Thanks for joining us for episode 90 of The Ancestral RDs podcast. If you want to keep up with our podcasts, subscribe in iTunes and never miss an episode! Remember, please send us your question if you’d like us to answer it on the show.

Today we are answering the following question from a listener:

“Could you give some ideas about the best things one can do to help with leaky gut and dysbiosis? If you don’t have access to a functional medicine practitioner or knowledgeable RD, what things could you do on your own to compliment conventional treatment, or simply the most effective things once could implement to support optimal gut health and take care of a sensitive gut?

Simply put, what are the things you think make the most difference to gut health and what practical steps are there for those who already eat a Paleo style whole foods diet and know the big things like diet, sleep, and stress management?

I hear so many supplements and tips that are supposed to be good for your gut, but if you had to choose the best ones, which ones have the best value while still being practical in terms of cost, safety, and availability for most people?”

It can be difficult to navigate through the sea of recommendations for digestive concerns. Whether dealing with a gut condition or trying to support gut health, wouldn’t it be great to have insight into the most practical and effective steps to take? Today is the day you’ve been waiting for!

Join us as we share the top ways to address gut health. Some of what we are discussing are the importance of identifying gut infections and the most effective ways to treat dysbiosis and help the gut heal. You’ll also learn about Kelsey’s upcoming gut health program that provides much needed guidance on the journey of healing the gut.

Here’s what Laura and Kelsey will be discussing in this episode:

• Why testing for gut infections and dysbiosis is the most important and cost effective step towards gut health
• The potential long term effects of not treating a gut infection
• How over reliance on some popular Paleo diet foods can worsen digestive conditions
• How a low FODMAP or elimination diet may relieve digestive symptoms in the short term
• Why diet is not a treatment for gut infections
• The use of antimicrobials and antibiotics for the treatment of gut infections like SIBO
• The use of prebiotics in a gut dysbiosis treatment protocol
• How supporting digestion can prevent reoccurrence of gut infections
• The role of stress in digestive disease
• A practical and effective stress relieving exercise to help enhance digestion
• Highlights of Kelsey’s upcoming “Build Your Biome” gut health program and how you can find out more information

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Links Discussed:

• This episode is sponsored by Pure Indian Foods
• Find out more information about Kelsey’s upcoming “Build Your Biome” program and sign up for the waitlist!

TRANSCRIPT:

Kelsey: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode 90 of The Ancestral RDs podcast. I’m Kelsey Kinney and with me as always is Laura Schoenfeld.

Laura: Hey everybody.

Kelsey: I hear you’re a little sick, Laura. How are you feeling today?

Laura: Yes. I’m feeling better than I was over the weekend, but still kind of stuffy, and a little brain foggy, and just ready be done with this. I was mentioning before we got on the call that for whatever reason I’ve gotten sick a lot more in the last year than usual and I think a big part of that has just been all of the many layers of stress that have come into my life in the last couple months.

Kelsey: Mm hmm.

Laura: Business stuff, and planning a wedding, and all the traveling to see my fiancé. I think my body is just a little less resilient to this kind of thing. I think this was a reaction to how busy we were over the holidays, which I don’t know if that’s going to be normal from now on. I think I learned this time that instead of jumping straight back in to a 50 hour work week right after that, I need to kind of wean myself back in.

Kelsey: Mm hmm.

Laura: I feel like kind of did it to myself. But luckily this one isn’t as bad as last time I got sick which was I think that lasted like three weeks. It was pretty awful.

Kelsey: Yeah.

Laura: I feel like this one is just a little baby cold. Luckily we had a southern snow storm. We got a whole inch of snow this weekend and so everything shut down and all my plans got cancelled, which I was really actually grateful for because I was really tired and really didn’t feel like leaving the house anyway regardless of the weather. I just had a really laid back weekend and wrote a blog post for the first time in weeks, or months, or something, so tried to get back into that.

I had shared a photo of myself on Instagram, I think it was yesterday, because I feel like a lot of times when I’m on social media or Instagram, I’m always seeing these photos that are really pretty and professional looking. As a business owner, sometimes I feel a little inadequate as far as the kind of photos I put up because I don’t have a great…well I shouldn’t say I don’t have a great camera, but I don’t use my camera very often.

Kelsey: Yeah.

Laura: My camera on my phone is okay and I just post this pictures and I’m like these aren’t that great. The ones that I do post that are amazing are always ones that other people have taken. I’ve been posting a couple more professional photos lately and in the spirit of transparency, I didn’t want to be pretending like I always look like the way that I do in these photos that just happen to be perfectly posed and timed, and I spent an hour doing my makeup, and got my hair blown out, that kind of thing. I was like, I look terrible today, let me share this photo of myself so people understand that I’m normal and I don’t look like photograph worthy all the time.

Kelsey: Mm hmm.

Laura: It was interesting. I actually got some pretty good feedback about it and a lot of people seemed to appreciate me sharing that. I guess those kind of posts do get a lot of attention because people don’t really see a lot of that.

Kelsey: Yeah.

Laura: The main the reason I shared it is just because I don’t want my Instagram feed to ever make people feel like less than, or that their life isn’t as glamorous as mine is because honestly, my life is not glamorous at all.

Kelsey: I know. Instagram makes everybody’s life look glamorous half the time.

Laura: I know. Maybe there’s people out there that their life is glamorous, but a lot of times those people are being paid to look good in their workout clothes or whatever.

Kelsey: Right.

Laura: I just get a little frustrated because I think there’s a lot pressure that people put on themselves to look a certain way. I’ve worked with clients before that feel like the pressure to keep up with other people or to meet what other people are expecting of them so high that they feel stress all the time. I don’t want to be that kind of influence for people.

Even though I like to share the pretty pictures that I’ve gotten done, either my engagement photos, or my business photos, or whatever, I also want to make sure that people realize that that’s not normal life and that’s not the way that I look most of the time. Like I said, I don’t want to be somebody that causes other people to feel like they’re not doing what they should be doing.

Kelsey: Yeah.

Laura: I kind of was like, here’s a good opportunity to share a picture of myself in a not so hot state and make people realize that there’s both sides of that for me. It seemed like people appreciated that. One good thing that came from being sick.

Kelsey: I just looked at that photo and I’m like, dude, I look like that all the time. Working from home, I feel like I don’t shower probably as much as I should, and whatever, that’s fine. I feel like I have to get made up and do all this stuff to go out and do anything. But when I’m working from home, I’m like whatever. It’s just me, and my husband, and my cat. I don’t need to look great for anybody really.

Laura: You live in New York. Down here in Raleigh, I rarely feel the need to get dressed to go do things.

Kelsey: Really? I guess you do see a fair amount of people walking around in pajamas. But I feel like for the most part, you do feel like you have to kind of get dressed up, or not dressed up, but dressed fairly nicely to go out and do anything here. But maybe that’s just me thinking too much about it and I could go out in anything and nobody would care. I’m sure no one would care but myself of course.

Laura: Mm hmm. I like to wear yoga pants because I feel like I can transition from inside to outside and people don’t necessarily think it looks weird the way pajamas would.

Kelsey: Yeah.

Laura: I know you don’t do video calls right with your clients, right? You just do the audio?

Kelsey: Yeah, usually just audio.

Laura: It’s funny because I do both video and in person sometimes, so it’s kind of a mix. On the days that I only work with audio, I’ll be basically in pajamas all day. I kind of know who I’m talking to that day and I know if they want to do video or if I have to see them in person. It’s just kind of funny because on the days that I don’t have any video or in person clients, I probably have a very similar look to what you look like during the week. But in some ways I actually like when people want to see me in video or if they want to meet up in person because it kind of forces me to care a little bit more.

Kelsey: Right.

Laura: But that’s also me being, not single, but living like a single person right now.

Kelsey: Mm hmm.

Laura: Maybe once I’m married and my husband and I live together, I’ll feel differently. But part of me feels like that’s probably not going to happen. He’s not the kind of person that would inspire me to get dressed up to watch TV or something.

Kelsey: Yeah. Once you’re comfortable with somebody, it’s like a whole different game. You don’t feel like you need to dress up.

Laura: Yeah, that’s in a totally loving way. He’s like the most accepting person on the face of the earth. It kind of confuses me sometimes when I’m like, my skin looks terrible right now, or I have makeup all over my face, or whatever. He’s like, well I still think you’re beautiful. I’m like what is wrong with you?

Kelsey: That’s a good thing.

Laura: You do see me now, right? You’re being objective and looking at what I look like? I don’t really see that changing a whole lot once I’m married.

Kelsey: Yeah. Fair enough.

Laura: Yeah. I like getting dressed up and I like to take nice photos. Our photo shoot for the engagement photos was really fun, and we got these really beautiful photos, and I’m really excited about them. But at the end of the day, that is not daily life.

Kelsey: Right.

Laura: I don’t have time to be spending that much effort on my hair, and my makeup, and my clothes, and all that stuff. I honestly don’t understand how people do. When I see these bloggers that have professional quality photos go up on a daily basis of their outfit of the day….I spoke with a friend of mine whose cousin does a fashion blog, which to me that makes more sense than someone who’s doing a health and fitness blog. But they all actually go and shoot like 10 outfits in one day and then they’ll just post those outfits throughout the week.

Kelsey: Interesting.

Laura: Which makes a lot more sense as far as a practical approach, but when it comes to how that’s affecting their viewers or their followers, it’s like kind of misleading. Like I said, with a fashion blog, I get it because that’s the point of that blog is to show different outfits and stuff. But I feel like it kind of gets misleading and then it makes other people feel like why does this person always look perfectly put together and stuff?

Kelsey: Right.

Laura: Maybe people are doing that, I just can’t be bothered.

Kelsey: I know. That’s sort of how I feel too. It’s like it sounds great in theory, I’d love to be able to do that. But just from an energy and time perspective, for me it’s like is that really worth it?

Laura: Yeah. I obviously don’t think I need to be posting gross photos of myself on Instagram all the time. But like I said, I had been posting a few more recently of professional quality ones that definitely basically make me look as about the best I’m going to ever look. I wanted to make sure I was balancing that with some gross photos.

Kelsey: Gross photos.

Laura: I like literally had like zit cream on my face in that photo, which I think didn’t come out as strongly because of the lighting in the photo. I feel like unless my hair was wet and piled top of my head, I don’t know if the photo would have been that much worse unless I was making a face maybe. I don’t know. Which some people do. I’ve seen some of the body positive type people who will take people of themselves making a gross face. I’m like that takes it to another level. I don’t need to make myself look uglier in a photo to make people feel better. But I was just trying to be balanced as far as the realness of what I look like.

Kelsey: Yeah. I think it’s a good idea because I’m sure a lot of our listeners can probably feel the same as both you and I where you can look through Instagram and get pretty…I don’t want to say jealous, but that is sort of, or envious in some way of who glamorous somebody’s lifestyle seems to be, or just maybe you feel like they are prettier than you, or better than you in some way. I feel like it’s really easy to fall into that when you just are scrolling through picture after picture of these people looking perfect.

You look at yourself in the mirror first thing when you wake up in the morning and you’re like, well I don’t look like that. And they probably don’t either when they wake up first thing in the morning. It takes a lot of effort and time like we’ve been talking about to kind of that put together a lot of the time for people. I appreciate your realness, Laura, and it sounds like other people did as well.

Laura: Yeah. I know I’m prone to that envy when I see those kind of photos. Honestly, a lot of the time I’ll just un-follow the person if I feel like their account is making me feel more envy than giving me any sort of positive influence.

Kelsey: Mm hmm.

Laura: I hope that I don’t have an account that makes people want to un-follow me becuase I’m setting up these unrealistic expectations. But I do find that there are some accounts out there that I have followed in the past that after a while I’m just like this is just making me feel crappy about my own life, so I’m just going to un-follow this person. It’s not that they’re doing anything bad, it’s just that it’s just not a healthy thing for me to be doing to be looking at what they’re doing and comparing myself. I think un-follow the people that make you feel badly about yourself, and then if you are somebody with influence, then try to make sure that you’re balancing your perfectly posed, beautiful photos with ones that are a little bit more real.

Kelsey: Yeah.

Laura: That’s what I would suggest if somebody has any sort of influence in the social media sphere.

Kelsey: Cool. Alright. I think let’s jump into our question for today which is about gut health in general. I will talk a little bit about the program that I’m creating while we walk through this question because it really ties in a lot.

I just wanted to kind of give you guys a little bit of an update on that program before we jump in. I think it’s going to be called “Build Your Biome.” Though that is really to be determined if that’s going to be the actual name, but that’s what I’m leaning toward at the moment. I’ve been working on this for the last few months in earnest, although I did take a break over the holidays, so it’s a little tough getting back into it now. But it should be coming out in the first quarter sometime of the year. You guys can look forward to that.

I’ll talk a little bit more about what will be included in the program as we walk through this question. But if you guys have any questions about this program or if you want to be a part of it, I may be offering some beta spots. Go to my website and you’ll be able to sign up for a wait list for the program. That way you can just get on that list, you can find out all the information about the program, you can potentially be a beta user if you are interested in that.

But for today, let’s jump into this question. And before we do that, here is a word from our sponsor:

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Kelsey: Okay. Here’s our question for today:

“Could you give some ideas about the best things one can do to help with leaky gut and dysbiosis? If you don’t have access to a functional medicine practitioner or knowledgeable RD, what things could you do on your own to compliment conventional treatment, or simply the most effective things once could implement to support optimal gut health and take care of a sensitive gut? Simply put, what are the things you think make the most difference to gut health and what practical steps are there for those who already eat a Paleo style, whole foods diet and knows the big things like diet, sleep, and stress management? I hear so many supplements and tips supposed to be good for your gut, but if you had to choose the best ones, which ones have the best value while still being practical in terms of cost, safety, and availability for most people?”

Laura: Alright. Well it sounds like this question is basically perfect for your program, Kelsey, that you’re developing.

Kelsey: Yes.

Laura: Especially when they say that they don’t have access to a functional medicine practitioner or a knowledgeable RD. Hopefully your program will make that more available.

But the first thing I wanted to mention, which I’m sure you’re going to agree with, Kelsey, is that if this person has any sort of major dysbiosis going on where there’s an infection or an overgrowth of bacteria, I would strongly recommend that this person look into getting tested for any sort of infection. The reason for that is we’ve mentioned this multiple times on this podcast, but I think it’s always worth repeating that if you have something like small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or SIBO, or H.Pylori, or some kind of gut infection, you do really need to get it treated from a medical perceptive, otherwise it will probably always be causing symptoms.

Kelsey: Mm hmm.

Laura: I’ve had clients who were trying to manage their gut symptoms for years and they were using diet and lifestyle changes, and eating healthy Paleo whole foods, and working on their stress, and all that and they weren’t really seeing improvements in their gut health and that’s why they ended up in my coaching program. Usually they wouldn’t have actually had a SIBO test done or any sort of gut testing done, but sometimes I’ve even had clients that have gotten SIBO testing done and just never treated it. Either they had decided that they didn’t want to do antimicrobials or antibiotics. I did have one client one time who had a really severely positive methane dominant SIBO case and her practitioner had identified it as negative.

Kelsey: Wow.

Laura: There was some misinterpretation of that test result. I’ve usually seen clients having lingering digestive issues end up with either some kind of gut infection, SIBO, H.Pylori, that kind of thing. Once their SIBO was actually dealt with from a medical perspective either using antibiotics or antimicrobials, a lot of their gut sensitivity went away, and for some clients it actually disappeared.

Kelsey: Mm hmm.

Laura: I assume you agree with this that this is a really important factor to consider if you’ve been using a healthy diet and lifestyle to deal with gut health and you haven’t seen improvements.

Kelsey: Yeah, 100%. I think that this is dealt with so terribly within the conventional medical world as well as the alternative medical world in that if you’re just reading blog posts about digestive symptoms like bloating, gas, whatever you have going on, everybody’s got a supplement to recommend to you or they’ve got a diet program to recommend to you. But I feel like not a whole lot of people are talking about the fact that if you have these kinds of symptoms, you are very likely to have either SIBO, or dysbiosis, a parasite, a pathogen, some kind of infection going on in your gut.

That’s a big problem because it ends up having people spend all this money on supplements, and special diets, and all that kind of stuff to deal with the symptoms that they’re describing when really most of the time if they had just tested, and found out what kind of infection they had, and treated that, they may not have developed long ongoing sensitivities or things like that can develop if you have SIBO or some other kind of infection for a long time and it’s not treated.

I feel like in the spirit of this question, which is how can you not spend a lot of money or just be practical in terms of cost, the best recommendation I can give people is to get tested because chances are like I said, you have something going on, you have some sort of infection if you’re experiencing a lot of gut symptoms. If you just get that treated whether that’s with antimicrobials or with antibiotics from your conventional medical doctor, it’s going to save you so much money in the long term that in my eyes, it’s really worth it to get that testing even though it  might be a little bit more expensive right now.

Laura: Right.

Kelsey: I’m sure you’d agree.

Laura: Yeah, I feel like when we’re talking about financially practical approaches, we have to think about short vs. long term practically. Because yeah, getting SIBO tested, getting antimicrobial protocols, even if you have to take an antibiotic that’s not covered by insurance, yes, it can be very expensive in the short term and that could be a big deterrent for people to actually do this approach. But it’s really I’d say worth it in the long run to treat a gut infection when it’s active and causing symptoms because first of all,  you’ll always be dealing with the symptoms and sensitivities if you don’t treat it. Even if you get most of the symptoms under control with a very restrictive diet, I don’t really see that as being a practical long term approach to dealing with gut health or dealing with health in general over the long run.

Kelsey: Mm hmm.

Laura: Then the other problem is if you have an ongoing infection going on, we don’t really know what kind of other long term health issues that can cause down the road. Even if your gut symptoms are managed and you’re not experiencing severe bloating, or diarrhea, or constipation, or anything like that, we don’t know that these gut infections might not lead to some other issues that are more serious.

One example of an infection that I would be concerned if it was present and not being treated is H.Pylori. Even though H.Pylori infection is fairly common, if people are having gut symptoms associated with an H. Pylori infection, it is worth treating that infection. That’s because H.Pylori can cause chronic inflammation in your stomach and it actually has been found to significantly increase the risk of developing gastric cancer in the long term. With stomach cancer or I guess small intestinal cancers, so duodenal, gastric ulcer cancers, that kind of thing, the infection of H.Pylori is actually the strongest known risk factor for that type of cancer.

If you have had a family member that’s had stomach cancer, or if you know you have H. Pylori and you’re having symptoms of H.Pylori like reflux, or burning in your stomach, or any sort of gut symptoms in general, then treating that infection may actually not only help improve your symptoms in the short term, but it actually could prevent cancer in the long run.

I’m not trying to scare people with throwing the word cancer around. I don’t like to use scare tactics to motivate people. But I do want to emphasize how important it is to get tested and treated for gut infections because if we know that something like H.Pylori can lead to gastric cancer in long run, who knows if maybe having an untreated SIBO could have eventually lead to some kind of cancer either in the small intestine, or colon cancer, or something like that. That would be my main concern if somebody was having an active infection for a really long time without treating it even if their symptoms were decently managed.

Kelsey: Yeah. I think those long term effects go far beyond cancer as well. SIBO for example is associated with so many different types of health conditions that you wouldn’t really think would necessarily be connected to gut issues. Even if your main goal right now is to deal with the gut symptoms you have, you’re also really helping the rest of your body and any other health conditions you have get better as well when you deal with that infection. Just for an example, I think SIBO is really highly associated with fibromyalgia. If you don’t even have any gut symptoms but you have fibromyalgia, you should be tested for SIBO. If you have SIBO, which is again highly likely if you have fibromyalgia, and you treat the SIBO, your fibromyalgia should get better.

It goes way, way beyond the gut and that’s why I think it’s such an important topic that people get educated about because right now at least how the medical system works, infections like SIBO or just general dysbiosis of the large intestine, it’s not something that conventional medical doctors are thinking a lot about. Even if they have somebody come in describing major bloating, lots of gas, or burping, all that kind of stuff, they may not even think to test for SIBO.

When somebody comes to both Laura and I with those symptoms, that’s pretty much the first thing we think of because it’s so, so common. I think we’ve mentioned in other episodes that when we have somebody come in with those symptoms and we have them get tested for SIBO, I think at this point for me it still stands that I haven’t had anybody with negative SIBO test. I’ve had some SIBO tests that have come back weird, like kind of inconclusive, but nobody’s actually gotten a negative result. Does that still stand for you, Laura?

Laura: Yeah. I usually am not ordering the test myself. I’ve been looking into doing that just because of the number of people that have come to me with this issue and realizing that cutting out the middle man of having them have to go find a doctor that will order the test is useful if possible.

Kelsey: Yeah.

Laura: But for the ones that I’ve had go to their doctors to get tested, all of them have come back positive. Even that one person I mentioned who had the SIBO test, it was interesting, she had the symptoms, all these IBS type symptoms, told me she had gotten tested for SIBO and it was negative, and I asked her to send me the test results just so I could see them. Like I said, her methane levels were through the roof. It was crazy high.

Kelsey: Wow.

Laura: It was just interesting that even though she had been told that it was negative, it wasn’t negative at all. It wasn’t even questionable.

Kelsey: Yeah.

Laura: I might have sent it to you also just to get your feedback on the results just to make sure that I wasn’t misleading her.

Kelsey: Mm hmm.

Laura: But I sent it to you maybe, I sent it to some of the doctors that I’ve worked with in the past just to get their feedback to make sure. But yeah, everyone was like yeah, that’s really positive.

Kelsey: Yeah.

Laura: This client of mine, we ended up doing some changes to work on it and I think she took the antibiotics. I can’t remember off the top of head because it was about a year ago at this point. But her gut symptoms are mostly gone at this point.

Kelsey: Yeah.

Laura: She had been having nonstop issues and just nothing she was doing seemed to be helping. I kind of like to use her as example.

Kelsey: Right.

Laura: Because if she had gone with what her doctor said that she was negative for SIBO, she may have never actually gotten treated for it.

Kelsey: Right. Well at least her doctor tested for SIBO. That’s a lot more than a lot of people can say right now. I think that that’s just because it’s something that’s becoming more well known, but it’s still not the standard of testing when somebody comes in with those types of symptoms, which it definitely should be.

This is something actually that my program will cover is how to talk to your doctor about either your SIBO or other kind of test results, or how to talk to your doctor about getting a SIBO test. Laura and I can offer SIBO testing. Laura is looking into it. I definitely offer it in my practice just because with the kind of clients that I work with, it’s just a really common thing that I need to figure out if somebody has. You can get that testing through somebody who’s not an MD. It depends on what state you are in and where you live personally, but you should be able to get that testing done. But if you get it done through Laura or I, it would be an out of pocket cost, whereas if you get it through your doctor, a lot of times it’s a covered or at least partially covered testing cost. That’s why I like to at least tell people that that’s an option because of course any time I can save people money, that’s in everybody’s benefit I think.

I do recommend that if you are comfortable with your doctor just having that conversation, that you do talk to them about getting that test done. What I typically do with my clients and what I will walk through in my program is I give you a few different research studies to bring to your doctor. This is specifically for, not only about SIBO, like if you have a particular type of condition, I might give you an article about that condition and its association with SIBO, or dysbiosis in general, something like that to give to your doctor to see if that will convince them to do the testing. But I actually more often use this approach when somebody actually has testing either from me or from their doctor and their doctor doesn’t really know what to do with it. I’ll give them some research studies about using Rifaximin which is one of the antibiotics commonly used for SIBO, or if they have methane positive SIBO, talking about the combination of Rifaximin and Neomycin together to treat methane positive SIBO.

Laura: Yeah. That’s a big reason why I like to have people test through their doctors because a lot of the treatment options are prescription, and I think we did have this conversation in past, but I’ve seen people who didn’t respond to antimicrobials and did respond to antibiotics.

Kelsey: Yeah.

Laura: Having that option as a treatment is always helpful and if you go get the test done through your doctor, that opens up that option for you.

Kelsey: Yeah. I will say while that’s preferable, don’t be afraid to go to your doctor with results that you have from somebody else because that was something I was little bit hesitant to recommend to some of my clients in the beginning. But once I started doing it and I provided them the research to bring to their doctor, I’ve actually only had maybe a handful of clients have a whole lot of trouble getting a prescription for Rifaximin or for Neomycin. Usually once their doctor sees their results, they see this research, they typically have no problem prescribing the antibiotics.

I think this is a case where that reliance on antibiotics by doctors can actually work in our favor a bit because they typically have no qualms about prescribing any sort of antibiotics for pretty much anything. I’ve actually not had a whole lot of trouble with people getting antibiotics, even if they’re coming in with a testing results that I’ve done and they bring that to their doctor.

That’s something that in my program, like I said, we’ll kind of go through how to talk to your doctor about this because I think some people can just feel a little bit uncomfortable about that. But at the end of the day, this is your health. You need to take charge of it. If your doctor can be an ally in helping you get the treatment that you need, you need to learn how to be comfortable talking to them about what you might need. Of course at the end of the day, you want to listen to everything that your doctor says, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t come in with research or things that you read and kind of just asked their opinion on it.

Laura: Yeah. That’s great that you’ve seen so much positive response to that since I have definitely felt the way you apparently felt in the past where you didn’t want to feel like you were telling the doctor what to do because sometimes that can backfire.

Kelsey: Yeah.

Laura: But like you said, if you just come in with information and not demands necessarily, just questions, it can be a little bit of a better approach.

Kelsey: Yeah. I was really surprised by the response. Like I said, I think it’s only been a handful of people if that that have had trouble or weren’t able to get a prescription for the antibiotics that they basically should be prescribed based on the results that they’re were getting from their SIBO test.

I’ve been pretty impressed with the doctors these days. This is even in places that I would not consider quite as progressive in a lot of ways. Usually on the coast it’s a little bit easier to get doctors to prescribe the right treatment, but sometimes I’ve had trouble with places in the middle of the country that have a little bit older doctors, they may not read up on the research as much, or just don’t really want to learn new things. That’s a huge generalization, but I will say that I have kind of found that to be true. But I feel like that’s been getting better over the last year or so. Even if you live somewhere where you have a doctor who you don’t feel like is particularly progressive, it’s still worth a shot.

Laura: Mm hmm. Anything thing else to add about testing before we talk about some other factors to look into?

Kelsey: I think that about covers it. I do just want to reiterate how important testing is. I know some people can feel like that expense is not worth it necessarily and they can control it with diet, with supplements, or whatever, but those long term effects that we mentioned are really something worth thinking about.

I’ve had this experience in my own practice, and it sounds like you have too, Laura, where just that antibiotic or antimicrobial treatment completely pretty much clears up any symptoms that somebody was having. That is crazy. That’s huge. In any other type of health condition there’s not typically something that is so simple and effective. The fact that there is for gut issues really means that we should just take advantage of that.

Yes, it might be a little more expensive if you have to pay for those tests out of pocket, but A.) go through your doctor first and see if you can get it through them. And B.) even if you have to pay for it yourself, oftentimes that is so, so worth it because you’re not going to end up spending so much money on buying all these foods for special diets, or buying supplements that you think are going to heal your digestive condition, but really they are just keeping it semi under control and as soon as you come off of them, you’re going to feel terrible again. It’s really well worth it to get tested and treated for any infection you might have.

Laura: Mm hmm. I think with finances, it’s always difficult to look at the cost benefit of this kind of stuff. But even if it is exactly the same amount of money you’d be spending if you were to do supplements for the rest of your life, I feel like the quality of life question has to come in.

Kelsey: Mm hmm.

Laura: What is your quality of life worth to you? Is it worth $1,000 for you to eliminate your gut symptoms for good? Those are the kind of questions I think people will have to consider because at the end of the day if we’re just looking at dollars to dollars comparisons, yeah, this approach might be more expensive. But I feel like from a long term health and well-being perspective, if you’re actually treating the issue as opposed to just masking or just fixing some of the symptoms, it’s going to help prevent any sort of bad things from happening down the road if you don’t treat it and then just also generally make your quality of life better when you have more flexibility with your diet, when you don’t have to take as many supplements, and you just have a little bit more normalcy return when your symptoms are actually dealt with instead of just masked.

Kelsey: For sure. In case you guys are interested in my gut program, I do go over the testing options for SIBO, for dysbiosis, for all these other kind of parasite type things. It’s optional because I do understand that maybe right now for somebody they just simply don’t have the finances to do that kind of stuff, but definitely highly recommended if you can afford it at the moment. You’ll be able to do the program either way, but you will get the information about testing if you would like to do that testing and you’ll be able to order that through the program as well.

Laura: Cool. Let’s move on because I feel like we’ve almost done a whole podcast on this in the past. Even though it’s helpful to talk about this stuff, we had a couple of other questions from this particular question. I know she was mentioning that she already eats a Paleo style, whole foods diet. I’d like to address that a little bit.

Kelsey: Yeah.

Laura: I think there’s this belief in the Paleo community that a Paleo diet is the fix all for everything. I think one of the things people forget about the typical way…especially if you’re new to the idea of Paleo, a lot of people approach Paleo in a way that I think can actually exacerbate gut symptoms depending on what you’re doing.

One of the things I see happening a lot in my clients that develop gut issues on Paleo is that they’re unknowingly adding tons of high FODMAP vegetables to their diet. FODMAP is just referring to those types of carbohydrates that are easily digested by bacteria and end up causing a lot of the symptoms of a gut infection. If you have SIBO and you’re feeding the bacteria, that’s where the symptoms will occur. They might have gone from a moderate vegetable intake to a super high vegetable intake and a lot of those vegetables might be those high FODMAP ones.

Kelsey: Mm hmm.

Laura: Then they may have also drastically cut out easily digested starches that actually would help support good gut function. One simple example of this is the way that a lot of people will use cauliflower to replace things like rice or potatoes. It’s not that that in itself is a bad thing for the average person, but if somebody has gut issue and they tolerate rice and potatoes and then they start eating tons of cauliflower instead, that could actually end up causing their gut symptoms to be worse or kind exacerbating any sort of gut issue that they have.

It’s not that I’m saying don’t eat vegetables or that cauliflower rice is bad for everybody, I just want people to be aware that if they’re making these really big changes to their diet and suddenly eating tons of vegetables that they weren’t eating before, you may find that you’re developing gut symptoms that maybe were dormant or weren’t that big of a deal before you switched to Paleo and then all of a sudden they get a lot worse.

Kelsey: Right.

Laura: I just see a lot of people going overboard with their vegetable consumption when they switch over to Paleo. It’s something to consider because I feel like there’s this vegetables are good no matter what and you can eat as many of them as you want. A lot of times people that are trying to lose weight will go overboard with them because they’re lower calorie. I just like people to try to be a little bit more balanced with their vegetable intake and make sure they’re also getting some of those easily digested starches, which for a lot of people with gut symptoms, they actually do well with that that kind of food.

Then there’s a couple of other things that often get significantly increased on Paleo that might cause some gut symptoms. One that I’ve seen cause issues for some of my clients, not the majority or that many, but a few has been eggs. Eggs is something that a lot of times people don’t eat a lot of, and then they learn about Paleo, and then they see that cholesterol in food isn’t bad for them, and maybe they go from eating a couple eggs a week to three a day or something. That for some people can actually trigger digestive symptoms especially if they’re eating lots of egg whites. If you’re doing egg muffins and then having homemade Paleo bread that’s got egg whites in it and all that, you might be getting way more eggs than you would have been doing on your old diet and that could be triggering digestive symptoms too.

Then the last thing that I see that changes pretty substantially when people switch to a Paleo diet is fat consumption. A lot of times again fat is one of those macronutrients that tends to get demonized in the popular western diet recommendations, but on Paleo it’s kind of fat’s good for you, fat gives you energy, fat helps you produce hormones, eat as much fat as you want. Which I don’t know if that is totally accurate either. I don’t know if eating tons and tons of oil and added fats is necessarily great for most people. There are some people I’ve worked with didn’t realize that going from a moderate or even lower fat diet to the super high fat diet is actually triggering some of their gut symptoms especially if they’re having either diarrhea, stomach cramps, that kind of thing. Or maybe if they’re getting super constipated, that could actually be something that’s triggering those changes because either you’re not digesting the fat well or you dropped the carbs so low that you’re not really promoting good gut motility.

I would say those three issues are the more common things that I see when people switch to Paleo and I would hate for somebody to think that Paleo has this perfect halo around it where there’s nothing that could potentially be wrong with it if it’s Paleo approved.

Kelsey: Yeah. I definitely think that that initial switch to Paleo can certainly cause digestive issues for a lot of people, especially that fat thing that you mentioned because especially if you’re making a very sudden transition to Paleo, that spike in fat consumption can be really problematic for some people. That’s something that I’ve certainly seen in practice to be fairly common. Definitely watch out for all those things that Laura just mentioned.

In regards to FODMAPs, same thing there. I agree that that can definitely be much higher on a Paleo diet without you really noticing it. I know that there’s a big…not push I guess, but there’s a lot of information out there about specifically with SIBO using a low FODMOP diet to control those symptoms. And it does work, you will decrease the symptoms that you’re having if you’re on a low FODMAPs diet and you have SIBO. That’s simply because you’re not providing food for the bacteria in your small intestine so you don’t end up getting as much bloating, or gas, or belching, all those symptoms that really go along with a SIBO infection.

But at the end of the day, that is not a treatment for SIBO. We’ve had a whole podcast on this so I won’t go too much into detail there. But just know that for any diet, unless you are staying away from a food that you are allergic to or sensitive to and that is root cause of what is causing you to have digestive symptoms in the first place, no diet is going to be treatment because you cannot treat an infection with diet unless it’s an elemental diet. An elemental diet is just basically a diet that is completely broken down already. You typically would take this as a powdered supplement and you would replace food with this supplement for usually a couple weeks. It’s not a long term thing. It’s more like how long you would take antibiotics for. That’s the only type of diet that has actually been shown to really make any sort of difference on bacterial counts. But otherwise, diet really cannot be considered any kind of treatment for a gut infection.

My approach with diet is generally to not change it a whole lot when there’s an infection before we have gone through treatment. Actually let me change that statement a little bit. I will if somebody’s got really bad symptoms and we’ve maybe put in the test results but we’re just waiting to get those back, or waiting for them to get a prescription from their doctor, there can be a month-ish amount of time where we’re just kind of in this waiting period and somebody may have pretty bad symptoms that are interfering with their life. In that case I will sometimes recommend a low FODMAP diet or kind of an elimination diet if they haven’t done that before because I do think that an elimination diet can definitely be helpful to just lower inflammation, lower irritation in the diet. If you’re eating a ton of FODMAPs, lowering the amount of FODMAPS that you’re eating so you can prevent some of those more common symptoms related to gas production.

I think a definitely a place for an elimination diet and it’s something I do include in my program because like I said, there is a place for that, but you can’t use diet as treatment. I think that’s really the takeaway here is that it is so important that people understand that because that’s where a lot of people waste a lot of time, they waste basically effort that they could have spent elsewhere on getting on the correct treatment, and it doesn’t help. It might cover up symptoms for a little bit, but it does not heal or treat the underlying infection. As soon as somebody brings those foods back, so if they did an elimination diet and they start adding foods back in without actually treating the infection, or at least at the same time treating that infection, those symptoms are just going to come right back and it’s not going to make a whole lot of difference.

You really just need to remember that you cannot treat any kind of gut infection with diet. Nothing, you can’t do it. It doesn’t happen. Just remember that, it’s so important. I literally feel like I can never say that enough because I can’t tell you how many people come to me in my practice saying I’ve tried everything to deal with my gut infection, and I’ve tried this diet, and that diet, and that diet, and all this other stuff and nothing works. I’m like well, it’s because you’re not actually treating your infection. You’re just basically covering up the symptoms.

Laura: Mm hmm. Mic drop.

Kelsey: The end, you guys. That’s all you need to know. But honestly, that is a really important note that if I could have a PSA to the world right now, I think that might be it.

Laura: Well I think one other thing we wanted to talk about, well I guess not one, there’s two other things real quick that we wanted to mention with this person’s question. Since again, we don’t know what when she says for those who already eat healthy and know big things like diet, sleep, and stress management, it’s like how much somebody actually knows isn’t super clear. Sometimes people can think that they know things and then when you actually start asking them questions, you realize that maybe they read the wrong information or just have the wrong ideas about certain things. Again, we’re not sure if this is stuff that this person has already thought about, but there are some supplements that could be helpful for treating the condition as opposed to just managing the symptoms. Do you want to talk about that a little, Kelsey?

Kelsey: Yeah, sure. I mean the most obvious thing here is antimicrobials like we’ve been talking about. Those can be an alternative to antibiotics either if antibiotics don’t work or if somebody wants to just start with antimicrobials and see if that treats their infection adequately without having to go to antibiotics.

There’s nothing wrong with doing either one. Antibiotics are great, they work wonderfully for SIBO and other types of infections. Same thing with antimicrobials, they work great a lot of the time. But especially with SIBO, we’ve done kind of a little bit more research on this. We’ve kind of seen that essentially some people don’t respond best to one or the other. Some people are going to do better with antibiotics and some people are going to do better with antimicrobials. We don’t really know why that is necessarily or how to identify what kind of people will do better with one or the other.

In my practice, I tend to get people who are maybe a little bit more interested in antimicrobials which is why they come to me in the first place. But I do get a fair amount of people who know that they might just want to go straight to antibiotics and they just need to have somebody walk them through that process like I was talking about before, like how do I talk to my doctor about this, I just feel totally not equipped to have this conversation or know what to say, or anything like that. You can definitely do either. But in terms of supplements, antimicrobials would be it. That’s things like oregano oil, berberine, garlic. There’s a whole host of them really that can help to kill bacteria. Those are some of the most common ones that are used for SIBO and other kinds of infections.

In terms of those antimicrobials, actually you can have SIBO or even have another type of infection. It’s more of a standardized approach actually with an antimicrobial protocol regardless of what type of infection you have. The antimicrobials that you might use for SIBO are generally also going to be effective for dysbiosis of the large intestine. That just means an imbalance of good and bad bacteria, so you maybe have too much bad bacteria growing in your large intestine and not enough good bacteria. It works really well if you’re actually not sure what kind of infection you might have but there seems to be something going on.

This goes back a little bit to the testing piece where sometimes people can’t get the testing. I’ve had other people in other countries who just simply can’t get the testing but they’re having all these symptoms and I feel confident enough that an antimicrobial protocol is really, really safe. There’s no real detriment to doing a short term antimicrobial protocol even if we’re not entirely sure what’s going on. I’ll give them an antimicrobial protocol and it tends to work really well. That’s what I have included in my program. Like I was talking about before, you can do that whether you have testing or not, though I recommend getting the testing if you can.

Those are definitely something that of course in terms of supplements can be very, very helpful because you’re actually killing that bacteria which is what our aim is to do. Everything on top of that is going to help the healing process. I would say actually prebiotics are the only exception where if you have dysbiosis, sometimes you may not even need to do an antimicrobial protocol and you just can take prebiotics which help to feed good bacteria and that will of course increase the counts of good bacteria in your microbiome. Often times just by doing that, it will kind of help to kick out the bad bacteria that may be overgrowing. You can kind of think of your gut as a parking lot where there’s only a certain amount of spaces. If you start to build up the amount of good bacteria and you can take those spaces up that were previously occupied by bad bacteria and kind of kick them out. That can be a good way to essentially treat dysbiosis just with prebiotics, though often times it’s a good idea to kind of combine antimicrobials and prebiotics for dysbiosis. That’s the only other thing that I would say really treats any sort of infection itself.

Another I like to use though is demulcent herbs like marshmallow root, slippery elm, or DGL. Those things deal with the inflammation and kind of damaged, irritated tissue that can come about as the result of having some sort of infection. But it’s not going to go away completely of course unless you actually get rid of the underlying cause that makes you have that inflamed tissue in the first place. Yes, you can treat the inflamed tissue with demulcent herbs and it’ll go away temporarily, but if you still have something that can cause inflammation like a gut infection, it’s just going to come back again. You kind of need to do both things. You need to get rid of the infection that is causing the inflammation and then to treat whatever inflamed tissue is already there and then it won’t come back again. That’s another thing that I use in terms of supplements. I’m trying to think if there’s anything else.

Laura: I think what’s important that is coming up in this podcast is that there’s not ever going to be one single thing that’s going to fix everything.

Kelsey: Right.

Laura: I don’t think this person asking the question feels that way and certainly she or he, I feel like it was a she, but it sounds like she’s aware that it’s not just one thing that’s going to make all the difference. But I feel like there a couple of major things to focus on that can make a really big difference. If you’re just looking at just diet as fixing something, it’s not necessarily going to work. If you’re looking at just antimicrobials and not really looking at diet or other support supplements, then that might not really work. Even though we’ve talked about testing and treatment as being super important, it is important to also support all this with a good diet and lifestyle that actually helps your gut function optimally. I’m assuming you would agree with that, which is why you’re creating that program.

Kelsey: Yes. Absolutely. I wish this stuff was easier than it was because then it would be more commonly used. I think honestly, antimicrobials and antibiotics are the closest thing we have to one single thing that would really fix a lot of stuff. You could certainly just do an antimicrobial protocol or antibiotics and it probably would fix a lot of your problems. But I think just kind of focusing on those other symptoms that come about because you have an infection and using supplements or diet to kind of help support those systems and heal anything that was affected because of the infection, it just makes those symptoms that you developed because of an infection go away faster and that of course is great in terms of life quality or quality of life, just how you feel in general and being able to get back to normal a little bit faster.

I definitely think there’s a role for all of this other stuff. Oftentimes you want to make sure of course that if you have an infection in the first place, you don’t get that infection again. Oftentimes that is related to lifestyle stuff or diet that was kind reinforcing you getting some sort of infection. That’s where I think those other pieces can come into play a lot. You need to pay attention to those other things to help prevent a reoccurrence. Especially for something like SIBO, reoccurrences are a really, really common.   One you get rid of it in the first place, then you can focus on really making sure that it doesn’t come back.

Laura: I feel like we could do….I almost feel like we have done a podcast about that.

Kelsey: I know.

Laura: I’m thinking now we’ve done one about preventing SIBO reoccurrence. But there’s things that would help prevent reoccurrence that may not be what’s going to going to fix the problem. Just mentioning immune function, I always think of micronutrients as being a super important factor there.

Kelsey: Mm hmm.

Laura: Even if having a really micronutrient dense diet isn’t going to cure any sort of bacterial infection, it will help make sure your immune system can keep any lingering overgrowth or prevent any sort of reoccurrence of that infection down the road. Because sometimes these antimicrobial protocols will kill off let’s say 90% of the problematic bacteria, but if you still have 10% there, then whatever caused that overgrowth in the first place could easily just trigger it again.

Kelsey: Right.

Laura: You want to make sure that you’re doing what you need to do to support your body’s ability to keep that infection from reoccurring.

Kelsey: Yeah.

Laura: I feel like that could be its own show if we haven’t already done that.

Kelsey: I know. It definitely could be. I do feel like we’ve done that, but maybe we should look into that. If we haven’t, we could definitely do one on it. But you just reminded me of another supplement that I commonly use with a lot of different digestive conditions, and that’s digestive enzymes and/or hydrochloric acid. That’s something that specifically with SIBO a lot of times that production of digestive enzymes and hydrochloric acid can be down regulated because of having an infection and all the inflammation that goes along with that.

Giving somebody some digestive enzymes to help kind of digest things better, get it through their system a little bit easier, that can help prevent a reoccurrence because food isn’t just sitting there kind of being fermented upon.  A lot of times we think it’s some of that pressure from getting gas in there, some other changes that happen as a result of not basically moving food through at a normal pace or digesting food thoroughly, we feel like that can kind of help that translocation of bacteria from the large intestine to the small intestine which we think is kind of what starts that process of developing SIBO.

Digestive enzymes can be a really good thing to include not only just during a treatment protocol, but also afterwards to just help the body a little bit while it gets back to its normal state. Because if you deal with an infection, you treat an infection, it goes away, but maybe you’ve had that infection for a really long time, you’re body does not just immediately go back to normal. It takes a little of time for all the systems that have been affected by this infection and the inflammation that comes about as a result of that to really kind of figure out what’s going on now that there’s no infection there, they’re not dealing with all this inflammation, and to get back to normal. Things like digestive enzymes or hydrochloric acid can be really useful in that transitional period.

Laura: Great. Then we had one last topic we wanted to discuss. I feel like these digestive topics always go way longer than we expect.

Kelsey: Yes.

Laura: But we wanted to talk a little bit about stress, which again could probably be its own show.

Kelsey: Yeah. This person in their question did mention, what can we do beyond the big things like diet, sleep, and stress management? Obviously they know that stress management is important in digestive disease, but what I will say about that is that I think it’s really easy to kind of throw that it’s not all in the head idea out there and just think that well it can’t all just be stress related. If I fix my stress issues, I don’t think everything would heal itself. Yes, that’s probably true, but you do need to realize that your brain and gut are really closely connected. While stress may not be the ultimate kind of fix for any sort of digestive condition like we said, you really do need to actually treat any infection you have, it could be part of the reason of why you developed it in the first place and it could make you develop it again in the future.

I think it’s really important that you realize the role that stress plays in digestive disease. To me the easiest way to explain that is that we have two different kind of response systems. We have this fight or flight response, which I’m sure everybody has heard of. And then we have the opposite, which is the rest and digest response. If you think about it, when you’re stressed out, I kind of like to use this example of if you were being chased by some predator in the wild, so you get that fight or flight response. Your body is either going to fight back or it’s going to run away. What happens when that system goes into play is that blood is taken away from areas like the digestive tract and is pushed towards your muscles and you brain because of course you maybe want to fight, you have to use your muscles, or you want to run away so you have to use your muscles, and your bring needs to be on high alert. It kind of takes all of the energy in a sense away from your digestive tract. It just slows down or doesn’t do its job, which is to digest our food, when we’re in fight or flight mode.

That’s the opposite of course when we’re in rest and digest mode, which is why it’s called that, because when we are in that mode, our blood goes to areas that are more about long term health and not just acute immediate survival, so that includes digestion. The response there is to kind of help get things moving again, you start to actually break down food, it doesn’t just sit there until waiting for the next time you get into rest and digest mode.

I think it’s really important to remember that because a lot of us are very stressed when we tend to go eat a meal. Either we’re doing work, or we’re just kind of distracted, we might be watching TV or something. While that doesn’t feel inherently stressful, your brain just doesn’t think of it as complete rest or that it’s in that rest and digest mode. It’s really important that you actually sit down to take a meal. Meals should be a relaxing experience. I often recommend that people actually take some deep breaths before they start eating. Put your food in front of you, sit down, and take some deep breaths. This helps actually because you breathe in the smells of your food too which stimulates the production of digestive enzymes and hydrochloric acid which help you to break down your food. Just kind of give yourself a minute to get into that rest and digest mode so that when you’re eating, once you actually start putting food into your digestive tract, your body is a little bit more prepared to take that food, to break it down appropriately, to absorb the nutrients, and then to eliminate anything it doesn’t need.

If you are in that fight or flight mode when you try to eat food, the whole system just does not work as well. Like I said before, it can really lead you to either develop some kind of infection or just feel like your food isn’t digested properly. Or if you’ve cleared an infection already, it may make it more likely that you’ll get it again in the future.

Laura: Yeah. I remember speaking to one client recently about how she was having some indigestion during her meal and she was hoping that we could figure out if there was a certain food causing it. I remember I asked her about how long she took to eat, and if she was sitting down, if she was really thoroughly chewing, and all that. I challenged her to set a timer for 20 minutes for her meals and see how that affected her digestion. She emailed me the next day and was like, yep, that was it because it basically completely fixed the problem.

It’s just kind of interesting because I think a lot of people will say my digestion is not working, it must be because I’m eating something that’s bad, or I must have a gut infection, or something. It really can sometimes be just as simple as that you’re eating your food way too fast to have good digestion.

Kelsey: Mm hmm.

Laura: Which of course could potentially down the road lead to a gut infection, but in the short term you definitely want to make sure that that’s not the main issue because it’s a simple fix. If you’re just standing up in the kitchen eating your meal in front of the TV or something, it’s like that is going to make anyone not digest their food well let alone someone that has any sort of gut issue.

Kelsey: Mm hmm.

Laura: I think that’s a very underappreciated strategy for dealing with any sort of digestive distress during meals especially if it’s something that you developed recently and it’s not something that you’ve dealt with for a long time. Because sometimes you really can just have a moment where stress is high or you’re really busy for some reason and you’re digestive system just responds poorly.

Kelsey: Mm hmm.

Laura: Hopefully I think that covers a lot of what we were talking about.

Kelsey: I know.

Laura: But I mean the fact that we’ve talked about this so many times I think really identifies the need for a comprehensive program. So I’m glad you’re putting one together, Kelsey, because I think that will be really helpful for people to have all this information in one place and have some really practical ways applying of these guidelines to what they’re doing currently since we know that there’s a lot of people out there that feel like they’re doing everything right but are still experiencing symptoms. There may be some things that are missing in their current approach.

Kelsey: Yeah, and I feel a little bad answering this question almost because it’s such a big question and I feel like this person wanted a very simple answer. Unfortunately, I do kind of feel like that it deserves a lot of time to talk about this stuff. It can be simple, but you need to sort of work through each thing in the right order and kind of really put all these things into practice to make a big difference.

Like you said Laura, that’s exactly why I’m making a program about this stuff because I get that not everybody can work with a functional medicine practitioner or a well-trained RD that really understands this stuff. Either it’s out of the budget or they just don’t have anybody in their area. That’s why I decided to make a program like this to really go over everything that you would need to know, everything that you would to implement to start to feel better. There is that piece of actual treatment whether that’s antibiotic or antimicrobial, and so if you do decide that you want to work with a doctor and you want to do the antibiotic route, I even talk about that too and how to go about that when you get these results and you’re just not sure what to do with them, and maybe your doctor isn’t even sure what to do with them either.

This is a really big question and I’m sorry it cannot be a simple answer that we can answer in an hour. I feel like we did a pretty good job in an hour’s podcast to talk about all the really important stuff. But if you guys want to more detailed information or you want an organized program to help you go through this stuff, go ahead and go to my website. We’ll put a link here too for the waitlist for that program. If you are interested, you can get all the information about that when it will release, which I’m not entirely of at the moment. You can potentially be a beta user as well at a discounted price. We’ll put the link here. You guys can feel free to sign up for that. But I hope that in the meantime that this podcast has given you at least some stuff to think about and hopefully some stuff to implement and help you get feeling better.

Laura: Awesome. Well thanks for joining us everybody. We will be back here next week for another listener submitted question. If you want to submit your question to have it answered on the next show, please go to TheAncestralRDs.com, click the contact tab, and you can submit your question that way, and hopefully we’ll be answering that on a future show.  Thanks for joining us and we’ll see you here next week.

Kelsey: Alright. Take care, Laura.

Laura: You too, Kelsey.