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a hope filled mama writing about chronic illness and holistic health

Health Post 1: Food and Leaky Gut

How I went from very healthy to not at all without even realizing it (leaky gut, food intolerance, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth and more)

Alex, That Mama With A Purpose

Nov 13, 2021

Ive read that our gut is our second brain. The gut brain axis? Its a thing.

Have you ever gotten that "gut feeling" when something good or bad is happening? Perhaps butterflies in your stomach? It makes sense to me that the root of most symptoms could be linked back to the gut.

I consider myself a pretty health young female, but if I'm being honest with myself, the last time I felt healthiest or at my peak was back in 2014. It made me look back to what I was doing then compared to what I'm doing now.

Seven years ago, my life looked prettyyyy different. I just turned 20, I loved meal prepping, I did several rounds of the 21DSD and Whole 30 before adapting to a Paleo lifestyle. And did I mention? My local gym was my second home; I was there morning or night or sometimes both. I was happy, my body was thriving, and truly, I couldn't see why people wouldn't want to eat healthy, work out and just be happy all the time?!

Fast forward to 2021 and boy did I get a HUGE awakening. I am no longer in my young 20's single, working out and meal prepping. Instead, I am closer to 30 than Id like to think about, married to my soul mate, and my closest “workout” is chasing after my 3 kids 5 and under around the neighborhood. A far cry from where I was years ago.

My symptoms of tummy aches, headaches, migraines, memory fog, knee pain, joint pain and low back pain all seemed to point to"being an adult and a mom" symptoms. I didn't think too much of it.

Until it knocked me out completely and I was made to face it.

Heres some background info. Over the years and months, I would mention these things during appointments and would here the same things: tylenol, advil, motrin, zofran for the nausea, NSAIDs for the migraines, TUMS for the aches… and the list got stronger as the pain kept increasing.

Did the suggestions work? Yes, for a time. Until it didn’t. The medications masked my symptoms, but didn’t FIX them. I started to fear my headaches that I couldn't bounce back from (I would lay in the dark, drink water, take tylenol, advil, cold compress, essential oils, cold bath, medications... nothing would work) that would eventually grow into a strong migraine causing me to be so weak and faint from the nausea and vomiting, I ended up at urgent care in need of IVs and meds from dehydration and pain. Upon discharge, I was often told the same thing, stay hydrated and rest and take the pain medication at the first onset of a headache to avoid the migraine.

Really? I thought to myself, thats all I could do? For the rest of my life?

The migraines kept coming. The medicine wasn’t working. And being in debilitating pain until I needed the urgent care was just no. longer. an. option. for. me.

I knew it wasn't normal to be in this much pain and I was done masking my headaches and migraines with medicine but not knowing WHY I was getting them. I wanted to know the root cause so I could stop them, these never used to happen to me, what was going on?

After being admitted to urgent care and given bags and bags and bags of fluids, I finally told a dear friend what was happening to me and bless her heart she did what others didn’t, she believed me.

She also reinforced what I knew, what was happening not me was not normal.

“I’m so sorry. Would you be open to trying my doctor? I know you’ve been through a lot and I just love her, I think she can help.”

I grabbed the doctor’s phone number. Called and got on the waiting list and waited 3 weeks to see her. After a one hour long appointment with the actual doctor, I came out of here feeling seen, heard, and most importantly, with a medical plan to move forward and find the cause of my symptoms, YES!

The big migraine and the dull tension headaches that follow one of my migraine episodes were gone. I was amazed. After years of struggling with this and talking to many doctors, I have heard of every single option, except one. Tension-ease lavender pills. They are MAGICAL. They are made of lavender and poppy seed and they smell great and take my headaches away. It was great. I wasn't feeling my best, but I was definitely doing way better under her care. I continued to see her, tell her my symptoms, and continued to do my own science and health reading on my own at home.

This is how I arrived at leaky gut.

Let me backtrack for a minute. Over the years, every time my body felt off or I needed to reset, I jumped into the Whole 30 elimination diet. Ive done this at the beginning of the year, after pregnancies, before weddings, before vacations, after the holidays, etc. Its a great plan to follow to eat only whole, clean, nutrient- rich foods and detox your body of processed foods. It always works for me and my body is more primed to dive into a paleo lifestyle after doing a whole 30 vs following the standard american diet. This routine has worked for me since 2014 and I definitely wanted it to work for me now. Only this time, it didn't….

I threw everything I knew how to do and I was still having so much nausea, and tummy aches. My nose hated smells, I couldn't go near many foods and I was even throwing up food like apples and bananas, proteins, and lettuce. What was going on?! I was unable to keep water and food down making me hungry all the time, inviting my headaches and migraines to come back with vengeance. I tried to keep down anything for nourishment and even water and apple sauce packets seemed to disagree with my tummy. It seemed to be on protest and I couldn't figure out why.

A month later, I returned to my naturopath and she was perplexed to hear about what happened with my diet. "Let's do a food sensitivity test," she said. Huh?

I already took a gluten sensitivity test, I eat whole 30, I avoid all dairy, corn, soy, grains, I don't really understand what else I can do. It didn’t make any sense to me. Its like my body seemed to hate all foods overnight. She drew my blood, sent me on my way and I waited for the results.

Friends, each day, each hour, each minute, is very long when you can't eat. When you are thirsty and water doesn't want to stay down and you are hungry but there's no food you can eat, each and every moment is accounted for. I waited for those results for 31 days. 31 days of "guessing" what my body will and won't like. I became afraid to eat anything, fearing what the symptoms would be. Joint pain, fatigue, tummy aches, headaches, migraines, back pain, knee pain, and more would all surface if I ate the wrong thing.

I just didn't know what the right thing was and what the wrong thing was. It was brutal.

One day I was sitting in my room thinking and I suddenly got up and just about ran to my bookshelf. I dusted off Practical Paleo by Diane Sanfilippo and began reading. She created 21 DSD which my body thrived off of and she also wrote a book, a Paleo Bible, if you will about the science behind why the paleo diet works. Im notorious for reading everything so you know that I had to start at the foreword. She talked about Robb Wolf, her sweet grandmother, our mutual friend Jenny, and her insatiable desire to help people eat good and feel good too. I knew I liked this lady! I dove into the science and nutrition of the body, read pages 7-149, took notes and continued to figure out what in the world was going on with my body. Why did it not like food?

Another month later, I saw my naturopath again, but this time without a pep in my step and my voice just weak and exhausted. Different from the person who was there in July and in August.

“Okay, so what did the tests say?!” I just about burst when she walked into the door.

"Hi Alex! Your test is interesting, it says a lot, come, here lets take a look."

She began to walk through the food sensitivity IgG antibody test I took. Things we already knew like dairy and gluten had high inflammation markers. What was interesting to note is that while the tests said my body could “tolerate” wheat, it was highly reactive to gliadine and glutenian, two other forms of gluten. Huh. It kept getting weirder. I couldn't eat legumes which I knew about myself, but also certain fruits, vegetables and even spices I couldn't tolerate. No wonder I couldn't figure out what to eat!

Foods like egg yolks and egg whites, lettuce, onions, garlic, paprika, oregano, chickpea, tomato, pepper, crab, cod, fodmaps and nightshades too ..... all reacted to my body.

We both looked at the results, at the each other, at the same time said, "Leaky gut?!"

If you’re like me and you didn’t know, food sensitivities and food allergies are very different.

When you have a food allergy, your body has an immune response where your body is doing the right thing by attacking the foreign substance.

When you have a food sensitivity, your its called an autoimmune response because it sees the food you are eating as a dangerous invader, like any other virus or an infection, and starts attacking itself.

My body was seeing nutrition (fruits, vegetables, proteins) as an enemy.

Oh boy. When I ate, it became like an episode of food poisoning. It was awful.

The goal is to "heal" my gut so that is stops doing this, but also finding the root cause of what made my gut so "leaky" in the first place.

Here is when I started to research intestinal permeability and what that means. Our small intestine is supposed to keep a good balance of bacteria in your gut. When this balance is disrupted, the gut lining is compromised and gets weaker and weaker. Our body is made to handle stress. Our body was built to withstand a lot. But its not made to handle chronic, daily, never ending stress. Our bodies are not meant to stay in state of constant fight or flight adrenalin rush. Just like animals, our bodies are made to hunt and then graze.

I don't know about you, but my body is always in a state of stress or high alert. Gotta check off that to do list, keep the littles alive, keep the house floating, balance your marriage, kids, job, home life, personal life, physical health, mental health, etc. THERE. IS. JUST. TOO. MUCH. And our bodies are paying the price.

When the body encounters too much stress and it does not have time to recover or graze, the hormones that flood your body during that stress state (cortisol), hits your gut over and over and over and over and over and and over and over again until your gut is now compromised and weak. Your stressed out, busy, its chaotic, the last thing you're going to do is cook a healthy meal and drink some bone broth. So we order take out, drink the wine, grab the candy bar, watch that movie, and comfort ourselves because life is just too hard and consoling it is way easier. Meanwhile, our gut is just taking hit after hit after hit after hit. Leak after leak after leak after leak.

Don't get me started on other things that compromise our gut like antibiotics, NSAIDS, gluten, and having c sections... but basically, when your gut is compromised or even leaky or leaking, it opens up a whole host of problems. Our intestines are made to filter out bacteria, separate the good from the bad and keep your body in harmony.

After all, the gut is the second brain right?

So when your gut health is compromised, so is the rest of your body. These stand alone or chronic symptoms shouldn't solely be treated with a pain medication so we can go live our mediocre lives, it should traced to its root cause because doing so may make fix a multitude of ailments that follow.

Got your attention? GOOD. I'm not someone with a healthcare or even science background, I am just a mom tired of feeling sick so I started to research symptoms on my own. And what I found? Blew my mind I had to share.

Below I linked some articles I read when I started. If there is more interest, I would be happy to do a follow up post. If not, I hope these resources help you take back control of your health. You know your body best friends. Lets take good care of it!

XO,

MWAP