Constipation and bloating are extremely common digestive complaints that often become “normal” for many people, especially women, despite being signs of deeper dysfunction. Healthy digestion should include regular bowel movements, proper gut motility, minimal bloating, and efficient digestion after meals. Chronic constipation, abdominal distension, gas, fermentation, and sluggish digestion can be linked to gut microbiome imbalances, poor bile flow, hormone dysfunction, blood sugar instability, stress, chronic inflammation, and impaired detoxification.
Poor bile production and sluggish gallbladder function can slow digestion and contribute to constipation, fat malabsorption, gallstones, and gut fermentation. When food sits in the digestive tract too long, bacteria and fungus feed on it, creating excess gas, bloating, abdominal pressure, and discomfort. Hormonal imbalances, chronic stress, blood sugar dysregulation, food sensitivities, microbiome overgrowth, and certain medications may all contribute to these digestive symptoms.
The episode also explores the relationship between serotonin and gut motility, the impact of restrictive diets and processed foods on the microbiome, and practical strategies for improving digestion naturally. Low FODMAP nutrition, antimicrobial herbs, digestive support, magnesium, bile support, blood sugar regulation, and lifestyle changes are discussed as tools that may help improve constipation and bloating.
This podcast transcript is provided for educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Please consult with a qualified healthcare provider before making changes to your health routine, diet, supplements, or treatment plan.
What’s going on, everybody? Welcome to the Freedom to Flourish podcast. Today we bring you episode 99, which we’re going to be covering Constipation and bloating. So I’m one of your hosts, Dr. Tim Augustiniak here with a good friend, Dr. Joel Miller, and hopefully you guys can get some good stuff from this episode.
Like I said previously on our last episode and and like we talked about, we’re going to be covering just a couple episodes in a row about gut health and, and how to manage that stuff, how to fix things, how to identify where problems are coming from and just try to teach you guys a little bit about what’s going on with all that.
So hopefully it’s going to be a good one for you guys today. Dr. Joel, how are things going this morning? Hey man, things are going pretty well. Things are going pretty well. Thankful for, you know, Thanksgiving was last week and got to see some family, got to visit Virginia and all that fun stuff.
And then, you know, we got the holidays coming up and some other travel. So it’s kind of bittersweet time because with the holidays, you have moments, you know, a lot of moments of rest and relaxation, which we’re always excited about.
But then you also sometimes have the busyness of all that. So trying to find that balance.
But thanks here in the office, working with patients every day is always exciting and helping people find relief and healing from their health issues, as we’ve talked about so many times, is so extremely rewarding. So as we get into bloating and constipation, man, I, I think if I was to, if you were to ask me like what are the most frustrating symptoms or like digestive health issues that people deal with every day, especially women, it’s probably Constipation and bloating.
And a lot of times they go together. So I know we’ve touched on this topic along with a ton of other topics in the past couple years that we’ve been doing, but I think revisiting it and talking about it and some different lights will be super helpful for people.
So I’m excited, I’m excited. So Constipation and bloating, Dr. Tim, let’s kind of jump in here.
So to kind of start, let’s kind of start with each one of these things and kind of talk about like, hey, what’s actually happening here?
What’s kind of normal? We have patients come in all the time. They’re like, I’m constipated. And yet, you know, we’ll see some people have a bowel movement once a day and it’s not very good and they feel like they’re constipated and to some degree they have that level there.
And then some people will literally go four days, five days, seven days without a bowel movement. And that’s just like a whole another level. Then we have bloating. And one of the questions I always kind of think and ask people is like what level of bloating is healthy?
And the reason I ask it and in that way is because I think a lot of people deal with a small level of bloating, but it’s been there all their life. And so it’s just kind of normal. And it’s like, Hey, there’s, there’s some gut stuff going on there that if you fix that, if you change how you eat and all the things that we’ll talk about here, you know, you’ll, you’ll actually be way healthier than you even thought, you know, you could be.
So Constipation, bloating. Let’s jump in. Dr. Tim, what are some thoughts on those things and, and essentially what kind of is happening with those things that kind of from a holistic level? One thing I want to add before we get into that stuff, I think it’s kind of funny that you say, you know, you ask, oh, so how are things going with digestive habits and bowel movements and all that stuff?
And people say, oh, I’m constipated and they go once a day. I’ll often find that particularly with women when they come into the office and they’ve got hormone issues and Constipation and just there’s this whole slew of symptoms and, and attributes that go together that I’ll talk about a little bit.
But women in this category, it’s always, you know, you ask the question of, oh, how are these things doing? And they’re like, oh, fine. I think that’s OK. And I’m like, OK, well, what does OK mean? If you’re, you know, we’re talking about bathroom habits, They’re like, oh, I mean, I don’t know.
I go like maybe every day, every other day. Yeah, it’s like. OK. So based on what should be normal, I understand that maybe you’re normal, but ideally bowel movement should be two to three times per day.
You eat, you have to go. You eat, you have to go, You eat, you have to go. And ideally you should be eating three meals, so somewhere in the range of two to three per day. So with that being the case, it’s kind of funny because you’re normal might not be something that you discuss with other people and you don’t really realize that you’re normal isn’t necessarily actually normal.
So with that being the case, what is normal? What are these things supposed to look like? You know, to your point, what are normal amounts of bloating? What is normal in regards to bowel movements and all that stuff. So for those who are listening from home or hopefully not in the car, don’t Google this stuff right now.
But I encourage you guys to Google what’s called the Bristol Stool Chart. It’s kind of funny. I like to bring it up with kids in the office just ’cause they think it’s, I think it’s hilarious to talk about poop. But it is a fun little chart where it has these cartoon pictures of different consistency of poop.
And so there’s a sliding scale of one to seven. And I believe one is the more constipated side, which is, you know, it’ll basically have degrees of like, we call them like rabbit turds here in the office where it’s just a little pebbles that you just don’t really want to come out as a full formed regular log of poop.
But then from there on the other side of that spectrum, it’s going to be just straight diarrhea, of course. But somewhere right in the middle at that #4 which is smack dab in the middle between 1:00 and 7:00 is a nice solid form, easy to go, no straining involving bowel movement.
And so that should be typically what things are looking like and then timing throughout the day, you should eat and then you should be able to go. It shouldn’t be, you know, the first bite or two of food, you are exceptionally urgent and you just need to go this second.
And then it’s diarrhea because that is a bit more extreme motility. However, it shouldn’t be too long after you eat that you need to go. And so that’s what the appropriate situation should look like there. And of course, everybody’s a little bit different.
I’ve had patients where we do everything we can and you know, one a day that’s nice and solid, good, easy to go and consistent. They don’t have to take supplements to do that. I mean, that’s definitely not bad. However, you know, if you started at 1:00 and we end at 1:00 and you’re not really following recommendations and you know, things are getting worse around your period, stuff like that, that’s a that’s a good sign that things are affected and that there’s still work that we have to do.
However, if you’re going like once every week and you have to take stuff to go and then we get you to everyday without supplements and then it’s nice and easy to go. That’s huge. That’s absolutely huge. So just because you might, you know, not be completely normal doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to fall within that range.
You know, we, we are some of the, I think first people to recognize that although we have optimal ranges with, with labs and with where things should be symptom wise and, and function wise, just like this situation with, you know, bathroom habits, there are some people that deviate and there are sometimes where you kind of just have to be happy with the best results that you can get with the circumstances that you have.
So, but then with with, let’s get on the bloating side of things. So what is bloating?
I mean, ideally you really shouldn’t have any bloating. I mean, if you eat way too much, of course you’re going to feel super full. But I think bloating, it’s important to differentiate because a lot of people, you know, I’ll ask how they’re feeling.
Are they feeling bloated? They’ll be like, yeah, my, you know, my ring doesn’t want to fit today. I feel kind of bloated. And I’m like, that’s not, that’s not really what we’re getting at here with bloating. I would argue that bloating is more so do you feel like food is not digesting properly?
Do you feel like your stomach’s kind of puffing out and you’re getting really full because food’s just sitting there? Are you getting really nasty with it? I’ll have women that come in and they have pictures where it looks like they’re, you know, progressive maternity, you know, month 4 month 5 month six pregnancy pictures where they have, you know, they stick the bump out and, you know, take it from the side to see exactly, you know, what things are looking like.
But it was just before and after eating a meal and they look like they’re not pregnant to, you know, six months pregnant. And so it’s a big difference. And so that’s where it’s, it’s a lot of gas and, and things like that that’ll happen.
But all in all, it’s generally speaking, lack of digestion, excess fermentation leading to burping gas, maybe stomach cramping, stomach, I guess, puffing out. There you go. That’s the word. My brain’s not working this morning.
Stomach distension. Great. And that’s really what we’re asking. And what we’re talking about here is, is actual abdominal bloating a distension? So that’s kind of what that looks like.
I would argue you really shouldn’t have any other than if you are eating way too much or like I said with this last, you know, topic of, of Constipation, Say you’ve had extreme, you know, you go from zero to six months pregnant throughout the day because you’re so incredibly bloated to go from, you know, not looking that way at all to maybe just a little bit because you’re eating and things aren’t incredibly efficient because your body’s not secreting the proper enzymes and digesting things exceptionally well, but far better than it was.
Sometimes that’s as far as you can get without people taking digestive enzymes or things like that.
And so you might not necessarily be in the, you know, perfect range with that. But I would say for patients who have dealt with pretty extreme bloating in their life and you get them from just terribly uncomfortable for year and year, years and years.
And then you get them to a place where maybe they do have to consistently take, say, butane hydrochloride, just stomach acid replacement or digestive enzymes or ox bile. If they take any of these things and then their symptoms completely go away and it’s just something that they have to keep taking to keep things gone.
A lot of times people are super, super happy with that. And that’s something that I guess we as docs have to focus on is as long as they’re very happy with it, we can have to be happy with it and, and accept that sometimes there are circumstances where you just have to have them keep taking things or else they’ll just not be comfortable.
You know, we like to think that we can fix everything and have it be totally perfect because in theory you should be able to and there should be something that we can find and fix. But sometimes it’s just not the realistic outlook on things.
Yeah, life is. The world is not a perfect place in some of those regards. I think that’s good. I think that’s a lot of good points there, Dr. Tim. One thing with constipation that I think people need to remember is how many bowel movements you have also might be, you know, dictated based on how much food you eat.
So I’ve, I’ve had some people that just, they don’t really eat anything and they’re like, I’m constipated.
I’m like, how is anything going to come out if you don’t need anything? And so there’s a little bit of that, but I love sharing stories and I’m sure we’ll have some that pop up here and there as we talk through these things.
But you know, I know we both had a number of patients that come in with Constipation. And like I mentioned, it’s super common for someone to be like, yeah, I go once maybe every four days or a lot of times once every four or five hits and they get so uncomfortable.
Of course they lose their appetite, but they also have to, they have to do something like Miralax in order to go. And, and you know, in general, when you go to see your standard doctor for Constipation, the first recommendation usually is something like Miralax, either Miralax or fiber.
And both of those, I would argue, are terrible options because they’re, they’re not actually supporting your gut and, and functioning better. What they’re doing is they tend to be more kind, I don’t abusive. I don’t know, maybe it’s a strong word, but more manipulative is probably the better word, especially with Miralax.
So offensive. What’s that offensive? That too. Yeah, definitely, definitely. And so we’ll get into some of those. But again, it’s super common that once, I just want to say this, that once, you know, when we have patients come in, they haven’t had a bowel movement for 3-4 days.
Number one, you’re not going crazy. There’s always a reason why things are not working right, things are not moving. We got to figure out what that is. And what’s so cool is when we can come in, doctor Tim and actually be able to understand what they’re saying and then be able to go through our testing, in our assessment, in our muscle testing.
And we can put a finger and say, you know, This is why you’ve got this ammonia toxicity that’s causing stress to your, your gut motility or you got this bacterial imbalance, you got SIBO or SIFO, you know, a fungal overgrowth or you got some parasites or whatever’s going on with the gut health.
You know, one of the biggest things is Bioflow. We’ll talk about that and how slow Bioflow causes issues when you, when you put a finger on these things and say, no, this is what’s going on and, and this is what’s going to fix it.
This supplement or changing this, you know, your nutrition to eat this way or whatever the change is, it’s so encouraging to people. And then what’s beautiful is that after we work through these things, like you mentioned, people will go from either having a bowel movement, you know, every other day or every two or three days with a supplement with Miralax.
We can get them to the point where they’re going, having a bowel movement on their own without supplements every single day or even 2 to 3 bowel movements every single day. And that’s life changing. People feel so much better.
And it’s awesome to see that. And we do that all the time. And I love that. I think that in general, I’m just ranting at this point a little bit, Dr. Tim. I think in general, there’s a tolerance for sickness in our country and I think it’s absolutely terrible.
Basically there’s this standard or this norm of like, oh, like you’re a little bit sick. Well, that’s OK. You know that it’s the norm. Everybody’s normal, every, everybody’s a little bit sick. So if you only have a bowel movement once every couple days, oh, that’s normal.
That’s normal. It’s like, why is our country why, why are we at a place where sickness is normal? People have lost perspective of what’s healthy and good because of a number of factors. So in getting back to things, you know, with bloating, we’ll have patients come in all the time that have bloating issues.
Probably one of my favorite stories is when this gout came in, we were, we had a few visits where we were working on the gut stuff and the bloating and the swelling. I, was like, man, I am working on different things, trying to find different things with the gut.
And there were 2 visits. I think she came, she’s like, it’s no different. It’s no better. And obviously that’s pretty abnormal. Usually. We’ll see. Oh, there’s been a little bit of improvement at least sometimes a lot of improvement.
But this gal, she had no improvement, is like the third visit. She was like, she came in and she’s like, well, my bloating. She’s like, I have good news and bad news. She’s like, good news is my bloating is gone. The bad news is none of my pants fit anymore and I need to go shopping.
And that was a little bit of a funny moment, but she was actually, I think pretty sad, but the fact that she had so much bloating, I think it’s such a common thing. So, Dr. Tim, let’s jump in a little bit more detail.
Like at the core of it, one of the things we talked about with Constipation is that the bile is not flowing well and therefore things are not moving in the gut. Can you touch on that a little bit? Can you explain a little bit about that?
Where does bile come from? What is it and, and that kind of thing? Yeah. So for starters, bile.
Bile is produced by the liver. It is spit out into the gallbladder and the gallbladder, when it senses an acidic environment coming from the stomach into the small intestine, that’s where it’ll contract, squeeze out the bile and bile is something that will emulsify fats.
So what that means, think of it like you’ve got a sphere of some sort. It’s like a ball of fat. If you look at it from a surface area standpoint, you only have the surface of that one molecule. And so if you cut that circle in half and then you have, you know, exposure to the inside of that, where you cut that in half, you have increased the surface area by, you know, quite a bit.
And so it will break down fats to where your, all of your, your lipases and other enzymes and things like that, that breakdown fats can break those down more efficiently. And so bile is huge, huge, huge when it comes to digesting and absorbing fats properly because you, your enzymes and all those things cannot properly digest those without bile emulsifying those fats first.
So the nutrients that are required to make bile, one of the biggest ones is cholesterol.
And so one of the biggest circumstances where people experience thick sluggish bile that won’t be ejected from the gallbladder properly is chronic stress where you steal resources from cholesterol to make cortisol instead.
And so this just kind of starts the snowball effect of not making good bile and then you don’t digest fats properly and fat soluble vitamins properly and those are necessary to make more bile. And then it’s just this, this constant downward spiral of things until Constipation kicks in or a lot of times gallstones stabbing, gallbladder pains, gallbladder attacks.
And then eventually a lot of times it’s removal of gallbladder, which in my opinion is not a fantastic solution because even if you have stones that don’t necessarily correlate with you have to have pain or dysfunction with it.
Once they’re there, sometimes they can be really difficult to get out of, but you can flush them out. Sometimes really big ones, of course, you’re just going to kind of be stuck in there.
But smaller ones, if you replenish bile and help thin it out so that way it can grow freely, it ends up doing pretty Dang good when your, when your bile gets really slow and you don’t digest those fats properly. Typically Constipation is a pretty telltale symptom of that.
And so because of the whole hormone correlation, they’re more often than not. So back to what I said previously about there being like a certain demographic and attributes with these patients who come in and complain about this stuff.
Pretty textbook. I’ll have relatively petite women who are at birth control or hormone replacement, you name it. They don’t tend to eat a whole lot of protein or fats at all. It’s almost just carbs. And then when they do it’s, it’s kind of these binge episodes of carbs where it’s just a bunch of pasta or it’s pizza or it’s something along that line.
And a lot of times they’re just not eating enough meals throughout the day. And so the gallbladder also has receptors for insulin on it. And insulin will greatly, greatly impact the gallbladder’s ability to contract and and do its job.
And so you kind of have the cortisol side, which steals the resources from making bile, then you have the insulin side. Blood. Trigger this regulation being present, that’s where the gallbladder just gets totally, totally irritated, and that’s where a lot of this stuff comes in.
On top of that, the pathways that detoxify those hormones also detoxify estrogens and testosterone and all those things. And so on top of already not phenomenal lifestyle choices you throw in when you get your period every month and estrogens kick in, you’re just bound to have problems.
And a lot of times things will get way worse at your period because that’s when you have excess hormones and excess estrogens that kick in and ’cause this problem to get even worse. And so that’s kind of the Constipation situation with most, I would say.
Honestly, it really is. Most patients that come into the office are there. Usually it’s women and usually it’s largely attributed to the gallbladder and hormones and all that stuff. And so as far as Constipation goes, that’s probably the largest cause.
But the thing is a lot of the women that are in this category are also on SSRI medications. And so they’ll have anxiety, depression, things like that. Hold that on it for years and years and years. And so another pillar of proper motility is sufficient or proper amounts of serotonin.
If you have good amounts of serotonin, your gut can be really regulated and motility will be very regulated. But if you have too much or too little, things will get really, really, really slow. And so typically there’s not going to be too much in the gut.
That doesn’t really happen. However, you can get too much in your brain and therefore you kind of get a negative feedback loop that’ll occur in the gut. And then from there, if you don’t have any serotonin in your gut, it’s just not going to move.
And so you already have hormone issues, blood sugar issues, detox issues that will contribute to the gallbladder problem. But then on top of that, the more that you’re not going because of that, maybe the gut from microbiome ferments too much, grows too much and becomes imbalanced.
And then from there, you don’t make neurotransmitters properly and therefore you feel anxious, depressed, you name it. Then you get on these medications, which amplifies the amount of serotonin that hangs out in your brain.
It doesn’t increase the amount that you make, but it makes sure that it sticks around longer and then your gut makes even less. And so it’s just every little thing that you can tie to Constipation ends up being present in a lot of those patients.
And so First things first, in order to fix it, got to talk about blood sugar and how to optimize that. And then from there, getting into detoxification of hormones, replenishing nutrients for bile, cleaning up the microbiome, and then from there supporting serotonin if necessary once those medications have been eliminated.
Because if you try to support serotonin deliberately with things like Saint John’s Wort, you’re not going to have a fun time if you’re on those medications. That is absolutely in no way, shape or form something that you should do.
If you’re on those medications, do not take Saint John’s Wort. There are things that you can do, like methyl donors, like vitamin B6. I’m sorry, B6 is not a methyl donor. B9 B12 in their methylated forms, choline, betaine slash trimethylglycine, all those things can be helpful to provide methyl donors to help make serotonin without deliberately forcing the gut to make it.
It’ll give your body resources to do so, but it’s still, it’s going to be kind of an uphill battle until you can get away from those medications. But anyway, that’s kind of the whole Constipation scenario that I typically see in the office if it’s.
Not a. If you’re not a woman and you don’t deal with those hormones, and if you’re not on those medications, usually it’s just fixing your blood sugar and detoxifying some of those things and replenishing some bile nutrients, you’ll be good to go.
Like men with Constipation doesn’t show up a whole lot and it just doesn’t hear it a whole lot, but it’s super easy to treat. But it does show up because you don’t have the compounding, you know, female hormone stuff that plays into it.
Yeah, for sure, Dr. Tim, there is one one piece there that you mentioned that was actually so important.
I want to go back to it. You’re talking about how with the poor bio, poor bio flow, how food will kind of sit in the gut and of course we. Will. See that as, you know, essentially turning there into Constipation. But when it sits in the gut, you mentioned this one word and it was fermentation.
And basically I just want to touch on that because that’s so important and especially how bloating happens. And that’s when you have tons of bacteria, millions of bacteria and some fungus in your gut. And some of those things are normal to your gut.
And then some of those are abnormal when they either are, you know, there and it shouldn’t be, which we call those, you know, pathogenic, you know, infections. And then sometimes you just have, you know, good bacteria, but it kind of over grows and that kind of thing.
And same thing with fungus. And essentially when food sits, the bacteria and fungus just feed on that and the food literally like ferments. I know it’s kind of nasty, but literally ferments. And what happens is the bacteria and fungus give off gas in our intestines.
And so it depends on where in the digestive tract, if it’s in the lower tract area, you know, you, you have gas that you, you know, release. And then if it’s in any closer or more, you know, proximal part of the intestines, that’s where you’re going to have more bloating where it just kind of sits in your gut.
Again, that comes from gas that’s given off from the bacteria and fungus. So that’s why a lot of times when you have Constipation, things are not moving very well.
Things sit there and ferment in the bacteria and fungus, feed on these things and then give off all this gas and then we just just feel even worse. So I wanted to just touch on that a little bit because that was something you kind of slid through really quickly.
And I was like, man, that’s no, that’s really good. So Constipation wise, I think all these things are great.
Let’s talk about this a little bit. What are the top things that kind of stress or threaten Bioflow and Constipation issues and gut motility issues? And what are some of the things that might kind of increase bacteria and fungus in the gut leading someone to bloating?
What are some things that come to mind and what we can kind of walk through together for the gallbladder, you mentioned some things. So obviously hormones, estrogens, not detoxing well, stress is a big one.
Another thing that I like to throw in there that I find causes a lot of issues is high Omega sixes, which usually come from seed oils, which are so prevalent in our foods and all those things today. What are some other things that might increase overall like stress on the gallbladder system in the liver and bioflow?
And then what about with the gut bacteria and fungus? One of the biggest ones is something called a seed aldehyde. So this is another bridge between microbiome imbalance and gallbladder dysfunction.
So the gallbladder dysfunction doesn’t have to predispose fermentation in the gut because of poor motility.
What can happen is say you’ve got a microbiome imbalance due to food poisoning, due to taking too many probiotics or just taking probiotics at all, or you got sick, you name it, environmental things. There’s a million ways that the microbiome can get out of balance.
But say that that was the first thing that happened once that’s out of balance, the there’s a byproduct of the immune system killing off these microbes in the gut and of these of this overgrowth in the, I can’t talk today, a byproduct of this overgrowth being present in the gut.
It’s called acetaldehyde. So it is basically the same chemical that alcohol breaks down into your body.
And so it’s the hangover chemical your body will produce that or these microbes will produce as a result of this being present. And then that is a nasty toxic chemical that your gallbladder slash liver must then get rid of.
And so it will irritate the heck out of the gallbladder. And so you can get where microbiome issues cause gallbladder irritation. I’ve seen Constipation go away just from treating the microbiome and detoxifying acetaldehyde without any hormone issues involved with it.
That makes it super straightforward. However, that’s not the only thing on the list. Beyond that, you can get other byproducts of infections. That’s super, super common. Things like bleach or hypochlorite, ammonia, those are all pretty high in the list as well.
But then from there, secondarily, a lot of foods will actually provoke it as well. And so if you have food intolerances, things like that, that can, that can mess with things. And then maybe histamines and then staying away from the foods can really, really help with stuff that will really, really impact gallbladder.
But then when it comes to the microbiome, like I said, there’s a lot of things that can mess with that. You can have poor, poor motility leading to excess fermentation. And from there, it grows too much. I will find that people that kind of restrict their diets will often experience microbiome imbalances quite a bit more than others.
So say vegans or vegetarians. I don’t think I’ve ever had somebody in the office who’s vegan or vegetarian that doesn’t have a microbiome issue. And it’s because all they eat is Fodmaps, which are short change sugars that are found in all plant foods.
And some of the ones that are highest in protein like lentils, beans, stuff like that, they are high in Fodmaps and therefore they’re feeding the absolute heck out of the microbiome, which it’s overgrowing. So that’s one part of it.
Just yesterday, I had a new patient who came in and his microbiome is out of balance. And throughout the time that he’s been a carnivore for the last three years, he’s gotten more and more and more urgent following eating.
And he was saying yesterday, I mean, within 5 minutes of finishing his meal and sometimes without even finishing it, he’s got to run to the bathroom because he just has diarrhea. And so we ended up finding that the microbiome is imbalanced, but the things that were feeding it were just almost every single fat other than Omega threes.
And so to your point, Omega sixes, but even still, I mean, he’s eating a ton of meats and things like that. And yes, they metabolize more similarly to your Omega threes and could be anti-inflammatory if they are grass fed or you know, organic, whatever you want to call them.
But that wasn’t necessarily the case for everything that this guy’s eating. So. It was leading to some problems, but I mean, not that those things are. I mean, I don’t think carnivores are bad. Maybe, maybe for that like the time, yeah, it can be a little little not so great, but there are certain things that will feed the microbiome and throw it off is all I’m getting.
Deliberately taking probiotics. If you get sick, mold exposure, there’s a lot of things that can throw it off. But all in all, the fix has to be to get rid of the stimulus, which is, you know, stay away from the mold. You know, quit eating as much fat for the time being.
You know, maybe avoid food mass for a while, whatever it is, and then do some sort of antimicrobial herb combination throughout, you know, a couple weeks to get things balanced. Once things are balanced, unless you are deliberately limiting yourself moving forward and you don’t have, you know, lots of diversity of foods, things should stay nice and balanced.
Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. Couple things to add to that with the bio flow and stress on the gallbladder system, high insulin, high blood sugar can be a factor there that’s one that we see pretty commonly. And then yeah, overall with gut health, the biggest thing that I’ll, I’ll, you know, find with people is that chronic stress over time and chronic poor nutrition has just contributed to different gut imbalances.
And to clarify what you said just a second ago, Dr. Tim is for the patient that hasn’t heard this. When he says FODMAP, he’s talking about what’s called a low FODMAP diet or avoiding high FODMAP foods. And FODMAP is spelled FOD MAP.
It’s an acronym that essentially stands for fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyoles. These are different kinds of sugar molecules in foods. And while, you know, sugar in general is going to be something you want to avoid and bread is something you want to avoid with this diet, there’s also healthy foods on this list, things like onions and garlic and apples and a bunch of other different foods that are healthy.
But if we’re eating those and we don’t realize, hey, that’s actually not great for our gut right now, that overtime will just contribute to the bloating and the gas and things like that with, with feeding the bacteria and fungus.
So Dr. Tim, let’s kind of keep going here. And then we got to wrap up in just a second what, what’s kind of the what’s kind of some things that patients can look into that they can try? What are some supplements that you find patients usually do really well with for Constipation and then also for bloating?
So for bloating, let’s start with that. Typically it is just, you know, some antimicrobial herbs, some really common ones are things like gentian root organ, grape root, noni fruits, Astragalus root, angiographis. Those are some really good ones and just experimenting with one at a time to see if that helps reduce bloating could be a good idea.
If it’s not a microbiome imbalance, maybe trying some digestive enzymes or even some betaine hydrochloride might help if there is some sort of protein or fat digestion issue there. And then beyond that, when it comes to Constipation, managing blood sugar, most people don’t realize how to do that.
So I encourage you to listen to our episodes that we have dedicated to that. Our second episode, the stress and anxiety episode, absolutely goes through that in great detail and how that causes problems if that’s not regulated properly.
So I would encourage you to listen to that one to turn off the stimulus for too many hormones being produced that will affect the gallbladder.
And then from there, maybe some glutathione, Vitamin B6 in its active form being pyridoxal phosphate. Those are super, super common ones. But then also artichoke extract, chromium, Those are really good. vitamin A. Those are some of the top nutrients that I’ll find for helping the gallbladder and helping with motility.
Glycine is also on that list. Beyond that, you can just do an Oxbow replacement to see if or just a bowel replacement. You can use Oxbow or Colacol from the standard process and see how that does. That’s kind of the quick list on what you can do there.
But all at all, just think remove the stimulus that could be causing problems, identify what that is and then from there remedy it. You know, detoxify or kill off the microbes in the gut or, you know, you name it, it’s it.
It can be difficult to pin down exactly what it is without us getting hands out of the office and actually talking through those problems with some patients. But hopefully with this episode, you can identify and and just keep your eyes on some lifestyle factors or on some indicators worse and that might help you piece together how to fix it.
Yep, I love it. I love it. Those are all great things. My kind of general list of things that, you know, especially when I’m encouraging patients like, hey, these are the things that I find the most from the muscle testing.
And these are the things that if you try these, you might find some good improvements. So in general, when it comes to bloating, following the low FODMAP diet, I find it to be very, very helpful for people because essentially what you’re doing is you’re taking out all the foods that are going to potentially feed the bacteria and fungus.
And so that that kind of takes some of the gas off of the fire, for example. But then the other things like you mentioned, the herbs can be extremely helpful. I would say some of the top ones that I find to be super helpful, I would say olive leaf is probably the top one.
Morinda, you mentioned that Noni is another name for that. And then another big one I find is Neem or Malia. And so those are some big ones there. And then in general, you know, making sure that other areas of your health are improving, like you mentioned, obviously eating right, managing the blood sugar well, making sure you’re having consistent bowel movements.
You know, it’s like if you have constipation, if you don’t fix that and the bloating is just going to continue to return a bit. So with the Constipation, the number one thing, one of the biggest things that I find it, it’s probably #1 is actually magnesium calm.
So there’s a lot of different types of magnesium. I really like magnesium calm because the magnesium carbonate, yes, it mixes with the citric acid, turns into magnesium citrate. But the carbonate I think is a it’s a pre it’s a, it’s a not yet formed magnesium citrate supplement, which basically gives your body the ability to use it in whatever different ways it needs.
So the magnesium column, the way I find that it works really well with people is in general, you might take half a teaspoon twice a day or one teaspoon twice a day, something like that.
Some people just take it before bed and that’s great too. But the way that you, you do it is if you’ve, you’ve gone a day or so and you’re not having a bowel movement and, and that generally helps you, what you do is you take, let’s say you take one teaspoon of magnesium column, give it about 20 minutes.
If you haven’t had a bowel movement, you can, depending on how aggressive you want to be with things, you can either take another half teaspoon or another full teaspoon. Give it 20 minutes. At some point you’re going to reach that level where your body’s like OK, time to move.
And if you get it just right, you should have a good bowel movement. It shouldn’t be loose. If you do it a little bit too much, it’ll clean you out a little bit more. It’ll be a bit more loose. So that’s kind of the risk you run with that.
But that kind of method has been really, really helpful for people. The other supplements in general that I recommend is I think something like choline, which is found in the yolk of eggs. You can also get in a supplement form.
The standard process is great. Sometimes fat stresses your gallbladder. Sometimes you need healthy fats for your gallbladder.
And so trying grass fed butter can be really, really helpful. You know, try like half a tablespoon or one tablespoon and just see how you feel. I found a lot of times that actually helps with bile flow and that kind of thing.
And the last couple things I’ll mention, vitamin A can be super helpful, but then also omega-3 fish oil can be really, really helpful. So for our listeners with every patient, we’re jumping into muscle testing.
We’re getting really specific with what each person needs. On our podcast, we don’t have that luxury as much. So we’re kind of like, hey, this is what we usually find works well.
This is something you could try and it’s definitely not our favorite way to go about things, but, but we hope that this is helpful for you nonetheless. Dr. Tim, any last comments?
Otherwise, let’s go ahead and wrap up. Nope, let’s get things wrapped up. So I’m Dr. Tim Augustiniak down here in Bentonville, AR at Flourish Functional Wellness Center if you want to find me online.
My website is flourishfwc.com. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions for future episodes, feel free to reach out. All of the contact info for you know, us at the office or e-mail, you name it, as well as all the links to all the socials around the homepage of the website.
I love it. Yeah. Likewise, you can find me at Dr. joelmiller.com. The practice is in Flower Mound, TX. It’s called Freedom Health and Wellness. You can also find me on Instagram at Dr. Joel Miller. If you guys have any questions, need any help, feel free to reach out.
We’d love to help you or point you in the right direction. All right, y’all. We’ll see you in the next one.
