Gut Health—IBD/IBS/SIBO

Gut health is not built in the gut alone — it is driven by stress and the toxic environment we live in. The Standard American Diet (SAD) — full of nutrient-depleted, genetically modified, and heavily processed fake food — combined with air pollution, a lack of exercise and sunlight, poor-quality sleep, synthetic bright lights, EMFs (particularly 5G), a broken healthcare system, and a constant go-go-go lifestyle of distraction all feed the toxicity our gut absorbs.

This creates an imbalanced terrain and microbiome — depleting the good bacteria or grossly throwing off the ratio of good to bad, either too much or too little. Our diets are far less diverse and severely low in a colorful array of nutrient-dense greens, with very little fermented food; and when we do eat fermented foods, they are often grown in a lab rather than carrying the robust probiotic strains our bodies actually need.

Stress destroys the microbiome on every level. It literally halts digestion, dysregulates blood sugar, blocks the liver secretion, creates stagnant GI movement, and lowers stomach acid. Yes — the opposite of what most people are prescribed. Heartburn and so-called "high" stomach acid is usually low stomach acid from poor digestion and inadequate pH levels. Dr. Mark Hyman, one of the most well-known voices in functional medicine, has spoken extensively about how chronic stress shuts down digestion at the brain-gut level, and how acid-blocking medications often make the underlying problem worse. Dr. Peter Kan, a board-certified functional neurologist, has shared that the gut is the second brain — when the autonomic nervous system is dysregulated, motility stalls, digestion weakens, and the environment becomes a perfect breeding ground for overgrowth. You cannot fix the gut without fixing the nervous system that governs it.

SIBO is just a label for a cluster of symptoms, and IBS even more so — it is simply a catch-all for chronic gut issues with no known cause, and once that label is handed out, doctors often stop investigating. IBD is what happens when the damage has become so severe it is recognized as a disease — visible harm to the digestive tract — though there is still no "known cause" or actual cure from the conventional view.

The gut-brain-nervous system connection is a real thing, with fascia plays a major part in it as well. When the nervous system is dysregulated, the brain stops signaling the gut, creating a broken feedback loop. If the gut is toxic, the brain is toxic — and we feel this as slow or impaired memory, foggy thinking, lack of drive or energy, inability to focus, and even ADHD. Autism, too, is increasingly traced back to the gut through the work of Jeffrey Smith and others who have documented how GMOs and glyphosate disrupt the microbiome and the gut-brain axis.

So where do we start? Many say start with the gut. But really, we need to start with cleaning up what we're putting into and around the gut first, no pills or supplements just yet. (Adding probiotics when good bacteria may already be over grown isn't going to help anything). Clean up our diet and our lifestyle. The noise around us needs to be quieted. We need to get out in nature, get sun, and avoid screens and TV before bed. Community matters — we were created as social beings, needing and relying on one another for the frequencies of our bodies to function properly! Not for isolation and self-absorption.

Making small changes that support your brain and gut will start to the storm around you. Focus on the present. Notice ways to be thankful. Say no more to things that bring stress, and yes more to the people and things that bring you joy and love. Of course there are real triggers like mold, EBV, H. pylori, or strep that can cause serious gut symptoms. But if you are reading this, you are likely past those — they have already been ruled out, and the severe symptoms are still there. No pill or prescription will fix a gut issue that does not have a known cause, at least from the doctor's view. You already know the start to that cause, and you can start implementing things now.