolve with these products and our bodies don’t know how to process them. Stress in any form creates a scenario like we are running from a tiger and our digestive system shuts down. These things also inundate our liver creating stagnation there. You can’t be healthy or have healthy digestion if the liver isn’t working properly. Everything is connected.
-
This is when bacteria that should stay in the large intestine backs up into the small intestine, where it absolutely should not be, and sets up shop. Many people struggle with this and it can be so bad that as soon as anything hits your stomach, even water or broth, you bloat and get extremely gassy. Some are chronically bloated, gassy and struggle with elimination on either end of the Bristol Stool Chart. SIBO can be a root cause for any chronic illness and autoimmunity and can be tricky to eliminate. If using antibiotics, the recurrent rate is high even if symptoms completely clear at the beginning. The main antibiotic is extremely expensive even with insurance for most people. If using antimicrobials (natural antibiotics like olive leaf, etc), the success rate is higher but you have to stay on them longer. Many people learn to manage symptoms through diet but this alone is usually not enough. There has to be a killing (aka detox) phase, as well as a building phase. Food can help to keep symptoms at bay, again you can’t feed and nourish something you are trying to kill, but food isn’t enough.
-
Similar to SIBO, other infections or overgrowth can occur in the gut and body like bacteria, yeast or parasitic. The CDC estimates that 60+ million Americans deal with undiagnosed parasitic infections and because these are living creatures, they are feeding and eliminating, dying and reproducing and causing lots of irritation and inflammation as a result. Many people end up with a combination of infections and infestations that need to be resolved before they will ever know wellness. But this is where hope should reside. Once you address the underlying causes of your body out of balance, remove the brick from your scale so to speak, inflammation goes down and the body starts to recalibrate itself.
-
In general food sensitivities happen as a result of leaky gut. That said, not addressing leaky gut can exacerbate food sensitivities as more foods leak into the bloodstream and are tagged as a foreign invader by the immune system.
80% of our immune system lives around the gut so anything that is entering at that point, which would be our undigested food, adds extra inflammation as that is the immune system’s response to things wrong in the body. Once that food is tagged, the immune system is creating an inflammatory response every time you eat it. That chronic inflammation in the intestinal lining from eating that food you are sensitive to (just like walking on the broken ankle), never allows the intestinal lining to heal. It also weakens the protective barrier between your intestines and your bloodstream, those tight gap junctions, even further allowing for more food sensitivities to build which means more inflammation every time you eat. We have to break the cycle and food alone cannot do this.
No, taking a probiotic every day does not help these. In many cases, most probiotics can be irritating and inflammatory to an already sensitive and dysbiotic system.
Your gut health affects everything! If you are a 4 on the Bristol Stool Chart (google it), but still have symptoms or a diagnosis, this does not mean all is well in your gut. If you have any symptoms or diagnosis, even as unsuspecting as allergies, this is a large sign that your gut needs some serious attention. More than food can do for you.
Does everyone need support in these ways? No. Do many? Yes. Clinical studies show 70-80%. But each person will require individual attention depending on what their needs are, what their sensitivity level is and how long they have been dealing with symptoms.
Continued below…
FUN FACT:
Issues compound in the body every 8 years. And we call this ‘aging’. The reality is we can take care of these issues at their root, stop the compounding, and extend not only our quality of life and biological age but our literal chronological age while at it.
When people think food is all there is:
The process begins, and changes are made fully or halfway to their diet, their daily habits, implementation into a lifestyle instead of the short term…
And then they stop.
REASON #1
Some feel like they are good when they change their diet and don’t need any more help.
MY THOUGHTS
If you have only changed your diet and not begun to address the rest of your system, other things will most likely start to happen down the road. More food sensitivities perhaps, other symptoms will arise, or possibly original symptoms that lessened come back as they were before.
When your symptoms are gone, you’re only about 25% there.
REASON #2
Others feel like they’ve made so many changes and still don’t see the results they were hoping for after only a couple of months or in some cases longer.
MY THOUGHTS
Our bodies can only make a few changes at a time before our nervous system shuts it down and says no more. Too much change is perceived as threat-the more sensitive the nervous system, the less change can happen. So, doing ALL THE THINGS up front isn’t advisable for most, which is why we start with food and a few other fundamentals. These changes feel like a lot because in our current culture most of us are living very out of balance.
Eating healthy is a mandate when trying to be healthy and especially when trying to heal. But it is only the beginning – definitely not the end nor the whole picture.
REASON #3
And still others simply don’t have the capacity to sustain the changes.
MY THOUGHTS
For these folks, I say don’t give up. Let’s work with where you are and take baby steps towards making small shifts. These add up to big changes. You most likely need recurrent check ins and accountability metrics.
Healing takes time, and unfortunately we live in a culture that has conditioned us to take a Tylenol and our headache goes away. We order something on Amazon and it gets here the next day. We want food, we pull through a drive through. We don’t even have to wait to watch the next episode of our favorite show. And in this lifestyle of convenience, we’ve confused medicine for actual healing.
True healing is a process that isn’t linear, isn’t fast and needs sustaining. But the beautiful thing about healing is that you have so much power over your quality of life when you choose to show up instead of numb out.
Food is tremendous. Always start there. But it’s just the beginning. Never the end.
Heal in every choice you make.
xoxo Lauren
Disclaimer: Information on this site is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult with a healthcare professional before beginning any diet, supplementation or exercise program. Statements and opinions contained on this website and other related sources (blog and social media platforms) are provided as informative and educational tools only. The Whole Mind Body cannot and does not guarantee the accuracy or effectiveness of the information to your unique circumstance.