Why You Can't Heal Your Gut with Evan H. Hirsch, MD - #116

Why You Can't Heal Your Gut with Evan H. Hirsch, MD

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Hey there, Evan Hirsch here. Welcome back to the EnergyMD podcast where we help you resolve your chronic fatigue, ME-CFS, which is chronic fatigue syndrome and long COVID. So really excited about today's episode because I'm going to be talking about why you can't heal your gut. So I can't tell you how many people come to see me and have spent five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 15 years.

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because the gut is the seat of all illness and while this is kind of true and the reality is is that by changing your diet and doing things to really support your digestive process and heal the gut, you can get a lot better. Oftentimes when you get stuck and you can't heal the gut is because there are toxic exposures that are affecting negatively affecting your gut and it doesn't matter how many

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digestive enzymes you take or hydrochloric acid or antimicrobials for killing bacteria in the gut or taking immunoglobulins to bind up infections in the gut or probiotics, it's not going to get you there. Okay, so let's kind of go through this a little bit. So when functioning normally, you put food in your mouth, you chew, you secrete some salivary amylase and some digestive enzymes in the mouth.

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which will start to the digestive process. Then you have to have a good swallow reflex to take it down into the stomach. You have to have enough stomach acid in order to start digesting the food. And then you have to have digestive enzymes secreted by the pancreas into the small intestine. The liver is producing bile that is then held by the gallbladder. And then the gallbladder secretes the bile and allows you to digest fats. So all along the way, you're digesting proteins, you're digesting fats, you're digesting carbs.

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And then you move the through the process of peristalsis, basically like a wave-like motion. You're then moving your food through the small intestine then into the large intestine where the water is getting absorbed back into the body and the stool is concentrated and then you're excreting it out of the body and you have to have a good sphincter in order to be able to make sure that you're not pooping all over the place and that you have control of your bowels, okay? So that's kind of normal function. And so...

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A couple of things to note, so 80% of our immune system is found in the gut, in the gult, the gut-associated lymphoid tissue. So whenever there's anything in the body that's not supposed to be in there, the immune system is going to be reacting to it, okay? This increases inflammation and causes symptoms. This is why one of the ways to decrease the reactivity of the immune system is to remove food sensitivities.

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So if there's a particular food that you're sensitive to that the body is reacting to, if you remove it out of your diet, then your immune system in the gut won't react to it. And consequently, your inflammation will go down and all your symptoms are, whether it's from headaches to bottom of the foot pain, to back pain, whatever it is, all of that is inflammation. And inflammation, all inflammation is, is the immune system's reaction to something in the body.

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causing that sort of inflammation. So if you work backward from pain and symptoms, it's inflammation and that is the immune system reacting to something. So at its core, the immune system's job in the body is to remove things that aren't supposed to be in the body. Okay. And these are actually the toxic four of the toxic five that I talk about. So this is their heavy metals, chemicals, molds, infections.

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and then I call it nervous system dysfunction or trauma. But four of those are things that are not supposed to be in the body that when they are in the body causes the immune system to become more dysfunctional and inflammatory. Okay. So coming back to the original question, what does this have to do with healing the gut? Well, oftentimes the, the toxic five, the heavy metals, the chemicals, the molds, the infections and the nervous dysfunction slash trauma.

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All of those things are going to cause inflammation in the body and they're going to affect the digestive process that we just went through in different ways. So nothing shuts down digestion faster than stress. Okay. And this can be mental stress, emotional stress, or physical stressors, kind of like what I just talked about. Four of those five toxic of those five toxins.

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So the toxic four versus the toxic five, I guess, are physical. The heavy metals, chemicals, molds and infections are physical insults. The the nervous system dysfunction or trauma that is mental and or emotional. OK, so these are all things that stress the body out. And when you are stressed, it's not the time to be digesting food. OK, so consequently.

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you will not be producing salivary amylase coming out of the salivary glands. And you will not be producing stomach acid to the appropriate degree. And you'll not be producing the digestive enzymes or the bile salts to digest your fats and your carbs and your protein, right? And if you have some of these toxins that are in different parts of the body, like let's say they're in the nerve tissue, you're not gonna have good peristalsis.

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You're not going to have this wave-like movement that is supposed to be moving the food down the path. And if you're having toxins in the nervous system and in the enteric nervous system, which is the nervous system in the gut, then consequently you can have even more issues with what's called gastroparesis, where basically you're having issues moving the food down the pathway to the point

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of having constipation and maybe obstipation where the food really isn't moving at all. And sometimes people need enemas on a regular basis in order to get things out. So these toxins that I'm talking about, not only are they stressful, but they can affect almost every single organ in the body. And if they're in a particular organ, you're going to have symptoms associated with that organ. Okay. So let's say you have mercury or let's say you have an infection like

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in the thyroid, consequently you're going to have inflammation in the thyroid, the thyroid production is going to be decreased, that is in turn going to cause constipation and other issues in the gut. And so it's this picture of the more of these toxins that you have in the more parts of the body, the more it creates this complex picture of making it very challenging to heal the gut.

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If you're not able to heal the gut with the normal, you know, four hour process that typically you'll do with your functional medicine provider, where you're removing your food sensitivities, you're removing a number of these infections, you're replacing some of the enzymes and the stomach acid, you're re-inoculating with some of the probiotics that you're taking, then you are, you're, if you're not able to fix it with that, then you really have to go deeper. And this is the next step that unfortunately not a lot of

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Fortunately and unfortunately that not a lot of functional medicine practitioners are trained in fortunately because 95% of the people that they see in their practice, they can get well just by focusing on the things that they're doing by replacing deficiencies, focusing on lifestyle habits. Whether you're a functional medicine doc or an integrative doc or a naturopathic doc, all of those things can be incredibly helpful for the majority of the population. But if you're still not able to get rid of your issues.

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whether it is an issue with digestion and having a gut issue and you're not able to heal your gut or whether it's something like we deal with, which is ME-CFS, chronic fatigue, long COVID, MCAS, mast cell activation syndrome, then you really need to look at this next level, which is the toxic five, the heavy metals, the chemicals, the molds, the infections, and the nervous system dysfunction slash trauma. So I'm just gonna keep saying it.

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because it's that important for you to focus on if you get to that point where you're not having success. Okay. And if this is the case for you, come check us out at energymdmethod.com. We have one-on-one programs, we have a course, we're here to help. All right, thanks so much for paying attention and like us and subscribe for more information like this coming forward.