Why Your Dysfunctional Gut Is Wrecking Your Hormones And What To Do About It

Wondering why your hormones are all out of whack? Ever feel like you’re maintaining a delicate balancing act, but the scales just can’t stay in place? Well, if that sounds like you, then it’s time to join us as we dive into Dr. Norm Robillard’s fascinating insights—on how an unhealthy gut might be disrupting your hormones. With decades of experience under his belt and countless research studies to back him up, this is one episode on midlife hormone balance that no woman should miss!

 

Norm Robillard, Ph.D., is the founder of Digestive Health Institute and creator of the Fast Tract Diet. He is a strong advocate of natural and integrative solutions for functional gastrointestinal disorders, various forms of gut dysbiosis and related health issues, helping people globally through his consultation practice. The Fast Tract Diet was presented at Digestive Disease Week to give gastroenterologists a science-based treatment option for functional GI disorders and dybioses based on Dr. Norms 3 pillar approach. His award-winning Fast Tract Diet mobile app and Fast Tract Digestion book series make it easy to implement the Fast Tract Diet.

 

In this episode, you'll learn:

• How an unhealthy gut may affect your hormones.

• What Dr. Norm’s 3-pillar approach is and how it could help rebalance hormones.

• The importance of probiotics in maintaining healthy gut flora.

• Why food sensitivities can play a role in hormone health.

• Plus, Dr. Norm shares his top tips for keeping your digestive system functioning optimally!

 

So don’t miss out – join us as we explore why your dysfunctional gut might be wrecking your hormones and what to do about it with our incredible guest, Dr. Norm Robillard! Tune in now—you won’t regret it!

 

Midlife women - let's take back our health and nurture our bodies, together! Join us for this eye-opening episode on why your dysfunctional gut is wrecking your hormones and what you can do about it with Dr. Norm Robillard! Tune in now to learn the secrets of a healthy digestive system and balanced hormones. It's time to start feeling like yourself again!

 

(00:00): “The best doctor gives the least amount of medicine.” - Benjamin Franklin. If your gut is dysfunctional and running you crazy and you think you've got hormone problems, this episode is for you.

(00:13): So the big question is, how do women over 40 like us keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones and our moods, feel sexy and confident, and master midlife? If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself Again. As an ob-gyn, I had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy after 40, in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue, now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results and to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible, natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kyrin Dunston. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast.

(01:06): Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin. Thank you so much for joining me today for this discussion on dysfunctional gut issues. What's a dysfunctional gut? Well, think about your dysfunctional family. You know what I'm talking about, right? Holidays where people get drunk and fight start, or people are disconnected, all the dysfunctions that plague modern families. Well, your gut can be dysfunctional too, and maybe it's not something that you're aware of. What does that mean? How you evaluate it? My guest today is an expert in this and he is going to help you understand clearly how do I know if this is me, how do I get tested, what do I do about it? And really get the big picture and detailed picture on what's important. And we're gonna talk about Benjamin Franklin's quote, the best doctor gives the least medicines, not the most.

(01:57): I know some people who go to the doctor and actually get angry when they don't leave with a prescription. Is that you? I really hope not, but it's very true. A lot of people get angry when they don't get medicines, but you'll be healthier overall when you take fewer or no medicines. They don't really fix the problem, they just mask them. Your gut health and microbiome are essential for your hormonal health. I will tell you why in this episode. So you wanna stay tuned for that. We talk about assessing low stomach acid at the Heidelberg Test. If you're not aware of that, we dive into that and much more. So I'll tell you a little bit about Norm and then we'll get started. Norm Robard is a PhD. He is the founder of Digestive Health Institute and creator of the Fast Track Diet is a strong advocate of natural and integrative solutions for functional gastrointestinal disorders, various forms of gut dysbiosis and related health issues, helping people globally through his consultation practice. The fast track diet was presented at Digestive Disease Week to give gastroenterologists a science-based treatment option for functional GI disorders and dysbiosis based on Dr. Norm's three pillar approach, his award-winning fast track diet, mobile app, and fast track digestion book series make it easy to implement the fast track diet. Welcome Norm Robillard to the

(03:24): Show. Thank you Kyrin. Nice to be here.

(03:26): All the way from Boston, Massachusetts with a distinctive accent. I did live there one summer when I worked at the Harvard School of Pub Public Health doing research and it's such a unique accent that I would pick out anywhere I went in the world. So thank you for representing the Northeast

(03:45): , right? In fact, I've lived in California for 10 years and I came back and I still have the accent ,

(03:52): Right? So let's dive into this very important topic. We can't talk about digestive health enough when it comes to hormonal health. And if you're listening and you're still scratching your head going, Kyrin, I don't know why you talk about poop all the time. This is supposed to be about hormones, . You gotta get the memo that your poop is all about your hormones and your hormones are all about your poop. So there's this interconnection. So what really was your path to becoming so passionate about functional gut disorders? Well, let me back up. Let's start with what are functional gut disorders? I don't even think people are familiar with that term.

(04:32): Yeah, well they should get rid of that term as quickly as possible. It's been around a long time and it doesn't have much meaning now because when that term came up, it was, they couldn't find anything organically wrong with you. But yet you had these i b s type symptoms, bloating, altered bowel habits, gas belching, and so they would think, okay, well everything's working, but you have these symptoms. So it's a functional disorder. But we now know that in many of these cases, really the planes hit the mountain. It's not functional and we know a lot more about what's going on. You know, with the more common use of breath testing. We know that there's often an overgrowth of bacteria in the small intestine and there should be very few microbes in the small intestine. That's where our own critical digestion takes place. So we now know there's overgrowths and there there's been some studies on which exactly which types of bacteria those are.

(05:34): And basically it's our own microbes overgrowing in the small intestine. And newest studies are starting to focus on some of these what they call proteobacteria like e coli and Klebsiella species. But others have been identified as well, also with various functional, what they used to call functional GI issues. They now know that there's alterations in or intestinal bacteria as a whole. So we have these FILA of bacteria and other organisms such as BDIs firm, acutes, actinobacteria and so on. And we know that there's some significant imbalances there in in people that have these conditions. So in other words, we're find as we find out more about them, they're not functional, they're dysfunctional gut health issues. So it, you know, takes 10 years for things to catch up with what's actually happening in terms of nomenclature and the dogma and the literature. Right.

(06:33): I agree. We should call it dysfunctional gut disorders, just like we have. Some of us have dysfunctional families, dysfunctional gut disorders. Exactly. So you mentioned symptoms of ibs. So how would someone self-identify? I could have a dis or now I'm saying I could have a dysfunctional gut disorder or I could have a functional gut disorder. How would they consider that that might be them? 

(06:56): Yeah, well I think that the symptoms of the, kind of the first sign, right? I mean we talked about gas and bloating. You might have a lot of belching or even flatulence, kind of some lower GI gas you might have cramping, reflux is one of those. In fact, acid reflux and I B s are very closely linked. Half the people with IBS have reflux symptoms and half the people with reflux have IBS symptoms. So there's a similar etiology there, but there's other ones, nausea, dehydration, fatigue. Some people don't gain weight or they lose weight. So there's a nutritional component there, which makes sense, right? If you have all of these microbes in your small intestine where, where your vili and the micro viop kind of the, the fibers on top of fiber fibers in all of the surface area in the small intestine, these vili are pretty kind of delicate.

(07:51): And if you have a lot of bacteria in that area and bacteria produce toxins and protease enzymes that can damage the vili and the little enzymes, the brush border enzymes that that radiate out from these microvilli. And so if you don't have those, you won't break down disaccharides, you won't complete the final breakdown of starches. You may not digest and absorb fats well. So the SIBO can cause this mal-absorption that ends up overfeeding these microbes. And when you overfeed these microbes, many of them produce significant amounts of gases. Hydrogen methane, hydrogen sulfide. In fact there was one microbiology study done on these gut bacteria. And if they feed these bacteria essentially one ounce of carbohydrates, right? So some, many of the carbohydrates we absorb into our bloodstream, but many we don't. We take just 30 grams of unabsorbed carbohydrates feed them to, to microbes these gut bacteria.

(08:56): They can produce 10 liters of hydrogen gas. So imagine, whoa, 10 liters of gas in your intestines from one ounce of of unabsorbed carbs. And of course there's a molecular food chain. Some microbes take the hydrogen that one type of bacteria produces and they turn it into methane. In the case of these akea organisms or sulfate reducing bacteria can take the hydrogen and turn it into hydrogen sulfide. So the bottom line is when you're not digesting and absorbing your food efficiently, you're overfeeding these microbes. They produce a lot of these gases and you can end up with a lot of these symptoms. So I think the symptoms to answer your question is the first sign that something's going on. And then you have to really begin to look deeper into what's happening.

(09:43): Right? So just to recap, cuz that was very rich, what you just shared is if you're wondering could I have a functional gut disorder? Basically if you have any of the symptoms that Dr. Norm is talking about, right? The excess belching, indigestion, heartburn, reflux, gassy if you poop less than every time you eat, right? So if you have any degree of constipation, if you have loose stool, hard rabbit pellet stool, you know any symptoms associated with a gastrointestinal tract that wouldn't be diagnosed typically by your regular H M O doctor cuz they're looking for a structural problem or maybe they would diagnose you with reflux, but they're basically gonna give you a drug for it. Can you talk about the pitfalls? Because some people listening are gonna think, oh yeah, I've got reflux, it's no problem. My doctor gave me this proton pump inhibitor and so I'm fine now. I don't have a problem anymore. Dr. Norm. Yeah, what what do you say

(10:45): To that? Yeah, my 18 years of consulting in this field as a consulting microbiologist, I really focus on holistic and dietary and behavioral solutions and perhaps some dietary supplements mostly aimed at improving digestion. Because I recognize that these proton pump inhibitors, for instance, and to a lesser extent H two antagonists, these types of medicines, they basically knock out the ability of your stomach to produce acid. And so when you do reflux and material comes from your stomach and gets up into your esophagus, it might not burn as much. And about half of the people with reflux get symptomatic relief from those types of medicines. Half don't. But the real issue is why are you refluxing? That's what you need to address. Because it's not just acid, it's stomach enzymes, pepin, it can be pancreatic enzymes when they look they find bile, right? Bile is something, it's a caustic molecule.

(11:50): Your liver produces these bile acids stored in your gallbladder, released into your small intestine to help digest fats. And all of these other functions are antimicrobial. But when they reflux back into your stomach and then into your esophagus, they're caustic as well. And the proton pump inhibitors won't do anything about those. And then on top of it, this long-term health consequences of removing your stomach acid. Mm-Hmm. , you may very well have not absorb vitamins like vitamin D, certain B vitamins, B12 because your stomach makes intrinsic factor that that is needed for B12 absorption. You might not absorb iron as well. Magnesium in particular, in fact on proton pump inhibitors, there have been cases with this hypomagnesemia low blood mag magnesium, which is a dangerous condition, cardiovascular metabolic health and even supplementing with magnesium doesn't always correct the issue. So there are long-term consequences of these drugs. And when I work with people, there may be a reason they need to be on a PPI to begin with. Say they have gastritis or an ulcer. Well that is one instance where those can be helpful, but the goal should be really healing that and then giving reflux under control and then getting off of these acid reducing medicines. I've worked with people that have been on them for 20 years. It's a problem at that point.

(13:19): Yeah, it's, I think they're really only approved for short-term use, but doctors put people sometimes on these who are taking them for years and it just decimate the rest of your digestive tract, which affects your hormones. Ladies

(13:35): . Yeah. And your microbiome. There's a number of studies saying that, that reducing the stomach acid on these drugs drives changes in your microbiome. So natural is always the best whenever possible. , that's my motto.

(13:50): So we can't talk about the microbiome enough. We've talked about, you know, how would I know if I had a functional gut disorder? Well actually let's go into this next. What type of evaluation should people be expecting to have if someone really is doing a root cause resolution approach and looking at why they have a dysfunctional gut issue, what kind of testing is available and should they look for an ask for?

(14:13): What I routinely use in, in my consultation practice is comprehensive stool analyses. Now those results won't necessarily tell you whether you have sibo. All right. Small, an overgrowth of bacteria in your small intestine. It's really looking at the composition of your stool. However, first of all, there are many types of dysbiosis. SIBO is one of them. There's also cifo, small intestinal fungal overgrowth. There's libo, what I loosely call libo for an overgrowth in urological biological intestinal overgrowth. And it's based on a couple of studies that are very convincing that you can't have an overgrowth in the early part of your secum and large bowel as well. Mm-Hmm , you can have these methanogens overgrowing that's called imo, forint intestinal methane overgrowth, people that are making too much methane. But you can also have significant imbalances in the composition of the gut microbes in your lo intestine.

(15:11): Right. And when you have that, what are the ramifications of that? So in these stool tests, first of all, you're going to look at a lot of other digestive markers. You're going to look at elastase, which is an enzyme produced from the pancreas. That is an important test. A lot of doctors use just that test itself to determine whether the pancreas is functioning and release, releasing other important digestive enzymes like amylase, lipase and protease. Elastase is just the test they use to assess the pancreas. You're looking at S I G A, secreted immunoglobulin A. In other words, how's your gut immune system doing? I G A is important for gut barrier integrity, for balancing the good and bad microbes. You're going to look at a whole variety of pathogens that may be your problem, right? You can roll in certain other testing, helico, pyuria, bacteria, infect stomach, clostridia, difficile, especially if somebody has chronic diarrhea.

(16:14): But then you also look at all of your, what I call commensal populations, right? The bacti, the firm acutes the proteobacteria on and on, right? A number actinobacteria bifidobacteria. And then you wanna know what do your populations look like in each of those high level and detailed species level breakdown compared to kind of the healthy consensus population. And so it takes a trained eye to really go through these tests, but there's a lot of actionable information in there when you do that. So for instance, what I like to see right off the top, I like to look at the firmicutes and the bact ADIs because those two Fila rep like and Utes are like bacillus and strap. And some of those species, lactobacillus, those are all Utes, bact, ADIs, that's bact, fragiles, bact theta, ITO micron and so forth. They're highly diverse, these two Fila.

(17:16):And they represent 90% of the microbes in your gut, just these two Fila. And so the ratio of those is really important. If you have a lot of these firmicutes over the BDIs that's commonly seen in I B s, it's commonly seen in epilepsy, it's commonly seen in obesity. And it's also common on a plant-based diet. If you eat a lot of plants and your digestion is working well, you may have too many of these firmicutes on an animal-based diet. There's more of the BDIs. And also that's more indicative when somebody is addresses i b s or addresses obesity or addresses the epilepsy. You see that shift. So there's just so much to look at in these comprehensive stool analyses, but there's some of the highlights. Yeah, it's very false.

(18:06): Yes. And I'm wondering if you can speak to the utility of, I'm not sure if you look at this cuz you come from it, gut health from a microbiology standpoint, but food sensitivity testing. And then if you could comment on, are these types of tests that your regular H M O doctors going to order and know how to read?

(18:26): Mm-Hmm. Yeah, that's a good question. Not all of them. Although if you go to certain websites of some of the companies that do this test, like Genova, they have a GI FX test, very good test. I use it often. If you drill into their website, they will point you in the direction in your state to doctors that routinely have accounts with them. You know, for instance, our Digestive health Institute has an account with direct labs, so we can get the test that way, but they'll point you in the direction of doctors that can order these tests. And you brought up an important point. You mentioned food sensitivities and while we're at it how about just kind of inflammatory conditions? Mm-Hmm. . And there are markers in this same test that look at that. For instance, calprotectin. Calprotectin is a protein released from activated white blood cells at the site of inflammation.

(19:17): And so if you have high levels of calprotectin, you're in an inflammatory state. Now it might be just a couple of hundred and okay, that's still high and you need to address it. But somebody with inflammatory bowel disease for instance, they might, might have levels. And I think the units are micrograms per gram of 2000. So it can tell you a lot. Now in terms of food sensitivity, there's EO eosinophil, protein X mm-hmm . And that's considered a marker of kind of food sensitivity. So that's another one you can look at. You can look at lactoferrin, you can look at if there's microscopic signs of blood in your stool because that's another sign potentially of inflammatory bowel disease or even colorectal cancer. So there's a lot in these tests and it's a really good thing to do if you have a lot of gut issues and, and you need to try to understand why and what to do about

(20:14): It. Yes. So I love these tests. I usually use the GI map, that's my favorite. It gives a lot of those markers that's, and you know, I was thinking earlier when you were running through the different species, the bacteria, some people will get tripped up thinking they have to know all these different names. I mean it's helpful if you do, but it's kind of like your friends at church that maybe you know their face but and you wave high, but you might not remember all of their first and last names. You don't need to. So don't feel like it's something that you have to memorize if that trips you up. But you can just learn the ones that are most important. Just like in your communities where you have friends who you know their first and last name, you know where they live, you know their phone numbers.

(20:56): So it's a similar type of community. So consider if you are a candidate for functional gut testing, having some of these tests, food sensitivity is something that I, I really recommend. I don't think there's a perfect food sensitivity test, but I think they all have their pros and cons. So you kind of have to, whoever you decide to work with, I do think having a guide with these types of things is very helpful. Pick which one could work. So tests, don't guess get an evaluation. What are some of the common things that we can do though maybe we can't afford testing. This testing is not inexpensive. I know. Mm-Hmm. , you know, the GI effects with Genova and the GI map or $500 or more. So not everyone can afford that. So what are some steps that people who are having functional issues with their gut might mm-hmm. just start to take from a general basis that could impact how their gut is functioning.

(21:57): Yes. In fact, you can do a lot. In fact, I'll usually start, if there is some testing, especially GI testing or say a SIBO breath test, I will like people to get those samples done before they start kind of some interventions. But oftentimes we'll just work by just taking a complete history of somebody, you know, how long has this been going on? Exactly what are your symptoms, what is your diet like? Is really an area that I dig deep into because I work with people that have very varied dietary preferences. I work with vegetarians, pescatarians, mostly omnivores, but a good number of vegetarians and pescatarians and once in a great while of vegan as well. But it matters because we had talked about this molecular food chain, right? When you consume food, right, it consists of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, right? Those are the three food groups.

(22:54): And while the microbes in our gut can utilize some of the amino acids from proteins for energy, there are some bacteria, these sulfate reducing bacteria for instance, that no tricks how to get energy from fats. It's not a high energy deal, but they can do it. But the microbes in our gut get most of their energy from carbohydrates. So if you're on a plant-based diet, you are consuming a lot more carbohydrates. And the five that I really focus on, and I look for when I, when people tell me what they're eating is fructose and lactose. Two sugars that tend to be difficult to digest, to absorb. And in the case of lactose digest with lactose intolerant people, but also resistant starch fibers and there's a huge variety of fibers and sugar alcohols. There's many sugar alcohols difficult to digest, but yet all of these are fermentable by microbes.

(23:51): And by the way, there is one kind of gut-friendly sugar alcohol called erythritol that won't drive these overgrowths and all this gas that we've talked about, but the other species can, if you're not digesting and absorbing these foods, well in fact we don't digest fiber by definition that you can overfeed these microbes. And there's a common belief these days that we're actually starving our microbes, that we need to eat more fiber and more fermentable material. More of these five types that I mentioned. I reject that if somebody's perfectly healthy and they're not having any of these GI issues, okay, I won't, I won't chime in, but for people that are having a lot of gas, altered bowel habits, bloating, all of these symptoms, I will really look closely at their diet and then focus in on their digestion and say, what, what's wrong here? Why are these microbes being essentially overfed in your case?

(24:47): And so it gets to kind of the mechanistic part of it. And so if you had to break down the fast track diet, that's a diet I created. I've written a couple books on it or my consulting practice, I always focus on these three important areas, diet and digestion, right? What are you eating and is that diet matched with your ability to digest and absorb those nutrients efficiently or is there a, a mismatch? So diet and digestion is big. And then the next part is root cause analysis, right? What are these potential underlying or contributing causes? As many of these, you know, probably a hundred if you consider the rare ones, but 25 or 30 or 35 are relatively common and they won't be common to everybody. So we have to, in most cases rule most of them out to really focus in on what is the most likely underlying cause or causes in that particular case.

(25:45): Cuz it's somebody that has hypochlorhydria, low stomach acid and there's all these risk factors and reasons for that. Is it somebody that has pancreatic insufficiency, right? We talked about the elastase test to measure that. But even if you don't it say you can't afford the stool test, you can just try a digestive enzyme that contains pancreatic enzymes. And the same goes with these brush border enzymes, these disaccharides, lactase, sucres, maltase, iso, maltase tris, it's many of them. They can be damaged on the brush border. It's not easy to get that test done. They usually use that test for kids with genetic deficiencies in these enzymes because it's a very dangerous condition. But we now know in adults with these functional GI issues, I, I'm using the term too dysfunctional GI conditions, right? , they, it's very common for them to have these brush border deficiencies. We now know very recent work up to 70% or more have these deficiencies.

(26:44): Testing requires endoscopy, taking biopsies, send it to highly specialized labs, probably expensive. But instead there are also digestive enzymes you can get that have brush border enzymes. So these are kind of workarounds. You can say, well this testing is too much, it's too involved. Instead I want you to try this particular dietary supplement that has either the pancreatic or the brush border enzymes and let and of course modulate your diet. I almost always recommend people to significantly reduce their overall levels of carbohydrates. Any more proteins and fats for the reasons I stated that those are less invasive or less li likely to drive overgrowths and dysbiosis. So reduce the carbs and then reduce in particular these five types of carbs I mentioned. And if you have a brush border deficiency, even the easier to digest starches may be a problem. In the fast track digestion books, I I break down starches into two groups, resistant starch starches that have more of a starch called amlo.

(27:53): It's harder to digest or le or less resistant star, which has more amylopectin, an easy to digest species of scotch. So jasmine rice and sushi rice, it's an easier to digest scotch, uncle Bens and wild rice and bosma rice, more of the resistant scotch. So I'll say, well if you're going to have starches stick with jasmine or sushi rice, I'll, I'll add some particular name brands that I like and cook it properly in a rice cooker if possible with plenty of moisture. And then limit your serving size, right? When you cut your serving size from a cup down to a half a cup, you cut these fp points that it's a calculation I created in the book to measure how much of these fermentable carbs you're consuming on whole. When you cut your portions in half, you cut these points in half and you cut your symptom potential in half. So I'll say eat less, follow these particular behaviors and practices or just avoid starches for the next month until we really get to the bottom of this.

(28:55): Yeah, I, you know, and when from a hormonal perspective, when you're saying sushi rice or jasmine rice, those are white rices, I'm thinking immediately, oh that's gonna mess up your insulin. Don't do that. Just don't eat it . No, but I hear very good point. I hear what you're saying looking at, yeah, right. So we've always gotta consider, you know, gut health with hormones and then hormones, he hormone health with gut health. And I think when we neglect one, we neglect to think about the other when we're, we're addressing one part that we can cause more problems. But yeah, so diet is super important. Sometimes you just can do empiric treatment if you can't afford testing, you can try a brush border enzyme or try adding retain and Pepsis. And I remember when I worked at the, the clinic in Atlanta, you know, getting at what is your stomach acid level? Do you have hypochlorhydria is really hard. Although most people over 30, and especially with each advancing decade, we increasingly have it till when we're in our seventh decade almost all of us have hypochlorhydria, meaning not enough stomach acid. So we actually had a Heidelberg machine

(30:05): , huh, wow, good for you to

(30:08): Test, right? Like who has

(30:10): That's

(30:10): Impressive Heidelberg machine.

(30:11): Yeah.

(30:12): Right. So some people are listening, you're going, what is a Heidelberg machine? So like I said, getting at a measurement of your exact stomach acid level is very difficult. But with the Heidelberg machine, you swallow a capsule and then it radio transmits the pH level to a de sensor outside and you get a computer readout of how your stomach acid changes over time in response to certain things. And it's this beautiful test. But like I said, you don't really need that test. If you're over 30, you probably have some degree of hypochlorhydria. You have gerd, you definitely do. If you've been on a P P I, you definitely do. So sometimes you can just treat empirically as that kind of, what is your approach to stomach acid disorders? Mm-Hmm. .

(30:56): Yeah, no, that's very good. And I, I wanna get into that, the Heidelberg and also risk factors for low stomach, but just wanted to comment on something you said earlier. Yeah, you bring up a very good point about, okay, the, the rices I mentioned that are less problematic for your digestion also going to raise your blood sugar more, right? They're higher glycemic index, right Rices, right. The bosma and Uncle Bens is a lower gi, lower glycemic index and higher FP and the jasmine rice and sushi rice, a higher glycemic index, higher gi, but lower fp. So they're easier on your digestive tract. If you have, you do need the brush border enzymes though, which complete the breakdown of starches. Amylase doesn't do all of it. You need the brush border enzymes as well. But let's assume they're working. And so Jasmine rice is a good fit for you in terms of your digestive wellbeing, but it, it is going to raise your blood sugar.

(31:47): And that's a point I do bring that up in my book. And that's one of the reasons we also recommend smaller servings of high GI, low FP foods because they will raise your blood sugar and the last thing you want to do is get into a situation with metabolic disorders or pre-diabetes or even diabetes, you know, insulin related illnesses. So we're very cognizant of that. So we know there is that trade off and so I'm glad you brought that up. Regarding stomach acid, this is really fascinating and I, I agree with you. Some people will just kind of say, well you're on a P P I when you get off the P P I, we're gonna make a lot of changes in dietary and behavioral changes get you off the PPIs and hopefully your stomach acid will pump back. Might be that simple. But for a lot of people they could have significant issues.

(32:33): They may have pernicious anemia. It's an autoimmune condition where your own antibodies are attacking these parietal cells that produce the stomach acid, right? And you wanna know about that if you have it. And of course you may also have low B12 levels because intrinsic factor is needed for absorption of b12, a Heidelberg test. And it's just fantastic that you once had one. I too bad. You can still have it. You can. I just received one of those test results this morning from one of my clients and was going through it. It's an amazing test. But before I recommend that to somebody, I really do look at the risk factors for hypochlorhydria and there and there's some risk risk factors for hyperchlorhydria too. Too much stomach acid. Mm-Hmm . But I look at whether they have had an endoscopy before. If they have gastritis, that's a big risk factor.

(33:22): And often gastritis is caused from a chronic infection with this bacteri helico back to Pylori. And so I wanna make sure they've been tested for helico back to Pylori. You can get it in a stool test, there's a breath test for it and so forth. I wouldn't recommend the blood test because that will just tell you whether you've ever had it. You wanna know whether you have it. So gastritis, whether you're h pylori positive or negative. If you abuse NSAIDs, non-steroid anti-inflammatories like aspirin and ibuprofen, that's very irritating on the stomach. Can lead, can lead to gastritis if you had Hashimotos, right? Hypothyroidism, autoimmune hypothyroidism, you're at greater risk for pernicious anemia. And so there's more of these. So working through these risk factors, I can usually reach a point where I can say, you know what, you're at very low risk for hypochlorhydria, let's move on.

(34:11): But if the answer comes back and says you're at a moderate to high risk for it, we might either take some action steps or let's look for a place near you, a practice near you that has the Heidelberg. So it's just, it's great you brought that up. And when you go to the Heidelberg website, I forget what the name of the website is, but if you just google Heidelberg acid test, you'll see the website. They do have by state places that still do the tests so you can find them. I'm really frustrated that every teaching hospital in every state doesn't have the ability to do this because for people that that aren't familiar with the test, you are not just measuring whether somebody has acid or not in their stomach, as you mentioned. You take this capsule, you swallow it, but it dangles on a string and they, and by the pH right, it radios up to a laptop and by the pH being really low you can see, okay, you're in the stomach and that's, they might put a piece of tape there and you know it's sting in the stomach.

(35:08): But the secret to that test is you can now tell what your stomach acid is and that capsule isn't going anywhere and they give you these drinks of sodium bicarbonate. Mm-Hmm That will raise the stomach acid back closer to neutrality six or six and a half, seven. And then they see how long it takes for your parietal cells to produce enough stomach acid to lower the acid back down to between pH one and two very acidic. And if it takes a real long time, then you may be diagnosed with hypochlorhydria. Now if it does it in 10 or 15 minutes, okay that's okay. But then they'll give you another drink and then once the stomach acid regains itself, they'll give you another drink, three or four of these. And so you can see if your stomach can reas acidify each of these times. If you end up with a space of about 40 or 50 minutes or an hour, then that might indicate that you have hypochlorhydria, your stomach just isn't able to keep up Reac acidifying itself.

(36:06): Yeah. And you know, after I was so excited to get to work with this machine, but I have to say after, you know, hundreds reading hundreds of these tests, I've never seen one in a human over 40 who wasn't having health problem, who was having health problems that wasn't abnormal. So I do think it's

(36:25): A great test. Well I seen, I've seen both and I've, I had one client that we suspect that he had low stomach acid. He was actually a hypers secret

(36:32): Secret, very interesting.

(36:33): Five minutes every time just making right stomach acid. So, and that can happen if you have dysregulation of gastro producing cells in the lower part of the stomach, which when those are expressed to stimulate stomach acid, they stimulate histamine release and that binds to the bridal cells and drive stomach acid. So there are a lot of possibilities that you pyloric sphincter in how healthy that's working can allow reflux from the small intestine back into the stomach that can throw off stomach acid results. So there's a lot of things to consider. It can be a little bit complicated, but I still think it's a great test right to look at in some cases.

(37:14): I do too. I wanna tie everything we're kind of talking about together with hormones for everyone because I know some people are still wondering K Kiran, why are you always talking about poop , we're supposed to talk about hormones so I just wanna tie it in as succinctly as I can. But your gastrointestinal tract is actually your biggest interface with the external environment. I know it's on the inside of your body, but you're taking the external environment and you are putting it inside of you. The surface area of your gut is as big as two doubles tennis courts, which is way bigger than the surface area of your skin. So everything you take into your mouth is contacting you. So it being the biggest contact with your external environment, it is the highest concentration of your immune system designed to protect you. It's your body's military all along your gastrointestinal tract.

(38:09): And that is directly related to your cortisol. Stress hormone is directly related to your immune system function is directly related to your gut function. So if your gut isn't right, your immune system's not gonna be right and your cortisol's not gonna be right. And your cortisol, I call her queen cortisol, is going to wreck havoc with your sex hormones. So you might have PMs heavy painful periods and you think all you've got is a period problem. No, you could have a gut problem or it's gonna wreck havoc with your thyroid hormone and you think you've got a thyroid problem cuz then you're overweight and tired and you don't have a primary thyroid problem, you actually have a gut problem. So if you listen to me long enough, you know what I'm talking about. If you're still scratching your head going, what in the world is she talking about?

(38:55): Keep listening, come meet me on social media, join one of my challenges, we will get you up to speed on why your PU poop is good. Poop is essential to hormone health. Thank you Norm for furthering the understanding for everyone today in a very deep and meaningful way about functional or dysfunctional gut disorders. Before we wrap up, I wanna just ask you a couple things. The first is you shared a couple quotes with me before we started that I absolutely love and you said from Benjamin Franklin, whom I love the best doctor gives the least medicines. Mm-Hmm , can you talk a little bit about that and then we'll go ahead and wrap up?

(39:38): Yeah, well in my fast track digestion books, I use a different quote at the beginning of every chapter. So I kind of like you, I love those. And the back one is your health depends on the bacteria in your gut. So I think that sums up a lot of what we were talking about. But in terms of the best doctor gives the least medicine, I mean I've really come to believe that and I've, I've been on both sides of the fence. I spent the first 20 years of my career after graduating from school in the Fama biotech industry developing new drugs. And I like the idea of working on these difficult diseases with unmet medical needs and coming up with, with a drug or a solution that that works for these serious conditions. You know, for, and I spent 10 years just on antibiotics and they're lifesaving medicines.

(40:27): I worked on the development and approval of ciprofloxin. They're lifesavers but they're also really rough on the gut. And so when I see more and more of these kind of strong medicines being used for people with these digestive health issues that I think could better be addressed by holistic means, especially antibiotics, because those are, those really disrupt the, the microbiome. It drives me crazy, but I think it's both the manufacturers that make money on the drugs, on the doctors, it's easy to prescribe something, but also patience. Well, I can just take this pill and keep eating what I want to eat. That sounds like a

(41:07): Good deal . But

(41:09): So when I work with people, it does take, you have to be willing to make some changes and to really look at things in a way that, you know, you may have to change your diet and change your behaviors and try some more holistic supplements. We talked about digestive en enzymes as many, many others and get away from these harsher drugs. So that's what that means. So first chapter of that fast track digestion, i b s book is all about the drugs for i b s and the conclusion at the end of it is it's a big fail. They, they're terrible and so we need to find a different way.

(41:42): Right. Awesome. Well everybody, norm is giving you a free copy of his hashtag Diet 1 0 1 ebook. We will have the link in the show notes, so definitely encourage you if you have dysfunctional gut issues to download that and read that. Tell everybody where else they can find out more about you and the work that, that you do.

(42:02): Sure. Every aspect of our work and also our consultation services, blogs, information about the fast track digestion books is one on i b s and Hot Burn. The Fast Track Diet mobile app I haven't really talked about. But this mobile app is, is just the greatest way to implement the diet. It uses this FP calculation and so there's, it's got a database of over 1200 foods and their FP values and a calculator to calculate this fp value for foods that might not be on the list. So those resources can also be found in the same place. Everything can be found@digestivehealthinstitute.org.

(42:40): Awesome. Well, I invite everybody who is interested to go and check that out and get that valuable resource. Thank you so much, norm for this deep conversation, deep dive into functional gut issues and what to do about them.

(42:54): Well, thank you Karen. Good questions,

(42:56): And thank you all for joining me for another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kyrin. Hopefully you've heard something here today that will be impactful for your health and your life so that you can make changes to move you towards the brilliant health that you deserve to be experiencing if you are not there yet. Stay tuned. Next week I will have another wonderful guest and episode helping you better understand your health and your body from a functional approach and how to improve it. And I'll see you again next week. Until then, peace, love, and hormones, y'all.

(43:30): Thank you so much for listening. I know that incredible vitality occurs for women over 40 when we learn to speak hormone and balance these vital regulators to create the health and the life that we deserve. If you're enjoying this podcast, I'd love it if you'd give me a review and subscribe. It really does help this podcast out so much. You can visit the hormone prescription.com where we have some free gifts for you, and you can sign up to have a hormone evaluation with me on the podcast to gain clarity into your personal situation. Until next time, remember, take small steps each day to balance your hormones and watch the wonderful changes in your health that begin to unfold for you. Talk to you soon.

 

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