3 things that trash your gut (and what you can do about it)

Hello friends!

I’m sitting on my hotel patio in sunny California this morning getting ready to attend the Mindshare Collaborate summit! I had some down time before everything gets rolling and wanted to share a few things that get our tummies into trouble and of course….what the heck we can do about it!

Almost all of my personal clients have SOME sort of gut distress whether it be bloating, constipation, stomach pain or acid reflux. Below are just a few things to consider when experiencing some of these problems!

Stress

YES STRESS!!! I put this point first because of ALL the things we want to address, stress is the one that we most want to overlook. We are busy, we live in a world where we want to go go go, drink all the coffee, and accomplish all the things….but stress is really the underlying problem that contributes to the development of disease, but also our seeming inability to heal once we experience symptoms….

Poor food choices

Well, obviously, you knew that I couldn’t mention tummy troubles without mentioning food. I promote #YOUtrition which means there is no one right diet that works for everyone HOWEVER there is ONE food I get hard core with my clients on and insists that they eliminate 100% and that is wheat/gluten.

The overarching principles that work for everyone are:

Avoid gluten like it’s the plague (it’s soaked in glyphosate which kills your beneficial gut bugs and gluten is inflammatory)

Avoid processed foods as much as possible and when needing something quick, choose foods that technically could be made at home if you had the time or inclination ( always read labels to determine this!)

Limit sugar intake. This might be the hardest right?! 3 things you could incorporate right away that make a big difference:

1. Stop drinking soda ( and don’t switch to diet)

2. Stop drinking latte’s and drink black coffee (I like Foursigmatic) or cold brew with a splash of vanilla almond or coconut milk

3. don’t have sugar in your house. Ever. ( This way if you are going out to eat and want a gf dessert you don’t stress about the sugar - it’s treat! But you also don’t have a bag full of white sugar at home just waiting to be used.

Overuse of Antibiotics, NSAIDS and pharmaceuticals

There is a time and place for all of these, but they are grossly overused in a culture where we seek a quick fix and a pill for every ill instead of putting the time and extra effort in to live a healthy lifestyle, get to the underlying problems causing the symptoms we want to relieve, and prioritize nutritional density like our lives depend on it (which they do by the way) :)

So what can you do about it?

Well, LIMITING your stress, ditching gluten sugar, and processed foods, and being mindful anytime you need to use prescription or over the counter symptoms reliever.

If your’e reading this then chances are you’ve been exposed to gluten, sugar, stress and prescriptions so I want to dig a little deeper into a few more things you can incorporate right away

Probiotics

I encourage everyone to use a quality spore based probiotic like Megaspore! Thats my favorite, and if you would like a recommendation, just shoot me your email and I’m happy to set yup an account for you! After stress, and, well, LIFE, it’s important to make sure we are refueling our guts with the good guys.

I also encourage you to begin incorporating probiotic rich foods like kimchi and sauerkraut on a regular basis! YUM. I love some good sauerkraut next to my meat and veggies!

Soothe and Repair

Beyond feeding our guts the good stuff, we want to make sure that the damaged caused from all our past bad habits (hello Mountain Dew and Oreos!) are healed - a great supplements like GI Repair from Innate response is filled with soothing herbs like marshmallow root, aloe, slipper elm, and include L-Glutamine which helps the cells in your gut lining repair themselves!

Bring in the JOY

Stress relief is about so much more than just becoming ZEN and getting into yoga, meditation and mindfulness. It’s a bout BALANCE which means you also need to create a life you live and include things that make you joyful and happy. Laugh more - spend time with friends, watch silly movies, take a hike and connect to nature, and walk barefoot outside!

What tips have you found helpful? I’d love to hear below! Share this post with a friend you think might find this useful!

My [REAL] experience with fertility preservation

Hi all! It’s been a hot minute sine I’ve blogged but I realized recently that with all the changes in my life the past few months and all the physical ups and downs where I may or may not regularly feel capable of doing live videos, I felt like I needed to make a blogging comeback :)

Sharing my journey with you on social media is something I have chosen for several reasons. First and foremost, I sincerely hope that sharing my experience helps someone else that may be going through something similar in the future but also, it’s somewhat cathartic for me to document my journey and receive support from my awesome online community! So thank you!!!

Many of you already know that in February 2019 I was diagnosed with Stage 1A nodular sclerosis Hodgkins lymphoma. that means I have 1 small tumor in my neck. To hear more about my treatment choices and mental preparation you can listen to my recent podcast episode below

Why Fertility Preservation?

Since ABVD (the type of chemotherapy offered for Hodgkins patients) can damage not only your heart and your lugs, but also your ovaries, young women run the risk of going through treatment and coming out infertile. The risk is mild, especially since I am receiving only 1/2 the national standard of treatment since my cancer has NOT spread and I have no symptoms ( thank you Jesus!). But still, at my age, if I damaged my ovaries I wouldn’t have that much time to do anything about it.

When Patrick and I got together I was pretty firm on the , “I’ve never wanted to birth children, so I hope you’re ok with that” front. But after 7 years of soulmate-ness :D and 6 years of marriage, I was softening to the idea of having a mini us. In fact, we were beginning to discuss the reality of even “giving it a go” this year. Just before I got diagnosed….

So when we found out that treatment could ruin our chances, I chose to get fertility preservation treatment which is basically the first half of IVF where we stimulate my ovaries and then harvest and freeze my eggs for what I call my future maybe babies.

What was the process like?

Expensive, painful, and….dare I say it….not worth it? ouch. I know that a lot of women out there live and breathe for the possibility of having children, but I haven’t and honestly, had I known what all this would feel like BEFORE I signed up, I don’t know if I would have followed through. However, everyone’s body is different and many women have had better experiences that I….So what’s it like?

Week 1 and Week 2

The first 2 weeks were easy. In fact, as I took my estrogen tablets (not recommended outside of this supervised and intentional process btw) I felt pretty good! If you have followed my story, I generally have hormones on the low end of the range, so increasing my estrogen felt pretty good to me. The only side effect I experienced was mild nausea that usually went away with a piece of gluten free toast.

Week 3

Week 3 began the hormone shots - I used Gonal-F and Menopur which are luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone. Basically, the goal is to get your follicles as big as possible so that during the retrieval process you have harvested MATURE eggs that can then be used later. They will save all the eggs because they hope that as technology improves they may be able to mature the rest of the eggs some day as well.

ANYWAY!! normally, your body matures about ONE follicle and releases ONE egg/month during ovulation….my body was maturing 24 follicles, the largest of which were about .75-.8 inches!!!

As you can imagine, that meant that the ovaries began swelling. Even so, I wasn’t terribly uncomfortable during this phase. Every evening Patrick would give me two shots in my belly and sometimes they hurt and sometimes they didn’t, but it was never horrible and always went away fairly quickly.

During this week you also being the every other day blood draw and ultrasounds to monitor your your follicle growth and estrogen levels so they can adjust your doses as necessary.

Week 4

The beginning of this week or potentially the end of week 3 you start adjusting your shots. You begin taking a third shot that keeps your body from ovulating because HELLO, after 3 weeks of growing these follicles and thousands of dollars later, the last thing you want is to release all these suckers before harvest day!

Your ultrasounds and blood monitoring continue until they determine which day (out of a 3 day range) your harvest will be. Then, 36 hours prior to your surgery time, you take a “trigger” shot. My harvest time was 7:30am on a Friday morning so my trigger shot was 7:30pm Wednesday. The day in between, no shots!

Retrieval Day

Finally, it was retrieval day. I didn’t know what to expect and was a bit nervous. I had an oops the morning of surgery which almost threw the whole thing off. I drank water!!! I had only written down no FOOD from midnight on, but apparently it was no food OR water….this is because you can spit it up a bit when you are put under for the procedure…which, apparently I did a little. But since everything is time sensitive and I agreed to the risks we proceeded.

When I woke up, I was NOT happy. I was in so much PAIN!!!! Normally, you wake up from something like this you are all loopy, and happily hopped up on some legit pain meds….but no, I was hurting the moment I came to consciousness.

On the plus side, we retrieved 23 eggs, which as I’ve done my research, seems to be a HIGH amount. I’m sort of getting the impression that since I went through this process as a preservation thing and not since I was infertile to begin with, that I had a stronger “output” and my body participated more easily….

Unfortunately, I think because the output was so high, the pain was also….I mean think about this…I had 23-24 eggs growing and the smallest of the follicles may be around .5 inches… in ovaries that are NORMALLY the size of your thumb…..thats a lot of stretching! Then to have a hollow needle shoved up your hooha to retrieve them all….well, inflammation followed.

The recovery

Friday (April 12th) I was in excrutiating pain. The pain was transferring beyond my ovaries and into other parts of my body (called referred pain) like my back and I was convinced I was having kidney problems haha. Patrick ran to get the legit pain prescription and the first half of the day we were a bit behind the curve. I tried to take 2 and wait the full 4 hours, but then I ended up throwing up and in excruciating pain again before the next round sunk in and I fell back asleep. After that, I took smaller doses ( 1 tab instead of 2) but more frequently so that the pain medication stayed in my system. Once we figured that system out, I felt ok after about 2:30pm and the rest of the day was spent sleeping and watching Netflix.

I was told to expect a little bit of pain - like period pain the day of, and basically over the next 3 days start going back to normal. I think I had a stronger reaction than normal because day 1 was completely and utter misery. Day 2 and 3 were better only in the sense that the excruciating pain was gone and I didn’t have to live in bed.

Days 2-3 (Sat/Sun) there was extreme bloating all throughout my abdomen making it difficult to eat regular food ( am I hungry? and I not hungry? the pressure was messing everything up). In addition to the pressure and swelling in my abdomen, I had pain and aches all throughout my lower abdomen as well. Imagine wearing a belt of pain filled with rocks that shift around…that’s sort of what it felt like. Walking was doable, but also difficult. Getting up in to bed or folding forward in any way was uncomfortable. Going to the bathroom was a whole other story….squeezing your abdomen to urinate becomes an unpleasant experience and you will most likely become constipated because of all the hormones and pain medication so there’s an additional source of pressure and discomfort in the very area you don’t want it!

I would HIGHLY recommend getting ahead on water and a natural laxative like Senokot the day BEFORE surgery so you don’t get behind because those little things make a HUGE difference during recovery. Day 3 I even did a water enema in addition to the Senokot I had been using because I really needed that to be taken care of!!! Do this with caution however because you may still be highly inflamed and so monitor the amount of water you use….basically….don’t push it. Just use enough to get things flushed out and then maybe do it once or twice depending on how you are feeling.

Occasionally it’s also difficult to breath from all the swelling and pressure in your abdominal area so adjusting to take deep breathes and trying not to breath too far down into your diaphragm where all the inflammation is at, is a real consideration for a few days.

Day 4 - FINALLY I hit a turning points! I’m experience less bloating and the scale began to go down. I didn’t mention it earlier, but during the tail end of the hormone treatments and on through the egg retrieval process the scale began to creep up. It hit a high point a few days after the retrieval because of inflammation and water retention but for me, on day 4, it began to go back down…. yay! I’m hoping that means that the bloating, inflammation and the sale will continue to go down from here on out!

Today there is still bloating and a fanny pack of discomfort, but much more manageable than any of the days prior! I’m also back to eating normally since the past few days it was most gluten free bread or crackers bone broth, chocolate pudding etc… Yesterday (Sunday) we celebrated Keegans birthday and the birthday lunch was the most normal food/meal I had eaten all at once since the surgery.

Results

As I mentioned, they successfully retrieved 23 eggs but i’m unsure how many were mature. I believe that if I need to pursue the second half of this process in the future the worst is definitely behind me. Is it worth it? OY. Like I said, I don’t know. There’s nothing I can do about it now, but I certainly didn’t expect to be an invalid for 3-4 days post retrieval and experience the level of discomfort I have. Personally, it’s a little frustrating because I know that chemo will be it’s own process and may bring with it a whole new set of pain and side effects…so had I know this would be so painful - would I have chosen it? Not sure. But I did, and now we have a safety net which is a good thing.

I wanted to share this because when I was researching what to expect there aren't a lot of stories sharing the after care experience being as intense as it was for me. Perhaps I’m a special flower that just really experienced the max levels of pain and thats unusual, but if it’s NOT, and you choose to go this route, I want you to be fully prepared mentally!!! Because if this IS your dream, it’s only a few days and you can definitely do it :)

Top tips

I always like to share anything I can through my experiences to help you avoid mistakes I make and and/or use tools that I used that did help!! Here are some tips if YOU are considering going through this process.

1) Definitely eat a healthy diet, there was one week where I really craved more carbs and sugar but other than that I stuck to my usual nutrition! Focus on veggies water, and healthy fats to support your fertility process!

2) Are you on the fence about fertility treatment? there are lots of other things too try first including changing your diet and lifestyle! In fact, several of my personal clients have “accidentally” become pregnant after working together when previously it had been more difficult. Personally, had cancer not forced my hand, I wouldn’t have chosen this for myself. I spent several years working on my hormones and balancing them naturally! I even eliminated my PMS completely and regulated my cycled to 28 days! There are lots and lots and lots of books and resources out there so I would’t recommend IVF as your FIRST step…but sometimes it’s a necessary step so don’t let yourself feel guilty if it IS something you need to go through either!

3) Vitamins. Things like curcumin, fish oil, multi vitamin and protbiotics are beneficial almost always, but certainly when you are trying to keep your inflammation low and your digestion regular!! I was really happy that I didn’t experience a lot of discomfort BEFORE the procedure. They kept indicating that I would, but I didn’t!

4) Definitely over hydrate as soon as you begin to take the medicines. When I started taking the shots I didn’t realize you could get dehydrated and I got behind at first. Staying up on your water intake REALLY helps - be proactive!!!

5) Be aware of the constipation reality. It’s not helpful and it’s not fun. Consider starting the day before retrieval with a natural laxative and get as much water in you as possible prior to the surgery cut off/ fasting time!!

6) Regardless of how natural or healthy you are, do NOT shy away from the real pain meds if you need them. They exist for times like this and will help you get through the first 24-48 hours!!!!

7) Remember- you CAN do this, Your body is designed to do amazing things, and it will recover and heal, and you can always assist it in detoxing this process as well. Remember to build up a really great support team behind you - that makes the BIGGEST difference!!!

8) Speaking of support teams - get a family member or friend to make dinner the night of the surgery. You may be drinking liquids and downing bone broth, but it’s extra helpful for your family to have some extra food that you don’t have to stress about!!!

9) And finally, when you ARE taking lots of NSAIDS or pain RXs, consider taking some supplements to protect your tummy and gut lining, I, again, got a little behind on this day 1 and could start to tell that my tummy wasn’t happy about it. Since then I’ve been careful abbot taking GI Response which is a poster supplement you blend with water that contains L Glutamin which repairs your epithelial cells, and skipper elm, marshmallow root etc that help soothe and heal as well.

Have you been through IVF???

What was YOUR experience??? Share below!

My journey with H Pylori

Hey Hey Diva Friends!!!!

WOW! This past month has been a roller coaster. Time is just flying by and I can't believe it's almost spring already. Wasn't yesterday NYE?? :)

Anywho - I've been very upfront and honest with you about my health journey over the past year or....so I thought! I realized recently that while I chatted with my newsletter VIPS and talk extensively with my personal clients about it I never created a post about my H Pylori experience....so here we go!

To learn about my food sensitivities testing click here

In July 2017 I got my stool test back. Good news - there was only one thing that showed up. Bad news, it was H Pylori. 

What is H Pylori?

It's a spiral shaped bacteria found in the cell lining of the stomach. You can acquire it from eating uncooked foods, drinking impure water, and saliva. Most likely if you have it your spouse does too. Your likelihood of infection is equal to a persons age whether they are symptomatic or not.

Over 50% of the population has

H. Pylori and doesn't know it!

How the heck do you have a bacteria overgrowth and not know? Well, sometimes the symptoms can go unnoticed. Or if you do notice them, you don't attribute them to the actual problem. 

For example here are some of the symptoms:

• Heartburn/acid reflux

• Upper abdominal pain

• Belching

• Gastritis

• Duodenal/Peptic ulcers

• Carcinoma

• Headaches – migraine

• Constipation

• Nausea

• Acne

• Halitosis

• Undigested food in stool

• Need for digestive enzymes

• Chronic dysfunction at T6-T7 (upper middle spine in between your shoulder

  blades.

• Aches similar to muscle soreness in upper/middle back 

Wow!! So... let's say none of those symptoms worry you a little...

H Pylori causes 90%+ of duodenal ulcers 80% of gastric ulcers and infected people have 2-6x increased risk of gastric cancer.

So, I'd say it's worth treatment right?! Well friends, if you know me, you know I'm pretty hard core. I jumped in and did the whole shebang! Unfortunately, when I retested in Feb 2018 I received this bummer news:

Oh my gosh Kylene, why are you sharing this?! You're a practitioner  - shouldn't you be sharing success stories? Well I'm sharing this because I want to be HONEST with you. Sometimes these buggers are flat out hard to kill. One of the downsides to this particular test is that it doesn't give you a measurement. I've since moved on to using  another test that does which is very helpful. This would allow me to see how much progress I made during the first round of treatment.

Why would it still be there?

So many possible answers so here are a few:

1. Recontamination through toothbrushes, kissing, sharing utensils, toothpaste etc....
2. Severity of the initial imbalance. Like I mentioned above its a bummer I couldn't see the progress level on the test, but ultimately that's information I don't need. If it shows up, there are enough present to take action.
3. I wasn't quite as strict as I could have been round #1. I still did things like drink coffee and splurge on sugar which are things that can feed or create a happy environment for the little suckers.
4. Duration of the imbalance. This may be something I've had for 2 years or it might be something I've had for 10. No way to know! 

What to do? 

Well what the heck do you do now? You already went through the protocol - do you do it again? How do you know it works?

Just like sometimes it takes a few round of antibiotics, or a few DIFFERENT antibiotics to kill a particularly difficult bacteria or viral infection, the same is true when using herbal remedies. In fact, potent herbal remedies taken over a longer period of time have been shown to be more effective than short term antibiotics for gut dysbiosis and imbalances. This can be due to the fact that antibiotics wipe out the good bacteria as well as the bad, leaving you susceptible for another negative bacterial overgrowth. Antibiotics, birth control, prescriptions and NSAIDS have all been shown to cause gut imbalance and inflammation as well so that's not a route I'm willing to go.

The second round of my protocol did change slightly. We tweaked a few things and I doubled down on details like replacing my toothbrush regularly, watching my sugar, and ditching coffee until I get the all clear. Do I think it's working? Absolutely - whenever I'm on the protocol I feel AMAZING. I basically don't get sick and if I do it's short lived and easily overcome. I have tons of energy, and well....I just generally feel better.

I'm still in the middle of round two and will move on to the upgraded testing for my follow up that will allow me to see levels should the H Pylori still be present. I wanted to share this with you because it's a TRUTH that the healthy answer isn't always easy. it just isn't.  It costs money and it takes time to do things the more natural way. But is it worth it?! 100% 

Interested in weekly updates? Sign up for my newsletter here!

Ready to start working on YOUR gut? Jump into my 8 week gut health program where I ease you in slowly with weekly challenges, tons of information, questions and answer sessions with me, recipes, detox tools, and upgraded testing (optional)! CLick "Get Gutsy With me" at the top of this page or email me at: KyleneT@thetinyfitdiva.com to get started - you only have a few days left to register!!!!!

Want to get tested yourself? Shoot me an email so we can set up our free 30 minute consultation to find out what's right for you :)

Soup your way to a healthier gut!

Hey hey Diva friends! Let's talk about soup and gut health....sounds good right? What is easier than indulging in some delicious soup in this cold weather?

Soup certainly doesn’t sound like any special life changing superfood. It’s soup, you’ve eaten it all your life. Yet soup has massive potential that often gets hidden behind nasty preservatives and less than ideal flavoring agents. The true beauty and nourishment happens with whole food ingredients and high quality homemade bone broth.

This is where the magic happens.

 

A daily soup made from local, seasonal ingredients and high-quality broth is better than any superfood or supplement out there. It’s a wholesome way to nourish your skin, immune system, joints, digestion and gut health. 

Homemade bone broth is rich in natural gelatin which is anti-aging and great for rebuilding  damaged intestinal lining. Making bone broth from scratch is as easy as throwing your leftover chicken carcass in a large pot of water and letting it simmer for 24 hours. This gets all the good stuff out of the bones and into the liquid.

Patrick makes an amazing broth with a few simple ingredients:

• chicken carcass
• onion
• carrots
• celery
• poultry spices ( rosemary/sage/thyme)
• salt

1. Place all ingredients in the crockpot, fill it up with water (purified!) and let it simmer for 24-48 hours. Use this as the broth base for any soup recipe, or simply enjoy a warm cup like coffee. 1-2x/day.

Note* let your broth cool after you have strained it (not TOO long as bacteria will grow quickly) and scoop off the fat layer that settles on top. The more fat the more healthy collagen is in your broth! Keep frozen or in the fridge for up to 5 days. If my broth is in the fridge 5-6 days or longer I simply make sure to boil it again before drinking.

Go to your local farmer’s market and get the freshest seasonal produce you can find. In the summer you may enjoy fresh garlic, beets and carrot in a homemade stock and blending with fresh dill. Served cold on a hot day with a drizzle of plain yogurt, this soup is refreshingly tangy and packed with nutrients.

In the Fall and Winter, soups made with root vegetables and hearty herbs like sage and rosemary are ideal. It’s all about sourcing local, pesticide-free vegetables for the most nutrient dense soups. Nothing you can buy from the store compares to what you can make at home with relatively little effort. 

The flavor base of every good soup should be sauteed onions, garlic and herbs. This is what all those flavor packs are trying to emulate. It doesn’t take long to cut up an onion and throw it in a hot pan with some olive oil, but it makes all the difference.

Add all ingredients to your blender and process until super smooth. Enjoy!!

If you’re seriously interested in getting healthy, restoring your digestion and boosting your energy then check out my new comprehensive program Get Gutsy With Me launching January 15th, 2018! 

In the program you get a ton of delicious satisfying recipes as well as strategies that will help rebuild your intestinal flora.

Not sure you're ready for all that?! Join me on my Facebook page Stop Dieting and Live your Life! where I’ll be sharing more information, tips and recipes to help you live a happier, healthier life. PLUS you'll receive free access to my Holiday Survival Guide along with extra recipes and support to navigate this holiday season with ease :)

Share YOUR favorite soup below!

bye for now!

All about food sensitivities and getting tested...

Hey Hey there Diva friends!! 

Many of you may have seen my recent video talking about my MRT blood test results that showed me several SURPRISING food sensitivities that I have....if not keep reading! (or watch here-->)

"Whyyyyyyy??", "Are you KIDDING me?", "I can't believe I have a reaction to that""waaaahhh that's my favorite." Were just a few thoughts that ran through my mind as I read my results. But THEN it gave me hope. Hope that this is another piece to my puzzle of health...a missing link so to speak that can take me a few steps closer to where I want to be. Let me explain why...

When you are ingesting food that your body then has a negative reaction (sensitivity) to, this causes inflammation and a cascade of stress inside your body whether you can recognize it or not! The thing about food sensitivities is....you often don't "see" them. We are so used to looking at the dramatic examples with anaphylactic shock, hyves, swelling, etc....the only difference with a food sensitivity is it's you can't SEE it, so we often don't put 2 and 2 together, and/or we write it off as unimportant.

See how eating foods you are sensitive to can affect your gut here

For example...since it's not life threatening, shows up within DAYS instead of MINUTES, and can be related to what we consider "normal" things like gas, bloating, a day of bad poop, acne, etc....we often don't think about it or recognize the connection....but long term these "little" sensitivities can affect your hormone balance, immune system and potential, or susceptibility, for chronic disease!

What's even CRAZIER is that the most seemingly benign foods can be causing this which, in my case, is EXACTLY what was happening.... 

Sign up for weekly news, recipes, and tips here!

This (potentially) explains SO MUCH! I had already eliminated the major common allergens - wheat and dairy. I was even pretty low on my consumption of grains and beans! But...after all that, I would still have some issues of bloating, fatigue, etc.... now granted, I've come a long way from the debilitating stomach pains, the kill me now PMS cramps that lasted for HOURS at a time and render me completely useless for the day, the rosacea on my face etc etc.... BUT even with all those amazing improvements I'm on a journey and want to see HOW healthy I can be! Feeling fatigued at the most inopportune times, struggling with getting my hormones back to a desired level.... those are things I am determined to solve...These things brought me to my FDN certification which in turn brought me to the MRT food sensitivities testing and I'm happy it did.

Come to find out, food I NEVER would have considered as being reactive are top on my list when I got the results back. Chicken, carrots, cinnamon, vanilla,  blueberries, and avocado were all reactive foods (as were several others but these ones really hurt!). These are foods I eat not just regularly but weekly if not DAILY!!! Even MANY times a day!!! No WONDER I still have some recurring issues... my goodness!

So then - that gives me HOPE! While I have to eliminate everything on my reactive list (including BANANAS and mint!) for 90 days, I also expect to see some great results from that.

Another thing to keep in mind with food sensitivities is that they aren't always forever. When I get retested in 3 months or so, there is the potential that after fully eliminating the irritants and adding some things into my lifestyle and diet to HEAL my gut, the list may be much smaller. That's the goal!

One major reason I think EVERYONE should get this test is because of how HIDDEN these stressors can be! It's tough to detect on your own because not every sensitivity you have would be an obvious or even common one (hello chicken?!), so getting tested gives you a clear path forward.

It's not necessarily an easy thing to do - the test is an investment and if you aren't willing to put in the work I wouldn't waste the money. You HAVE to be willing to go through a mental transformation as well as a physical one because trust me - it can be overwhelming at first. But this I know. You CAN do it, and if you're willing to, I can help you get through it! 

If you are interested in getting this test done make sure to send me an e-mail! Or go to my FDNP link at the top of the page to set up your FREE 30 minute discovery call to find out if working together is the right choice for you! 

I'm looking forward to helping YOU reach YOUR optimum health goals too!

Bye for now!

If you didn't see my video check it out here! See my reaction, my results, and my PLAN!

3 Steps to Healing your Gut

Hey there Diva friends! Kylene here, enjoying this BEAUTIFUL day and thinking about all the wonderful things I want to share with you in the coming months....but today I'd like to talk about something I'm SUPER passionate about and that's gut health!

Have you ever wondered WHY everyone is suddenly getting food sensitivities, IBS, bloating, indigestion, acid reflux, celiac etc....? Why are autoimmune diseases becoming more and more prominent? Why are imodium, Ex-Lax, gas-x and tums part of every American's medicine cabinet? Why does everyone seem to have a sensitivity to SOMETHING?

Or maybe you haven't wondered...you just think that these things are part of life, aging, eating rich foods and that it's "normal".... 

A few years ago I had INTENSE stomach pains. So bad in fact that I had to leave work several times because I would be doubled over on my desk incapable of doing anything productive. I remember one specific instance where I went home and took everything available in the medicine cabinet aka excedrin, pepto bismol, tums, ibuprofin....WHATEVER could help the pain go away. But nothing seemed to work!

This happened enough times that I was pretty concerned and thought "could I have an ulcer?""is it stress?" "What could this be?" I had nowhere near the understanding of nutrition and gut health that I do today, but somewhere in my mind I connected that maybe it had something to do with what I was eating....or rather drinking....so I cut out soda for YEARS. Thankfully after that the pain pretty much went away. That isn't to say that everything ELSE I was eating was healthy....but this is what I have found out. Our bodies are INCREDIBLE at healing themselves... and what I now believe I was struggling with is something called gut permeability. The soda exacerbated my already irritated gut lining, and removing it didn't necessarily HEAL it, but at least it stopped the pain.

What the heck is gut permeability?

So glad you asked :) Gut permeability is the fancy term for what is commonly referred to as "leaky gut". And that my friends is EXACTLY what it sounds like.

See these little guys? These are the little villi, or teeny tiny hairs, that line your small intestine! They are coated by even tinier hairs! These villi keep things moving in your gut - they wave around and protect your gut lining, absorb the nutrients you NEED, and keep the bigger and/or bad particles OUT of your blood stream. But what happens when you have leaky gut? These little guys can't do their job. The hairs get separated or damaged and then particles get into your blood steam that aren't meant to be there!!! Depending on the damage, large particles of food can fall in between the villi into the blood stream or if there is significant damage the particles can even be absorbed through them inappropriately.

This of course causes all sorts of irritation, inflammation and food sensitivities!

What Causes Gut Permeability?

Let me back up here for just a second because I just said that gut permeability can cause food sensitivities....but what do you think causes gut permeability in the first place? You guessed it.... food sensitivities! I'll explain:

Step 1) We eat food that causes irritation. Many foods we have been told are "healthy" are the worst culprits! The biggest reason for that is genetic modification - the "food" is no longer in it's created state and cannot be digested properly (an entirely separate blog post!)

Step 2) That food damages the villi and loosens the tight junctions in the gut, lowering our immune system, allowing food particles into the blood stream that shouldn't be there,  and causing symptoms (p.s. symptoms are some of the LAST things to occur NOT the first!) like acid reflux, constipation, indigestion, pain, acne, bloating etc....by the time you feel symptoms, something is going wrong inside!

Step 3) Your gut is inflamed and irritated....because of that, many foods that may normally be fine are now being labeled by your body as irritants! For example: Let's say wheat and dairy (usually the top 2 most common inflammatory foods!) are the actual culprits that started step #1 in your body. Once you are having gut pain, intolerances, belching, etc....your body has probably labeled a few other foods as irritants as well. If at this point you took a food sensitivity test you may be alarmed at the long list of foods that are on it. "Avocado?! Eggs?! No way!  I know these aren't bad for me and there's no way I can be sensitive to them" is what you might think. And in most cases you'd be right! The good news is that once your gut is healed many of those foods can be brought right back in with no problem. Foods that are KNOWN gut disrupters remain gone forever.

So how can I heal my gut?

Step 1

Remove the offensive foods. Whether or not you take a blood test to know the full list of irritants, there are many common offenders that everyone can try at home through a simple elimination diet. An elimination diet should last for approximately 1 month (or longer) and means that you eliminate any food that can cause inflammation, gut damage, or sensitivities. After that time you can go through a guided process of reintroducing those foods one by one into your diet to see how you react to them individually.

The most common irritants are grain (all), wheat (specifically) and dairy (depending on the person this can be all dairy or just low quality dairy). A few less common are legumes, nuts and nightshades (like tomatoes). Sugar is also inflammatory and processed sugar should be avoided.

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Step 2

Step 2 is crucial and step 1 and 2 will not be as successful without each other. While you are removing the foods that cause irritation you also need to bring in foods that can soothe, heal, and repair your gut! 

My top 3 favorites are: Collagen, Bone Broth, and Gelatin. I love to add Collagen to my Shakeology, drink bone broth like coffee (homemade is the best!) and occasionally I'll make homemade jello from the gelatin! You can find a great Jello recipe HERE.

Fermented foods like Sauerkraut and kombucha are also really beneficial to boost your healthy gut bugs and a high quality probiotic is a good choice. A note on fermented foods and probiotics: If you begin taking these and notice bloating afterwards it may indicate some further bacterial issues and require further testing which leads me to step 3...

Step 3

Be willing to get some testing done, work with a practitioner, or coach that is familiar with the process and can help guide you through the elimination diet. Resources, encouragement, and knowing you are not alone can be invaluable! When I work with my clients sometimes they just need to be HEARD. We can laugh that they aren't crazy, and it makes the process more fun to have someone that can support you every step of the way. It's also great to have access to someone you can email and say "hey - I'm going out to eat is this ok?" or, "I'm really craving this right now - any recipes for me". They also find relief in knowing that I do the work of finding good recipes for them so they don't have to google, guess, and experiment!

Interested in working together? Let's chat! Set up a FREE 30 minute discovery call to see if we are the right fit.

Often when you have gut dysfunction you are struggling with several other things like skin issues, fatigue, hormone balance, joint pain, or more....The body is very connected and much of our health begins in the gut....which begins with what we eat! So it's great to work with someone who can guide you, test instead of guessing, encourage you, and help you resolve it from the ROOT cause - not just cover up a symptom!

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Still have questions? E-mail me for a free 30 minute consultation :) 

Here's to your gut health!