On This Page:
Note: Table of contents is clickable
1) Digestive Health Conditions Cause Some Unique Challenges
2) What You Need To Know About Digestive Health
3) How We Can Help
Some Important Things to Know about Digestive Health:
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Digestive Health Conditions Cause Some Unique Challenges
If you are one of the unlucky people who have to cope with persistent or chronic digestive issues, you likely have to agonize over choosing whether or not you are going to disclose to others why you might have to excuse yourself from a conversation at work, run off to the washroom either urgently or frequently, seem to be in a lot of pain, are excessively tired, avoid eating in front of others, or have to eat a specific diet, and many more uncomfortable symptoms or considerations that you would rather not have to explain.
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What You Need to Know About Digestive Health
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Digestive Issues Can Be Taboo To Talk AboutSpeaking openly about digestive health conditions, especially when it comes to bowel movements and flatulence can be stressful & uncomfortable, because unfortunately these topics are often still seen as taboo by many in our day to day North American culture.To make matters worse, anxiety over having taboo symptoms that you can’t talk about can further contribute to stress that can in turn exacerbates digestive symptoms. If you haven’t had digestive issues it’s sometimes hard to grasp the challenges people with digestive conditions often face. |
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What Is the Gut-Brain Axis?
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The brain and the gut communicate to each other via the vagus nerve through electrical impulses and through chemical signals like hormones, neurotransmitters, and inflammatory markers. The vagus nerve is responsible for the function and internal organ regulation. This means it affects autonomic or unconscious body functions such as your vasomotor activity (regulation and movement of blood), respiratory pace (breathing pace), digestion, heart rate, and some actions that are more of a reflex response, like sneezing, vomiting and swallowing. Neurons transmit electrical signals between your brain and digestive system or more specifically your intestines. Neurons are nerve cells and they transmit electrical signals. These communications go both ways, to and from the brain to the gut. It might surprise you to know that your guts talk to your brain and vice versa! |
Emotions, especially strong emotions like stress, worry, and anxiety significantly impact the gut and how you digest nutrients to nourish the rest of your body.
Some Important Things To Know...#1 - The gut has it’s own nervous system, called the enteric nervous system (ENS), and is sometimes referred to as the second brain or little brain. The brain gut connection is the bidirectional communication between the brain and the gut and vice versa and is the basis for how emotions might affect the gut and the gut may affect our mood and how we feel. anchor: ThingsYouNeedToKnownumberone
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Holistic Treatment Of Digestive Conditions
Mild to severe digestive conditions can be disruptive and painful. If you or someone you love is struggling with digestive symptoms that seem to persist without relenting, you might feel encouraged to know there are many effective holistic treatment options available. This is especially true if your healthcare practitioner considers your unique lifestyle requirements or preferences and customizes a multi layered treatment plan specifically for you.
Sometimes you might think that you are only dealing with one condition when in actuality you may have overlapping conditions. With complex cases like this, it can take some time to unravel the source of the issue but I also frequently hear from patients that sometimes the simplest changes have made a world of difference in their life. One of the most important parts of working on digestive health holistically is to gather enough information to investigate what might be the root cause or possible root causes of the condition so that we can do our best to get long term resolution of the issue or issues. Simply trying to address singular symptoms can feel like a frustrating game of whack-a-mole because you never actually get to the root of the problem. Holistically looking at the source of the condition, might look like considering the entire physical body from different perspectives, but to truly look at digestive health holistically, we have to consider an even wider lens. A holistic medicine perspective is sometimes necessary to resolve complex cases. This is especially true with digestive conditions because they are so often related to mental health with stress having such an influential impact on the gut through the gut-brain connection. Your microbiome (your gut flora or the healthy bacteria and fungi that live in your gut) has a direct impact on your gut health. Imbalances in your gut flora can have an impact on levels of inflammation and damage in your digestive tract and it can also affect your hormones (your body’s chemical messengers that influence mood etc). This aforementioned holistic wide angle lens approach is inclusive of mind, body, & spirit. Since I started practicing this way I was actually initially surprised and excited to find how effective a mind, body, spirit approach can be with patients who have challenging chronic digestive issues.
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Common Digestive Conditions That Often Benefit From Naturopathic Medicine:
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Healthy Digestive FloraInterestingly, with all the advances in science and technology we are still learning and discovering more about our flora and its impact on our health and our bodies.. The Human Microbiome Project has extensive information of over 2000 gut microbes identified in human gut flora. Bacteria in the body can often be labeled as good or bad but good and bad are relative, so it’s better to look at how it’s balanced or functional. Often when I am treating a patient with digestive issues, I am often working on a variety of ways to help balance their flora in a way that will be sustainable long term. Many conditions benefit from supporting healthy digestive flora. Sometimes finding solutions to balancing digestive flora can take some troubleshooting to discover what is happening and what course of treatment or treatments need to be implemented. Most commonly, it’s assumed that taking probiotics is considered to be healthy and sometimes it is, but sometimes it can fall flat and have no effect and sometimes it can actually make symptoms worse or cause aggravations. This is always very valuable information and gives me really clear information for diagnosis and the next steps for treatment. If you aren’t the type of person that benefited from probiotic supplements or foods, it can be frustrating if you had high hopes that they would resolve your symptoms.. There is still hope. Don’t give up. Sometimes you just need to find the right diagnosis and combination of treatments that your body needs. A holistic perspective can be useful by considering your unique situation from a mind, body, spirit approach. |
Some Important Things To Know...#3 - Often underemphasized, the nervous system of the gastrointestinal tract is lined with over 100 million neurons or nerve cells from the mouth to the anus. It contains more neurons than the spinal cord or peripheral nervous system, which coordinate communication between your limbs and organs and the brain. anchor: ThingsYouNeedToKnowNumberThree
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Some Important Things To Know...#4 - There are an estimated 100 trillion microbes in our gut that are made up of bacteria along with fungi, protozoa, and viruses. It was thought that there are 10 fold more microbial cells than human cells in our body, but the latest research seems to point to the idea that number of human cells and microbial cells are equal. Interesting that we form this symbiotic relationship with these microscopic creatures that have a population equivalent to the number of cells in our body. anchor: thingsyouneedtoknownumberfour
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Putting The Digestive System's Importance In PerspectiveDigestive health focuses on the health of one of the most important systems of the body. Digestion is connected to every aspect of your health. The function of your entire body depends on what nutrients your body can extract through your digestive tract. It also has a role of protecting the rest of your body from infection and toxicity. Most don’t know that the gut is an enteroendocrine gland which means it synthesizes key regulatory hormones that affect things like sugar and fat metabolism as well as appetite. The gut also plays a key role in estrogen metabolism which can be a critical part of addressing hormonal balance. When the digestive system is not in a healthy state of functioning, this can lead to many health issues not only with not being able to absorb your nutrients but it can lead to further systemic problems. Long term digestive issues often result in something called “leaky gut.” Leaky gut is an inflamed and damaged state of the digestive system that can lead to systemic skin disorders, exacerbate autoimmune conditions, affect hormonal balance, and contribute to mental health conditions. |
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How We Can Help
How To Work On Your Digestive Health With Me
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Digestive issues are one of my favorite conditions to work on. It’s very satisfying to help patients with digestive issues that they haven’t resolved on their own, are longstanding, or have tried treatments that were unsuccessful. It’s even more satisfying when patients come in for help with concerns that they didn’t even know were digestive in nature. I also love it when I am able to help patients address mental or emotional concerns and they notice improvements in their digestive health, seemingly indirectly, but expected from a holistic viewpoint. As someone who struggled previously to find the right diet and was trying a lot of different remedies, cleanses, and supplements with mixed results, I know how much it can help when you have the right guidance. I approach gut health with the curiosity and troubleshooting ability that my previous career as an engineer brings combined with a holistic and inclusive mind, body, spirit approach. If this unique perspective peaks your interest, book a meet and greet with me to see if we might be a fit to work together. |
