Gut health is a popular subject in the health and wellness world right now. This is probably not the first blog you’ve read about it and also probably not going to be the last. In recent years science has started to discover just how important our guts are to our health and just how intertwined the digestive system is to the rest of the systems in our body. What does gut health really mean? It basically means a healthy digestive system. It means that as you eat your food it is properly broken down, absorbed, and then excreted. This sounds pretty simple but it’s quite the complicated process.
Gut health starts in the brain! No, you aren’t digesting food in your brain but you do need to be in the right state of mind in order to digest properly. When you are in a stressed-out state digestion is stalled because it takes a lot of energy and your body wants to save that energy in case you need to run or fight for your life. There is a reason the parasympathetic nervous system (the relaxed state) is often referred to as the rest and digest state. Being relaxed as you eat is step one. Step two is chewing, this is a major issue for many of us. We are in such a hurry that we barely chew our food. This means that it is more likely to make it to our small intestines not broken down enough to be used. We’ll address this issue more later. The moral of the story here is to make sure that you are chewing your food properly so that way when it gets to the stomach it can be further broken down by your stomach acid. Stomach acid really gets a bad rap these days. Stomach acid is really important for digestion of proteins and fats and often it is a lack of stomach acid due to stress that causes uncomfortable issues like burping, bloating, and acid reflux. After, protein, fats, and carbs are broken down in the stomach they move on to the small intestines at the beginning proteins and fats are broken down further by pancreatic enzymes and bile. Once everything is nice and small it is moved further into the small intestines where the nutrients are absorbed through the mucus lining. This is where if your food is not broken down enough by chewing and stomach acid things get pretty sketch. You see these larger food particles can damage your mucosal lining and lead to leaky gut (womp womp). After your small intestines has absorbed the nutrients the once food now moves onto the large intestine. Helpful bacteria live in the large intestine and these guys feast on the leftovers from our small intestines and even some of the good bacteria produce more nutrients for us to absorb like vitamin k and butyrate. Once our gut bugs are done the waste is finally moved out of our bodies, but this waste is more than just the unusable parts of the food we eat it also includes other wastes and toxins that our liver dumps into our bile to carry out of our bodies. So, as you can see there is a lot to our gut health and it’s about more than just probiotics.
This complex system is very much tied into our fertility. First you have the issue of nutrient absorption, if our digestion is compromised, we are not able to absorb all the nutrients that we are taking in with our healthy diet. If we can absorb fats, proteins, vitamins, and minerals then our bodies will not be able to properly build hormones or important tissues for pregnancy like a healthy uterine lining or eggs. Digestion also affects the levels of estrogen in our bodies. One of the wastes that our livers put into the bile to be removed is used estrogen. When digestion is not working properly this estrogen can be reabsorbed into the blood stream causing estrogen dominance. Estrogen dominance can cause issues with ovulation and can even prevent you from ovulating at all. Excess estrogen has also been implicated in poor egg quality further reducing your chances of falling pregnant and staying pregnant. Inflammation is probably the most common issue caused by poor gut health. There are many ways that your gut health can cause inflammation: when foods are reaching your intestines not broken down enough they irritate the gut lining and cause inflammation, when you have compromised gut lining and undigested foods are making it into your blood stream your body reacts to these unrecognized objects and cause an immune reaction which includes inflammation, when your gut bacteria is out of balance the bacteria send out distress signals which cause and immune reaction including inflammation. All of this inflammation isn’t just isolated within the gut itself because the gut lining is impaired all of this easily passes through into the bloodstream where it can spread throughout the body including our ovaries and uterus. Inflammation in the ovaries can cause issues with ovulation and egg quality and inflammation in the uterus causes issues with implantation which can lead to miscarriage. Inflammation not only affects women’s fertility but also men and has been shown to decrease sperm quality.
Gut health is an important part of fertility and it’s important to know if something is not quite right. Here are some of the symptoms that your body may be using to tell you that something fishy is going on with your digestive track: anxiety, depression, inability to remember dreams, vivid dreams, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, burping, gas, heartburn, digestive pain, floating stools, undigested food in your stool, constant runny nose, allergies including seasonal allergies, candida/yeast infections, bacterial vaginosis, and food sensitivities. If you have any of these symptoms on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis that means that something is not quite right. There are several things you can do to test to know exactly what is going on but you should work with a practitioner on getting these tests done and interpreting them. Some options include blood work for things like food sensitivities and inflammatory cytokines, breath tests for SIBO and GI mapping (basically a poop test).
How you go about fixing the issue is very highly individual and should be based on your test results. General recommendations are eating a healthy diet rich in veggies, fats, quality proteins and bone broth. Make sure you sit down and calmly eat your meal and chew your food thoroughly. You can take digestive bitters before or just after eating to help increase those digestive fires. Also, getting plenty of sleep because that’s when our digestion is really kicking in and also when our bodies do most of the repair work. Beyond these basics it really depends on if you have leaky gut, dysbiosis, SIBO, histamine intolerance, and/or food sensitivities. Some people may need to go on an elimination diet like Autoimmune Paleo Protocol, others may only need to cut out a few highly reactive foods. Some may need probiotics and others may need to clear out some bad bugs first with nutraceuticals like oregano. Most of us probably need some work on sealing leaky gut and can benefit from things like l-glutamine and collagen. Trust me having a practitioner to support you through this is vital because testing is so important. I learned the hard way a while back and tried to guess what was going on and actually ended up doing the opposite of what I actually needed. If you would like support on your journey to healing your gut and restoring your fertility you can work with me by signing up for a free consultation call on my services page!