The Holistic Gut Prescription: Create Your Own Personal Path to Optimal Digestive Wellness

The Holistic Gut Prescription: Create Your Own Personal Path to Optimal Digestive Wellness

by Lauren Deville NMD
The Holistic Gut Prescription: Create Your Own Personal Path to Optimal Digestive Wellness

The Holistic Gut Prescription: Create Your Own Personal Path to Optimal Digestive Wellness

by Lauren Deville NMD

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Overview

The Holistic Gut Prescription is designed to be a simple guide to healing the gut, based on the following premise: if people give the body what it needs to heal itself and remove the obstacles to its cure, then within reason, healing will follow. Nature Cure is not easy to employ, but it is usually easy to understand. There are only so many building blocks, and there are only so many possible obstacles to cure. The physician’s job is not to “make someone well,” but rather to facilitate the process of healing. In this guide, Dr. Lauren helps readers recognize which obstacles to a healthy gut they face, how to remove them, and how to supply the specific building blocks they lack so that they can create their own personal path to optimal digestive wellness.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781683506676
Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
Publication date: 05/15/2018
Pages: 282
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Dr. Lauren Deville is board-certified to practice medicine in the State of Arizona. She received her NMD from Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine in Tempe, AZ, and she holds a BS in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics from the Universityof Arizona, with minors in Spanish and Creative Writing. She has previously been published with the Naturopathic Doctor News and Review, and wrote a weekly column for the Tucson Citizen called “Natural Health Tips.” Currently, Dr Lauren resides in Tucson, AZ and has a popular blog on natural health, hosts the weekly podcast “Christian Natural Health,” and writes Young Adult fiction under the pen name C.A. Gray.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Toxic Buildup from Food = An Inflamed Gut

Lots of things can lead to gut inflammation. In this chapter, I'll be discussing toxic exposures from genetically modified food, food allergies, and food additives, which can lead to (or perpetuate) gut inflammation.

It can be easy to read this chapter and feel overwhelmed — we cover a lot of information. Again, not all of it may be important for you. We'll recap this at the end of the chapter again, but as you read, please keep in mind that healthy eating is not all that complicated. Most of what I write in this chapter can be encompassed with a few simple rules:

1. Read the ingredient list. The shorter the ingredient list, the better. If there is no ingredient list because the product is a whole unprocessed food, that is best of all!

2. If you don't recognize the ingredient, don't eat it if you can help it.

3. Choose foods that will spoil, and eat them before they do. The less processed, the better. You can usually accomplish this by shopping the perimeter of the grocery store: that's where all the real foods are. The processed junk is usually in the center aisles, in bags, boxes, or cans.

4. Avoid sugary, processed beverages. Especially avoid sugary, processed beverages laden with carcinogenic chemicals and food dyes.

If you do just these things, you will likely feel much better. These rules may or may not be enough to get you back to where you want to be, though. For many of you, it will also be necessary to identify and remove food allergens. Before we get into food allergies, let's talk about what allergies are in general.

Allergies

Your immune system is designed to protect your body against harmful substances, such as bacteria, viruses, and foreign substances (allergens). In that sense, allergic responses are not inherently bad. But in a person with allergies, the immune response is exaggerated, and you react to substances that are not generally harmful.

The word "allergies" is kind of a catch-all term, since it can refer to allergic conjunctivitis, atopic dermatitis (eczema), contact dermatitis, hay fever (seasonal allergies), or food or drug allergies, which tend to manifest symptoms all over the body.

Common allergens include medications, dust, food (these reactions can be to the protein, starch, additive, or pesticide on the food), insect bites, mold, pet dander, pollen, hot or cold temperatures, sunlight, or other environmental triggers.

There are actually five kinds of antibodies in your body, but for the purposes of allergy testing, we usually only test two: IgE and IgG. IgE are considered "immediate sensitivity" antibodies, which means your body mounts an immune response to that substance immediately. IgG are "delayed sensitivity" antibodies, which means it may take your body up to 72 hours to mount an immune response.

Skin prick tests are the most common method of allergy testing. This measures IgE ("immediate sensitivity" antibodies). Blood tests can measure either IgE, or IgG. Food allergies are best measured with IgG antibody blood tests, because 80-95% food reactions are of the IgG variety. Blood tests for IgE antibodies are more valuable for environmental allergens such as molds, pet dander, pollens, grasses, dust and the like. These IgE tests are usually covered by insurance, but sometimes you have to fight for it. I will occasionally check IgA as well — these immunoglobulins are only present in the gut, and indicate a gut-only sensitivity, rather than a systemic sensitivity, though most gut inflammation heals by just addressing IgG immunoglobulins.

Allergies of any kind almost always involve the gut. This is because 80% of your immune system resides in your gut. Ideally, your gut should produce a lot of IgA (a lot, but not too much), because it's your first line of defense against any foreign substance. The flora and the lining of your gut need to be healthy in order to produce adequate IgA so that the rest of your body never has to deal with those substances. I test total IgA in stool cultures frequently, in order to identify the integrity of the body's defense system.

Food Allergies

Food allergies are the first thing I think of when I see recurrent sinusitis or upper respiratory infections, asthma, ear infections, eczema, GERD (reflux), heartburn, or psoriasis. In addition to those, though, food allergies can also cause chronic gut issues (gas, bloating, IBS), fluid retention, autoimmunity, behavioral changes (lots of ADD/ADHD kids do much better when allergens are removed), and I've even seen cases where food sensitivities are responsible for hypertension and weight gain.

Nobody is really sure why food allergies are so prevalent, but there are a few theories that make sense to me.

Food allergies could stem from a lack of beneficial flora (probiotics) in our diets. Probiotics are important because they feed on the waste left over after we digest our food, and produce lactic acid, which helps protect our guts against pathogens. We used to get plenty of them by eating raw and fermented foods ... but these days, our food is so processed and overheated that there are precious few good flora left over. That sets us up for overgrowth by the bad flora.

Medicines that wipe out gut flora are also suspected of causing allergies. These include antibiotics, certainly, but they also include proton pump inhibitors (such as omeprazole), nSAIDs (like ibuprofen), steroids (like prednisone), birth control, and many others. (More on this in Chapter 4.)

It has also been suggested that genetically modified foods may cause food allergies. If true, this could be because the glyphosate toxin produced by these foods kill off our gut flora, or because the novel components themselves are stimulating our immune systems. It has not been scientifically established that genetically modified foods cause food allergies, but the evidence is strong enough that I avoid them and counsel my patients to do the same. (More on this shortly.)

Really, though, anything causing inflammation in the gut is capable of causing food allergies. This can be a bout of gastroenteritis, trauma, untreated malabsorption syndromes, environmental toxicity, and even chronic stress. If there's inflammation in the lining of the small intestines for any reason, it sets you up to develop sensitivities to foods you could otherwise consume with no problem.

If you think you might have food allergies, you have two choices: 1) see a naturopathic doctor or Functional Medicine doctor who will run an IgG food allergy test for you. 2) Follow an elimination diet. (For more information on how to do this, see Appendix A.)

Leaky Gut Syndrome

Leaky gut syndrome, or Intestinal Hyperpermeability, can be measured with a biomarker called zonulin, which is necessary for a tight intestinal barrier. Higher levels in the stool correlate with increased gut permeability, as do the presence of antibodies against it in the blood.

The cells that line your small intestine ought to be tight enough that nothing can get between them without the aid of digestive enzymes. In a leaky gut (or increased intestinal permeability), the junctions between the cells are loose enough that food particles can come in contact with the bloodstream before they've been properly digested. Your blood expects digested nutrients and assumes therefore that the food particles are foreign invaders, and it creates antibodies against them.

Leaky gut also can be the gateway to autoimmune conditions, since allergies and autoimmunity are so closely linked. Allergies are when your immune system thinks a friend is an enemy; autoimmunity is when your immune system thinks you are the enemy. The one can set you up for the other.

Zonulin and another protein called occludin are the major building blocks of the intestinal tight junctions. Higher levels in the stool, or antibodies in the blood, have been correlated with autoimmune inflammatory bowel conditions such as Crohn's and Ulcerative Colitis, reinforcing the idea that Irritable Bowel Disease is characterized in part by intestinal permeability. Of course, the same association exists with Celiac Disease.

Interestingly, though, increased zonulin levels have also been correlated with other autoimmune conditions that don't necessarily have such a clear "gut" symptom picture, such as Type 1 Diabetes, Ankylosing Spondylitis, Lupus, and Rheumatoid Arthritis.

If you're not sure if you have increased intestinal permeability and don't want to test for food allergies directly, zonulin testing would be the appropriate choice.

Otherwise, you next will need to identify the triggers. That means getting tested for which foods, for you, perpetuate the inflammation in your gut. People who have leaky gut have antibodies (IgG, usually) against the foods they eat the most. Those foods with lower antibody titers can usually be added back into the diet once the gut lining has healed.

For some people, pathogenic bacteria may be an additional culprit (see Chapter 4). This will require a comprehensive stool culture to identify the specific organism and how to get rid of it.

After eradicating pathogenic bacteria, it is necessary to repopulate your gut with good bacteria, since they are a huge part of your immune system. For the most part this is straightforward (unless you also have SIBO, or Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth, in which case you'll need to make sure you stick with just the lactobacillus family until it's gone. More on this in Chapter 4).

Before I leave the topic of food allergies and go on to toxins that can contribute to them in general, there are two exceptionally common food allergies that deserve their own mention: dairy and gluten.

Dairy Sensitivity

Our ancestors have been drinking dairy for generations with no problems — but now, all of a sudden, dairy sensitivity is second only to gluten sensitivity. What happened?

For those with an already sensitive gut, dairy is a very common culprit. There are a few possible reasons why.

Dairy is hard to digest. "Sticky" proteins, like gluten, dairy, and eggs (those commonly used in baking) are more likely to cause issues for those without a robust gut to begin with.

Dairy is often full of antibiotics and added hormones. rBGH and rBST are growth hormones given to about one in six dairy cows in the U.S. to increase milk production. These hormones have been known to cause inflammation in the cows' breast tissue, augmenting the need for antibiotics. Dairy cows consume about 70% of this nation's antibiotics both for this reason, as well as to offset the unhealthy conditions in which they are maintained. The reason this is bad news: bacteria are smart. Antibiotics may kill off most of a given strain, but the ones that survive are the ones that are resistant, and then they reproduce ... which is the reason why we're having more and more trouble with antibiotic- resistant bacteria these days. Additionally, the milk produced by cows treated with these hormones has a higher concentration of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), linked to various kinds of hormonal cancers. rBGH and rBST are banned in Australia, New Zealand, Israel, the EU and Canada ... but not in the US.

Dairy products often have a number of additives. Reduced fat or fat free milk has been processed to strip away the cream, which also removes the fat-soluble vitamins A and D. These vitamins must then be added back (which is why you should be leery of any product that says it is "enriched". This term means that vitamins and minerals that were lost during processing were added back. But if a food needs to be enriched in the first place, it's been processed.) Some brands of milk also contain gums like carrageenan, which may cause gut irritation. In general, any product that has been chemically processed is more likely to trigger allergic responses than the original, untampered product.

The two allergens in milk likely to provoke a reaction are the sugar (lactose) and the protein (usually casein, and very rarely whey). The former is found primarily in softer milk products, such as milk and ice cream, while the latter is found primarily in harder milk products, such as hard cheeses, yogurt, and kefir. (If the sensitivity is to the whey component of dairy, then anything that has the liquid part of the milk included will cause problems.)

If you suspect you are sensitive to lactose, casein, or whey, eliminate it for two weeks, and then eat a lot of it for three days. If you're sensitive to it, you'll know pretty quickly after you add it back. However, this will only work if dairy is your only sensitivity. If there are more, the picture will be muddier, at which point you would have to do either a full elimination diet (see Appendix A), or an IgG food sensitivity blood test.

Gluten Sensitivity

The only thing more prevalent than a sensitivity to dairy is a gluten sensitivity. Yet people have been eating wheat since the agricultural age began. So why the sudden explosion in Celiac Disease and gluten sensitivity?

Celiac Disease is an autoimmune condition: it means that in response to the presence of gluten, the body produces antibodies that attack the lining of the small intestine, blunting the villi (tiny finger-like projections where the enzymes live) and preventing absorption of nutrients. An autoimmune condition is when your body attacks itself.

If you have Celiac disease, then yes, I'm afraid you'll have to avoid gluten forever.

Gluten sensitivity, on the other hand, is an allergy — it just means the body produces antibodies (IgG or IgE) against the gluten protein, causing inflammation and poor digestion in the gut. An allergy is when your body attacks something that is ordinarily harmless. In this case, the ordinarily harmless substance is gluten protein which is the glue, or the core binding element, of certain grains (including wheat of course, plus barley, bulgar, couscous, durum, rye, semolina, spelt, and triticale — to name a few).

Statistically, few people had any issues digesting gluten until about fifty years ago, around the end of WWII. Since then, the rate of Celiac Disease has risen over 400% — and that's to say nothing of the many others who are merely gluten sensitive. There seem to be two possible explanations for this: how we grow and process wheat changed around 1960, and how we get the dough to rise (ferment) changed most significantly during the aforementioned war.

Bread rises due to fermentation. Fermentation converts sugar into (in this case) lactic acid and carbon dioxide. The latter is a gas, and that's what makes bread rise.

Up until about a hundred years ago, sourdough was the only kind of bread available, and it is produced in the following manner: flour + water + a sealed container + time –> sourdough starter (consisting of a whole bunch of different strains of bacteria + CO2 + lactic acid). While the CO2 makes the bread rise, the lactic acid gives it its characteristic sour flavor. But lactic acid also has three other very important functions: it serves as a natural preservative; it helps to break down certain naturally occurring chemicals (called phytobiotics) that prevent the body from absorbing the nutrients found in the grain; and, most relevant to the topic at hand, lactic acid helps to break down the gluten protein. (Remember, gluten is sticky like glue, and therefore harder to digest on its own, without this assistance.)

Around 1879, however, mass-produced commercial yeast was invented, consisting only of a single strain of yeast (saccharomyces cerevisiae), compared to the veritable zoo of microflora found in sourdough starters. This single yeast ferments the bread much quicker than in sourdough, minimizing or eliminating the benefits of lactic acid. During WWII, this yeast was further refined into granulated active dry yeast, and it was refined further still into instant yeast in the 1970s. (See a correlation in these timelines?)

In 1961, wheat crops also began to be mass-produced. Mass production required the grain to withstand fertilizers, pesticides, heavy machinery, and transcontinental shipping ... and in order to achieve such hearty grain, the wheat was bred to contain more gluten than ever before. (Remember, gluten is glue — more gluten means it can take more of a beating.) In order to accommodate the extra gluten in the same amount of "space", though, the trace mineral content in wheat correspondingly declined (and that's before commercial processing strips out the rest of it).

If you are gluten sensitive (but do not have Celiac) you can either avoid all gluten-containing food types or replace your usual carbohydrate products with gluten-free products. Unfortunately, most pre-packaged products marketed as "gluten-free" are still highly processed white carbohydrates, which means the carbs turn into sugar as soon as they hit your saliva. You might not have an allergic response to it, but that doesn't make it nutritious.

The good news is that by following traditional grain preparation methods, gluten-containing grains may be tolerable. In 2007, Applied and Environmental Microbiology performed a study demonstrating that while ordinary wheat bread contains gluten levels of 75,000 parts per million, its fermented (sourdough) counterpart instead contained only 12 parts per million — rendering it effectively gluten-free.

(Continues…)


Excerpted from "The Holistic Gut Prescription"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Lauren Deville, NMD.
Excerpted by permission of Morgan James Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Introduction,
Part 1: Obstacles to a Healthy Gut,
Chapter 1 Toxic Buildup from Food = An Inflamed Gut,
Chapter 2 Toxic Buildup from Western Society = Gut Inflammation,
Chapter 3 Biotoxins and Chronic Infections = Gut Inflammation,
Chapter 4 Dysbiosis and Candida,
Chapter 5 Toxic Buildup from Stress,
Chapter 6 Prolonged Poor Treatment = Hormones Gone Haywire,
Chapter 7 Toxic Thoughts and Limiting Beliefs,
Part 2: Building Blocks for a Healthy Gut,
Chapter 8 The Essential Role of Your Microbiome,
Chapter 9 Building Block #1: Macronutrients,
Chapter 10 Building Block #2: Micronutrients,
Chapter 11 Building Block #3: Water, Fresh Air, and Sunlight,
Chapter 12 Building Block #4: Sleep,
Chapter 13 Building Block #5: Exercise,
Chapter 14 Building Block #6: Recreation,
Chapter 15 Building Block #7: Solid Relationships,
Chapter 16 Building Block #8: Peace and a Sense of Purpose,
Conclusion,
Appendix A: Allergy Elimination Diet,
Diet Diary,
Bibliography,

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

The Holistic Gut Prescription is the most thorough guide to intestinal wellness I’ve seen to date. Readers can learn detailed programs to reverse leaky gut, chronic infections, candida and chronic inflammation. The book also gives deep perspective on how multifaceted the connections between gut health, lifestyle, and mindset are. Highly recommended.
- Alan Christianson, NMD, New York Times bestselling author of The Adrenal Reset Diet

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