Hannah Aylward Nutrition | Gut Health Expert

Ep 4: Exactly How to Repair Your Gut After Antibiotics

Hannah Aylward — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 18:12:19 +0000

In this episode, I dive into all things antibiotics and gut health. Antibiotics do a number on the gut, and can destroy both of the good and bad bacteria in the gut microbiome, causing further microbial imbalances. Heavy antibiotic use is a big contributor to conditions like SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth) and Candida overgrowth. Together in this episode, we’ll dig into a step-by-step action plan for repairing the gut microbiome post-antibiotic treatment.

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT IN THIS EPISODE:

Antibiotics: the impact on the gut microbiome and your digestive health.
Could chronic antibiotic use be an underlying root cause of your chronic digestive issues?
The key components to a thorough plan post antibiotics to protect and repair your gut microbiome.
What foods to avoid after taking a course of antibiotics.

CHAPTERS:

00:00 Antibiotics and the Gut Microbiome

09:02 Step-by-Step Plan to Repairing the Gut Post-Antibiotics

35:12 Foods to Avoid After Antibiotic Use

37:52 Stress Management: A Key to Gut Healing

43:14 Supporting Liver Health After Antibiotics

47:05 Probiotics: Good or Bad Post Antibiotics?

ENTER THE GIVEAWAY:

We’re giving away ONE SPOT in the next round of my Healin’ Guts + Shakin’ Butts Program (over $6k in value)! HGSB is my signature group program for ditching your digestive issues, transforming your gut, and regaining your freedom once and for all. The only cost for you to cover will be your functional stool test & any needed supplements.

HOW TO ENTER:

Listen to an episode of the Nutrient Dense Podcast (3 episodes dropping this week!)

Subscribe + Follow the show on Apple Podcasts

Leave a rating & review on Apple Podcasts

Comment on this Instagram post tagging a friend who would love to listen to the show (each tag is another entry!)

Once you’ve completed these 4 steps, you’ll be entered to win!

CONNECT WITH HANNAH:

If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and leave us a rating/review! Thank you for listening

Transcript

Hannah Aylward (00:00.909)
Welcome to the Nutrient Dense podcast. I’m your host, Hannah Aylward, holistic health coach, functional gut health practitioner, and the founder of HAN. So many people are continuously failed by conventional and alternative healthcare. We are here to do it differently. Alongside my team of functional registered dietitians, I’ve helped hundreds of women around the world overcome their chronic digestive issues when nothing else works.

I’ve learned a thing or two about what it really takes to transform your health from the inside out. And I’m here to share it all with you. Please keep in mind that this podcast is for educational purposes only and should never be used as medical advice. Now let’s dive in. Your transformation is waiting. Hello and welcome to the Nutrient Dense podcast. I’m excited to dive in today because we’re going to be covering one of the most commonly asked questions that I get.

which is how can I repair my gut after I take a round of antibiotics? So this comes in a lot in my community on Instagram, comes in through our clients after they work with us, if they have to get on antibiotics. So we’re going to kind of dive into some strategies and like easy application, easy action items that you can really put into play to help support your gut health after a round of antibiotics. And

You know, we kind of can’t talk about gut health without talking about antibiotics because they are obviously a big offender of our overall gut health and the strength and diversity of our gut microbiome. We’ve all taken them for different reasons across the board. And I think it’s pretty safe to say that they are overprescribed. Doctors kind of tend to hand them out like candy. And sometimes they’re totally necessary. Never feel shame or guilt for taking an antibiotic if you really need one. That’s not really the point of this conversation.

but more so just be mindful and ask some good questions before you are put on an antibiotic. So I always use the example of, know, this one time I sliced my foot, it was super weird. I had this like door that kind of like swung open and swung closed. And when I was coming in from a run one day, it hit my ankle and it sliced my ankle open pretty bad. So I went to urgent care.

Hannah Aylward (02:14.84)
because after a couple of days, this thing was just getting infected and it was getting bigger and it was, it was not feeling or looking good. So I was like, I need to do something about this. So I went to urgent care and they gave me a topical antibiotic cream and they gave me two internal antibiotics to take. So I was like, I’m not going to take this antibiotic internally. I think that this topical cream is going to kick it. So I was just like, okay, thanks. I filled the prescriptions, didn’t cost me much with my health insurance and I took it all home.

And I was like, I’m going to use this topical antibiotic and this creams ointment. And if I don’t see big change in like two days, then I’m going to take the internal antibiotic. And I was really monitoring it and making sure that it wasn’t getting worse, making sure I wasn’t drawing a fever or anything like that. And honestly, one day of the topical antibiotic cream and things were starting to turn the corner. If they had gotten worse, yes, I would have taken the internal antibiotic.

However, this cut on like the outside of my foot, I was like, I don’t know if this warrants two internal antibiotics. So I used my best judgment there. That’s my personal experience. Do with that what you’d like, but they’re very often dished out. And when I think about my childhood as well, my gosh, I got sick multiple times a year as a little girl. And I was given so many like Z packs, so many antibiotics for kind of cold and flu symptoms. They used to get a lot of sinus infections that would turn into bronchitis. my gosh, my little brother and I, we were chugging.

coughs her up like Delsim. Shout out to Delsim, that orange liquid. We took so much of that. My parents didn’t really know, right? So when I speak to my mom about it now, she’s like, we didn’t really know what this was doing and how negative this could impact your overall health. So if you grew up in the 80s, 90s, you’re probably given a lot of antibiotics and now we can support our gut, gut health from here on out. But sometimes this heavy antibiotic use, you know,

in your past does play a role in what your gut health looks like today. It definitely reduced my resilience and my diversity and kind of contributed. It was one of the many factors contributing to my chronic digestive issues because I started getting digestive issues really as a little girl. I can remember them as early as like the fifth grade, kind of going into the office up front because my stomach hurt really bad and all of that great stuff. And at that point I had been on multiple rounds of antibiotics and then as a kid was eating processed food.

Hannah Aylward (04:37.369)
drinking Gatorade, eating, I mean, fruit roll-ups, you name it, whatever I was eating then, loved ramen, loved KFC mashed potatoes. So my life has really changed since then. So I didn’t know what I was doing, right? I was also a child. So we want to just be mindful of our overall antibiotic use over the years, you know, because it can, what antibiotics do, they wipe out all of the bad.

bacteria, right? So the infection, is what they’re designed to do and thank goodness they do because they save a lot of lives. And while they do that, they also wipe out all of our good gut bacteria. So they’re kind of coming in and they’re wiping out all of the bacteria, but the gut microbiome is made up of things other than just bacteria as well. So we’ve got yeast or fungi in there. We’ve got archaea, we’ve got parasites naturally occurring. And when we bring an agent in to come in and wipe out all of those bacteria,

our risk for things like candida or fungal overgrowth goes up because these good gut bacteria that we have in our gut help to, well, they influence our immune system, they modulate our immune system, but they help to weed out the not so good bacteria and the not so good like fungi and yeast. They help prevent that from overgrowing. So when we take an antibiotic that wipes out all the bacteria, the yeast remain, the yeast or the fungi, they stay.

And then we can find ourselves with a whole different set of symptoms. So it’s pretty common to get like a fungal overgrowth, Candida overgrowth after having to take an antibiotic. And that’s one of the reasons why also sometimes women get stuck on this little roller coaster of like taking an antibiotic for a UTI and then they get a yeast infection. Then they have to take an antifungal for that and then an antibiotic again. And that’s not a fun place to be.

We just want to be mindful, but that’s how they work, right? So there’s kind of an analogy that’s if you’re looking at a garden and there are weeds in the garden, you can bring things in to kind of like pull out the weeds from alongside the veggies and the fruits or the plants or whatever. But you could also get rid of the weeds by just setting the garden on fire, but you’d also get rid of all the good stuff too. You’d kill off all the beautiful plants or the veggies and fruits that you were trying to grow.

Hannah Aylward (06:49.692)
So that’s kind of what an antibiotic does. It’s as if we just set that garden on fire. Once again, I want to be very like mindful here. I’m not, I don’t like to be like incredibly black and white when it comes to these topics. There’s a time and place for an antibiotic and there’s no doubt about that. So if you need to take one, take one. And if you’re questioning it, ask questions, voice those concerns to your practitioner, to your medical care. And if you do have to take one, we’ll talk about, you know, things that we can implement to help.

support your gut and bouncing back after taking that antibiotic and our good gut bacteria, you know, we want to be mindful of killing all these things off, whether it’s an antibiotic or honestly a lot of strong herbals too, because these good gut microbes do a lot for us and they help to support immune function, which, know, the irony is that we’re taking this antibiotic to wipe out the bad bacteria to

support our immune system from this infection, but then we wipe out all the good bacteria and then our immune capacity, our immune system is functioning at a lower level because we don’t have all these good gut bacteria kind of informing it at the same time. But our gut bacteria also help to like synthesize B vitamins. They help to convert a portion of our thyroid hormone into active thyroid hormone. They help us break down certain carbohydrates.

So they’re very important for our overall health and we want a good robust amount of these good gut bacteria. And we can do that largely through the food that we eat. And that’s going to help to support gut proliferation or the growth of these good gut bacteria and microorganisms that we do need for so many reasons. So there’s a lot of talk in this space about kind of eradicating pathogens and killing off overgrowth and killing, killing, killing, killing, right?

but we also need to make sure that we are rebuilding either alongside the eradication and the killing or after, because that’s what’s going to help build resiliency and strengthen your gut so you’re not as susceptible to things going forward, which is what we really, really want. Okay, so let’s go ahead and dive into some of these main tips that I have for repairing your gut after a round of antibiotics.

Hannah Aylward (09:02.524)
So the first most important thing to do is going to be eating foods that are rich in prebiotics because contrary to popular belief, probiotics don’t actually like re-inoculate our gut microbiome. oftentimes when we take probiotics, they’re transient. So they’re impacting your system as you’re taking them and then you poop them out. And then as soon as you stop taking them, we stop getting the benefits of them. There are some that operate a little differently than your average probiotic, things like sport based probiotics, which we tend to use with clients.

But overall, these probiotics are transient. They’re really not super effective at actually repopulating your gut microbiome. We want to more so focus on prebiotics. And what’s cool is we can get a lot of these through the food that we’re eating. Some of the clients that we see are very sensitive to prebiotics because they have a lot of bacterial overgrowth. you’ll, as I list off these foods to kind of add in, take note, cause you’ll know if you’re super sensitive to prebiotics,

It’s a sign you’ve got some other, you know, gut dysbiosis going on that we can help you through. And that’s why you can’t tolerate these foods very well, but just know that what these foods are really doing is they’re feeding these, these gut bacteria that you have. We run into issues tolerating them when we already have an overgrowth of these bacteria, because we’re feeding an overgrowth and then we get super symptomatic, very bloated, very like distended in the belly. It’s not fun. It can lead to constipation, but that’s really how prebiotics are working.

they’re feeding our good gut bacteria. So we’ve got prebiotics, probiotics, and then we’ve got things called postbiotics. So when we are eating these good fibers, these prebiotic rich foods, we are supporting refeeding these probiotics or these good gut bacteria. And when these good gut bacteria eat up these prebiotic foods, they’re going to produce what we call postbiotics and or short chain fatty acids, things like butyrate and propionate and acetate.

And butyrate is the main fuel source for our colonocytes or the cells that line the colon. So if we’re looking at that leaky gut picture, which is usually more so kind of happening in the small intestine, but we always want to maintain a healthy gut barrier in the large intestine as well, especially when we’ve got things like IBD. So we want to support the production of butyrate, this really important short chain fatty acid, and we do so by eating prebiotics that then feed our probiotics.

Hannah Aylward (11:28.346)
It’s kind of amazing. The body is like a miracle, right? I mean, listen to all of this. It’s doing this without us even thinking about it. Thank you body. So we want to make sure that we’re eating a lot of prebiotic rich foods. So that’s going to include things like onions, garlic, leeks, asparagus, Jerusalem artichokes, dandelion greens. These are going to be really high in prebiotics naturally.

A lot of like fruits naturally contain some prebiotics. A lot of veggies kind of naturally contain some, but those are some of the veggies that you can implement and add in that contain like good levels of prebiotics, potent levels of prebiotics. We can also add some supplementation in here too. One of the supplements that I love to use is called Sun Fiber. That’s like the brand. I have no affiliation with this brand, but we use it with a lot of clients. And what it is is it’s partially hydrolyzed guar gum, which is a prebiotic.

and it’s very well tolerated by more sensitive clients. So I put it in my morning coffee pretty regularly. It also is included in one of my favorite probiotics, the Clare Labs Therbiotics Synbiotic. That’s a great one. But remember, we don’t want to like be blindly adding in probiotics. We may respond negatively to them depending on where your gut microbiome is at and what you’ve got present in there. But that is overall, like generally speaking for people that aren’t too sensitive, a great probiotic.

and that actually contains this partially hydrolyzed guar gum or PHGG in it. But sun fiber is super simple. It dissolves really well in liquid. So you could add it to a smoothie. You could add it to a mineral cocktail. You could add it to a cup of tea. I throw it in my cold brew in the morning. Super easy. Doesn’t taste like anything. And like I said, pretty well tolerated by people that are more sensitive, including those that may have SIBO or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.

that are gonna react to a lot of these prebiotics, right? With lots of bloating and burping and gas and things like that. But overall, we want to add in these prebiotics to really help repopulate our good gut microbes, feed those good gut microbes that we have and build that bacterial diversity because that is one of the biggest indicators of a healthy and resilient gut is diversity in our bacteria. We don’t wanna have too much of just one bacteria.

Hannah Aylward (13:45.21)
Essentially our good gut bacteria help to weed out the bad gut bacteria and maintain like a healthy ecosystem and kind of keep things in balance alongside our gut immune system. So that’s going to be tip number one, eating foods rich in prebiotics. So instead of focusing on probiotics after an antibiotic, I want you to focus more so on prebiotics. Then we have things like resistant starches and these are very similar, right? So they serve a very similar purpose. They’re going to help to feed the friendly bacteria in your gut.

and increase the production of those short chain fatty acids that I mentioned, things like butyrate that are gonna then help support that healthy gut lining, reduce inflammation, really good stuff like that also tends to help clients a lot with like pain. So this is gonna be foods including cooked and cooled potatoes. So the key here is to cook them and then cool them. You could like boil them and then cool them down, pop them in the fridge. The next day, heat one up, add some butter and salt, you’re good to go. It could be like a mashed potato situation.

you basically just want to cook them and cool them down. And same thing goes for rice. So white rice, brown rice, both work. You want to cook that, cool it down. That’s when the resistance starches start to form and then you can reheat it the next day. That’s fine. Or you can eat it cold, but that’s really key there. So if you’re kind of prepping for the week, you can just put on a pot of rice or throw it in the, rice cooker, slow cooker, whatever you want to call it, and then let it cook thoroughly.

cool it all down and then kind of reheat it throughout the week. That’s going to get you that good resistant starch. Things like beans and legumes, oats, green bananas, all of these are great sources of resistant starches to help refeed those good gut bacteria and build up that population of your good gut bacteria. So pretty easy add-ins there. Oats, you can do overnight oats, you can cook them hot.

Super easy, super simple. Oats have been like very vilified on social media lately. They’re not going to wreck your gut health. They’re not causing the health, poor health epidemic that our country is dealing with. Don’t blame the oatmeal. Can they be sprayed with glyphosate, oats themselves? Yes. However, just bi-organic. And that’s really that, right? People are saying that they’re loaded with glyphosate and people are saying that it’s a blood sugar nightmare. And that’s not necessarily true.

Hannah Aylward (16:05.446)
So this is a little tangent on oats, but I’m just like, someone’s got to defend these oats. There’s so much research showing that consuming oats regularly leads to positive health outcomes, including better gut health and then also like lower cholesterol and all of that. So the key here is to aim for organic or non-GMO. If it’s organic, then it should be non-GMO inherently. It doesn’t have to say organic and non-genetically modified. It should just be organic.

very easy to find you guys. can grab them at Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Publix, not super expensive and easy, easy add-in. And you also want to look for ones that are like certified gluten-free if you can as well. Oats themselves are gluten-free in nature. They don’t contain gluten, but there’s a lot of cross-contamination with them typically. So if you can find one that’s like says gluten-free on it is certified gluten-free, you’re better off if you are sensitive to gluten, have a gluten intolerance.

I’d say overall for your gut health, it’s a good call there. just aim for, you know, look for gluten-free, look for certified gluten-free and look for that organic label. And then what’s really important is pairing, kind of like formulating your oatmeal properly. So we want to avoid these empty carbs regardless of what they are, whether it’s oats or crackers or a piece of bread or a piece of cake or whatever, people are just like hating on oats for clicks. So.

We just want to really make a bowl of oatmeal the right way or make overnight oats the right way. And then, and then we’re good. That would look like adding protein to them because they don’t have much protein at all and adding a good fat source to them. And then you can even add some more fiber to them because they do contain some fiber, but it’s honestly not that much. And they are mostly carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are going to spike your blood sugar regardless of the form. And what’s going to help to minimize that blood sugar spike is going to be protein and fat. So add in some collagen protein, add in

a scoop of your favorite protein powder. I love Equip protein. We’ve got a discount code for you. We can put that in the show notes. I’m a big fan of their protein. It’s very high quality. It’s a great source. It’s like minimally processed, minimal ingredients. Those things are really important to me. I also love Trubani protein powder. That’s going to be a plant-based one. It’s organic, which is great. It’s also like very minimal ingredients. I don’t have a discount code for you guys on that one, but I can work on it if you want. But I kind of alternate between using both of those personally.

Hannah Aylward (18:23.792)
and we recommend those to clients very often as well. So you just want to essentially add in protein that could also look like cracking an egg in it, or maybe two, it could look like adding some Greek yogurt to it. I mean, you can kind of play around with that. I think the simplest way is to make the oatmeal, then add in some protein powder. And then I top mine with like a big dollop of Greek yogurt for some extra protein and creaminess. And then I add some good fat to it. So that could be pumpkin seeds, walnuts, almonds, a good drizzle of almond butter.

cashew butter, coconut oil, mean, whatever works for you. And then I like to throw in some fruit for some extra fiber and some good sweetness. And I’ll do a little drizzle of honey. And you can also add in extra fiber through things like chia seeds and flax seeds. So pretty simple, very good, great in like these colder winter months as well. I’ve been eating a good bit of oatmeal and that’s how it’s going to actually keep you satisfied. You’ll feel satiated. You won’t be hungry an hour later, which can commonly happen with oatmeal when we’re not kind of like

doctoring it up well. And that’s going to all help to minimize that like big blood sugar surge that you can get when you’re eating those, you know, what I would call like naked carbs. So it’s not really the oats. We don’t have to vilify the oats, just pair them properly, eat them well, just like you want to do everything else too. You know, we want to pair things properly to balance our blood sugar. These oats are a great source of resistant starches and have some prebiotics. So there you go. Add them in. That’s the, that’s my advertisement for oats, not paid, not sponsored.

So the next thing on my list is going to be eating polyphenols. So polyphenols, as one of my practitioners on my team says, you’re going to look for foods that stain. So those foods that will leave a mark on your shirt will stain your cutting board. Those are going to be rich in polyphenols. We’re looking for very deeply, like richly darkly colored fruits and veggies. So that’s going to be things like cranberries, pomegranate, raspberries, blueberries, beets, turmeric, right?

this stuff that if you like drop it, you’re like, great. I’ve got, I’ve got a mark on, on the floor. Those things are going to be really rich in polyphenols. Coffee is another good source, but you know, we don’t want to rely on coffee as our source of polyphenols. Cacao is another great source too. So that’s something you could add into an oatmeal. You could drink a hot cacao. So very easy to add these things in olives. I am so obsessed with olives. I love them so much. Great source of healthy fats, great source of polyphenols.

Hannah Aylward (20:45.988)
Every time I eat them, I’m like, yay, my, good gut bugs are loving this. So these are things that you can add in green teas and other great source of polyphenols. And, these help to increase the population of your good gut bacteria ultimately. So we’ve got certain strains of gut bacteria, acromansia, mucinophila comes to mind and that specific keystone strain of gut bacteria, it should usually take up about, I would say one to four, maybe 5 % of a healthy gut microbiome.

we’re looking for about, you know, three to 4 % overall. And this gut bacteria really helps to protect our gut lining. So it can minimize risk for leaky gut. can help us repair and heal leaky gut. also can like minimize risk for autoimmunity, for metabolic dysfunction. It’s great for blood sugar regulation. It’s a really, really important strain of gut bacteria. And there’s a lot of research coming out about it right now. So

This gut bacteria specifically loves polyphenols. It wants to eat those up and then it’s going to produce these short chain fatty acids and it’s gonna help to essentially like seal up our gut lining and also help to feed and support good gut proliferation in the gut microbiome through the consumption of these foods. So this is a great way to support your gut after taking antibiotics. So once again, you’re looking for those polyphenol rich foods.

and drinks like hot cacao, green tea. You can do like a cranberry juice or a pomegranate juice as well. I just love the real food if you can get it, because as soon as we juice something, we’re removing all the fiber. And that fiber is designed to help slow essentially the effect that it’ll have on our blood sugar, right? It slows the sugar from entering the bloodstream. So when we start to juice things, we can have big blood sugar ups and downs because all the fiber is gone. That’s why juicing is very different than a smoothie.

A smoothie, you blend it all, all the fiber still in there. So if you can eat this in a whole food form, like eating raspberries and blueberries and pomegranates and cranberries and olives and things like that, that’s really your best bet. Olive oil is another great source of polyphenols too. So cooking with olive oil, adding it onto your salads, drizzling it on top of soup, I love doing. I added it to like my avocado toast with my egg this morning. So lots of great ways, but making sure that you’re prioritizing this is important.

Hannah Aylward (23:09.744)
So that’s really all about kind of supporting the supporting gut proliferation, supporting the rebuilding of our good gut microbes after we’ve kind of wiped them all out with an antibiotic. And then after that, we can kind of support our bodies in some other ways. So one being really soothing that gut lining because that can be quite irritated after taking something like an antibiotic. So I mentioned acromansia, mucinophila, that’s a really very important keystone strain of gut bacteria that helps support a healthy mucosal.

layer of our gut lining. So we have an epithelial layer and then we have a mucosal layer. A nice robust mucosal layer essentially helps to like reinforce the epithelial layer and overall together they create a nice strong barrier, which is what we want. We don’t want that weakened intestinal barrier. And I will be doing an episode on leaky gut and all of that for you guys soon too. So stay tuned, but we want to really help to soothe that gut lining. In the meantime, when

We do have taken antibiotics so we can take things like bone broth Marshmallow root collagen eating enough protein is really key here as well And then reducing or eliminating gluten at least temporarily if you’re not super sensitive is probably a good idea here as well and bone broth It’s gonna contain gelatin. It usually has a good amount of like vitamins minerals, you know It’s like grandma’s chicken soup when you get sick. There’s a reason for it and It’s going to contain

gelatin which helps to absorb water and strengthen the mucus layer of that gut lining and that’s gonna help keep these gut microbes away from that intestinal barrier which is what we want. We want to keep these microbes away from creating essentially more like breakdown of that intestinal barrier. And then it’s also gonna contain glutamine and that’s an amino acid that’s commonly found in bone broth that helps to maintain the integrity of the gut mucosa and intestinal barrier.

You may have heard of like L-glutamine. You can take it as a supplement to support your gut lining. We honestly don’t recommend it that much. Sometimes we recommend it in a mixture with a bunch of other things that can help soothe the gut lining as well. But glutamine, you you’ll find that naturally in things like bone broth. So if you’re very sensitive to bone broth, that can be a sign that you’ve got like a histamine overload picture. We can definitely help you with that. We see that a ton in our clients. It’s usually a deeper gut issue.

Hannah Aylward (25:29.444)
It can be a few things kind of at play, gut lining, gut microbial issue, liver stuff, environmental toxins. But if you are really reactive to bone broth, it’s probably due to a histamine thing. So it’s not that bone broth’s not good for you or anything like that. but you, you do want to look out for that if you’re someone that leans a bit more sensitive, cause we definitely see those clients as well. So yeah, the bone broth, the marshmallow root is great. You can find marshmallow root tea. You can buy it in bulk.

There’s something called throat coat tea, which is great. It contains slippery Elm and marshmallow root and licorice. It’s very soothing for the GI lining. It’s great for soothing the upper GI lining too. So any like reflux heartburn, it can be helpful for that as well. And then another one that I wanted to mention that’s not on my list right here in front of me is aloe. So aloe vera can be very soothing for that gut lining as well. And you can get that in the form of aloe vera juice at your grocery store.

And that can kind of help calm inflammation and soothe that gut lining. And then I also mentioned eating enough protein. And that’s really because your digestive tract, your gut is essentially one big muscle. And what muscles need, they need amino acids. So as I mentioned, glutamine, or you’ve probably heard of that L-glutamine supplement, right? That’s just an amino acid. And what are amino acids found in? They’re found in proteins. So you want to make sure you’re eating enough protein.

that’s going to help regulate your blood sugar, also help to strengthen that gut barrier, which is very important after taking the antibiotic. So then the next thing that we can add in is going to be anti-inflammatory herbs. So those can be things like turmeric, ginger, chamomile, and cumin. And this will also help to soothe that GI irritation and reduce inflammation in the GI tract. I love a good like ginger tea. You can make it at home. You can make it fresh. Ginger root is very cheap.

you can add turmeric in it as well. You could add in a little raw honey. All of that’s going to be great. You could sip on that in the evening or throughout the day. Great. If you feel like you’re coming down with a cold, great for just like some good anti-inflammatory support. Of course, not going to be as strong as taking like a very potent supplement at a clinical dosage, but adding these herbs that we can work with in our own kitchens into our daily routine is kind of always a good idea. So turmeric and ginger, can throw it in a smoothie, chamomile tea. You can brew that at home.

Hannah Aylward (27:49.109)
cumin you can add to soups and stews and things like that. But a very simple, like I said, turmeric and ginger tea is great. All you need to do is grab the root at the grocery store, the ginger root. And then I like to peel mine. Some people don’t peel it, but I peel mine. I don’t really know what to tell you there. If there’s any extra benefits in the peel, I just like to peel mine because it’s kind of sitting at the grocery store and people are touching it. So I rinse it, I peel it, and then I just thinly slice it and I just pour some boiling water over it. I tend to make mine in a big

French press. I’ll let it steep there for a good like 10, 15 minutes and then I’ll drink it after that. I’ll just push the press down and strain it. And that’s really it. I’ll add a little bit of honey and it’s really like spicy and warming and can be great for nausea and supporting gut motility as well. So working with these anti-inflammatory herbs is going to be really helpful. And I listed a couple here, but other herbs and spices are incredible things that you can add in. So

all of these herbs and spices tend to be very high on the auric scale. They’re very high in antioxidants and they’re totally underutilized because most people are just cooking with like salt and pepper. So adding things in like oregano and thyme and parsley and rosemary and cilantro, mean, these things carry such like healing power in them. And this also adds to your plant diversity needs, which I’m going to talk about here soon.

So adding these different types of spices and herbs into your diet can be really, really helpful when honestly on any part of your gut healing journey, they’re super underutilized. You can throw them into soups, smoothies, stews, everything, curries. mean, curries loaded with so many amazing spices I love. So yeah, working with some of these anti-inflammatory herbs, super easy, super simple and pretty much always cheap too and easy to do at home, which we love. Then the next thing’s going to be

I’m just going to go into the plant diversity one since I kind of commented on that before. So adding in these herbs and spices is a really great way to up your plant diversity. And we want to aim for about 30 plus different plants per week. This is going to include herbs, spices, nuts and seeds, fruits and veggies, gluten-free grains. All of those are included in that. So it’s honestly not as difficult as you think.

Hannah Aylward (30:05.387)
But if you have a very bland diet and you’re used to eating the exact same thing every day or every week, then you might run into some issues. But the biggest study that has ever been conducted on the gut microbiome, the American Gut Project showed that essentially the diversity of plants that we consume helps promote diversity in our gut bacteria, which then helps to promote gut resiliency. So we can do this by, you know, simple, simple tips that I like to give my clients.

Instead of buying just frozen blueberries, buy a bag of mixed berries. So buy frozen organic mixed berries, raspberries, cranberries, blueberries, strawberries, whatever that’s going to give you already four different plants with no extra effort. I love simple, actionable tips that I can actually do consistently. So when we keep things easier, we can actually do them. So we want to kind of, you know, those are my favorite tips to give. So I’m like, let’s keep this as simple as possible.

Of course, cooking new recipes and all of that is also key and wonderful to do. Most of the people that we work with, and I think everyone ever is like strapped for time and they’re, you know, adding in simplicity is helpful. So that’s one way that you can do it. Instead of buying just a bag of organic spinach, buy a bag of organic mixed greens that has spinach and kale and whatever else is in there and throw that into your smoothie. Instead, throw that into your veggie stir fry instead.

of just the one green. That’s a very easy way to add in this plant diversity. Throw it into pastas. I use it as a salad. You could also just swap things week to week. And then another great thing to do is just buy something new at the store that you never buy. You know, if you’re in the rut of buying the same stuff over and over again, choose one new fruit or one new veggie and add it in. Other ways that you can do this or, you know, I like to swap out my nut butters. So sometimes you can get a mix where there’s like four different nuts in there.

I’ll buy peanut butter and then I’ll buy almond butter and then I’ll buy sunflower seed butter and you can kind of rotate those out as well. And then, you know, I try to be mindful of my consumption of like too many of one thing because especially with nuts, because everything that’s gluten-free has nuts in it. Basically now all of like these almond flour crackers and almond flour tortillas and all of that kind of stuff. So I don’t really drink almond milk because I’m getting exposure.

Hannah Aylward (32:25.141)
two almonds in like crackers and tortillas, because I do like those things. They’re gluten free and they taste great. So I’ll use like a cashew milk or I’ll make a hemp milk. You can also just use like a good quality dairy milk. That’s totally fine as well. If you tolerate that, it’s just not going to give you that plant, that plant power, but it has other benefits. So we just want to kind of mix things up a little bit. When it comes to our plant foods, if you always cook brown rice, cook a quinoa, cook a white rice. If you always buy

Kalamata olives, buy green olives next time. All of these things kind of help to increase our plant diversity and help to support that gut microbiome and really repair its strength. So this is something we do want to focus on after we do take an antibiotic, is prioritizing that plant diversity. The next thing would be really reducing our intake of processed sugars and alcohol. So antibiotics wipe out both your good and your bad bacteria.

And this is going to set the environment for that fungal overgrowth that I mentioned earlier. So minimizing sugar, you know, temporarily minimizing sugar always is kind of a good call, but having like an extra kind of your finger on the pulse of it after having to take an antibiotic is super key to kind of minimize this risk of the fungal overgrowth because yeast and fungi, they love sugar. They feed off of sugars. So really just being more mindful for a good, you know, month or two, if you can.

of that sugar intake, especially processed sugars. I wouldn’t worry too much about like fruits and things like that. I’m not, you I don’t like to strip a lot of these foods away from clients unless it’s totally necessary. So I wouldn’t have your diet be all fruit. Don’t eat like 10 bananas in one day, which some people do. We would never recommend that. No one on my team would ever recommend that FYI. You know, we want to avoid like that kind of sugar that much, but like, don’t be afraid to have a banana a day or, you know, some strawberries or whatever. Don’t stress about that.

more so looking at your processed sugars and your consumption of those after taking antibiotic. And then same goes for alcohol. Alcohol is not good for us. There’s essentially no health benefit to it. They try to make some claims about wine because of the polyphenols that I mentioned earlier, but the risks and the negatives like highly outweigh the benefits, any possible benefits. So, know, alcohol is never really a good thing to add in.

Hannah Aylward (34:42.645)
With that being said, I consume alcohol here and there, so I understand I’m not going to sit here and act like I never drink it. I love a good martini and I love a good margarita. I like to think my body can handle it in small amounts because I take pretty good care of it. But we do want to just be more mindful of consuming a lot of alcohol after taking something like an antibiotic. So I had one client and my goodness, she had the highest levels of Candida that I have ever seen in my entire life. It was nuts when we ran functional stool testing, her levels were

so, so, so high. She was super reactive to lots of food. She had a lot of digestive issues and she just looked kind of exhausted. And I’m like, how did we get here? Because we run functional stool testing that assesses like what’s going on in the large intestine, which is where the majority of your gut microbiome is. But a lot of the fungal overgrowth tends to hang out in the small intestine and even the stomach. by the time we’re seeing it on our tests that we run, we’re like, this is, these are some high levels. Like I’m looking at these test results and I’m thinking,

These levels are even higher than I can see right now, which is insane. I mean, this was the highest level I had ever seen. And so when I see that I got to go looking, right? I’m like, how did we get here? Because this is wild. And you always want to ask that, especially with Candida. We always want to ask how did this happen? Because it doesn’t just kind of happen out of nowhere. Yes, if your diet was very poor for a very long time, it can happen, but usually there’s like chronic antibiotic use. So we’re living in mold or we’ve got,

birth control use or something else is playing a role. And we do want to make sure that we address that so we can get you fully better. I’m like talking to her and I’m like, how did, let’s, let’s dive in. Like what’s going on? How did we get here? And she said that she, she just like partied really hard when she was younger. No shame to that. She just like would drink a lot and she would party a lot when she was like in college and her, in her twenties. And then she would always get sick. So she’d go get an antibiotic. So she’d like party and she wouldn’t sleep and she’d get an antibiotic.

And then that she’d feel better and then she’d just do it all over again. And I was like, Holy moly. And how long did this go on for? And she was like a couple of years. And I was like, okay, at least this makes sense. Cause girl, you have the highest candida levels I have ever seen. So that’s gonna, that’s showing us, right? So she’s doing the opposite of what we, what we want to do. She was doing the opposite. She’s, she’s changed her life and props to that.

Hannah Aylward (36:58.751)
but we want to avoid, know, that, mean, imagine we’re wiping out all of those bacteria and then we’re just feeding, fueling the fire of the candida overgrowth, of the fungal overgrowth with alcohol. That’s also like wine and beer, like yeasty and like, ooh, no. So let’s avoid that after taking an antibiotic and then just like minimizing alcohol overall. Never really a bad, a bad idea.

Okay, then the next thing that we want to do is really work on our stress levels after, and this should be a big focus of ours always as well. Honestly, all of these recommendations apply like every day of the year. They’re always helpful for your gut and your overall gut health, but managing stress levels here is going to be extra important because it’s going to promote healing and support healthy gut immune function that then helps to maintain a healthy gut environment. So

When we run lab work, we will see a marker called secretory IgA. And this is reflective of your gut immune system. And this marker is very vulnerable to stress and like negative perception and mindset. So we’ll see that your secretory IgA levels will go way down. They’ll be low. If you’re chronically stressed, it’s a very prominent in clients that come to us that are like burnout stage, like they’re exhausted. They don’t have motivation anymore. They are getting like headaches in the morning.

you’re just kind of at that like low cortisol spot where you don’t even have the high cortisol anymore. You’re just like so tired and I’ve been there personally. It’s not fun. And we’ll see that they have lower secretory IgA levels present after all the stress. So we do want to be mindful of our stress levels because our secretory IgA, this is reflective of our gut immune system. And this is, this is what kind of helps keep things in check. This is what’s helping to maintain a healthy gut environment for us.

And when this is lower, we’ll also see things like food sensitivities and intolerances be more prominent. And we’ll also see like, tends to be like adrenal functions. Well, essentially your immune system, your gut immune function has been working so hard. doesn’t have that much juice or power kind of left. So it’s kind of more so that depleted state. And, know, we do want to avoid that and stress will take us there and no supplements will get us out of that. If we continue on that.

Hannah Aylward (39:19.903)
chronic stress cycle. I know that from personal experience. So we do want to be mindful of stress. adding things in like breath work, meditation, more rest saying no, just say no. If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no, right? Do you don’t have to go to that party that you don’t really want to go to, but you’re going just to be nice.

You don’t have to take on that extra project. You don’t have to take on that extra phone call, whatever it is, just be more mindful of your own needs and your, and your own boundaries during this time to protect yourself and put work away. This is where I struggle, put work away, set some boundaries for yourself there too. So, you know, once it hits a certain time, it goes away and it doesn’t get revisited until the next day. A big thing that causes chronic stress now too, is just like information overload.

on social media, Instagram, on TikTok, podcasts, on XYZ. I mean, we’re inundated. There’s not a moment that goes by where we’re like not getting in more noise and input into our brains. That’s going to keep us stressed. And then just like the incessant scrolling, the scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll that just keeps us looped in and drives up that stress response and kind of keeps us in that sympathetic dominant state. So be mindful of these habits.

after taking antibiotic and always every day for your overall health, your hormone and your gut health, but especially during this time. And that’s really to, you know, set the environment for healing. Your body cannot heal. It cannot repair when it’s in that sympathetic dominant state or that fight or flight state. So this is really important. You’re going to be fighting an uphill battle. If you’re just chugging supplements and you’re not relaxed ever, that’s going to be an uphill battle.

And we’re not looking for perfection here. There are going to be stressful moments. It’s more so like, can we flip our mindset on them? How can we flip our perspective on them? And how can we kind of like put some boundaries into place to protect ourselves and just like turn off more. So I always make the joke with my clients. I will tell them your homework is to go home and sit on your couch and stare at the wall. No phone, no TV, no podcast, no iPad, no Kindle, no nothing.

Hannah Aylward (41:30.217)
I want you to actually relax and I want you to sit still and you can close your eyes and just like feel your body. Listen to your intuition. Take some space in this moment to actually hear yourself because we cannot connect with our intuition and we cannot hear ourselves if we’re just go, go, go all the time. And this is like the really, really juicy, juicy state that we can get in.

We want to make aligned decisions in our lives and we want to make sure we’re on the right track. And in order to do that, we have to actually listen to ourselves. But most of the time we don’t have any time set out to listen to ourselves. So this is your excuse. This is your homework. You can tell your significant other, your husband, your roommate, whatever. My health coach, Hannah, she told me I got it. I got to stop and I got to slow down and I’ve got to take this space. So see you in 15 minutes. And that’s my prescription quote unquote for you.

So really being mindful of the stress after an antibiotic, utilizing things like breath work and meditation can be super helpful in these moments as well. And as we know, our like stress influences our gastrointestinal function. It influences our gut health. It causes changes in the mucosal permeability and the gut barrier function. It influences visceral sensitivity. It influences blood flow to our GI organs. It decreases stomach acid.

We’ve gone over this, so we know stress is not great for the gut. So when your gut is kind of in this more vulnerable state, it’s super helpful to be a bit more mindful here. And maybe it’s your excuse. Maybe it’s the excuse or the push that you needed to really take this seriously. Okay. The next thing we want to take a look at is liver support. So antibiotics are the most common class of drugs that cause liver damage, accounting for about 45 % of cases.

Now, know, severe liver damage is still pretty rare when you do take an antibiotic, but we want to be mindful of this and we want to give our liver a little extra loving after having to take something like an antibiotic. So biggest thing there is to pull the offenders. So your, your liver can do what it knows how to do best because it knows what it’s doing. It just needs the raw materials to do the job and it needs to not be inundated with kind of toxins nonstop. alcohol.

Hannah Aylward (43:41.735)
other drugs, Like Tylenol and things like that. Then we have like other toxins, plastics. We’ve got endocrine disruptors through personal care products. You know, we want to be mindful of all of that kind of stuff, reducing all of those. And then we can consider adding some things in like beet juice. We could add in bitter foods, bitter greens, like dandelion greens are great. I’m a big fan of dandelion root tea. It’s a great, really like gentle liver support helps to promote increased bile production.

So it can help with things like nausea, fat, mal-digestion, bloating. I mean, I love dandelion root tea. It can be really also helpful in your luteal phase right before menstruation. And we can always add in supplements here too, but we like to start with some, some food. really aiming for more of those bitter foods, bitter greens, and you could even consider something like a digestive bitters during this time. You could also consider something like a castor oil pack during this time. I love my castor oil pack. We recommend them clients all the time. Big fans over here.

super easy to use, not another oral supplement to take, which I love. And we do have a discount code for that too. And I’ve got a recommendation for you. So I’ll pop that in the show notes, just in case you want to grab one, but we usually hear that clients have less constipation, less bloating, less inflammation after using them. And I love them in the luteal phase as well. When we need a little extra support helping to detoxify estrogen, which the liver does too, it’s under like a heavier burden at that time.

right before we menstruate. So it can really be helpful for PMS symptoms, cramping, that kind of stuff when used in the luteal phase. So all of those could be good add-ins to support your liver along with getting in adequate amino acids. So liver detoxification is a nutrient dependent process. A green juice cleanse is not going to cut it. When you learn what you actually need for liver detoxification, you realize that those things don’t really make sense because you’re lacking a lot of nutrients with them.

including a lot of amino acids and phase two of liver detoxification requires many different amino acids. So where do we get amino acids? Proteins. So making sure you’re getting in some good protein sources can be really helpful there. Okay, so that’s how we can support our liver. Very quick overview. And then, you know, we just want to be mindful overall too of avoiding these refined ultra processed, ultra refined foods, foods high in sugar, foods high in like simple carbohydrates.

Hannah Aylward (46:08.397)
especially when our gut is kind of in a rebuilding phase and we’re lacking a lot of these good gut bacteria and we’re more vulnerable to that fungal overgrowth picture. We want to be mindful of the ultra processed sugars and things like that, but we always want to work to minimize our exposure to ultra refined ultra processed foods overall for our gut health always. So that shouldn’t be anything new to you, but you know, if once again, the antibiotic is kind of like a push for you to

you know, revisit that and be a bit more mindful about that. And that’s great. And we’ll take it. Okay. Those are my tips that I have for you today. You may have realized that I didn’t really mention probiotics. so I have a little bit of a different kind of take on these. There are some probiotics that can be helpful after an antibiotic. So things like Saccharomyces boriardi can sometimes be helpful. However, there has been a little bit of research that shows that taking in a probiotic might delay your gut microbiome reconstitution.

So it can kind of delay your gut getting back to that good spot. So for that reason, my personal take is to just avoid the direct probiotics for a little bit. I don’t push the fermented foods during this time either, because they can kind of, if you’ve got any histamine stuff or fungal stuff, they might flare you pretty bad. So I don’t love adding in a bunch of fermented foods or.

probiotics during this time. It doesn’t mean they’re bad. It doesn’t mean you can’t add them in later, but that’s kind of my personal take. So do with that what you will. But that would be my recommendation. And then adding in a probiotic, you know, four to six weeks kind of down the line, maybe, maybe even longer than that two to three months later, I think is good to go. But with that research, I’m just a little wary of it. And there’s, like I said, the prebiotics are really where it’s at anyway, the prebiotics, the polyphenols and the resistant starches. Those are the things that are really going to help to rebuild your gut bacteria.

Anyway, so we can focus on those in the meantime. And then, yeah, just be more mindful of fermented foods, things like kombucha, sauerkraut, kimchi. If you feel good about taking those in and eating those, they make you feel better, then go for it. If they flare you, you know, let’s reduce, it’s probably a histamine issue or a fungal issue or a SIBO issue. So, you know, that’s usually the case when people are reacting to those foods pretty bad and we see a lot of clients like that. So that’s what I have for you.

Hannah Aylward (48:25.723)
for how to repair your gut after a round of antibiotics. I hope it was helpful. I hope you learned a thing or two. Send this episode to someone who needs it, who recently had to take an antibiotic. This is a really good one to have in your arsenal to reference when you need it because you probably will need it at some point. So save it, share it, and would love to hear any takeaways that you have from the episode in the comments below too. And I’ll see you in the next episode.

Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Nutrient Dense Podcast. If you found this episode valuable, don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and come back next week for a new episode. See you then.

The post Ep 4: Exactly How to Repair Your Gut After Antibiotics appeared first on Hannah Aylward Nutrition | Gut Health Expert.

Ep 3: Leaky Gut 101: The What, the Why, and How to Fix It

Hannah Aylward — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 18:54:23 +0000

In this episode, I delve into the trendy topic of leaky gut, exploring its causes, symptoms, and how to fix it. We go into the importance of understanding the gut barrier and its functions, the role of the gut microbiome, and the various factors that contribute to leaky gut. Leaky gut doesn’t just happen. It’s the symptom of other underlying causes. Digging deeper, understanding and addressing root causes, and coming up with sustainable solutions is key. Completing a generic “leaky gut protocol” is simply not going to solve the issue. Stay until the end where we review actionable steps for improving gut health, including dietary changes, stress management techniques, and the significance of functional testing to identify your unique needs.

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT IN THIS EPISODE:

Leaky gut – is it real?
Leaky gut is often a *symptom* of other gut issues. Not the cause.
Your gut is an ecosystem – not a one supplement fix all.
Breaking down the gut barrier: the mucosal layer, the epithelial layer, and the microbiome.
Food sensitivities are the result of underlying gut dysfunction.
Causes of leaky gut, or increased intestinal permeability.
Generic leaky gut protocols don’t address root causes.
How gut health influences other systems in the body, from endocrine to immune.
Actionable steps to take today to support a healthy gut and overcome leaky gut.

CONNECT WITH HANNAH:

If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and leave us a rating/review! Thank you for listening

Transcript

Hannah Aylward (00:00.909)
Welcome to the Nutrient Dense podcast. I’m your host, Hannah Aylward, holistic health coach, functional gut health practitioner, and the founder of Han. So many people are continuously failed by conventional and alternative healthcare. We are here to do it differently. Alongside my team of functional registered dietitians, I’ve helped hundreds of women around the world overcome their chronic digestive issues when nothing else works.

I’ve learned a thing or two about what it really takes to transform your health from the inside out. And I’m here to share it all with you. Please keep in mind that this podcast is for educational purposes only and should never be used as medical advice. Now let’s dive in. Your transformation is waiting. Hello, my dear and welcome back to the nutrient dense podcast. I’m excited to jump in today because today we’re going to be discussing leaky gut, the what, the why, and the what to do about it.

When I pulled my community about what they wanted to learn from me the most, leaky gut really came up as one of the leads. So I think it’s because it’s commonly discussed. We kind of know the terminology. I feel like it had a big uprising in the functional medicine space or the holistic health space a couple of years ago, and it’s kind of kept its popularity. So we’ll dive on in to everything that you need to know about leaky gut. So what it is, what causes it.

common signs and symptoms, what it kind of creates in the body and then what you can do about it. So let’s just dive on in. The gut really houses about 70 to 80 % of the cells that make up our immune system. And I always like to point this out because when we have issues with the gut lining, we’ll get that chronic inflammation because in the other side of that gut lining is the majority of our immune system. So it’s not really a surprise that our gut health is directly linked to our overall health.

our ability to fight off disease, inflammation levels, our ability to fight off possible invaders. And, you know, about 90 % of all chronic disease can be linked back to the gut microbiome in some way. You know, my understanding of that is partially because of that increased intestinal permeability or leaky gut that can occur causing that kind of systemic inflammation and activation of the immune system.

Hannah Aylward (02:24.28)
when we have that breakdown of the gut barrier. So leaky gut or the more technical term is intestinal permeability or increased intestinal permeability. It’s very common. It’s like I said, it gets a lot, a lot of press. You’ve probably heard about it, but what I do want to voice at the very beginning of this is that leaky gut is not the cause of all your gut issues. It’s not the cause of every gut issue out there. It’s more like it comes alongside these other gut issues that we have. So I want you to think about it in the sense that

Our gut microbiome, our gut function, our gut health overall, it’s a big ecosystem. So all of these things are impacting one another, which is also why it’s really not as simple as taking an L-glutamine supplement or getting put on a quote unquote leaky gut protocol. And that’s because leaky gut protocols, if they’re focusing just on maybe like a probiotic and then an intestinal barrier supplement, so something with like glutamine or maybe it’s got zinc in it,

Maybe it has vitamin A in it, aloe, marshmallow, these things are pretty common in these types of formulas because they can help the gut lining. But we’re really missing the mark if that’s the only thing that we’re focusing on because we have to pay attention to everything else that’s going on in our GI tract that kind of is, that’s basically like creating our gut health overall. So it’s not just about your gut barrier or your gut lining, but we will get into that bit of all of it today.

So what happens when we have leaky gut? What does that really mean? So we’ve got our gut lining and the lining of our digestive tract is really a single cell layer thick. That is really what I’m talking about, this cellular layer. We also have a mucosal layer of our gut lining, but the cellular layer is just a single cell layer thick. And these cells form a barrier between our bloodstream, our immune system and the outside world.

that comes in multiple times a day through what we eat and what we drink. Once again, the body knows what it’s doing because it essentially puts the majority of our immune system right outside of our gut lining. And we’re getting the biggest exposures from the outside world that would potentially be threats inside of our bodies through the food that we’re eating. are like directly putting the outside world inside of our bodies through the things that we eat and drink. So brilliantly, our body put a large portion of our immune system

Hannah Aylward (04:48.063)
in the gut itself to help protect us from these possible invaders that we’re literally putting inside of us. Then we also have our skin barrier, right? And that’s really important. And that protects us from the outside world as well. In a healthy system, these cells are very closely locked together, forming what are called tight junctions. So you can think of like a brick wall and how there’s all these different bricks and they’re all like sealed in nice and tight, right? You’ve got the, honestly, I don’t know what that’s called. Is it grout?

I have never built anything in my life, but you have, they’re all nice and like cemented. don’t know. Someone will have to correct me on this. They’re all together, nice and tight or else the wall would fall. That’s the point of all of this, right? In a nice, healthy gut microbiome that these tight junctions, these cells are nice and tight and connected.

These tight junctions are really what are forming a protective barrier in the gut, making sure that everything we eat is properly processed. And when these tight junctions break down or they get leaky, we develop what is called leaky gut syndrome or increased intestinal permeability or gut barrier issues. We can toss around all those terms. So with space in between these tight junctions, bacteria, undigested food proteins, toxins, waste that are not normally absorbed,

leak out of the intestines and into our bloodstream. What’s on the other side of that lining, right? We’ve got the majority of our immune system. So this is what triggers inflammation in the body, which can lead to a lot of the symptoms that accompany leaky gut, including things like bloating, gas, cramps, fatigue, but also things like joint pain, rashes, acne, eczema, increased intestinal permeability or leaky gut, very, very prominent in chronic skin issues. see a lot of that as well. And

other autoimmune conditions too. you know, we have a lot of inflammation of the gut lining when it comes to IBD. And then we have a gut permeability component to other autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis or Hashimoto’s. So there’s really three main pieces to leaky gut. And we want to look at that mucosal layer that I mentioned, and then that epithelial cellular layer that I was just talking about. And then we also have to look at our gut microbiome because that is more so the bacterial component of all of this.

Hannah Aylward (07:02.147)
but that’s influencing the health of our gut lining. And that’s why I said, all of this is working together as an ecosystem. No part of the GI tract or your digestive system operates in a silo. So if we have a breakdown anywhere down the chain, we are gonna run into issues and that one issue is gonna essentially cause another issue. So an example of that would be someone that has SIBO, right? If someone has small intestinal bacterial overgrowth,

you basically always have leaky gut too, because we’ve got a lot of overgrown gut bacteria that are causing inflammation in the gut lining and breaking down that gut lining or that gut barrier. So we’re going to have kind of that overgrowth picture, that dysbiotic picture accompanied by leaky gut, accompanied by inflammation, because these things all influence one another. So in the case of SIBO, it’s never just SIBO. There’s also usually an intestinal permeability component.

but there is also usually a mal-digestion component because we have to ask how did we get that overgrowth in the small intestine when a lot of our gut bacteria are supposed to be in the large intestine. And I can do a deeper dive on SIBO specifically, if that’s what you guys want, just kind of let me know either on social or you can comment it below here below this episode too. Let me know. Cause I can do a deep dive on SIBO specifically, but these things are all impacting one another. We have to ask,

what allowed for the slow motility that’s occurring in SIBO that essentially allowed for the overgrowth to occur where it’s not supposed to. So SIBO is really a gut motility issue, but we want to take it a layer or three deeper and ask, well, what’s slowing down our gut motility? Is it low stomach acid? What’s causing that? Is it a gut infection?

So we want to always dig deeper here. And this is really how we get clients like really good results because most people don’t do this. And we see a ton of clients and sometimes they’ve seen like the top, you would be shocked if I name dropped, you would be shocked. The top like, you know, gastroenterologists that specialize in SIBO, but no one’s looking at the full picture. Someone comes to mind and we tested her to see what else was going on. Cause she had SIBO that wouldn’t go away, wasn’t getting better, et cetera.

Hannah Aylward (09:14.071)
So we did additional testing on her and not just a SIBO breath test. We ran functional stool testing and she also had infections. She had a parasitic infection. She had an H. pylori infection. She had overgrowth in the large intestine. So there was a lot of other stuff to address and by working with us, she was like, this is the most progress I’ve ever made in this condition. So there’s just a lot more to the story, right? My point in sharing all of that was all of these things are connected and not like

these little aspects of your digestive health and your gut health don’t exist in a silo, right? So we wanna make sure that we are addressing all of these things when working to get you feeling better and fully overcome those chronic digestive issues. So taking a look at this mucosal layer of the gut lining, now this mucus layer is the first layer of protection in our gut. And our intestines are a single cell layer thick, essentially with this mucosal layer on top. And your intestines are really like one long tube.

What we need from our food should be passed through the intestinal walls through tight junctions. So this lining is semi-permeable in nature and into our bloodstream to nourish the cells throughout our entire body. But there is this mucosa layer that sits atop the cellular layer in the gut and it has its own proteins, its own defense molecules and immune proteins that are protective. essentially like a nice robust mucosa layer of the gut lining also helps to kind of reinforce

this barrier of our gut lining, that’s cellular epithelial layer. Then we have our cellular layer. And once again, that intestinal cellular layer is a single cell layer thick. So you can kind of conceptualize like just how vulnerable that might be. Literally a single layer of cells on your gut is what protects your entire body from exposure to unnecessary compounds. And it’s extremely vital to maintain this barrier function efficiently, right? We want a nice strong barrier here.

So in the case of leaky gut, tight junctions can be damaged, reduced, or there’s essentially more space. They’re not so tight anymore. And then we get this passage of unnecessary components into the system from the gut, which is then stimulating that immune system response and driving up inflammation. So there’s so much conversation in the functional space about inflammation and inflammation being the root cause of disease.

Hannah Aylward (11:30.093)
And then people say leaky gut, all of this stuff. I’m like, y’all need to dig deeper, right? So when we’re talking about inflammation, yes, is inflammation present in a lot of disease states? Of course. But what’s driving that inflammation? Cause that’s what we actually have to address. We can throw all the turmeric that we wanted it, all the curcumin that we want at the inflammation, but that’s not actually going to fix the issue. If we have like a gut infection that is essentially contributing to leaky gut, that’s causing that chronic immune response and inflammatory response.

I hope that makes sense. So we always want to take it a layer deeper. I like to say we take like a root cause approach to a root cause approach on my team. And we like to dig a lot deeper. I don’t think there’s another way. I think we have to do this to get people feeling better. So that’s what we do. And this is what we’ve learned really over the years. So we have that mucosal layer and then we have that cellular layer. And then we have this microbiome piece, which is like these trillions of microorganisms that make up our microbiome, right? That are influencing the state of our gut barrier.

There are more bacteria in the gut than there are cells. So like our body cells. So it’s crucial to really maintain a healthy bacterial makeup. The health of our gut microbiome could literally not be more critical to disease prevention, to immune system health, to preventing IBD, autoimmunity, and to helping you enjoy your life without struggling with a ton of chronic digestive issues. I mean,

I got into this work, this deeper gut work, because I very quickly realized if I helped people with their gut health, I could essentially help them with everything because almost everything stems from the health of our gut. So I was like, this is the best way that I could help people. Taking a root cause approach to your gut health, like essentially focusing on your gut health is a root cause approach to like every other condition, right? It’s involved in PCOS, Hashimoto’s.

dermatitis, eczema, acne, IBS symptoms. I mean, it could not be more important and it gets me really jazzed up. So we want to make sure that we are supporting a healthy gut microbiome too. Once again, like there’s a couple components of this and not all gut issues are due to leaky gut, right? Leaky guts essentially like this result of other things gone wrong. So we have to ask,

Hannah Aylward (13:46.903)
what is actually contributing to the breakdown of that gut lining. What’s degrading the mucosa layer? What’s damaging the epithelial layer? What’s actually causing this? Because that is how we’re really gonna overcome these symptoms and heal more at that root cause level. So slapping like a leaky gut protocol on someone’s digestive issues is quite lazy and it usually won’t get us the results that we’re looking for. I watched someone very near and dear to me go through this.

recently and I advised him against it, but he didn’t listen to me and that’s fine. Everyone’s on their own journey. I’m not here to, you know, shove my beliefs down anyone’s throat. That’s definitely not it. So I let him do his thing. I said, this is not the approach I would take just FYI, but you know, if you feel good about it, then go ahead and do it. He bought this like $400 kit that was recommended to him by a quote unquote functional medicine doctor. And cause they all practice differently, right? All functional practitioners kind of practice differently.

So we bought this kit and he took it and it didn’t really resolve the issues. And then I ran functional stool testing on him and he had a ton of overgrowth. He had all of these histamine producers and all of this bacterial overgrowth that was contributing to the symptoms. He had like sluggish liver, liver stagnation. He had, I’m trying to remember everything that was present. There was a lot going on. Now this leaky gut protocol did not address any of these things. So then he brings the results to the doctor. He’s like, I’m working on this with someone else, just FYI.

And the doctor’s like, had I known all of this was happening, I wouldn’t have given you what I gave you. And I’m like, well, isn’t that funny? Maybe we should have dug into that a little sooner and no hate to this practitioner. He’s helped tons of people. It’s all good. I’m just like that frame of mind, that like thought pattern doesn’t make sense to me because before we’re like just throwing this kid at it, of course we want to know what’s going on. Cause I know very well that if there is a bunch of gut dysbiosis present, I mean, this is not going to fix it. It’s, it’s just not.

this gut lining supplement and enzymes or whatever. And that doesn’t mean that they’re like useless. It’s just that it’s not going to get him feeling fully better. And it didn’t. So could have saved him 400 bucks. However, you know, life, life moves on and money always comes back and it’s always in circulation and it’s all good. So, you know, we dug deeper than we were able to get him some more answers and things started to make a bit more sense too. So just be mindful of people that are like, yeah, it’s just leaky gut. Like, let’s just do this.

Hannah Aylward (16:07.471)
like generic protocol. So there’s a lot of like kits on the market and it’s this like gut healing protocol or this like, um, gosh, I just had a call with a prospective client who ended up starting to work with us the other day. She was like, I’m going to do this gut cleanse from this website. And I’m like, what is it? So I took a look and I’m like, this is not, this is like one 12th of what we need to do. And that’s not to overwhelm you or anything. You know, we handle that so you don’t have to stress about it when you work with us. Like we’ll take that off your back.

we know what we’re doing so you don’t have to figure it out all out on your own. but it’s just interesting to me how they like put together these kits and then they call it gut resets or gut whatever. And I’m just like, this isn’t really it. This is like a fraction of what needs to happen. And this could help a little or it could literally not help at all. So that’s my soap box. I’m going to get off of it now, but I just wanted to make the point that there’s so much more to the picture than just leaky gut. However, your gut barrier function.

and your intestinal permeability, this leaky gut, it does play an important role in your health. We just have to dig a little deeper to understand why it’s there in the first place. So let’s just take a look at the clinical picture of someone with leaky gut. What are we looking at? We’ll see chronic fatigue. We’ll see a lot of food sensitivities because think about it. We have the majority of that immune system on the other side of that gut lining and that immune system’s essentially going, this

Is this friend or is this foe? What’s passing through this gut lining that’s now hyperpermeable? Is this friend or foe? Should we mount a big like cytokine immune system response from what’s passing through or should we not? Now we have more stuff passing through the gut lining in the case of leaky gut. So we are going to essentially be reacting to all of these foods that we’re eating. And this is where

It can feel very defeating because you’re like, I’m eating all this healthy food. I’m eating these like good proteins and veggies and I’m so bloated and I’m constipated and I’m in pain and like, what the heck is going on? I feel like I have more and more food sensitivities. Food sensitivities are the result of underlying gut dysfunction, microbial imbalances, intestinal permeability, maldigestion. They’re really just the result of that kind of stuff. And I have another episode on all of that. They’re not the cause and

Hannah Aylward (18:24.653)
We honestly, like in my opinion, we don’t really focus on them too, too much. Eliminating the big hitters can help people in the short term as we work on all the underlying stuff. But part of this, you know, the person that has leaky gut, they will tend to have a lot of food sensitivities and reactions because those things are flowing through the gut lining, activating that immune system response. And then, you know, the way that the immune system works is the cytokines.

alert other, you know, bits of the immune system all over the body. So they’re not, they’re usually not just digestive issues. We’ll see them in, you know, joint pain. We’ll see them as migraines. They’ll become systemic, right? That’s my point. So it’s not just like bloating. It can be many things. So like I said, fatigue, food sensitivities, then we’ll see, course, bloating, diarrhea, constipation. We can see joint pain. We can see headaches and migraines, psoriasis, eczema, hives.

We can see brain fog and memory issues. We’ll see depression, anxiety, other behavioral or mood issues. Liver issues can also be a part of this. And then autoimmune conditions, because there is essentially a part of what creates an autoimmune disease. One of the pillars of that is increased intestinal permeability because we have that chronic activation of the immune system. So regardless of whether the autoimmune disease involves the gut, like it could be Hashimoto’s.

it could be another kind of autoimmune disease. Even if there aren’t a lot of digestive issues present, we have to look at the gut because of that intestinal permeability picture. I mentioned Hashimoto’s just cause we see quite a bit of it in our clients, which is not a surprise because it goes hand in hand with IBS. We tend to see a lot of other like infections and, things like that and Hashimoto’s cases too. So anyway, I can do a whole thing on Hashimoto’s if you guys want, let me know. I’ll do a whole episode on it. So those are kind of some of the common symptoms of like what we’re looking at when someone has leaky gut.

Now let’s get into the causes because this is arguably the most important thing to understand. We have to know kind of what’s contributing to it. So we make sure to remove that while we’re kind of repairing that gut barrier so we can get better and really stay better. And the reality is that very typically it’s not just one thing. There are a lot of things that can damage that very delicate single cell layer thick gut lining. And unfortunately in modern day, we have to be aware of these things and actively avoid them.

Hannah Aylward (20:43.617)
or we’re really just being constantly exposed. So there’s a lot of things that can break down that gut barrier and your body is so resilient. It is working for you all the time. It’s trying to repair for you all the time. It’s doing this naturally. It’s detoxing naturally. We run into issues when it’s just like too much. It’s been too much for a long time or it’s too much at once. this is also why, you know, I know I’m biased because I work in this field, but don’t ignore this stuff. Please don’t ignore these symptoms that you have.

Don’t like roll your eyes at them or be like, it’s not that big of a deal. It’s like, especially when it comes to women, we tend to just like normalize this stuff and we’re like, we feel like crap, like get used to it. You know, that’s just what happens once you have kids or whatever the story is. Don’t ignore these symptoms. They are important. And over time they’ll likely turn into something bigger and that’s not to scare you, but that’s just the truth. We can’t, we have to listen to our bodies kind of, check engine light, right? We have to listen to when our body is going, Hey,

something’s feeling off, not feeling so great. Don’t ignore it and wait many years before you address it. Okay, so looking at some of the biggest causes of leaky gut or that increased intestinal permeability, we have chronic stress shocker or no, it’s involved in everything. So feeling stressed every day, feeling overwhelmed every day, these living in a state of chronic stress will essentially contribute to intestinal permeability because stress

wrecks havoc on your gut health, stress hormones like cortisol and epinephrine break down the tight junctions that hold the cells that line the digestive tract together. So there’s some really interesting research too. I believe, I don’t want to butcher it right now, but I believe it was showing that people that have been in abusive relationships or unhappy relationships have intestinal permeability. Like they’re at higher risk for intestinal permeability because of the chronic stress that they endure. So

You don’t just digest the foods that you’re eating, right? You digest the information that you take in, what you see on social media, what you watch on the news, who you surround yourself with, what relationships you engage with. Be mindful of this stuff because when it comes to our health, we’re digesting all of this. Our brains and our bodies are taking in all of this and

Hannah Aylward (22:56.831)
Life can be a little rough sometimes. And this year was, you know, I feel like things are a little intense. So just like be mindful and protect yourself and set up boundaries. So you’re not in this chronically reacting and responsive and like hyper reactivity state that eventually just like wrecks your gut. So the chronic stress, this could be overflowing inbox. It could be eating on the run. It could be, um, feeling like you could never get ahead. You’re always behind. It could be deeper things like childhood trauma. It could be perfectionism.

It could be like running late for an appointment and being stuck in traffic, whatever it is, you know, we want to be mindful and aware of our ability to exit this stressed out state, this chronically stressed state and kind of come back to a state of regulation. If you feel like that’s very difficult for you, this is absolutely something that we want to work on because of the fact that this chronic stress really essentially directly causes increased intestinal permeability or leaky gut. It also is going to mess with everything else. It.

causes shifts in your gut microbiome. It also decreases your ability to digest your food. mean, I could list out many things. It decreases gut immunity. It’s gonna cause gut issues over time. So this really shouldn’t be an afterthought. This nervous system support and regulation should really be a number one priority for most people, especially if you’re juggling a lot, which everyone I know is juggling a lot. So I’m talking to you too. Okay, then we have things like conventional foods that are genetically modified, things that are heavily sprayed with glyphosate.

Glyphosate was originally put on the market as an antibiotic. What antibiotics do, they wipe out our gut bacteria. Things like heavy alcohol use, that can cause gut dysbiosis, that can also cause increased intestinal permeability. An occasional glass of wine here and again, don’t worry about it too much. I’m talking like, you’re one glass of wine that you started having once a week and now you have every night. We wanna make adjustments to that.

then we have things like gut infections and gut dysbiosis and dysbiosis is really just when we have an imbalance in our gut bacteria and then we can get a nice slew of different gut infections. And I’m telling you, they’re more common than you’d think. A lot of people are like, no, I don’t have that. And I’m like, let’s run the labs and let’s see. So some of these are pretty common, infections like helicobacter pylori or like parasitic infections, like giardia and things like that. see them in clients, honestly, all the time. So these.

Hannah Aylward (25:19.837)
gut imbalances are essentially going to contribute to the breakdown of your gut lining. Once again, the dysbiosis leads to increased intestinal permeability, which leads to inflammation. If you’ve got one of these things, you have all of them because they all kind of coexist and feed each other. So we want to look at gut infections and gut dysbiosis, which is once again, also why slapping L-glutamine or collagen on the situation, it’s just not going to do it. We’re missing a huge piece of this puzzle.

Then we have things like medications, antibiotics, EPIs, NSAIDs, like ibuprofen, birth control. Birth control is known to cause inflammation in the gut lining. It can increase your risk for IBD. If you have been diagnosed with IBD shortly after starting birth control, please go talk to your doctor and explore other options. Then we also have sluggish thyroid function. This essentially slows down digestion. like hypothyroidism.

Hashimoto’s slows down digestion and that can lead to a lot of issues, constipation, excess toxins in circulation since we’re not eliminating them, since we’re not moving the bowels, that can lead to more dysbiosis. So it’s all really connected there. Then we have not sleeping enough, which is a big one too. So our gut microbiota changes when we don’t get enough sleep. Sleep deprivation can actually alter the composition of our gut microbiota, which can lead to inflammation and our gut and gut barrier damage. So

Health is holistic, right? Like it’s not gonna be one supplement and it’s not gonna be one little tweak. And that doesn’t mean you have to feel overwhelmed by it. Like we can make things super simple and actionable. That’s the, my, feel like one of my biggest skills. I’m like, I can take all of this really high level education and information and I can distill it into like, these are the five things you need to do today. I think that’s one of my biggest talents in this life. So that, that’s not, you know, to overwhelm you or be like, my gosh, there’s no hope. It’s more so just like,

let’s take a look at this stuff. It’s not just about eating leafy greens, right? We want to take all of this into consideration. Hopefully, you know, you’re also having some light bulbs go off and understanding why previous quote unquote gut healing protocols, like maybe didn’t do it for you. And it’s not cause you’re broken and it’s not because you can’t get any better. And it’s not because there’s something so wrong with you. It’s just because like you haven’t been given the right strategy to address all of these underlying, you know, root causes.

Hannah Aylward (27:41.321)
there’s a lot of nuance to all of this. And we really want to take like a thorough approach when we are repairing the gut. Then we have, you know, those highly processed foods, things rich in preservatives, emulsifiers, additives, gums, food dyes, lots of sugar. We kind of know that. So I won’t go too much into that. Like standard American diet is going to get you the standard American diseases, including some nicely gut. So we want to make sure that we’re focusing on having a healthy diet here too.

And then also sometimes like a lack of diversity in the diet. So if you’re eating the same five things over and over again, our gut needs diversity specifically implant fibers to support the proliferation of the gut microbes. So we need more diversity in the diet to help build a nice, healthy, robust and resilient gut microbiome that then protects our gut barrier. So once again, all of those things are connected and

you know, we run so much functional stool testing because we run it on every clients and we see hundreds of clients every year. So we see patterns and we’ll see, we’ll kind of like pick up patterns in clients. And I swear each round of our co like each cohort has a new pattern and or like a specific pattern. Anyway, it’s very interesting. But when I chat with my team about some of this, cause we’ll see as much low good gut microbes and gut diversity as we will see.

infections and overgrowth. And I’m like, what’s going on? Like, why do I feel like no one has the slow acromantia? Why does everyone have low bacterial phyla that make up such a huge portion of our gut microbiome? Essentially like, why don’t we have enough good gut bacteria? And there’s a lot that goes into that antibiotic use. And you know, if we were born via C-section versus vaginal birth, and once again, there’s a lot, but it often includes, you know, when I’m chatting with my team, one of the practitioners is like,

I feel like we’re seeing the fallout of people’s like really neutral bland diets that are lacking all this diversity. We used to eat these things kind of more naturally and then we were like, Hey, can I throw it in the microwave and is it salty? And then we just started eating like bland beige foods and that’s going to negatively impact our gut microbiome over time. So you want to aim for

Hannah Aylward (29:47.673)
many different plant foods in the diet and be mindful, look for colors, look for different fibers. That’s the kind of stuff we want to include to support a healthy gut microbiome. So those are some of the main causes of leaky gut. And once again, I just really want to reiterate that when we have got dysbiosis, that’s going to essentially contribute to leaky gut. So leaky guts never just leaky gut. That’s what I want you to take away from this, right? There’s more to the story. So if you feel like you’ve like

you know, consumed a good amount of bone broth and collagen, you haven’t gotten there, that’s okay. There’s more that we can do. There’s so much more that we can do. And you know, that’s gonna cause leaky gut and then contribute to inflammation. And our immune system is really reacting to these threats. Chronic and widespread inflammation is present in essentially all diseases. It increases your risk for all diseases. And dysbiosis and leaky gut are essentially what are causing this inflammation. So

That is one of the many, many reasons why I feel so passionately about this deeper gut work. And I wish more people would do it preventatively instead of when they’re just like really struggling with their digestive issues. But one day we will get there. And once again, this increased intestinal permeability really creates a lot of food sensitivities and reactions as we’re triggering that immune system over and over again. And at that point you’re reacting to all the foods. So when we’re looking at someone who’s really reactive to foods, there can be many reasons why.

One of them being leaky gut, others being, you know, an overabundance of histamine producing bacteria contributing to histamine overload. it can be a maldigestion picture and it’s often a dysbiosis picture as well. Once again, because all of these things influence one another. None of these like pillars of gut health exist on their own. Everything’s influencing everything else. And then you have your gut influencing every other system in the body from endocrine to cardiovascular to immune. So

when Western medicine takes these organ systems and just like puts them in their little pockets and kind of like disconnects them from each other, we’re really missing out because we know that your adrenals impact your gut. We know your gut influences your thyroid. We know your gut impacts your skin health. I mean, it’s all connected. So that’s also why the work that we do

Hannah Aylward (32:01.309)
with clients is so powerful. And we see symptoms start to drop off, you know, across the board. It’s not just digestive issues, which is also really amazing. We’ve got people, you know, with reduced anxiety levels, decreasing their anxiety meds. We’ve got people getting off of antihistamines. We’ve got people decreasing their thyroid medication. We’ve got people getting pregnant for the first time in three years. So it’s pretty cool. If you, if you can’t tell, I’m very into it. Okay.

So we’ve discussed causes and now let’s talk about what we need to do to get feeling better. First thing, first thing that I wanna say here is we have to address our underlying root causes. Now, how do we know our underlying root causes? Functional stool testing and running functional labs really helps us identify what our own root causes are. We can take some educated guesses, but when we’re looking at a symptom like bloating or we’re looking at a symptom like food sensitivities, you heard me list off many different things that could be contributing

to food sensitivities. So the testing helps us narrow that down and it helps us see is gut dysbiosis present, is fungal overgrowth present, how’s the gut immune system, how are we digesting our food, what infections are present, what’s the state of the gut lining? And we can gather that data and then customize things for your needs, which just helps people decrease the amount of time that they’re suffering so, so much. When I found this way of doing things and then kind of created my own way out of that way,

It was night and day for my digestion. I can tolerate so many more foods than I could tolerate before. I didn’t eat gluten and dairy for about 10 years. I couldn’t tolerate apples, sweet potatoes. I mean, it felt like I couldn’t tolerate anything, honestly. And I had so many food sensitivities. And now it’s like, I can basically eat whatever I want. And I maintain a very healthy diet, but I’m not like fearing food anymore. I trust my body way more. I’m not dealing with these chronic digestive issues anymore. If anything flares me at stress, classic.

But it’s like my life is so much easier on the other side after addressing my underlying root causes. So I had some dysbiosis, I had some leaky gut, I had some low stomach acid. I’m trying to remember what else. I had some, lot of liver stuff and I also had some mold illness and some like mycotoxin illness, which was a whole other thing, but very fun. Let me tell you, very fun to go through. And then my cortisol was all over the whack too because I was like perfectionist, over-exercising, under-eating, you know.

Hannah Aylward (34:24.831)
We don’t need to get into the whole story, but I had to take a look at, you know, lot of this stuff to, really get feeling better. It’s so worth it. It’s like truly so worth it on the other side. No question, no doubt about it because my entire life was being negatively impacted by my digestive issues. You want to talk about dating when you have chronic digestive issues. Good luck. And that’s no hate to anyone. I’m speaking from my own personal experience. You want to feel confident in your body. You want to feel sexy in your body. You want to get the right sleep. You want your skin to not break out.

You want to feel good putting on your cute dress or whatever it is. Good freaking luck with these chronic digestive issues. It’s really, really hard. And that doesn’t, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t feel confident, even if you’re bloated, you absolutely should. Definitely. It doesn’t really matter what your body looks like, right? I’m more so talking about like the feeling when you feel like your body is reacting to everything. mean, everything else is harder and it was just impacting everything in my life. It was impacting my relationship so much. was like not dating.

my energy, my confidence, my like stress levels. I mean, it’s, it’s truly night and day. So it’s the good work. So when it comes to healing leaky gut, we have to address these deeper root causes. We’re going to get into some more like actionable things here now, but just understand that adding in a supplement or adding in one, one new food is probably not going to be enough to do it. That’s okay. We want to make a lot of like customizations for where your body’s at now and what it needs. And that’s great.

And then it can be really customized to you and it will help you get a lot better as opposed to like, you know, throwing spaghetti on the wall and hoping that it sticks and seeing if maybe this 20th supplement that you’ve purchased this year finally helps something without actually knowing like what we’re looking at and what we’re dealing with. first thing is of course we want to maintain a healthy whole foods diet. So we want to get in our veggies. We want to get in our colors. We want to get in our fruits and veggies, like clean sources of good quality proteins, organic animal proteins.

things like salmon, things that are higher in omega-3s can be really supportive of both our gut bacteria and our gut lining. Foods high in vitamin A can also be very supportive for our gut lining. And then foods higher in zinc can also be very supportive for our gut lining. So we use a lot of beef liver with our clients in more of a supplement form. You can totally eat it if you want. Personally, I won’t do that. So I take it as supplement. But it’s loaded with retinol, which is like the bioavailable form of vitamin A.

Hannah Aylward (36:48.147)
The gut needs vitamin A, the gut lining and our gut immune system needs vitamin A. So that could be a food to add in. And then zinc, which is really high in things like oysters. And most of us are, you know, we’re just not eating those on a daily basis. So increasing your intake of those things can be helpful, but going back to these high quality proteins, right? This can be plant-based sources, but animal sources are really helpful here too. And not only does this help, you know, with just like our overall gut microbiome health and the gut barrier health.

helps to decrease inflammation, but it also helps to balance our blood sugar levels and support our hormonal health too. Really focusing on these nutrient dense foods, whole foods, single ingredient foods, not hyper processed, like ultra processed foods that are in a box that will last on your shelf for a long time. Those things we want to minimize where we can. I think most of us kind of know that at this point though. then fruit is totally fine too. There’s a lot of fear around fruit.

I could do a whole podcast on that. fruit is fine. You know, depending on how you respond to fruit or different fruits, could tell me more about what might be going on in your gut. but always good to stick to fruits in their whole form loaded with fiber ones that are lower in sugar, keeping those in more often things like berries, blueberries, raspberries. those are great, you know, big emphasis on those other fruits that are really sugary. You know, I wouldn’t really recommend eating like a ton of them, but don’t be afraid of them.

You know, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t say go eat three pineapples in a row. That might be a little much other than that. You’re good. So don’t fear those too much. If you feel like you’re really reacting to fruits and the sugar in fruits, that’s kind of a different conversation. Then we can get more specific here and talk about that mucosal layer and how we can support that mucosal layer. Adequate protein is incredibly important here because it’s associated with increased goblet mucus cell activity. So making sure that you’re getting in enough protein.

pretty much every client that works with us is not eating enough protein. They come in to work with us, they think they eat healthy and that’s no shade to anyone. We love you guys, but they’re under eating protein. They’re usually under eating overall, but they’re definitely under eating protein. We’ve probably had like five people be eating enough protein for their needs. So you want to honestly aim for about a hundred grams a day. That’s a good starting point for most. can definitely customize that more to your unique needs.

Hannah Aylward (39:06.043)
But most women that we see are eating about 50 grams a day, which is simply not enough. So we want to increase your protein intake and make sure that we’re getting in good sources like organic animal proteins, grass-fed beef, organic eggs can be great, wild caught fish, organic turkey is great, all of that kind of stuff. And then you can absolutely add in plant-based proteins too. Things like mung beans, black beans, lentils, all of those are great as well if you can tolerate them.

I also love bringing in animal protein just because a lot of clients with gut issues are very sensitive to a lot of plant foods because they’re higher in fibers. you know, things like beans and lentils, as I say that you might be like, absolutely not. I cannot eat those. They cause so much bloating and gas. And that just tells us that there’s something else going on. They’re not necessarily bad food. You know, they’re just not working with your body, not, not working for or with your body right now. And that’s okay. But if you can tolerate them, they’re great to add in. Then we have things like soluble fibers.

because these increase goblet cell numbers and upregulate secretion of mucin, of those mucous proteins in the lumen or that inner tube of the gut. This is going to be things like fruits and veggies. We’ve got peas, beans, apples, bananas, avocados, citrus fruits, carrots, right? All great sources of soluble fibers. Then we have things like polyphenols. I am kind of obsessed with polyphenols. I think I need to do a full episode on polyphenols. Noting that now.

They’re essentially these plant compounds that are in fruits and veggies and they elevate the amount of mucin and also our secretory IgA. So specifically things like bilberry and erronea berry are very high and they’re great for this. But polyphenols are going to be in those foods that stain and those really richly colored foods, those really richly colored fruits and veggies. Then we have anthocyanins and that’s a group of deep red, purple and blue pigments that are found in plants.

because these help to restore mucin levels in a high-fat diet animal study. So there’s been some cool research. The study really showed that in a high-fat diet, when an animal was consuming a high-fat diet, bringing in these anthocyanins helps restore these good mucin levels. Not all animal studies really correlate with human studies, right? So there tends to be a lot of testing on like mice.

Hannah Aylward (41:21.735)
and things like that. Just because something happens in a mouse does not mean it will happen the exact same way in a human body. So I just want to make note of that. I don’t think that research is worth like totally tossing. Like I think there’s still some value to that, especially when there’s not really any harm in adding in more deep red, purple and blue pigments found in plants. We can’t really go wrong with that. so, so yeah, just kind of wanted to make, make that note. Cause some people might be like, well, I don’t know if that science is right to be using.

I wouldn’t say it’s like totally lacking value, but yes, if something is occurring in a mouse study, that does not mean that a human will respond that same way. Also, a lot of humans don’t respond the exact same way to a lot of things. Well, you find that out once you work with people. So these anthocyanins are going to be found in things like berries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, grapes, cherries, pomegranates, red cabbage.

All these foods are also very rich in polyphenols. They’re also great sources of, you know, different fibers. So you can hit and kind of tick off a few boxes with a lot of these foods. Essentially, it’s a lot of different fruits and veggies. So that’s the way to keep it simple. Then we want to make sure that we’re getting an adequate protein as well. We also, when we’re talking about that mucosal layer, we have to take a look at our stress management because cortisol wears away at our mucosal layer of the gut lining. So stress management is a non-negotiable here.

And it’s amazing how often we will deny that and also avoid that rewiring your nervous system, I think is a much more difficult task than taking supplements and cutting out gluten and dairy. So I really feel for everyone working to do that, your body is going to resist that change. So expect some resistance and start with really like small, simple, actionable things. So I was just chatting with someone in my healing guts and shakeabouts program.

And stress is a big thing for her. She’s got high levels of cortisol confirmed via testing. She’s got these chronic digestive issues. were working with her on her gut microbiome and digestive health and all of that. But I had to bring up the stress component because we already know that’s present. I mean, I would know from just, you know, speaking with her, but she told me as well as we’ve got some, you know, confirmation with testing. So I’m going, okay, well, how can we, how can we address this? How can we take the pressure off of you? How can we set better boundaries in your life?

Hannah Aylward (43:42.03)
And how can we start to help your nervous system feel safe? And that can look like practicing five to 10 minutes of little things like meditation and breath work. The more consistent you are with it, it will get easier. Your body will eventually fall into that more relaxed state with more ease when you have essentially just practice it. It’s just like a muscle. You don’t go into the gym for the first time in five years or 10 years.

I mean, however long you were running in that stress state, which could be forever, you don’t go into the gym for the first time and expect to run a marathon or pick up like a hundred pound weight, you’ll hurt yourself. So it’s, you have to do, you know, small exercises over time and consistently and build that muscle. Same goes for changing our habits and same goes for helping our nervous system kind of reach back into that regulated state a bit easier. This stuff takes consistency and that most of us don’t want to hear.

but that’s the truth. So even implementing five to 10 minutes of breath work or meditation first thing in the morning, right before you go to bed as part of your evening wind down routine, these things can be really, really helpful. And taking little pauses throughout the day. Most of us, once the day starts, it’s like, boom, we’re going and we don’t stop all day. So being mindful of that, where can you implement little tiny breaks throughout the day? Whether that’s just like putting your phone down and closing your eyes for 60 seconds.

could be taking a step outside and getting the sun, like feeling the sun on your skin for literally 60 seconds at a time. It could also be not checking your phone nonstop, not checking your email inbox nonstop. So those are some things that can kind of just help support their nervous system. So that’s a bit about the mucosal layer. Then we have this cellular layer of the gut lining and we can bring in some more strategic things here. So we can increase flavonoids in the diet. These are plant molecules that positively modulate intestinal barrier function.

This can be really helpful to increase our intake of flavonoids in the diet. And these things are just commonly found in, you know, plants, different plant foods. So overall, we want to increase our intake of good quality fruits and veggies. Then we have increasing butyrate producing foods. So butyrate is a short chain fatty acid that positively modulates intestinal barrier function. So butyrate is really the main fuel source for the colonocytes. It helps to essentially seal up the gut lining.

Hannah Aylward (46:02.442)
in the colon or the large intestine. Now, in order to produce butyrate, we have to eat essentially enough fiber. Our gut microbes eat up this fiber and then as a result, we produce butyrate, which is a short chain fatty acid. So we want to eat these prebiotic rich foods. Fiber rich foods found mostly in plants, in plant foods. We want to eat these up, our gut bacteria eat them up, and then they produce these postbiotics that are short chain fatty acids, including butyrate. So

how we work with clients is we’re working a lot to kind of repair the digestive function and eradicate infections and clean up the gut microbiome. And we’re also supporting the gut lining throughout the process by focusing on what our clients are eating to fuel their good gut bacteria and then therefore fuel the short chain fatty acid production and support the gut lining. Then of course, avoiding, you know, certain things like really high fat diets,

food additives, unnecessary medications, and then gluten can be a big issue for some people. So there is some research showing that gluten can essentially increase intestinal permeability. I do think that people have different ways of responding to this and different like abilities to repair after this. So for some people, you can repair quickly, especially if you don’t consume a lot of gluten and the rest of your gut’s in a good spot. So for me personally, when I eat gluten now, it doesn’t really impact me that much.

because I’ve done so much work on my gut and I’ve done so much work on my nervous system, I’m kind of in a good spot. My body can repair. Now, if I had a lot of gut infections and gut dysbiosis and I was chronically, chronically stressed and I had a lot of inflammation and I was eating a lot of gluten, my gut lining wouldn’t be able to repair. Because your gut lining is self-repairing and it is repairing all the time. But if we’re continuing to aggravate it over and over again, in the case of dysbiosis or in the case of consuming a lot of gluten, we can run into some issues there.

Then we have certain nutrients that can support the gut lining. So L-glutamine I’ve spoken about already. Butyrate is another big one. So L-glutamine more so helps the gut lining in the small intestine. Butyrate more so helps the gut lining in the large intestine. It helps to seal up those, the space between those tight junctions. Then we have things like licorice root and aloe vera. These can be really helpful as well. Once again, I just want to reiterate, adding these things in, you know, if there’s deeper stuff going on, which I would venture a guess there is, is not

Hannah Aylward (48:28.908)
gonna be enough, but aloe vera and licorice, like they can be very soothing and kind of calming. So they can be great to add in if well tolerated. Then of course we have addressing root causes, supporting the production of our good gut bacteria, optimizing digestion because everything is connected to everything else within the GI tract. So if we’re not digesting our food efficiently, we’re going to be essentially creating dysbiosis in the gut.

because we’re not breaking down our food well enough and we’re overfeeding these bacteria, that’s then going to contribute to that leaky gut. So we have to take a top down approach. Digestion is a north to south process. And you’ll probably hear me say that a lot. This is why throwing a probiotic at it is not enough. This is why taking collagen isn’t really enough for someone that’s struggling with these chronic digestive issues. And once again, that’s not to overcomplicate it. It’s more so to help you feel like, okay, I just haven’t done this other stuff.

No wonder I feel this way and we can help, know, so don’t lose hope. You’re not broken or anything like that. There’s just kind of more to the story. Your guts really this ecosystem and everything’s working together. And this is why I just preach that a single supplement, cause a lot of you’ll just see a lot of it being sold around, especially like the internet, the interwebs, like Instagram and Tik TOK and influencers and all that kind of stuff and no hate everyone’s doing their thing, but one single supplements just not, it’s just not going to do it for most.

And if your digestion is like in a pretty good spot, your guts in a pretty good spot, then sure, adding in one thing, you know, could help, but it’s not going to really truly move the needle for most people. And then as I mentioned earlier, you know, we have to take a look at the stress. We mentioned it with the mucosal layer. It’s also going to impact our, cellular layer of our gut lining. So we have to take a look at the chronic stress, hormone roller coaster, making sure we’re helping our body feel safe. And how do we do that?

How can I help my body feel safe on a day-to-day basis? That could be breath work in the morning. That could be eating enough. That could be replenishing nutrient deficiencies. And then these chronic like gut issues and the inflammation in the gut and the gut dysbiosis and infections, that stuff is causing you a lot of stress. So addressing that will really help to decrease your stress as well. So once again, it all works together, which is very exciting.

Hannah Aylward (50:46.284)
So essentially there are a lot more aspects to your digestive system than just that lining of the intestines. And it’s really important that we don’t overlook these other things like our digestion, our ability to actually digest our food, our gut microbiota, our nervous system, our gut brain connection, all of that kind of stuff, right? So just because you’ve got gut issues, don’t just assume you have leaky gut, you probably do, but there’s also probably some other stuff that’s essentially causing the leaky gut that no amount of L-glutamine will.

get rid of or heal. Addressing these other underlying root causes can actually help to heal and repair the leaky gut and that increased intestinal permeability. So I hope that was helpful today. We have some good action tips, like action steps that we can put into play. We have a better understanding of our gut microbiome and our digestive function as a whole. And we have a better understanding of leaky gut and increased intestinal permeability.

and food sensitivities and our immune system and inflammation levels and how it all kind of works together. So I hope you found something valuable in this episode. Thanks for hanging out with me today. And I would love to hear your feedback and what was kind of your aha moment in the comments below. And I’ll see you in the next episode. Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Nutrient Dense Podcast. If you found this episode valuable, don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend and come back next week for a new episode. See you then.

The post Ep 3: Leaky Gut 101: The What, the Why, and How to Fix It appeared first on Hannah Aylward Nutrition | Gut Health Expert.

Ep 2: The Difference Between Food Sensitivities vs Intolerances vs Allergies

Hannah Aylward — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 18:19:14 +0000

In this episode, I dive deep into the differences between food sensitivities, food intolerances, and food allergies. If you are currently experiencing multiple food intolerances and sensitivities & feel like you’re reacting to everything that you eat – this episode is for you. So many people are dealing with food reactions, and are stuck chasing symptoms and expensive, unnecessary testing. Restrictive diets are never the answer – they’ll leave you with food fear, nutrient deficiencies, anxiety, and low gut bacterial diversity. And most importantly – they won’t actually heal your gut. In order to get to the bottom of food reactions, and be able to enjoy many different foods again, we have to dig deeper and understand the “why” behind the reaction. This episode breaks it all down for you.

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT IN THIS EPISODE:

Different immune system responses between food sensitivities, intolerances, and allergies
Why identifying the root causes of food sensitivities and intolerances is more important than knowing what sensitivities you have
The dangers with food sensitivity testing & why we never run them in practice
What actually causes food reactions that so many face today
Why elimination diets don’t actually heal the gut
How to finally be able to eat more foods with less pain and digestive symptoms

CONNECT WITH HANNAH:

If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and leave us a rating/review! Thank you for listening

Transcript

Hannah Aylward (00:00.908)
Welcome to the Nutrient Dense podcast. I’m your host, Hannah Aylward, holistic health coach, functional gut health practitioner, and the founder of Han. So many people are continuously failed by conventional and alternative healthcare. We are here to do it differently. Alongside my team of functional registered dietitians, I’ve helped hundreds of women around the world overcome their chronic digestive issues when nothing else works.

I’ve learned a thing or two about what it really takes to transform your health from the inside out. And I’m here to share it all with you. Please keep in mind that this podcast is for educational purposes only and should never be used as medical advice. Now let’s dive in. Your transformation is waiting. Hello, my dears and welcome to the Nutrient Dense Podcast. I’m so excited to be here with you today because today we’re going to be diving into all things food sensitivities.

food intolerances and food allergies. So I’m going to be breaking down the biggest differences between all three of these things, because we do have some different responses from the body and kind of different causes when it comes to these three different food reactions. So I’ll be breaking those down and then also giving us some kind of next steps and tips and really getting to the bottom of this stuff. So you’re not dealing with it anymore because that’s what we want more than anything, right?

We want to not be afraid of food. We want to not feel like we’re reacting to everything that we do eat. So this is going to be kind of a quick and dirty little breakdown of food sensitivities, food intolerances and food allergies. And before we kind of jump into all the technical stuff, here’s what I hear most from our clients that are dealing with food sensitivities and intolerances. Cause most of you already know that you have an allergy that’s kind of in a different bucket, but I will break that down.

When it comes to sensitivities and intolerances, if you’re dealing with a lot of these, you may feel like you eat anything and you end up bloated, bloated, gassy, constipated, running to the bathroom. You’ve got stomach cramping, pain, whatever it might be. You’re kind of reacting to all of these different foods. You also may find yourself living off of like the five same safe foods because you’re terrified to eat any of the others.

Hannah Aylward (02:20.548)
So that’s pretty common. We see clients and when they come in to work with us, they may only be able to tolerate five different vegetables. The good news is by the time they’re done working with us, they can eat many, many more symptom free. And that’s really the goal for all of our clients is to be able to tolerate more foods with less symptoms and less pain and less fear and anxiety that accompanies it. I know that very well from my own gut issues when they’re done working with us, right on the other side.

So you may be living off a couple safe foods. You may feel like you eat a meal on one day and you feel fine. Maybe it’s like oatmeal and berries and chia seeds, whatever it is, doesn’t really matter. You eat that meal on a Monday morning, you feel fine. And then you eat that meal on Tuesday morning, the exact same meal, and you’re flared. So you’re bloated, you’re gassy, you’re in pain, you’ve got reflux, a lot of common IBS symptoms. So you’re eating the same food.

on both days, but the second day your body reacts to it. So some practitioners will advise you to utilize something like a food log. And we’ll use that here and there with our clients more so to kind of get a gauge of what they’re eating. If they’re responding to certain things, we’re looking for patterns. We’re looking to make sure that they’re eating enough. Honestly, about 90 % of the people that we work with come into us not eating enough, not fueling their bodies efficiently, thinking they’re eating healthy and making quite a few mistakes, but that’s no shame on you or anything like that.

That just means there’s a lot of room for improvement and opportunity for growth, which is amazing. That’s going to help get you feeling better. So that’s what we love. Anyway, some people will advise using a food log and you may have tried doing that. You’re tracking what you’re eating. You’re writing it all down. You’re trying to pick up on these patterns. What is ticking you off? What foods are making you feel sick? What foods are causing the bloating causing the chronic digestive issues, the headaches, whatever it might be. And you’re finding that they’re not really like going in a bucket. You can’t

put them into a certain category. So you’re trying to track your food and you’re taking the time and the effort, it’s so much effort to write it all down. And you’re like, this doesn’t even make any sense. I’m reacting to everything that I’m eating. All of those are some signs that you’re dealing with food sensitivities, food intolerances, and ultimately, which I’ll get to at the end, deeper gut issues that are causing the food reactions. So if you resonate with any of those things that I just said,

Hannah Aylward (04:45.476)
This is the podcast for you because we’re going to get into all of it. And this is the majority of clients that we see. So we’ll see clients come into us having been on quite restrictive diets, maybe elimination diets for years, low FODMAP diets for years, AIP diets, GAPS diet, so many different restrictive diets. And there is a time and place for these different diets for sure. They can be used to help minimize symptoms.

but the key is to make sure that we’re using them while we’re working on the underlying root causes, which I’ll get to at the end of this. Now let’s get into some of the biggest differences between food allergy, food sensitivity, and food intolerances. So first off, we’ve got food allergies. If you have a food allergy, you probably know you have a food allergy. I hope you know you have a food allergy. The difference being that you’re gonna feel it.

pretty immediately, right? So if you have a peanut allergy, if you have a shellfish allergy, whatever it might be, if you, maybe sometimes you even get close to that food, but if you eat that food, you can go into anaphylactic shock, right? This can happen very quickly. This is an extreme response from the immune system. Your immune system is producing IgE antibodies that are kind of communicating all around your body. And then you’re going to get that pretty intense, pretty immediate response.

from the immune system that can lead to anaphylaxis, right? So food allergies are potentially fatal. They’re dangerous, they’re life threatening, they’re immediate and they’re very serious. So we’ve got an IgE response from the immune system. We’ve also got an immediate response from the immune system when we do get exposure. So those are in their own little bucket of like, hey, we do not mess around with these. You can’t be guessing with these ones.

Then we have food sensitivities and food intolerances, which are, can talk about in the same conversation, but they’re quite different because these are foods that you eat and you’ll feel it, but it’s not going, it’s not life threatening, right? It’s definitely going to decrease the quality of your life. It’s going to cause digestive issues. It can cause all sorts of like full body symptoms, but it’s not fatal. You don’t need an EpiPen. You’re not producing IgE antibodies.

Hannah Aylward (07:03.218)
When it comes to food sensitivities, your body can be producing IgG antibodies. That’s kind of what most functional practitioners believe to be true. However, we know that food sensitivity testing that is testing for IgG antibodies is pretty highly inaccurate. We have some trouble replicating the results when we do run these tests.

And IgG antibodies are actually kind of showing that your immune system has had exposure to this food. So a lot of more like holistic or functional practitioners will run food sensitivity testing, right? This is never a recommendation from me. This is not where we start. Honestly, I think in all of the years of practicing, we have run maybe one. honestly, I can’t even recall the time, the last time that we ran a food sensitivity test.

clients will come in to work with us and they will have these test results. But these IgG antibodies that the test is picking up, it’s usually a simple blood test, right? It’s like a finger prick. There’s some big companies out there selling these to lots and lots of people. I would never spend my money on that test because that IgG response is really just showing that your immune system has had exposure to this food. This is also why we will find that

you may have a lot of foods listed on this test result. So it may show. And what it usually shows is these foods that you’ve had exposure to recently and not in every single case, but this is also part of the problem, right? Because these test results highly differ. We can’t replicate the results very efficiently, very effectively, which is also a problem, right? But you may find that on that long list of foods that you’re sensitive to,

It’s these foods that you’ve like eaten recently. That’s because your immune systems had exposure to these foods. You’ve, you’ve eaten them, right? So we never want to look at food sensitivity testing as honestly, anything that’s going to guide our health or our gut health healing journey. We never run them. We never spend money on them. I never advise clients to get these. With that being said, you know, if your immune system is highly reacting to some of these foods, can pulling these foods out temporarily help?

Hannah Aylward (09:19.708)
to minimize inflammation a little bit. Sure. If you know right now you’re listening to this podcast and you’re like, I know I react to this food and this food and this food, gluten, dairy, these things do not work well with me. I feel sick when I eat them. Then don’t eat them. That is not harmful. That can help. mean, all of this is kind of communication from your body. You will be better off if you eliminate these foods. The key though,

is to eliminate them temporarily because we don’t want to take these foods out forever. Now, if you’ve got celiac disease, that’s kind of a different conversation. We have to remove that food for good cases like hypothyroidism, Hashimoto’s, those cases can really benefit from removing gluten. But I’m talking about, you’ve just like read a lot of stuff online. You’ve, you’ve read a lot of functional medicine, doctors, blogs. you’ve seen maybe another holistic practitioner and they’re like, take out gluten and dairy. And you’re like,

Okay, I guess I will. And then you kind of feel the same, right? That’s, that’s one person. Another person may feel like I really, I eat gluten and dairy and whatever I do, I get super sick. It hurts my stomach. I get a headache, whatever that is. Go ahead and remove that food for now with the key being once again, that we want to dig deeper and understand why you are reacting to these foods in the first place. So food sensitivities, the other big kind of differentiator here,

is that they can cause more like systemic symptoms. So when we’re looking at food sensitivities, we can feel the effects of that food for up to 72 hours after consuming that food. So it’s kind of, it’s not so immediate, right? When we’re looking at allergies, we’re getting that immediate response. When we’re looking at food sensitivities, we can feel kind of icky up until 72 hours. We may feel at 72 hours after consuming the food itself. So that’s a big difference.

You can feel kind of okay initially and start to feel it a couple hours later. The other big kind of differentiator here is that it can cause more of those like full body symptoms. So it could be you getting a headache. could be you getting big brain fog. It could be you breaking out, right? So those are kind of some signs. It’s not just digestive symptoms for a lot of you. It might include digestive symptoms and some other kind of like full body symptoms. That’s pretty common.

Hannah Aylward (11:37.734)
For me, when I was dealing with a lot, a lot, a lot of gut issues, I could not tolerate dairy at all. I had pulled dairy and gluten from my diet. I probably went a whole decade not eating gluten and dairy. That’s not an exaggeration thinking it was like healing my gut. It wasn’t. I had to dig a lot deeper. However, did it help me feel a little bit better in the interim before I even understood what else I needed to do? It did. It did not heal my digestive issues. It didn’t get rid of all my digestive issues. It didn’t fully heal my gut.

There was a lot of other work to be done, but it did help a little bit, right? It took me from like a, I’m struggling 80 % of the time to I’m struggling 60 % of the time, which was helpful because if you know, if you’re dealing with chronic digestive issues, you’ll take any relief you can get almost because it starts to like so heavily weigh on the quality of your life. If you feel sick, like I said, eating these foods, we can take them out. When I was eating dairy, when my gut was really struggling, I would get a headache.

And that was pretty immediate. It was not an allergy, but pretty immediately I would get a headache. It could break out my skin. When I was eating gluten, I would get big brain fog if I had like some bigger exposure to gluten. So I could have a piece here and there. I could kind of tolerate that. But if I ate too much of it, if I ate like a larger serving of it, I would have really bad brain fog. I would feel very sluggish after eating it for like, you know, a whole day after eating it, it would kind of ruin my next day.

I would also have some digestive discomfort after eating it. So that’s kind of more of those like full body systemic symptoms. It can even cause joint pain. So food sensitivities are like really all over the map. You’re looking for symptoms of just kind of feeling off up to 72 hours after eating the food. So it can be very difficult to track, which is why, you know, doing something like an elimination diet can help bring some clarity because you’re just going to take it all out and then you want to slowly, slowly reintroduce these foods.

However, elimination diets alone will not heal your gut. And you know, that’s kind of our whole philosophy here. There’s a lot of other work to be done there, but I won’t get too off topic. It’s going to be a challenge to keep me on topic this whole time. So we’ve got food sensitivities, more systemic response, not so immediate of a response. We’ve got potentially IgG antibodies. A lot of people believe it’s IgG antibodies, but really IgG antibodies are just showing us that our immune system has been exposed to the food. So

Hannah Aylward (14:03.255)
either way, food sensitivities are not the actual cause of your digestive issues. They’re more like the result of your digestive issues. And I’ll get into that more. Then we have food intolerances and food intolerances are going to be more specific to your digestive tract. So that’s kind of going to look like you eat the food and then you’ve got stomach pain. You’ve got bloating, you’ve got indigestion, you’ve got constipation, diarrhea,

you you look six months pregnant with belly bloat afterwards. These are more signs of intolerances that are more so like you’re going to feel the change in your digestive function. So less of like a headache response or a breakout or a joint pain response and more so a digestive system response. And this is because food intolerances are usually due to mal-digestion. Your body cannot break these foods down efficiently.

And that is usually the result of inadequate enzyme production or low stomach acid or poor bio flow. So you’re going to feel like essentially you can’t break these foods down properly. So you’re getting that response in, your belly, you’re feeling it in your digestive tract. So when we’re looking at food intolerances, we’re kind of looking at what are you lacking to properly break down this food? For example, a lactose intolerance, right? When people have lactose intolerance, they can’t break down dairy.

efficiently so they don’t have enough of the good enzymes to help them break down the dairy. This is also why you can get like lactate pills. You can get these pills that are essentially just enzymes to help you digest these foods better. If you’re going to go for the ice cream, if you’re going to go for the cheese, whatever that can help for most of the clients that we see, it’s not enough. That’s not going to fix. It’s not going to fix anything, right? But that’s not enough to fully help them.

but it could help use some symptoms temporarily, really never a recommendation of ours, if I’m being honest, but that’s kind of how you can better understand it. So looking at intolerances, we don’t have what we need to actually break down the food efficiently. Now the clients that we see most commonly have a nice combination of both. It’s not, you know, clients will definitely come in with allergies, but as I said at the beginning, if you have an allergy, you pretty much know you have an allergy. That’s kind of been a different

Hannah Aylward (16:27.797)
bucket, different immune response, different level of severity, different bucket. When we’ve got intolerances and sensitivities, almost all of our clients have food sensitivities and intolerances. I don’t even talk about it that much with our clients because the work that we do is focused on digging deeper and understanding why they are having these food reactions in the first place.

So we can kind of lump like sensitivities and intolerances into this bucket of like food reactions. Long story short, I eat this food and I don’t feel well. It’s not going to kill me, but I feel sick and I got to stay home and I got to cancel my plans or I can’t button my pants or whatever it is. So as I mentioned, food intolerances are usually the result of kind of like mal-digestion. We can’t break these foods down efficiently. Food sensitivities,

can be the result of many things in the digestive tract. So we can have increased intestinal permeability or leaky gut playing a role here. We can have maldigestion playing a role here. We can have different gut imbalances, pathogens, infections playing a role here too. So when we’re looking at, and this is why, you know, I love having the conversation of breaking down the difference here, but we are not really focusing on this with our clients, right? As I mentioned, we’re focusing on digging deeper.

because it kind of doesn’t matter if it’s a sensitivity or if it’s intolerance or whatever the heck we’re looking to optimize your digestion and we’re looking to get you feeling better. And we’re going to look at the health of your gut microbiome and we’re going to look at how you can actually break down and digest your foods, how well you can do that. Cause both of those things have to be taken into consideration when we’re having this conversation. So identifying it as an intolerance or a sensitivity kind of doesn’t matter.

And in my eyes, we, what matters most is digging deeper to understand why it’s happening in the first place. So I hope that makes sense for you. So when we’re working with clients, they have a nice combination of different gut imbalances present that are causing them to react to these foods. Like I said, it can include increased intestinal permeability, gut imbalances, microbial imbalances, and then kind of a maldigestion picture. But here are some things I want you

Hannah Aylward (18:45.451)
to look out for when you are eating foods, it’s going to help kind of clue you in to why you may be reacting to these foods in the first place. A big part of your digestive system breakdown, a big part of why you can’t digest these foods efficiently is because we’re not producing adequate digestive output or enough digestive juices to actually break down your food. So if you’re eating foods that are higher in fat,

It can be healthy fats or unhealthy fat. could be avocado, olive oil, and it also could be like fried foods or canola oil. It doesn’t discriminate here. However, of course we want to stick to the healthier fats like the olive oil, the avocados, the olives, that kind of stuff. But if you’re eating these foods and you notice that they’re causing bloating, stomach distension, burping, gassiness, they’re causing

floating stools, pale stools, green stools, sometimes as well. This can be a sign that you’re not producing adequate bile to help break down these foods efficiently. Bile is one of our digestive juices that helps us break down fats and absorb fat soluble nutrients. So if we’re eating these fattier foods and we’re feeling sick after we eat them, then we know, okay, we may have a bile issue that’s present and that can kind of help clue you in.

Another thing to look out for is if you are taking hot liver oil or fish oil and you feel like really burpee after it, or you feel nauseous after it, because these capsules, if you’re taking a capsule form, you could take a liquid form too, but these are essentially straight fat, right? They’re just oil. So if you have any issues with liver or gallbladder function, your liver is what produces bile. Your gallbladder is what pushes it out at meal time. If you’ve had your gallbladder removed,

Any of these cases, if this function is compromised, then we’ll find that you are more reactive to these foods. So this can kind of help clue you in when you’re doing your at home investigation and don’t take it too seriously. You know, working with someone is obviously best here to kind of help figure it out. But if you want to try to pick up on some patterns, we may want to look at things, not so much like is it dairy or gluten or sugar or soy, but look at, after I eat these foods higher in fat, I feel more sick.

Hannah Aylward (21:07.221)
that clues us into what we can help you with next. So it’s not always just these kind of like big food groups that they have you take out when it comes to an elimination diet. It could be, every time I eat guacamole, I get really sick. That’s because it’s super high in fat. I noticed the same thing when I have a bunch of cheese. I noticed the same thing when I have, I don’t know, a bunch of mayonnaise or when I have a bunch of olive oil or whatever it might be. So you can look for that pattern.

So once again, bile is what helps us break down fats and absorb fat soluble nutrients. I could do an entire podcast episode on bile, which maybe I’ll do in the future. it’s super duper important, but if we don’t have enough of it, if it’s not thin enough, if it’s our liver function is sluggish, our gallbladder function is sluggish. We’ll have issues with digesting these fats. Gallbladder issues are a huge underlying root cause of bloating that very, very commonly go missed. We see it.

all the time in our clients. And we have certain test markers that we’re kind of looking for to gain some insight into the liver and gallbladder function. However, we can also tell a lot from symptoms, which is what I’ve shared here with you today. The other thing that we can look at is stomach acid levels because our stomach acid is what’s going to help us break down protein. So if you are someone that feels like every time you eat protein, you feel sick.

or you feel really heavy, you feel like that food is like sitting in your stomach. It feels like there’s a brick in your stomach. That’s directly from what our clients will say. there’s a brick in my stomach. I feel super heavy after I eat, I get full very quickly, but also maybe you have like an aversion to me. You don’t really want to eat it aside from like, you know, ethical reasons and all of that, if that’s what you believe, but more so just like, I feel sick after I eat it, I’m burping, I feel heavy, I get constipated. That can be a stomach acid issue. So once again,

The answer never lies in just pulling these foods from your diet forever. We’re not going to repair your gut function by simply eliminating animal product or anything that’s high in protein. That’s not the answer. The answer is to identify, do you have low stomach acid and how do we help you rebuild that stomach acid production efficiently so you can better break down these foods that are high in protein with less symptoms and less discomfort. If you do feel

Hannah Aylward (23:28.309)
heavier after eating protein, then we want to look at stomach acid. Then we have enzyme production. And typically when we have low enzyme production, there’s many different enzymes, right? But if we’ve got lower enzyme production, we may have more trouble with things like carbohydrates and breaking down carbohydrates, including, like I said, you know, lactose intolerance. We don’t have the enzyme to break down this dairy that we are eating. Therefore it causes a lot of digestive issues.

Some of the signs that you have issues with, you know, poor enzyme secretion would be like undigested food in your stool. It could be stomach cramping. It could be bloating after eating. It could also be, you know, feeling heavy after eating. Constipation will play a role sometimes there as well. But you are essentially not producing enough enzymes to break this food down efficiently. So all of these, you know, a lot of these symptoms you could consider

as a part of that kind of like food intolerance bucket. But we can see now that they have these deeper underlying root causes. And even those causes can sometimes have deeper underlying root causes too, that we won’t get into here today to keep this short and effective. but there’s always something deeper to dig into there. That’s the biggest thing that I want you to take away from this episode is that you don’t just pull these foods forever. We have to look at why is the body

reacting to these foods so intensely and what’s kind of causing this pain, what’s causing this inability to break down these foods well enough. And what are those deeper causes, contributing to, you know, my digestive issues, taking out the food is not going to heal really any of that. It’s kind of like not putting another log on the fire, which can be helpful, but it’s not actually dealing with the cause or the reason why the fire’s lit.

I don’t know. I’m making up that analogy as I go, but I think you get the gist of it, right? So there’s always something, something deeper going on. Another kind of like example of this, you could put this into the sensitivity bucket. You could put this into the intolerance bucket. Like I mentioned, it kind of doesn’t matter honestly, but people that have something called small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or SIBO, they are going to be really reactive pretty frequently, right? Like pretty commonly.

Hannah Aylward (25:53.163)
These people are really reactive to FODMAPs and FODMAPs are just fermentable carbohydrates that are in some of the foods that we eat and they’re in a lot of healthy foods and these carbohydrates are not bad for our health. They’re actually great for supporting gut proliferation. They’re helping to feed our good gut microbes, but we run into issues when we already have an overgrowth of these gut microbes.

So it’s very common if you have a lot of digestive issues, if you’ve seen your gastroenterologist or if you’ve worked with, you know, a dietitian or a nutritionist, people are very quick to pull the FODMAPs because there has been some research there and it does help with symptoms. So if you are dealing with heavy bacterial overgrowth, especially if it’s in the small intestine, you’ll probably feel a lot better when you do follow a low FODMAP diet. Now, once again,

This is not the solution to overcoming the chronic bloating, the GI issues, the constipation, the diarrhea, pulling the FODMAPs is not actually going to quote unquote, heal your gut, right? It’s not actually repairing anything. It’s just putting a little less fire on the flame, whatever. I’m really bad with these apologies you guys, so bear with me. It’s just minimizing symptoms temporarily. And if you’ve ever tried a low FODMAP diet,

You know, it’s incredibly difficult to follow. It’s super difficult to do and to stick with. And it’s not something I ever want people on long-term. I’ve also seen like hundreds of our clients be able to eat these foods without pain, without bloating and gas, without constipation and diarrhea after working with us. So in my opinion, there’s never a time when we have to like take these foods out forever. That’s not the solution when it comes to these and it can differ per client.

This is where testing and working with someone is so, so important because it’s not always like super black and white. Like if you are reacting to FODMAPS, then you have SIBO and that’s it clear the SIBO and then it’s gone. That can give us more insight. It’s a, that’s like a common pattern, but that’s not the exact case for everyone. SIBO is also never just SIBO because something causes the SIBO. Something’s causing the overgrowth in the small intestine when the majority of those bacteria should be moving along to our large intestine. So.

Hannah Aylward (28:13.277)
It’s not like it’s kind of not even SIBO’s fault. It’s like what caused the SIBO. But in a lot of people with SIBO, they’ll have that kind of intolerance or sensitivity to these FODMAPs. But once again, it’s not really about the FODMAPs. It’s like, why are we reacting to the FODMAPs? And in this case, normally it’s because we’ve got an overgrowth of bacteria that is essentially like we are eating these fermentable carbohydrates. We already have so many of these bacteria present. We’ve got too many.

And then they’re eating up these fermentable carbohydrates. And then these bacteria are eating them up and they’re producing gases. And that’s the discomfort that you’re feeling. That’s the bloating. That’s the stomach distension. That’s the, you know, looking six months pregnant after eating or at the end of the day. Typically in those with SIBO, we see the bloating like maybe a little higher up in the abdomen, but not always. And once again, as I said, it’s honestly never.

just SIBO, there’s always something else there too. So it’s totally possible to have overgrowth in the small intestine and the large intestine and have an infection and have a parasite and have maldigestion. mean, we see it all. You can have all of that at once. So focusing on just eradicating the SIBO also really isn’t the answer because there could be a lot of other stuff going on. There probably is. That’s how you got the SIBO in the first place. And if we don’t clear that up, then we won’t.

we won’t get that full symptom resolution that we are looking for. So that’s just kind of an example of, what a quote unquote food sensitivity could be or could look like and an underlying cause of that food reaction. It’s kind of better just call them like food reactions. When I’m talking to clients, I’m like this food just, it’s, you’re reacting to this food actively. It doesn’t sit well with you. You get sick when you eat it. We know that there’s something else that we need to identify. We need to dig deeper and identify putting it into,

the buckets, kind of doesn’t matter so much because when we work with clients, we want to run functional stool testing to assess their gut microbiome to dig deeper, see what’s going on there. That’s essentially causing these reactions to the food that we are having. So when we have something like a fungal overgrowth or we have a candida overgrowth, candida is a natural normal part of a gut microbiome of all of our gut microbiomes.

Hannah Aylward (30:32.175)
the issue that we run into is when it does overgrow. So when it overgrows, we can get super duper symptomatic. those with Candida overgrowth or fungal overgrowth tend to react more to fruits and fermented foods and yeasty foods. like wine and sauerkraut, kimchi, all these gut healthy foods. And that’s why it can feel so confusing and things like sugar, higher in sugar, including fruit.

And of course other, you know, things higher in sugar, like cakes and cookies and all that jazz. However, the answer is never to just pull those foods forever and think that you’re going to clear your Candida when you just like take out berries or apples and watermelon. I never want anyone to feel afraid to eat these whole healthy foods. The issue is not the food itself. Like don’t blame the raspberries for what the raspberries like aren’t doing a healthy

gut microbiome, a healthy and resilient gut microbiome can tolerate most foods with little symptoms or pain. A little bit of bloating here and there, sure. A little bit of gas here and there, sure. It’s normal and natural to pass gas a couple of times a day. That’s not really the client that I’m talking to or the client that we see.

You know, if you’re bloating is over the top, if it’s causing you to cancel your plans, if you have to unbutton your pants, if it’s causing you tears, if it’s caused you food, fear, and anxiety, if it’s impacting your day-to-day life, we need to dig deeper and see what’s going on. For the person that’s like, I get a little bloated after a couple of slices of pizza. That’s not really who I’m talking to. Everyone should work on their gut health. No doubt. It’s could not be more important. however, you know, most of our clients are in some pretty consistent discomfort and pain.

So going back to the fungal overgrowth, we can find that we are more reactive to those sugary foods, foods higher in carbohydrates, foods higher in vinegars, fermented foods, yeasty foods, that kind of stuff. But once again, we don’t want to just pull out those foods forever. It’s not going to get rid of it. What we want to do is eradicate the fungal overgrowth, the candida overgrowth. Just so you guys know, fungus, yeast, candida, they’re kind of interchangeable.

Hannah Aylward (32:44.826)
for the purposes of this episode here. So we want to eradicate that overgrowth and then we’ll find that you can tolerate these foods more efficiently. Again, you can eat these fruits without pain. can have a cookie and you won’t be flared up with like eczema and acne and chronic bloating and diarrhea.

it always comes down to digging deeper and understanding what’s at the root of these food reactions. So once again, that’s like the biggest thing that I want you to take away from this episode is we want to dig deeper. And that’s what we do with our clients and digging deeper essentially looks like running some testing. want to run functional stool testing to see what’s going on in your gut microbiome.

What undergrowth overgrowth do you have any infections that are present? How’s your gut immune function doing? How is your ability to digest your foods looking like? That’s the stuff we want to address. And also why the deeper wise to all of that too, to help you be able to tolerate more of these foods and essentially like kiss these food sensitivities goodbye. And I, I have personally been able to do that over the years. I can eat

dozens and dozens of foods that I would never even touch before. I don’t think I touched a French fry for about 10 years. I was really missing out. I don’t think I touched a piece of cheese for 10 years. I would never eat cheese. Now I’m like eating feta cheese all the time. I love some raw cheddar. It’s so good. I never really got it when people were like, cheese is so good. I’m like, eh, I can live without it because I had to live without it. So I had really just, you know, didn’t mind it too much.

And now I’m like, my gosh, she’s so good. And Greek yogurt is so good. And it’s so, it’s such a great source of protein and it’s so easy. You don’t have to prep it. You can like enjoy it so simply in the morning. So it really works out on the other, on the other end. So I can eat these foods and I did not eat these foods for honestly a decade. I couldn’t eat an apple without looking six months pregnant after eating it. It quite frankly just sucked. mean, it was, it was awful. And I ended up kind of just like skipping meals.

Hannah Aylward (35:00.868)
because I didn’t want to deal with the inevitable pain and bloating and gas that was going to come from eating these foods. So glamorous, I know. But if you’re my people, then you’re like shaking your head like, yes, that’s me. So then you’re in the right place. And if you’re not, we can find you another podcast, but I would just end up skipping these meals because I was just like, I can’t, I don’t have time for this. I have too much going on and I don’t want the rest of my day to just go downhill from there. And then it’s kind of

your nervous system activates. And then you’re kind of playing this, like, what, what can I do to minimize the symptoms and how bad is it going to get? And am I going to have to, you know, step out of class or step out of this meeting because I’m in so much pain or because I have to run to the bathroom and it, it kind of comes, then it likes to kind of transforms into like crisis. How do we minimize the crisis that we’re experiencing? And if you know that feeling in your nervous system, then you know it right. It’s not a pleasant way to exist.

And now I’m able to, mean, travel. don’t really have to think about it too much. I don’t really have to prep that much. I mean, I used to travel with mad snacks, you guys, so many snacks. I still love some snacks and some, it’s always great to have healthy options. It’s not like I’m over here, you know, eating pizza and burgers and fries all day, every day. Definitely not. But with that being said, I can go eat at a restaurant without fear. I don’t have to scan the menu for the one thing that I can eat that I have to modify.

Not anymore. My life is way easier. That is really truly what I want for all of you, all of the clients that we work with because on the other side of that is freedom. That’s when your whole life opens up. That’s when you don’t spend your days constantly thinking about your digestive issues, how bad they’re going to get, what you can do to minimize them. If you can have space that night, what plans you have to cancel. I mean, you can feel that energy. You don’t have to live that way.

once we dig deeper and address some of these underlying issues that you are experiencing. So it’s the good, good work. And we’ve had, I mean, I could name off so many clients that we’ve had start to be able to eat onions, garlic.

Hannah Aylward (37:06.07)
apples, dairy. Dairy is like one of the biggest things we see people be able to tolerate again. Strawberries, mangoes, I mean all sorts of weird foods that they couldn’t eat before doing the deeper gut work. And when we look at the labs, when we look at the deeper root causes for these clients, we’ve got usually a nice combination of different microbial imbalances and some mal-digestion patterns that are causing the reactions to these foods. When we eradicate those,

It’s that’s kind of a simple way of putting it, but so you can understand, we kind of come on in and we use natural agents to eradicate these things and optimize digestion. We see them be able to tolerate these foods a heck of a lot better with no pain, with no bloating, with no food fear. And that’s what I call the juice. That’s the juice of it all. That’s what we want for you. So I hope that you leave this conversation with hope, with a better understanding of your body.

and also deeply knowing that you should not have to live on a heavily restricted diet for the rest of your life. You should not have to take out dozens and dozens of foods just to be able to make it through the day. And you should not have to live in this constant state of fear when it does come to the foods that you’re eating. And if you are reacting to loads of different foods and it’s hard to pick up the patterning,

And it’s hard to feel normal when it comes to your relationship with food. And you are living in this chronically bloated, chronically kind of like IBS symptom state, bloating indigestion, reflux, constipation, diarrhea, lots of food reactions that there’s a lot more to the story. All we need to do is dig deeper to get you some answers. Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Nutrient Dense Podcast. If you found this episode valuable, don’t forget to subscribe.

Leave a review, share with a friend, and come back next week for a new episode. See you then.

The post Ep 2: The Difference Between Food Sensitivities vs Intolerances vs Allergies appeared first on Hannah Aylward Nutrition | Gut Health Expert.

Ep 1: How Trauma Impacts Gut and Hormone Health

Hannah Aylward — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 18:01:49 +0000

In this episode, I explore the intricate connection between trauma, gut health, and hormone health. We dive into the gut-brain connection, the role of the vagus nerve, and exactly how chronic stress can lead to digestive issues and a host of gut imbalances over time. We often ask ourselves which came first, our gut issues or our anxiety? The reality is: they are both influencing one another. If you feel like you’ve done a million gut protocols, and eventually end up back at square one – this is the episode for you.

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT IN THIS EPISODE:

How trauma influences both gut and hormone health.
The gut-brain connection: how our gut and brain are intricately connected and influence each other.
The vagus nerve: the key component in the gut-brain axis.
How stress affects digestion, nutrient absorption, gut motility, intestinal permeability and cortisol levels.
The role perfectionism plays in causing your gut & hormone imbalances.
The negative health impacts of chronic stress, like low cortisol and burnout.
Cultivating safety in the body in order to heal.
Practical exercises can help tone the vagus nerve and support nervous system regulation.

ENTER THE GIVEAWAY:

HOW TO ENTER:

Listen to an episode of the Nutrient Dense Podcast (3 episodes dropping this week!)

Subscribe + Follow the show on Apple Podcasts

Leave a rating & review on Apple Podcasts

Comment on this Instagram post tagging a friend who would love to listen to the show (each tag is another entry!)

Once you’ve completed these 4 steps, you’ll be entered to win!

CONNECT WITH HANNAH:

If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and leave us a rating/review! Thank you for listening

Transcript

I’ve learned a thing or two about what it really takes to transform your health from the inside out. And I’m here to share it all with you. Please keep in mind that this podcast is for educational purposes only and should never be used as medical advice. Now let’s dive in. Your transformation is waiting. Hi, sweeties and welcome to the Nutrient Dense podcast. I’m so excited to be here with you today because today we’re going to be diving into the connection between trauma

gut health and hormone health and how trauma can cause a long lasting impacts on both our gut contributing to those chronic digestive symptoms like bloating, constipation, diarrhea, stomach pain, those classic IBS symptoms, along with how it can cause these long lasting impacts on our hormonal health and our hormone balance, influencing things like our fertility, our periods, PMS, overall energy, all that kind of stuff.

And this topic is pretty near and dear to my heart as someone who experienced a good bit of childhood trauma that heavily impacted who I am today and impacted my digestive health and my gut health over the years. And when I look back on my story, it is pretty clear that my childhood trauma played a big role in my health overall. And it also plays a role in how I show up today.

and how I have to be extra mindful of certain things when it comes to my health today. So to keep it pretty short, my childhood story came with a lot of walking on eggshells, a lot of emotional volatility, a lot of kind of like emotional explosion and not feeling very safe in my home. So I was kind of always waiting for that other shoe to drop.

Hannah Aylward (02:19.384)
So how did that kind of show up and how I coped with things? Well, I would try to control every little thing that I could because it seemed like everything was out of my control. Nothing really made sense. I would witness these things happen and I would go, why is this happening? I don’t understand this. My brain like could not compute. And there was a lot of kind of an emotional explosion yelling.

screaming that kind of stuff that left me as a little girl, you know, pretty scared and feeling very unsafe. And how that played out in my adulthood a bit more is really, you know, soon after that, I gripped onto things like over exercising, under eating, and kind of leaning towards this perfectionism or perfectionist tendency, trying to be the best that I could possibly be.

essentially to protect myself and avoid any negative outcomes that could come about because I wanted to minimize as much pain and fear as possible, minimize as much rejection as possible and just kind of try to control all of the bits that I could control once again, because it felt like everything was really out of my control. So we’re going to get into how those little bits and pieces

impact your gut health and your kind of like story overall. But what’s also interesting is, you know, these things impacted the state of my gut function, the state of my gut microbiome and my hormonal health, because I just got very, very used to running on cortisol, but these things still pop their heads up today. So I always say, you know, I like to be very clear and honest. I’m very like upfront with expectations with clients. I’m very

transparent with clients and I am not sitting on the other side with this mic acting like I’ve got it all figured out and I’m perfect and don’t you worry. We’re all dealing with our own version of this as life ebbs and flows and as we get thrown more curveballs because we always do. That’s part of life. So my tendency is that I will work, work, work. I will control, control, control, and I will kind of burn the candle at both ends.

Hannah Aylward (04:38.209)
striving for more and more and more. And how that influences my health is if I’m not careful, I wake up one day and I’m burnt out. And I have this moment where I think to myself, how am I here again? I’ve been here before. I know better than this. I know how to support my body on a physical level. I know how to support my nervous system, but here it goes again, because a lot of my self-worth over the years has been sourced from my ability to do.

There’s always kind of been a comparison in my life with someone and I’m the one who can figure it out. If you want something done, you give it to Hannah. If you have a big project, you give it to Hannah. She can lead, she can take the way I’m quote unquote inspirational, but I’m, I haven’t really been marked as this one. That’s just fun to be around or funny or a good time or whatever. So I’ve almost played into that story more and more as I’ve grown up.

and gotten older as well. And that kind of keeps me in this pattern of thinking that what I produce, the work that I produce, how hard I work, what I create in that sense is a reflection of my worth, right? So I gain self-worth from these things, not simply from being. And that’s kind of sourced from a deeper underlying belief that I’m not worthy as I am, just who I am.

that’s not enough. I’ve got to prove that I’m enough. So it’s a nice mixed bag. So, you know, I wanted to elaborate a little bit on that just because I know it’s going to resonate with someone. a lot of the clients that we work with, a lot of the clients that I see tend to be a lot like me, which is not a coincidence because you you attract, you put that energy out there and that’s what you attract. And I’m not surprised that people

that also operate that way in that perfectionist tendency in that go, go, go work, work, work way or attracted to my work either. Right. So I’m happier here. If that resonates with you, you’re in the right place and there’s so much that we can do to help you get better. And it’s so worth it. Like the nervous system work is so fricking worth it. Cause it’ll change your whole life. It’s not only going to change your digestion or your stress. It’s going to change your whole life, which is super cool. But wanted to elaborate on that a little bit there.

Hannah Aylward (07:01.308)
So you kind of had an idea of where I’m coming from. I’m not this like super quote unquote chill person that this lets anything like float on by. No, my patterning is controlling, minimizing risk, go, go, go, work, work, work, prove, prove, prove, be the best, graduated top of class, skipped a grade, that kind of energy. So relaxing, doing less is quite hard for me, but it’s very important.

that I kind of keep my finger on that pulse because it’s super easy, as I said, to wake up one day and I’m sitting here going, I’ve done it again, right? I’m exhausted and how stress physiologically impacts the body and how it can create and contribute to these negative health outcomes that so many people are facing today. Let’s kind of get into a bit more specifics on exactly what that looks like. So what I want everyone to know is

Trauma is really not what happens to you. It’s how it lives in your body and it influences your psychology, your immune system, and your stress hormones long after the event took place. It’s how you normalize living in a chronic stress state. It’s how you learn to run on cortisol, unable to sit still and always having to be productive.

which inevitably leads to chronic health issues like IBS, hormonal imbalances, painful periods, thyroid disorders, and poor sleep. So when we talk about trauma, sometimes the conversation gets a little lost because people think back to their childhood or they think back to their life and they’re like, you know what, I’ve had it pretty easy or I’ve had a good go, right? And that’s fantastic. And it’s not really, no one’s trauma is, I don’t want to deem it like

better or worse than anyone else’s, right? We have some big T traumas that some of us have been through and we have some little T traumas that some of us have been through, but not to undermine anyone’s experience. Everyone’s experience is valid and some people have been through incredibly, incredibly difficult things. That’s a given, right? But it’s more so about how your body responds to this trauma. So it can be something, you know, like your parents get divorced. You go through a divorce,

Hannah Aylward (09:21.668)
And then you take away the belief that you’re not enough or your parents would have never gotten divorced. Or maybe that divorce leads to financial problems for the family. You’ve got to sell your childhood home and you’ve got to move out. And then things are a lot more stressful from there. So there’s kind of like different situations that can unfold. That’s just one example, right? We can have big, big T traumas. We can have physical traumas. We can have huge emotional traumas. And then we can have smaller kind of smaller little T traumas.

And I don’t want to really call them small, right? So I hope I’m making that very clear here. And once again, it’s not a contest who’s got the worst trauma or anything like that. My point is really understanding that it’s how your body perceives the event. It’s not really the event itself, which is also why someone can interpret a situation like

getting picked on in class or being called on in class and not having the right answer to the question from the teacher and then being laughed at in front of everyone as a traumatic event based on how the body responds in that moment. So say that moment takes place, whereas some kids wouldn’t really affect much, right? And other kids then go into a fight or flight response. Their heart starts beating fast. They start sweating. Their palms are sweaty. Their stomach turns into knots. And then they take away the belief that

I should never speak up because I have nothing to add. have no value to add. We zoom out 10 years later, 20 years later, and we can see how that could impact someone’s life. If they feel like they never have any value to add or there’s no point in voicing their opinion or speaking up. It’s more so about your body’s response to the trauma. So we don’t all have the same traumas, right? Most people have endured something in their life.

if not many things, think most of us have endured many, painful things, but it’s more so how, how that has kind of stayed in the body, created these patterns in the body and in the nervous system and then how that influences our lives. So as I mentioned earlier about my personal story, and I like to share personal stories just because I learned with like examples, I’m

Hannah Aylward (11:33.476)
I was always the girl in class being like, Hey, can I see another example of this? This isn’t making sense to me. Can I see another example? And when I hear other people’s stories, I can connect to where I fit in, in that story, if that makes sense. So as I mentioned about my story earlier, I had a pattern of, there was a lot of walking on eggshells. There was a lot of not enoughness. There was a lot of emotional volatility. So that left me on guard. That left me kind of in defense. That left me go, go, go, go, go work, work, work, right.

And that is going to, that pattern is hardwired in this body of mine. Let me tell you, relaxing is harder. Saying no is harder. Slowing down is harder for me personally. And how does that influence my life? I can get defensive sometimes. That means I’m really, really used to operating in a stressed out state. I am used to running on cortisol.

my body knows running on cortisol very, very well. We’ve had a lot of practice there and it takes consistent awareness to take me out of that response. Now we’re going to get into why that would be damaging for your health, but I think that most of us know running on cortisol is not good for us, right? So just know that these little things can happen and then you see them playing out in your life time and time and time and time again.

And we want to be mindful because it’s very easy to wake up in 20 years, 30 years, 40 years and go, wow, I haven’t really relaxed one day in my life. I haven’t really felt safe in my body this whole time. I haven’t felt ease in my life this whole time. And that’s a painful thing to wake up to. So let’s try to do what we can to avoid that. Yeah.

do all the little work, the little important work, everything that we can. and there’s never any like guilt or shame or blame in this conversation either. And I want to be very clear about that. It’s definitely not a, should have known better. That’s, that’s the opposite of what we’re trying to do here. It’s more so gaining education and awareness so we can see, Ooh, this is something worth taking a look at and paying attention to in my life. So let’s get into the connection between your gut health, specifically your nervous system.

Hannah Aylward (13:48.582)
how these things are intertwined and how they influence one another. So really the connection between your gut and your nervous system is inseparable. So we have something called the gut brain axis, and this is essentially showing the connection between our gut and our brain. And this is really formed through the vagus nerve. So the vagus nerve is a pair of cranial nerves.

that connect at the bottom of the brainstem and they go all the way into the gut, but they touch on all these organs along the way down too. So your vagus nerve can also influence your heart rate, right? So it’s touching on all these other organs on the way down, but we do feel it in our bellies. It does connect in our gut. And that is why you may have experienced the feeling of butterflies in your tummy.

because that’s really showing you, know, you’re not eating anything. You’re not taking any supplement, nothing like that’s happening. Nothing’s actually going in your gut, but your nervous system is sensing a situation, whether it’s nervousness, anxiety, excitement, whatever. And then you’re feeling that in your stomach. Sometimes everyone kind of knows the feeling of before you get up to give a big presentation or you’re going to walk out on the stage or you’re going to go on that first date or you’re going to send that text message. That’s like super vulnerable.

whatever it might be, you know that feeling of getting butterflies in your tummy from that. Sometimes you may even have to run to the bathroom in that case because of that gut brain connection. And the vagus nerve is an incredibly important piece of this connection. One of its main roles is to bring us back down to a calm state or to a regulated state after we’ve been anxious.

And as I said, the vagus nerve really creates a two-way communication highway between your brain and your digestive system. It’s not just your brain biochemistry and physiology that’s impacted by chronic and traumatic stress. Your gut literally changes too. So I always say to my clients and to my community, stress doesn’t stay stress. A lot of us picture stress.

Hannah Aylward (15:56.594)
as this emotional stress, right? Mental stress and emotional stress. There’s also other stressors. can have environmental stressors. We can have physical stressors, gut issues, gut infections and imbalances. Those are big physical stressors, under eating, nutrient deficiencies. I’ll kind of go into that in another episode, but we can have stressors all over the map here, physical, environmental, mental and emotional.

But stress doesn’t stay stress because it influences your physiology. So it’s not just your brain biochemistry and feelings of anxiety that are impacted by this chronic and traumatic stress. Your gut is literally responding to these chronic stressors. So when you spend time in chronic states of stress, of anxiety, of this is never enough, of go, go, go, of I’m

totally overwhelmed and I can’t get my head above water. The vagus nerve isn’t functioning as it normally would in these states. And that means that blood flow is going to go away from the GI organs, blood flow is sent away from your gut and out to your extremities because this is really the fight or flight state. This is known as sympathetic dominance. So we’ve, is an automatic response from your nervous system when you encounter a stressor.

your body is brilliant and it’s doing this to protect you. But your body can’t tell the difference between a big stressor, a big sense of danger. Maybe it’s like a tiger running at you. That’s kind of the example everyone gives, but most of us aren’t experiencing that anymore. Right? So I like to give the example of when you’re about to like step off the curb and cross the road and there’s a car coming and you jump back up and you feel that surge in your body, you feel like, Whoa,

And that’s your stress response and your cortisol and your adrenaline kind of waking you up and helping you jump back on the curb really quickly, or getting that feeling of when you’re walking and you kind of slip on something, but you catch yourself. That’s your body stress response in action. You can think clearly, you can see clearly your like go-to response mechanisms are at play here. So this is not all bad in this state. It’s very helpful and it’s going to help you survive.

Hannah Aylward (18:13.464)
In the short term, we run into issues when it’s happening chronically because your body can’t tell the difference between an instance where this response is really needed to save your life and an inbox full of emails, being late for that dentist appointment, having another conversation with your spouse that you’ve already have at this point is just pissing you off and you’re angry about it. Scrolling on Instagram and Tik Tok and getting fed all of this negative stuff over and over and over again.

Honestly, even if it’s not negative, it’s so much stimulation for your brain. It’s keeping you in that sympathetic dominant fight or flight state. So when we are in this state, blood flow is going to go away from our GI organs. The other thing that changes is the movement of food throughout your GI tract. When we are in this fight or flight state, this sympathetic dominant state, our gut motility is going to be impacted. It can actually be slowed down when we’re in this fight or flight state.

And this can cause things like bloating, constipation, cramping, stomach pain. The vagus nerve also plays a role in our stomach acid production, and that’s gonna influence our ability to digest food properly. Improper digestion is going to cause things like IBS symptoms, bloating, gas, pain. Now, stomach acid is one of the main digestive juices that we use to properly break down our food.

but it also acts as what I call like the conductor in the orchestra. And I learned this from another dietitian. She called it the conductor in the orchestra as it kind of like signals for the other digestive juices to be released and to do their job. And we can’t break down our food efficiently if we don’t have enough of these good digestive juices, things like stomach acid, things like pancreatic enzymes, things like bile. All of these are kind of our, I call them digestive output to

help us break down our food. Without them, we’re going to create this more dysbiotic state. This is how we develop SIBO. This is how we develop gut dysbiosis. This isn’t the cause for every single case, but this is very commonly playing a part in this. When we can’t digest our food properly, we’re gonna have this microbial overgrowth in our GI tract. And we know that that microbial overgrowth causes a lot of symptoms. So when we don’t have adequate digestive output,

Hannah Aylward (20:35.728)
We’ll get like a lot of burping, gas, bloating, that feeling of like having a rock in your stomach. That’s what some clients will say to me. Feeling like food is just sitting in your stomach. It’s not fun. It’s not a good feeling. You’re feeling like really full after just a couple of bites of food. It sucks, right? So our vagus nerve impacts and plays a role in our stomach acid production. So to kind of like wind that back a little bit, if we, our vagus nerve is not doing its job and it fits not operating,

Well, it’s not doing what it knows how to do so well because we are in this chronic stressed out state. We are going to be producing less stomach acid. Our gut motility is going to slow down and our blood flow is going to go away from our GI organs. That is going to cause chronic gut issues over time. One instance here and there, not a big deal, right? One instance of turning the corner and someone’s there and they scare you or whatever and your digestion’s compromised for 30 seconds. Not a big deal.

existing in this state, fueled by underlying trauma, fueled by not enoughness, perfectionism, go, go, go, work, work, work, never settle, not prioritizing rest. We can see how this could become a larger issue over time, right? We also know when our gut motility is impacted, our ability to digest our food is also impacted. And as I mentioned, that’s when we’ll see things like gut dysbiosis, SIBO,

low gut immune function and maldigestion as a result of this. And gut dysbiosis is really just an imbalance in our gut microbiota. It’s an imbalance in our gut bacteria. It’s just kind of a fancy word for that. It is going to increase inflammation and it’s gonna cause a lot of digestive symptoms. And this is when I can essentially tell that a client has got dysbiosis when they come to me and they say, I react to everything that I eat. I have been diagnosed with IBS and

My symptoms are very inconsistent. can’t really connect them to one food. I seem to be reacting to many different foods, but I also seem to be reacting to a meal on one day and I didn’t react the day prior. So I could eat the same thing for breakfast on Monday and Tuesday, and I feel fine on Monday. And then I feel really bad on Tuesday after eating it. It’s not the food, right? Something else is impacting your ability to digest and break down the food and how you also respond to the food.

Hannah Aylward (22:57.478)
So gut dysbiosis is at the core of like a lot of chronic GI issues. We run functional stool testing. I have a team of functional registered dietitians and a clinical nutritionist and we help clients in group programs and one-on-one programs really dig deeper here. We run functional labs. We see is there gut dysbiosis present? And dysbiosis can be an overgrowth of bad bacteria. It can be an undergrowth of good gut bacteria. It can be an overgrowth of

fungi or yeast, like there’s many kinds of different patterns that we’re looking for. We can have more of a histamine producing overgrowth picture. So we won’t really get into that today. But the point is chronic state of stress leads to maldigestion leads to gut dysbiosis, which also then leads to increased intestinal permeability or leaky gut. We also know that high cortisol. So when our body is running on these stress hormones,

from this trauma state, from this chronic stressed out state, when we are running on those stress hormones, we are going to use cortisol, right? The body’s gonna pump out cortisol as part of that stress response. When that happens, we will see our immune response, our immune system be suppressed, and we’ll also see a degradation of the gut lining happening. So cortisol has the ability to kind of wear away at the mucosal layer of our gut lining.

which will then further contribute to that leaky gut or increased intestinal permeability picture. It’s really just a barrier. So we’ve got your skin as a barrier and we’ve got your gut lining as a barrier because this is where you get most of the exposure to the outside world through your gut, through the food that you’re eating and putting in your mouth and then through your skin, everything that you’re touching. So we’ve got strong barrier systems here.

Now this barrier, when our gut barrier gets compromised, we’ll end up super symptomatic. And this is also playing a role in a lot of autoimmune conditions as well. So this is not something to take lightly. This isn’t to like scare you or anything like that. We can totally get you feeling a lot better and help, but we want to consider this stuff, right? So if we are thinking that we can supplement our way out of this or elimination diet our way out of this, we are mistaken.

Hannah Aylward (25:08.794)
we have to look at the nervous system. Digestion is a nervous system regulated process. It starts in the brain. When we are in that rest and digest state or that parasympathetic nervous system state, we are primed to properly digest our food. When we are in that sympathetic dominant state or that fight or flight state, our digestion is going to be immediately compromised. So we have to take a look at the health of our nervous system when it comes to

wanting to overcome these chronic digestive issues that we might have and our hormonal health and our ability to absorb nutrients and our hair growth and our skin health and everything honestly, but we’ll stick to gut hormones for the purpose of, of this talk today. So essentially these chronic gut issues can be almost like a symptom of being stuck in this stressed out state. And like I said, you know,

I say very often stress does not stay stress. It influences your physiology. And when I teach master classes, I always use this same graphic for my students because it really breaks down exactly what happens in the body when you enter that stress state and how that will influence your gut health. Quick overview of that again, it’s going to wear away the mucosal layer of that gut lining, contributing to intestinal permeability or, you know, leaky gut.

It’s going to suppress stomach acid production. It’s going to slow down gut motility. Blood flow is going to go away from the GI organs. All of these things essentially over time lead to this dysbiotic state in our gut microbiome that then also contributes to intestinal permeability, which is that kind of combination right there. This is what’s causing most people’s IBS. This is what’s causing most people’s food reactions and intolerances and food sensitivities.

The conversation, it’s a little bit more nuanced than this. Everyone’s story is different. Everyone’s labs look different. No person’s protocol is the same as someone else’s and people can have some kind of underlying imbalances, things to tweak. But these are, there are very common patterns that we see and this is one of them right here. It’s also very easy to get stuck in that chronic stress state.

Hannah Aylward (27:25.493)
when you feel like your body’s freaking out nonstop and you feel like you’re reacting to everything that you eat, it’s kind of like a hamster wheel. It’s the question is always, my anxiety cause my gut issues or did my gut issues cause my anxiety? And the answer is both y’all. Like they are contributing to one another at this time. So regardless of where it originated, we have to look at the nervous system and we have to look at the gut on a physical level.

These two things are essential for helping you get better. In order to get on the other side of these chronic gut issues, we need to address both of them, the physical gut imbalances and the chronic stress state. And we can help this, you know, through all of the lab work and the protocols and all of that amazing stuff that we do. But we also, on the nervous system side, we want to reestablish self-regulation through balancing the nervous system and increasing our vagal tone.

these things can be very, very helpful. We also want to take a look at our belief systems and our thoughts. What thoughts are we thinking on a daily basis? What are the stories that we live our lives by? What are these belief systems that we’ve essentially just been like indoctrinated into because that’s what our parents believe. And that’s, not even saying if it’s right or wrong, right? But we just want to check it. Is how I’m living my life, how I want to be living my life is

how I think of the world and my abilities, how I actually want to, were these beliefs just given to me? Are these a response of trauma or am I, do I have a choice in this? So my life really started to change when I said, I have a choice in this. A lot of these beliefs and these big fears that I have in my life actually have nothing to do with me. My parents’ divorce has nothing to do with me. My, one of my parents, like emotional,

explosions honestly has nothing to do with me. So I have a choice in how I show up and I have a choice in these patterns that I choose to live out every single day. And once again, it is not always easy. I grew up hearing from my mom that being lazy is the worst thing that one could be. So how do you think that impacted me today? Of course, as a little girl, you know, on when we really like go deeper and deeper into it.

Hannah Aylward (29:44.521)
I just want to be loved by my mom. think every little girl wants to be loved by their mom. So if this is what my mom thinks, then okay, I definitely don’t want to be lazy then because I want to make her happy and I want to impress her and I want her to love me just like basic survival. And then also just like, you know, mother daughter connection. It’s very intuitive. I don’t think we even like choose that. So how did that influence me? I work really, really hard and I’ll work myself into the ground. And if I’m not working hard enough, I’m not doing enough.

And what does working hard enough even mean? Right. So I bring this up once again, because we want to check this stuff and see like, where does it come from? Is this even what I believe? What is happiness to me? What is enough to me? What does successful look like to me? Where do I get this idea of perfectionism? Because I kind of logically know that it’s a lie, right? No one actually knows.

everything and no one actually does it perfect because we’re all just human and we are simply doing the best that we can, every single one of us. So it’s like, can logically know these things, but you can still not feel that safety in your body. But bringing awareness to these patterns, to these beliefs, to these thought systems is part of this journey because it can be really hard to just kind of like breath work and meditation your way out of these deeper beliefs.

Because if you believe if one of your core beliefs, just like mine is being lazy is bad, right? Which like lazy, I mean, what does that even mean? We want to like dissect all of this. What resting every once in a while, right? Like we live in a society that does not prioritize rest. So like what is lazy? But if you have the belief that being lazy is bad, then giving yourself space, sticking to a meditation practice, sticking to a breath work practice.

not working into the late night. mean, all of these things, you’re going to be fighting your belief systems. I hope that makes sense. So it can be helpful to dissect some of this. Where do these patterns come from? Where do these thoughts come from? And how are they influencing my health today? So this is the good, good work you guys. So we can see how these patterns, these stress patterns influence our gut, right? Your stomach acid, gut lining, all of that good stuff.

Hannah Aylward (32:07.061)
but it’s kind of like, how can we jump in and support this and take a look at our beliefs and how we show up on a day to day basis and learning self-regulation and learning some vagal tone, vagal toning exercises can be really, really helpful because you can’t always control what happens to you. Life is going to throw us curve balls. We will encounter difficult things.

I kind of believe, this is take this or leave this, cause it’s just my belief. think life is beautiful and literally anything is possible. And I also think life is a little like inherently tricky, right? It’s a little challenging. We, we love these people and they leave or they die, right? Like there’s a lot of, there’s so much beauty in the love. There’s so much joy in the love. And then there’s so much pain in the loss. And that’s just kind of like part of this life. We can’t control everything and how.

Frustrating is that sometimes, right? So since we can’t control everything, at first we have to accept that. And then we can learn these tools to kind of help us reach regulation again, that state where the nervous system feels safe, we feel calm, and we can actually think straight. Because if we’re just going through our day in a chronically stressed out state, I mean, this is going to influence

not only your gut health, it’s going to impact your memory, your decision-making skills, everything, because you can’t even think straight when you’re in a pure survival state. So we’ll talk about some exercises at the end here that you can implement and start implementing into your life on a daily basis to help tonify the vagus nerve and support a healthy stress response and more so like stress resiliency, because a quote unquote balanced nervous system is not always stress free. It’s more so about

how quickly you can re-regulate. Does a really stressful event take you out for three days or does it take you out for an hour? That’s kind of more so what we want to be looking to close the gap on. You will still get stressed. You will still be thrown curve balls. Things are still going to come your way that you didn’t see coming and they’re going to impact you. I almost had a freak out last week because my computer started tweaking on me and I was already at capacity with my workload and I was like, you know what? I’m going to freak out, but I can’t.

Hannah Aylward (34:21.169)
because I have to get some things done because I’m an adult. So I gotta, I gotta take some breaths and I have to keep going. But thank God I have these tools at this point. Or I mean, that would have taken me fully out. I was able to recover and I was able to get things done and I was able to kind of shrug it off and laugh it off. And that’s after years and years of hard work implementing these tools. Once again, not perfect, but I am deeply in practice of all of this. The key to this is really having a healthy functioning Vegas nerve.

so we’re, we are going to get into that a bit more. The other thing I just wanted to, you know, make it make another note on or emphasize a little bit here is this perfectionism piece. And I say this because I see it in so many of the incredible, incredible women that we work with. And when you’re doing this gut work and you’re taking these supplements and you’re following these diets and you’re putting in so much effort, I mean, I congratulate every single one of our clients for even signing up to work with us because it feels scary.

It’s an investment in your time and it’s an investment in your money. It’s an investment in your energy and you’re committing the next few months to like completely transforming your life. And that’s going to take some work. It is the best work and it is going to be well, well worth it, but it, takes some work, right? And you’re going to have to change some things. So it’s so common for the women that we work with to want to totally control every piece of it. They’ll even try to control some of their protocols. They’ll question every supplement that we give them.

They will, they’re trying to keep their finger on the pulse of everything, which I get, you know, it’s like, of course you can ask us questions, but this over-controlling piece is part of this nervous system, like rev up, this like hyper arousal response. And they’ll also try to do everything perfectly. So I will say in our programs time and time again, we do not expect you to do this perfectly. No one does this perfectly. And that’s the reality of this. And that may make me a bad health coach.

but I do expect you to show up for yourself, but I expect you to show up for yourself at the highest level that you’re able to today. And that’s what I want you to do for yourself. This is not about checking every single box every day, and it’s not about doing it perfectly. I don’t do it perfectly. Honestly, you can give it a good 85 % and you can get great results. That’s what I always say, cause life will happen and one of your kids will get sick and you will miss your flight and you will get a bad phone call and you will, you know,

Hannah Aylward (36:44.309)
purchase a new home or whatever it is. mean, we’ve had clients all over the map inside of my programs, purchasing homes, getting, you know, sicknesses, traveling, getting married, going on honeymoons, losing a loved one. I mean, we’ve, we’ve experienced all of this together with our clients. So things will happen. It’s not about doing it perfectly, but when we are striving for this perfectionism, the nervous system is trying to avoid fear or criticism because if we don’t do it, if we can,

do it all perfectly, then we’re able to stay safe. No one can say anything bad about us. No one can criticize us. And we have less to fear because we followed all the rules and we did it right. Let that sink in for a moment. This is your nervous system trying to protect you. You might think if I don’t do this perfectly, something very bad or dangerous is going to happen. And I get that because that’s like my entire childhood experience. So I, I’m with you on that one. So

If your nervous system is dysregulated towards this hyper arousal, this perfectionism, working more, trying harder, these are the ways that you control your stress activation. This is how it kind of expresses in your body. And this pattern of excess driving to somehow manage the outcome of a situation can make you anxious, angry, frustrated, unable to switch off. You may be someone who’s like, I can’t meditate.

It’s not for me. I don’t like it. And to that, I say, you got to try again. This is a big sign. If you can’t, if we can’t calm the brain at all, that’s a big sign that you’re used to operating in this hyper arousal state. And in this state, your survival brain, it’s hypersensitive and it’s reactive. And if your nervous system is hyperactively trying to cope, it will be producing more stress hormones. And this can push you further into fight or flight.

which eventually will lead to burnout. Just like I said earlier, right? I know this pattern very, very well. This is kind of ebbed and flowed and come in and out of my life, my entire life, because my, my go-to is hyper arousal. My go-to is over-functioning and my go-to is doing all of that for a while and then eventually burning out. And when we look at burnout on like a hormonal level, we tend to see low cortisol after high cortisol for a really long time.

Hannah Aylward (39:06.559)
We tend to see low nutrient stores, low mineral status, low secretory IgA or our low gut immune function and higher risk of gut dysbiosis and increased intestinal permeability because of all of it. So once again, I mean, we can see these patterns impacting our gut health and our hormone health. So when we stay in that perfectionism state, when we stay in that

Everything has to be perfect state. Your nervous system is chronically activated. You’re in that sympathetic dominant state and more and more and more will just lead to burnout. It’ll lead eventually to low cortisol. And let me tell you, as someone who has experienced low cortisol, you don’t want it. I think it’s honestly worse than high cortisol. And I say that to everyone. When your cortisol levels are low, you have no motivation. I always say like your juice, like your lust for life, things that brought you joy before.

They’re not really making you happy anymore. They’re not really bringing you joy anymore. I love pushing my business vision. I love this mission. I love helping clients. I want this business to get big. I want us to help more and more and more people. I love my team. This is very consistent in my life. I’m so grateful for this work that I do helping all of you. When I had low cortisol, I was like, honestly, I just want to watch Netflix. I don’t really care about building this any bigger right now, which is, which is fine. Right.

But I was like, I don’t, this isn’t even bring me joy anymore. Researching health stuff. Like I love, I love when new data comes out. I love getting into the nitty gritty science stuff to then kind of dissect it all and translate it for my clients. And I love learning new things. Me and my team, we are always in new trainings to better our skills, to better help you. When I had low cortisol, I didn’t want to do it. And that scared me because as someone who has always loved these things,

I couldn’t really feel joy from a lot of what I was doing. And that felt kind of scary to me and worrisome to me. Other symptoms of low cortisol would be like low sex drive, getting sick very often. You’re also at higher risk for autoimmunity when your cortisol is low. So these are some serious things that we want to take a look at, right? And you could even like skip periods or have really painful PMS. Digestion tends to be a bit wonky here too. So we don’t, we want to avoid getting there if we can.

Hannah Aylward (41:25.759)
And most of the times we get to that low cortisol state after we’ve been running on high cortisol or that chronic stress response, that chronic activation response for a while. So I had been existing in that state for a while, arguably my whole life. So eventually it got low. I started waking up with headaches. I started waking up feeling like I’m so tired. It doesn’t matter how much I sleep. I started waking up with no motivation. It would take me an hour to get out of bed. It was not, it was not fun. So I want to prevent that from.

happening for as many of you as possible. And it starts with learning self-regulation now before it gets to that state. It’s really essential to slow down and connect to these goals that we have and these missions that we have and these purposes that we have. I feel so connected to my purpose in this life, but I have to make sure that my goals and my next steps and my visions for the business are coming from a place of like healthy striving, full of choice and vitality and energy.

versus I have to do more, this isn’t enough, I have to do it perfectly. I’m sitting on the couch recording this podcast episode because I’m a little tired. So I thought better done than not done at all, right? Better done than perfect. And that’s where I’m out. That’s what I allow myself to do nowadays in my career.

old me would have never let myself do this. Now I’m like, honestly, I just got to get these done. I want to get this information out for you guys and I want you to listen to it. I want this to change your life as quickly as possible. If I keep waiting for the time, the day that I have all this extra time when we’ve got a full roster of clients and full roster of all these different initiatives and projects, it’s never going to happen. So it’s better that I do it imperfectly and get this out to you. Now that’s my take. Now that took a lot of, inner work.

and awareness to get me to this place. So we want these goals. We want these visions for this next chapter of our life to be coming from like a really, I like to call juicy. Like when my life feels juicy, when it feels it’s like it’s flowing, when it feels like I’m aligned with my purpose, when it feels like these next goals, like putting out this podcast is a big project for us. It comes from a place of this is going to be awesome and it’s going to be fun. And it’s going to help me help more people. That’s where I want it to come from. I don’t want it to come from.

Hannah Aylward (43:46.377)
It’s just another thing that I need to do or I’m not enough. don’t have it. Right. We want these things to come from like healthy, healthy striving versus this heaviness and kind of like suffocation energy that comes with perfectionism. So here are some signs and kind of symptoms that you can look for or really like ask yourself, do you experience these things to know if you’re kind of running off of these stress hormones? Because sometimes we tell ourselves, we’re not that stressed.

a mom, I got two kids, I run a business, I do X, Y, Z. I’m not that stressed. So a better question that we can ask ourselves is, are you overwhelmed? Do you feel overwhelmed on a day to day basis? If the answer to that is yes, you are experiencing stress. A lot of us just have very high stress tolerance at this point in our lives because we’ve done a lot and we’ve held a lot for a long time. consider myself in that group, right? I can do a lot of stuff. That’s not

That’s not really what bogs me down. It will eventually, but I can hold a lot. So I just kind of normalize it. And then eventually I go, wow, I’ve been doing way too much for too long. Here I am again. So signs that you’re addicted to running off of stress hormones, addicted to the hustle, go, go. It’s easier to keep go, go going than it is to slow down and recalibrate and rest. If you feel like you’re always cold, if you have poor sleep, if you have trouble relaxing, if you don’t feel good, unless you’re being productive.

If you don’t like meditating or you’re bored meditating, if you’re always worried about something, if you can’t sit still and relax, that’s really hard for you. You got to scroll, you got to check emails, you got to do X, Y, Z. You got to make the list, the grocery list, the to-do list, whatever it is. If you feel anxious, if you’re addicted to exercise, this is how mine initially kind of came about. I was totally addicted to exercise. It made me feel good. And then it didn’t.

If you’re used to not eating breakfast, if you’re used to running on coffee, if you’re drinking many cups of coffee each day, if you feel like your mind’s always racing, these are all signs that you are addicted to running off of these stress hormones. So it can feel really hard to rewire these patterns that the nervous system and the brain are so used to taking, right? So it takes a lot of intention to kind of unwind the nervous system.

Hannah Aylward (46:02.573)
and let us relax. And the vagus nerve can really help us when it comes to shifting into that parasympathetic state. I just want you to be honest with yourself. I want you to take a deep look at yourself after I listed all of those things off and ask how often are you really on and how often do you let yourself truly turn off and not worry about anything, the dishes, the to-do list, what you look like, what you’re going to eat next.

your gut issues, I mean, whatever it is, do you ever let yourself turn off at that level? If you don’t, this is what it looks like to run off stress hormones and it’s not sustainable and it’s not even real energy, it’s cortisol. And over time, this is going to cause chronic gut issues. It’s gonna cause hormonal issues. It’s gonna cause sleep issues, hair loss, infertility, low libido, estrogen dominance, lack of muscle, increased belly fat.

We don’t want to go down this path. Brain fog, memory issues. my gosh, when I get really stressed, I stop remembering things and I’m like, okay, this is really freaking me out now. I know I need to make change because I can’t remember things. That feels horrible. So we want to focus on this re-regulation if this is the case. And whenever you’re embarking on a gut healing journey and a gut repairing journey, or honestly any journey, any health journey, your body has to feel safe enough.

Your body has to feel safe enough to heal. And this is going to require you to eat enough, rest enough, and turn off enough. You cannot supplement your way out of this. So these are things to start with. Am I eating enough? Is my mind racing 24 seven? How can I support myself there? Am I saying yes to everything? How can I start saying no to some things? Do I have any boundaries in my life or do I let myself just get pulled?

all around the map where my needs end up always coming last. These are some things that we want to start to ask ourselves and definitely prioritize your sleep while you’re at it. So before we get into the exercises and things that we can do as well, just a quick note on our hormonal health here, cause I’ve talked about cortisol during this and I’ve talked about kind of, I’ve kind of hinted at some ways that the chronic stress response and the trauma can contribute to our hormone health. But we know when under stress,

Hannah Aylward (48:29.583)
Our body’s going to pump out adrenaline and then it’s going to pump out cortisol. And cortisol is one of those stress hormones involved in that stress response. We know what that does to the gut, but we also have how that’s going to influence our blood sugar. Cortisol is going to raise our blood sugar levels. That’s not great. When blood sugar levels go up really high, they crash really low. That’s going to leave us feeling anxious, jittery, irritable, like kind of like a snippy. Like you do not want to talk to me when my blood sugar is crashing.

We want to avoid that as much as we can, right? We can’t balance our hormones without balancing our blood sugar. So if we’re running on this chronic, this cortisol roller coaster, right? If we are constantly in that stress response and then cortisol is bumping up our blood sugar levels, we cannot have proper hormonal health under those circumstances. Then we also have the fact that progesterone

balances our estrogen level. you know, when we’re talking about like female sex hormones, we’re largely looking at progesterone and estrogen and progesterone balances our estrogen and it calms the brain. It stimulates the metabolism and it supports good sleep. It really helps us feel balanced and it helps us feel kind of like, like I say, juicy. It’s a feel good, right? It helps us feel good. And you only make progesterone when you ovulate.

Whether kids are in your future or not, the menstruating female body is primed to have children and your physiology wants you to have kids, whether you want to or not. And there’s no judgment. mean, you do whatever you want with that, but this is just on a biological level, right? So your body is essentially asking itself, am I safe enough to ovulate? Am I safe enough to, to drop an egg to have a baby this month? If I’m not, I won’t ovulate. If I am, I will ovulate.

we have to ovulate in order to produce adequate progesterone. This hormone that helps to balance estrogen, it also plays a vital role in pregnancy. It thickens the uterine lining. It supports a growing fetus. It can prevent preterm labor. Low progesterone levels make it difficult to conceive. It can increase our risk of miscarriage, right? So if we are not ovulating, we’re not gonna have adequate progesterone levels. In this state as well,

Hannah Aylward (50:50.295)
estrogen and progesterone are balancing each other out. They work together to balance each other out. They’re kind of, you know, hormonal balance, hormones are never completely balanced. They’re always kind of playing this dance with each other. When we have low progesterone, our estrogen will be higher because it’s more so is our estrogen higher in relationship to progesterone. And estrogen can be high if we have low progesterone, just like relatively speaking.

or it can be high because we have too much estrogen too, right? So when we’re looking at symptoms of estrogen dominance, so that’s going to be like painful periods, cramping, clotting, painful like breast tenderness, all of those symptoms, bloating, right? These are all symptoms of estrogen dominance. And when we want to get to the root of estrogen dominance, we want to help to detoxify estrogen properly.

And also look at our progesterone levels because sometimes that estrogen can be high just because progesterone is so low. trauma, chronic stress, nutrient deficiencies, chronic gut issues, restrictive diets, never doing enough, constant blue light, not enough time spent in nature, not enough time playing, laughing, smiling, always being on. All of these things, they don’t help you feel safe. They do the opposite. That over time will lead to low progesterone.

which, as I mentioned, counterbalances estrogen and then eventually leads to high estrogen levels. So we want to take a look at this chronic stress response and how we can help to regulate the nervous system to help support healthy hormonal balance because we know chronic stress is going to influence cortisol, it’s going to influence progesterone production, and it’s going to influence our estrogen dominance if we’re kind of presenting with

estrogen dominance and so many women are struggling with infertility. So many women are struggling with miscarriages, also just really painful periods, bad PMS and breast tenderness and cramping and clotting and all of that, which are typically signs of estrogen dominance. So we have to have to help the body feel safe enough to heal and feel safe enough to ovulate so we can then produce adequate progesterone. We also have to make sure we’re eating enough.

Hannah Aylward (53:07.195)
to this properly. So if I don’t eat enough, my next period will be more painful. And I know that for a fact, the things that I know make my next period more painful, drinking more alcohol around like the holiday times, right? So every holiday season, then women’s cycles in like January and February will be like super painful. And they’re like, why? And I’m like, it’s cause you drank more alcohol and that’s messing up your liver detoxification and your liver is detoxing estrogen. So it’s too much, right?

It’s putting a heavier burden on your liver. So you’re, you’re not detoxing estrogen as efficiently. So drinking too much alcohol and then not eating enough. These are like the things that are going to make my period more painful, more crampy, like more painful cramps, all of that really, really fun stuff that we have to deal with. So we can see how trauma leads to these patterns in the body influences how we show up influences, how safe we feel in our body and

our stress state and this chronic stress that lives within us and the almost like levels that we uphold ourselves to, which eventually leads to chronic gut issues and hormonal imbalances. It’s all connected, which is honestly beautiful because your body is magnificent. It’s incredibly intelligent and it’s self healing. And once you address some of these underlying root causes, the good news is, that you’re going to see

everything get better. And that’s what I always say to clients because it can feel very overwhelming when it’s like, my gosh, this is influencing this. And then this is influencing this. I’m like, good thing there’s like five foundations that everyone’s got to do. And then you’re going to, you’re going to notice winds across the board, you know, and that’s where this functional approach really comes into play. We’re not just like playing whack-a-mole with symptoms. going, what’s at the core of all of this and how can we improve that? And then by regulating the nervous system, we see gut get better. We see hormones get better. We see energy sleep.

hair, skin, right? It’s all connected. Beautiful. So the ability to really return to regulation is the essence of resilience. So when we’re looking to build nervous system resilience, which once again, it’s not about always feeling calm or always feeling happy, but that’s really not the case for any of us. So let’s just get that on the table. It’s more so about how quickly can I return back to a regulated state? This is the essence of resilience.

Hannah Aylward (55:31.525)
So I wanted to just give us a few little exercises that we can add in and take away with us in order to help to tonify that vagus nerve and kind of help that body reach regulation again with an understanding that there may be deeper work for you to do here. There may be deeper work for you to explore when it comes to your patterns, your thoughts and your belief systems and these traumas. I’ve done a lot of work with my therapist. We do EMDR together.

I’ve done neurofeedback. I’ve done a lot of inner work. I’ve done a lot of like hypnosis and kind of reprogramming work. It has changed my whole life. There’s no doubt about it. I don’t think I would even have this business without this. It’s game changing and it makes me more compassionate. It makes me more loving. I can show up for my relationships stronger. I’m a better daughter. I’m a better sister. I’m a better boss. I’m a better girlfriend. I mean, it’s like, it like makes me emotional. is.

It is one of the most worth it things you could ever do in your life. And I’m just genuinely more trusting. I feel more at ease and I’m way more connected with like source God, the universe than I was before, because I’m just like, I trust and I can, I can loosen my grip on the massive control and I can reregulate. And that’s what I want for each and every one of you too. So it’s pretty cool. That’s all wrap it up. It’s pretty cool.

Okay. So a few exercises that we can do are there’s something called the VU breath and I walk my clients through this and my healing guts and shaken butts program. So that’s my signature group program. It’s a four month program. We run functional stool testing. We build out customized protocols. We walk through like targeted nutrition, all of that good stuff. Teach you how to balance your blood sugar, support detoxification and support your nervous system to help you overcome your chronic digestive issues. I’ve been running this program now.

since 2019, which is honestly insane. We’ve helped hundreds and hundreds of people inside of this program. I’m so proud of it. But one of the things that I do in this program is I walk clients through the VU breath in these live breath work sessions that I offer sometimes. So essentially what you do here is you take a deep inhale through your nose and then on the exhale, you purse your lips and you make the sound VU.

Hannah Aylward (57:46.929)
So I’ll do it here for you so you can kind of get an understanding of it. And this is something that you can do at home when driving to work, when washing your hair in the shower, when cooking dinner. There’s really no excuse to not use this technique when you really need it. So we’re just gonna take a deep inhale and you can do this with me. Deep inhale in through the nose, filling up that lower belly and then exhale to voo. Voooo.

We’ll do one more together. Inhale through the nose.

Hannah Aylward (58:27.793)
you

Hannah Aylward (58:31.621)
Beautiful. So you can do a few rounds of that and that’s going to help to tonify the vagus nerve. And I like to put one hand on my heart and one hand on my lower belly as I do that as well. So I can feel the power of my sound creating the vibrations that are, that’s helping to tonify my vagus nerve. That’s helping me enter regulation again. We can also do something called the double breath.

I feel like Andrew Huberman made this very popular, but this has been around for a while where essentially you just take a deep inhale through your nose, fill all the way up. And then at the very top, you suck in a little bit more air and then you deep exhale it out. So I’ll do it for you here so we can do it here together. So we’re to take a deep inhale through the nose, filling all the way up, sucking a little more air at the top. Exhale.

And again, deep inhale, filling all the way up. A little bit more at the top, exhale.

Just like that. Other things that you can do to support your vagus nerve and help your nervous system reach regulation again would be cold showers, gargling water. You can do that first thing in the morning after you brush your teeth, you’re already rinsing out your mouth. It’s super easy to add into your routine. You want to gargle water and really gargle very hard. That’s going to help to tonify the vagus nerve. Singing, laughing, these things also support a healthy nervous system and building nervous system resilience. And

I had to say love and compassion, love and compassion for yourself, allow your efforts to be enough. Always hold yourself accountable because no one else can change your life but you, but treat yourself with love and compassion as these are really the antidote to trauma. So you have a couple of exercises that you can implement and you can go away with straight from this episode and put them into your daily life. And just as a quick recap here,

Hannah Aylward (01:00:34.703)
We know that trauma can leave the body in this chronically stressed out state, in this chronically anxious state. It can also leave the body in this hyper arousal state where we’re in that sympathetic dominant nervous system state or that fight or flight state. This essentially down regulates digestion. It’s gonna negatively impact our gut lining. It’s going to suppress stomach acid production. It’s going to slow down gut motility.

all of this will lead to IBS, cramping, bloating, chronic digestive issues, gut dysbiosis, SIBO, all of these kinds of conditions. It’ll also weaken immunity over time too. And then we can also see that chronic cortisol that’s released in that fight or flight state essentially decreasing progesterone production because it will inhibit our body’s ability to ovulate. And then that can leave us in this more estrogen dominant state.

We also know that cortisol can actually influence our thyroid function too. I didn’t get into too much of that, but listen, there’s nothing it doesn’t influence. So we want to take this, this work seriously, right? And we don’t really want it to be another thing that we have to quote unquote do to stress this out more. But what I like to say to clients is you are already doing all of this stuff in your life. You are going for it. You are keeping tabs on so many things. You are putting in so much effort to be the best that you can be.

You deserve to show up for this life and your mission and your purpose and your loved ones in a regulated state. You deserve that and you should get to experience that on a daily basis. If you’re going to do all this stuff anyway, you might as well do it in calm versus total chaos, right? I have no doubt that you’re going to succeed and do a million things that you set out to do. It’s more so how are you going to show up when you are doing those things?

That’s the big, big work here. So I hope you gained a lot from this. Thanks for hanging out with me today and we’ll chat soon. If you are ready to finally get to the bottom of your chronic digestive issues, your nonstop bloating, gas and stomach pain, your constipation and diarrhea,

Hannah Aylward (01:02:55.001)
your low energy food sensitivities and food reactions and the very fun food fear and anxiety that comes along all of these gorgeous symptoms. We would love to help you and have you inside of my healing guts and shaking butts program. This is my signature gut repairing program that I have been running for five years now going on six years, which is honestly insane. And we’ve helped hundreds and hundreds of clients inside of this program.

In the program, we build out customized protocols based on symptoms, history, and functional lab results. So we run functional stool testing and we utilize natural supplements and targeted nutrition and strategic lifestyle adjustments to repair your gut at the root cause level. So you can tolerate more foods with less pain and say goodbye to all of these pesky digestive symptoms that you’ve been dealing with for so long. So we will put the link.

to sign up for the HGSB waitlist in the show notes below. And if you also want to talk with someone on my team about working with us, what that would look like, if you’re a good fit to work with us, then you can go ahead and book a strategy call with us. And that way we can chat through your symptoms and your history and best next steps to get you feeling better. And you can grab that link to book a strategy call in the show notes below as well.

The post Ep 1: How Trauma Impacts Gut and Hormone Health appeared first on Hannah Aylward Nutrition | Gut Health Expert.

HAN’s Top Black Friday Deals!

Hannah Aylward — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 23:32:45 +0000

We compiled the best of the best Black Friday deals for all things health! The guide includes gift ideas in the areas of nutrition, self care, supplements and personal care products. These are all products that I use personally and love!

So whether shopping for others or trying to figure out what you want to tell others you would like for yourself, I hope you find some inspiration!

KETTLE & FIRE BONE BROTH

Kettle & Fire’s bone broths are my absolute favorite because they use high-quality ingredients, and every flavor is made with organic, free-range, or 100% grass-fed bones. Bone broth contains gelatin, anti-inflammatory amino acids like alanine, hydroxyproline, proline, and glycine, and a variety of minerals that are essential for thyroid function and hormone health. Gelatin absorbs water and helps keep fluid in the digestive tract, promoting good intestinal transit and healthy bowel movements. You can use my code HANNAHAYLWARDHHC for 20% off Kettle & Fire’s Bone Broths!

HERBAL FACE FOOD

Serum I: I cannot explain in words how much I love this product. My skin is glowing like never before since I’ve been using this serum. I have all of my friends try it. It’s literally food for your face. It’s anti-oxidant and anti-aging properties help with dryness, wrinkles, acne, pigmentation, and brightness. I use it every single day. The Cure is also incredible for breakouts. When I see a pimple coming on, I put The Cure on it about 2-3 x per day and it’s basically gone the next day. For Black Friday, when you order any 3 products, you’ll get a free soap (valued at $83.97) on top of the 20% off with my code Hannah20.

QUEEN OF THRONES CASTOR OIL PACKS

We recommend castor oils packs to most of our clients. They help our clients reduce constipation, get better sleep, reduce inflammation, balance out gut bacteria, reduce PMS, and support liver detoxification. A great gift for your wellness friend (or for yourself). Honestly, I love this thing so much. It’s such an easy way to support detoxification on a regular basis without supplements or food. I notice a big difference in my PMS when I’m wearing my castor oil pack regularly during my luteal phase. You can get 15% off site wide for Black Friday and after the sale, you can use my code HANNAH10 for 10% off!

FULLSCRIPT: PRACTITIONER-GRADE SUPPLEMENTS

We use Fullscript with all of our US clients. When you sign up for a Fullscript account through the HAN dispensary, you get access to the highest-quality, practitioner-grade supplements at discounted prices. PLUS, they’re having a huge Black Friday sale – up to 20% OFF! Reminder: don’t buy your supplements from Amazon! The supplement industry is not regulated and you want to ensure quality. You can create an account HERE + immediately get access to practitioner grade, 3rd party tested supplements for 15-20% off. For Black Friday, you can get 20% off site-wide (no code needed).

JUST THRIVE PROBIOTIC

Just Thrive is one of my favorite probiotics on the market due to its quality and survivability. The Just Thrive probiotic can help decrease inflammation, improve diarrhea, reduce abdominal pain, bloating, and stool consistency, boosts energy, improves sleep, and promotes healthy skin. Spore-based probiotics are my go-to recommendation for a basic gut support probiotic when we don’t have testing & specifics on your microbiome.

You can purchase it HERE and use the code BF25 for 25% off (and after Black Friday, you can use the code Hannah15 for 15% off)!

EQUIP PROTEIN

Choosing the right protein powder can feel so overwhelming. Half of them are full of fillers and crap ingredients, and the other half taste awful. Equip protein is one of my go-to recommendations for our clients. We love it because it only a small handful of ingredients, 100% carefully sourced, real foods, no additives, allergens, chemicals, fillers, or other junk. Gluten free. 21g protein per serving. And independently tested to make sure the protein powder is free of harmful amounts of heavy metals and toxins like glyphosate.

When you purchase with this link, you can get up to 30% off your order!

TEMPDROP

Want to track your cycle? Practice FAM? The Tempdrop is my go-to device for taking my body temperature as I’m sleeping. It’s a simple band that you wear on you arm (free of bluetooth) while sleeping that takes you average body temperature throughout the night. This is what I use as a natural form of birth control to track my ovulation and fertile window using the Fertility Awareness Method. This device was a game changer in my journey and makes it all so easy. They’re doing a BIG discount for Black Friday: 20% off PLUS an additional 10% off when you use the code: AFHANNAHAYLWARD

Are you struggling with bloating, stomach pain, and food sensitivities? Feel like sh*t even though you eat clean and exercise? Ready to overcome your chronic digestive issues + get your life back? Book a FREE Strategy Call with me HERE! We’ll talk about your case, history, symptoms, and next steps for getting you feeling a million times better ASAP.

The post HAN’s Top Black Friday Deals! appeared first on Hannah Aylward Nutrition | Gut Health Expert.

Top 7 Herbs for Gut and Hormone Health 🌱

Hannah Aylward — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 21:52:52 +0000

There are so many gorgeous herbs that can be used to optimize gut, hormone and adrenal health.

This is really just the beginning (there are many more herbs + we could get even more in-depth about them all).

These are just some that I personally use the most often. My favorite way is through herbal infusions (if y’all don’t know already, I love my nettles infusions!!).

I boil water, place a few tablespoons of the herbs in a big mason jar or french press (here’s a link to one I like!), and steep the leaves overnight.

This is going to be more potent than a cup of tea that steeps for much less time.

I serve it the next day by pouring it over ice (just because I like it that way!)! but feel free to drink it as-is or warm it up.

I drink an infusion almost daily for mineral support, hair growth, adrenal loving, and gentle detox support.

MY TOP 7 HERBS FOR GUT & HORMONE HEALTH

Nettles: great source of minerals, also good for histamine support

Marshmallow: coats the throat + stomach lining – helps with ulcers, constipation, and reflux

Oatstraw: for stress + adrenal health

Dandelion root: liver support, PMS, digestion, constipation (supports bile & detox which can help with hormonal balance – I like to drink it 7-10 days before my menstrual phase)

Ginger: gut motility, constipation,
nausea, inflammation (great for SIBO)

Hibiscus: vitamin C, adrenal health (also tastes yummy!)

Chamomile: good for relieving indigestion, gas, nausea, anxiety, and serves as a digestive relaxant (great before bed)

Which is your favorite to use?

*this is NOT medical advice! Work with a practitioner that can advise on which herbs your body needs/can tolerate well.

Are you struggling with bloating, stomach pain, and food sensitivities? Feel like sh*t even though you eat clean and exercise? Ready to overcome your chronic digestive issues + get your life back? Book a FREE Strategy Call with me HERE! We’ll talk about your case, history, symptoms, and next steps for getting you feeling a million times better ASAP.

Link to my original IG post on this.

Note: Some of the links to products or services in this blog post are affiliate links. This means that we may receive a small percentage or fee for referring you to any product you may purchase from one of those sites. These small fees help sustain our small business. We truly appreciate your support.

The post Top 7 Herbs for Gut and Hormone Health 🌱 appeared first on Hannah Aylward Nutrition | Gut Health Expert.

6 Things To Do Daily To Heal Your Gut + Support Healthy Digestion

Hannah Aylward — Wed, 25 Oct 2023 18:55:12 +0000

Knowing where to start on your gut healing journey can feel very overwhelming to say the least. Probiotics? Elimination diets? Low FODMAP? Where do you even begin? Not to mention most of the information out there is contradictory.

You have one Instagram influencer telling you that doing a parasite cleanse changed her life and “healed her”. Then you have the next person telling you to never do one because it will ruin your gut.

Confusing much? I feel you. So let’s bring some clarity and simplicity to your gut health plan. Because analysis paralysis is real.

Start with these 6 things daily to heal your gut and support healthy digestion:

1. Brush your teeth first thing in the morning (before eating or drinking anything).

Your mouth houses lots of bacteria that if swallowed, travels into the gut. Bonus: tongue scraping gets the bacteria off your tongue better than just brushing alone. Your oral microbiome influences your gut microbiome

2. Hydrate with filtered water first thing. 16oz of water with a pinch of sea salt and/or trace mineral drops to properly hydrate. Straight water isn’t the best way to hydrate! (You can check out my favorite trace minerals in Fullscript, where you get 15% off practitioner-grade supplements when you sign up here.)

3. Eat a protein-rich breakfast. Aim for 25-30g of protein. Pair this with fiber, a healthy fat source + a carb. For example: a smoothie with a serving of protein powder (here are some of my favs) + 1 TBS chia seeds, berries and 1-2 TBS of nut butter. Add whatever else you like: ginger, spinach, hemp seeds, etc.

4. Eat more polyphenol-rich foods. Polyphenols enhance the growth of beneficial bacteria and inhibit the growth of pathogens.

Foods to eat daily: berries, coffee, olives, dark chocolate, pomegranate, green tea Here’s a recipe for a polyphenol-rich (and delicious) chocolate bark.

5. Move daily (in a way that you enjoy!).

Moderate exercise can enhance the number of beneficial microbial species, enrich the microflora diversity, and improve the development of commensal bacteria. Avoid too much high intensity to reduce increasing stress hormones.

6. Help your body feel safe. Your body needs to feel safe to heal! Here are tools for how:
– prioritize 7-9 hours of sleep per night
– eat 3 full meals per day (no skipping)
– stabilize blood sugar
– use daily stress management techniques like breath work, meditation + journaling
– set boundaries + prioritize your needs

Are you struggling with bloating, stomach pain, and food sensitivities? Feel like sh*t even though you eat clean and exercise? Ready to overcome your chronic digestive issues + get your life back? Book a FREE Strategy Call with me HERE! We’ll talk about your case, history, symptoms, and next steps for getting you feeling a million times better ASAP.

Link to my original IG post on this.

The post 6 Things To Do Daily To Heal Your Gut + Support Healthy Digestion appeared first on Hannah Aylward Nutrition | Gut Health Expert.

HAN Gift Guide + BF Favorites!

Hannah Aylward — Mon, 21 Nov 2022 19:17:53 +0000

The HAN Gift Guide is HERE! Whether you’re looking for gifts for others or you don’t know what you want for yourself, I hope this guide is helpful and sparks some inspiration for your holiday shopping. These are all products that I use and love.

Many of my favorite brands below are also having incredible Black Friday Sales, so you can save even more.

Nutrition/Home

Kettle & Fire Bone Broth

Kettle & Fire’s bone broths are my absolute favorite because they use high-quality ingredients, and every flavor is made with organic, free-range, or 100% grass-fed bones. Bone broth contains gelatin, anti-inflammatory amino acids like alanine, hydroxyproline, proline, and glycine, and a variety of minerals that are essential for thyroid function and hormone health. Gelatin absorbs water and helps keep fluid in the digestive tract, promoting good intestinal transit and healthy bowel movements. You can use my code HANNAHAYLWARDHHC for 20% off Kettle & Fire’s Bone Broths!

Berkey Water Filter

This is the water filter I personally use. If you don’t have a high-quality water filter (Brita’s and fridge filters don’t count), it would be one of first recommendations when wanting to get healthier. The Berkey Water Filter can remove chloramines, pharmaceuticals, BPA, pesticides, heavy metals, and other harmful elements in water. They are currently doing a huge Black Friday sale, so you can save big HERE. Use code HAN5 for an additional 5% off.

Territory Foods

This is a life saver. Perfect for busier weeks, and the flavor is superb. I personally order from here when I know I’m gonna have a crazy week and want to make sure I still fuel myself properly and feel amazing. They use only responsibly sourced and nutrition-dense ingredients, resulting in high-quality and super-nourishing foods and meals. NO highly processed oils like canola or rapeseed (that will harm your gut + blood sugar), or refined sugars! Try them out HERE with my code HANFAM ($25 off your first two orders!). A perfect option to help you reset in between all of the holiday parties.

Vitamix

The best blender on the market in my opinion. I’ve used mine almost every day for 8 years and it still works just as well now as it did when I first got it. I use it for everything – coffee, soups, smoothies, sauces, etc. This is an investment that you won’t regret and the best gift. Grab it HERE.

Waku

I think I’ve gotten everyone in my family obsessed with Waku. It’s a delicious herbal tea, with prebiotic powders to feed your good gut bugs and 0 grams of sugar. Raspberry Rose is my favorite flavor. You can use my code Hannah15 for 15% off.

Personal Care + Supplements

Herbal Face Food

Serum I: I cannot explain in words how much I love this product. My skin is glowing like never before since I’ve been using this serum. I have all of my friends try it. It’s literally food for your face. It’s anti-oxidant and anti-aging properties help with dryness, wrinkles, acne, pigmentation, and brightness. I use it every single day. The Cure is also incredible for breakouts. When I see a pimple coming on, I put The Cure on it about 2-3 x per day and it’s basically gone the next day. Use code: hannah20 for 20%.

Queen of Thrones Castor Oil Packs

We recommend castor oils packs to many of our clients. They help our clients reduce constipation, get better sleep, reduce inflammation, balance out gut bacteria, reduce PMS, and support liver detoxification. A great gift for your wellness friend! Check them out HERE and use my code HANNAH10 for 10% off your purchase.

Fullscript

We use Fullscript with all of our US clients. When you sign up for a Fullscript account through the HAN dispensary, you get access to the highest-quality, practitioner-grade supplements at discounted prices. PLUS, they’re having a huge Black Friday sale – up to 30% OFF! Reminder: don’t buy your supplements from Amazon! You can access my catalog for my favorite supplements that we often use with clients.

Head & Heal CBD

Amazing Certified Organic CBD products for stress relief and nervous system support. We love recommending CBD for clients that need help with sleep, anxiety and relaxation. Get 15% off with code hannah15!

Just Thrive Probiotic

Amazon Favorites

Supplement Organizer

I shared about this on my IG stories last week. I’ve been using this for the last few months and I’ve been loving it! It’s one container, with smaller daily supplement storage that breaks out into morning and night supplements. It’s helped me stay organized and accountable with my supplements. SO much better than having a million bottles everywhere.

Anti-EMF Phone Case

A must-have to help protect against radiation + EMFs from your cell phone. I currently have the beige color on my phone now.

Electric Kettle

Love a good electric kettle. This one is chic and amazing. I use my electric kettle daily to make herbal infusions, matcha, coffee, hot chocolate, and more.

Wine Glasses

Love these wine glasses. To me, the wine glass impacts the whole drinking experience. I usually enjoy mine with sparkling water + kombucha, an organic red, or Waku on ice. It really adds a little pop of joy to a Tuesday.

Mason Jars with Bamboo Lids + Straws

Perfect for taking your HAN Smoothie, iced coffee or mineral cocktail on the go.

Yeti Rambler Insulated Mug

So efficient and keeps your drink hot while it sits on your counter for an hour (or more haha).

Milk Frother

Love a simple hand held milk frother for mixing pretty much everything – mineral cocktails, matcha, coffee, electrolytes, etc. A small little tool, for a major morning upgrade.

Magnesium Spray

Most of us are deficient in Magnesium and would benefit from supplementation. Magnesium can help with cramps, bowel movements, muscle relaxation, and more. If you’ve taken Mg and it’s made you feel worse, you’re likely either taking too much too soon, or you’re depleted in other minerals. This spray is a great way to intro more Mg so you get the benefits, without going faster than your body can handle.

And, we WILL be having some fantastic Black Friday Deals coming your way later this week. If you’ve been wanting to transform your gut health + ditch your digestive issues at the root cause level…you won’t want to miss this!

Wishing a safe and joyful holiday to you and your loved ones!

The post HAN Gift Guide + BF Favorites! appeared first on Hannah Aylward Nutrition | Gut Health Expert.

How to Reduce Stress and Anxiety Naturally Through Foods

Hannah Aylward — Sun, 03 May 2020 04:03:36 +0000

Today, I wanted to talk all about the stress response and how we can navigate this uncertain and overwhelming time. Right now I’m feeling a bit better by using food as medicine and supplementing with the right foods. Let’s just dive right into it.

The blood sugar curve

The blood sugar curve is something that I talk about so much because it makes such a huge difference in how we show up and how we really feel in our bodies. I want to work with the body, not work against the body. So what is the blood sugar curve?

Everything that we eat affects our blood sugar in a different way. Most people exist on a blood sugar curve that’s like a roller coaster. So they wake up in the morning and cortisol, the stress hormone, is naturally higher. Cortisol is something that helps us wake up in the morning. It should be naturally higher (but not too much higher) and it should ideally be the highest in the morning and goes down throughout the day. This helps us go to bed at night unless we’re wired and tired. Maybe cortisol is high at night, our hormones are being affected there. If it’s not highest in the morning for you, come talk to me. We have some work to do. If you feel like this could be an issue for you, get a stress hormone test done.

It’s very simple, but it’s amazing information to have. Our hormones are naturally highest in the morning. So most of us wake up, we hop out of bed, right, and we instantly go for a coffee. Maybe we’re running out the door, so we grab a muffin or something at Starbucks. What happens here is that our blood sugar is gonna spike really high because the things that spike our blood sugar the highest are sugars and carbohydrates. And all carbohydrates break down into sugars regardless of what kind of carbohydrates they are. So, of course, processed carbs are not the better choice, right? A sweet potato is different than a doughnut. It’s obviously the better choice. However, all carbohydrates break down into sugars, which is why we want to always pair them with fat, fiber, and protein.

So when this glucose is released into the body, insulin is secreted, the insulin levels go up, and cortisol goes up. Insulin is a pro-inflammatory hormone, so we don’t want it to be pumping out all the time. Our body can’t really do its healing thing when we’ve got high insulin happening all the time. It’s also not good for your weight management if that is a goal of yours. Insulin is also the fat-storage hormone, so we don’t want it pumping out all day. This is why I don’t eat six meals a day. I think that’s a very quick way to damage your metabolism, not really help it.

When our blood sugar goes up really high, it crashes really low. When it dips really low, we feel irritable, we feel anxious, we feel stressed. That’s when we get into the office or it hits 10:00 AM and we are reaching for a second coffee. Or someone brings in donuts to the office and we go in on them because we’re hungry and feeling a little shaky. Our body’s actually craving sugar and carbohydrates at that moment because it’s craving a source of glucose, which is energy. When it dips so low, the body is craving that glucose for energy, even though you just ate an hour or two prior.

When it dips really low, it’s also harder at that time for us to make a healthier choice. We get to the restaurant and sit down, the breadbasket comes and we’re so shaky and hungry (hangry) that we don’t even care what we eat. We just dive in and we’re like, we’ll start tomorrow, right? This is where we get into trouble because we just end up eating whatever’s in front of us. It makes our decisions. We’re not working with our body here. We’re working against our body and fighting our own physiological response. So then we maybe have the bread, our glucose shoots back up, and then it crashes again.

Or we had a long day, its dinnertime, and we bust open that fridge grabbing whatever we see first and sticking it in our mouth because we’re so hungry. This is what we want to avoid. That’s kind of the blood sugar curve that most people exist on. The things that bump cortisol and blood glucose levels the highest are sugar and carbohydrates. The things that bump the blood sugar curve the least amount are fats. Like a tablespoon of coconut oil, which most of us aren’t really eating just like that, but straight fat. We want those healthy fats! They support our blood sugar response, our hormones, our skin, all the goods. Protein and fiber really bump our blood sugar levels very minimally, and fiber can actually help the blood sugar response.

If we look at carbohydrates again, one of the reasons why a sweet potato is a better option than a donut, it’s because the sweet potato obviously has vitamins, minerals, and nutrients, but it also contains fiber, which is going to help slow the sugar release into the bloodstream. So I’m explaining this blood sugar curve because when we’re on this roller coaster, y’all, it’s hard. It is not supportive of the life that we really want to live, right? And we’re making it harder on ourselves. This is why I’m not a fan of diets. We don’t want to be starving because we also end up here on that low blood curve.

That is stressful on the body. That is a way to trigger anxiety and stress, which is not what we need. We want to get on this very even-keeled blood sugar curve. And this is why you’ll see in all of my books, even in my free 3-Day Gut Reset, we start the morning with a morning power smoothie because it contains protein, healthy fats, fiber, and greens. These things help elongate the blood sugar curve. So let’s put together an example meal to help you get results.

So what would be an example meal for us to really support that blood sugar curve?

You can access my morning power smoothies in all of my programs, even in my free 3 Day Gut Reset. But let’s talk about options if you don’t have those, especially because lately, we’re all stocking up with long-lasting foods. Eggs last a really long time. If you eat two eggs in the morning with avocado, there are healthy fats from the avocado and the yolk. Eggs are also loaded with protein and vitamin D, which is really essential right now. Then maybe include some sauteed greens, whatever you have. I always keep frozen spinach or kale in my freezer. I put it in my smoothies, I use it in stir-fries, everything. This breakfast is a great option because it has fiber, greens, healthy fats, and protein

This is why I start every single day with my HAN morning power smoothie. It’s not just about decreasing bloating or managing weight or even clearing skin. This smoothie helps me stay calm, productive in my body, and I can actually focus. My brain works better on it because I’m not on a sugar high or low, or feeling irritable/anxious. This, in my opinion, right now is not an option. This is a necessity because we’re all trying to manage so much right now. Take the five minutes to make this smoothie. It will drastically change your morning.

Everything that I teach is backed by science. So I learn and then I make it really relatable and sustainable so you can actually put it into practice. And these smoothies taste delicious, so it’s not like I’m asking you to eat something disgusting. I touched on it briefly earlier, but I want to mention cravings here because a lot of people are telling me that they’re dealing with a lot of cravings and snacking right now. There are a few things to look at here, but one is that dip in the blood sugar curve. When it dips low, we crave sugar and carbohydrates. We want to avoid that low dip in our blood sugar levels, not just because of the cravings, but also because it leaves us hangry and it’s not supportive.

It doesn’t help us make a decision that supports us at our next meal. We want to show up present in our bodies as opposed to fighting this response that’s going on. I talked about cortisol a little bit earlier, which is the stress hormone. It’s not bad in small doses, and our body produces it to protect us. But, when it is chronically elevated, we crave these palatable foods, sugars, carbohydrates. We can manage these cortisol levels through eating good hormone balancing foods, all of those things that I just listed. Through meditation, through movement, through good sleep. Our cortisol levels are going to affect how we sleep, so good sleep is essential for managing cortisol. But we won’t be able to get good sleep if we’re on this cortisol roller coaster!

So, it’s kind of like a catch-22 and it all works together. A similar concept is that our sleep affects our gut health, but our gut health also affects our sleep. All of these little pieces are essential, which is why I teach a holistic approach to transforming your gut health. Because it’s not just one thing, and if anyone’s telling you its only one thing, it’s not real, okay? We have to have to take a holistic approach. Insulin is another important hormone. It’s a fat-storage hormone that’s pro-inflammatory. Insulin is secreted by the pancreas to allow you to take in glucose (blood sugar). It prevents fat cells from being broken down.

This is why weight loss doesn’t come down to calories in, calories out. Weight loss comes down to hormones, and calorie counting is not going to get you there if your hormones are out of whack. Science shows that it doesn’t work. So because it comes down to hormones, insulin will literally stop your body from being able to burn fat. I don’t really talk about this too much because I work with women that have digestive issues, skin issues, anxiety issues, etc. but I figured I’d throw it out there.

So once again, eating these protein-rich meals is linked to the reduction in insulin resistance. Omega-3s can actually help lower these insulin levels. Salmon, walnuts, and chia seeds are really high in Omega-3s and they’re also anti-inflammatory. Magnesium can help improve insulin sensitivity and it’s important to improve insulin sensitivity because once insulin is triggered, it puts our body in a state of inflammation. Inflammation in the body can manifest as bloating, acne, and digestive issues, and is overall a stressor for the body. It’s something that your body has to fight constantly. This alone can increase your anxiety levels, which is why that’s really important.

This is why I teach gut health. The gut bacteria actually influences insulin. Tons of research supports that during obesity, our immune system is often responding to components of bacteria that leak through the intestinal tissue leak through that gut lining. And this results in inflammation. In turn, inflammation can drive insulin resistance, which then predisposes people to diabetes. Our gut bacteria influence our insulin sensitivity. This is where the gut bacteria and weight response, that gut bacteria and diabetes link, that’s where this all comes into play and this is stressful on the body. So, this is something that we really want to manage.

How do we manage our gut health?

We increase the number of good bacteria in the gut. Don’t eat the foods that wipe out the good bacteria and populate the gut with good bacteria through fermented foods if they sit well with you. If they don’t, we’ve got another gut issue going on. (Reach out to me!) If you feel like you get bloated after eating fermented foods and things like that, remember it’s not all about adding in the probiotic-rich foods or taking probiotics. We also have to feed them with good prebiotics. Veggies, artichoke, onion, garlic, foods like that. If your body can’t handle prebiotics very well, talk to me because that’s a sign of a gut issue.

And none of these things need to last forever. So once we fix the root cause of what’s causing those sensitivities, chances are those sensitivities won’t be there anymore. Any inflammation in the gut affects the immune system, which then sends inflammation throughout the entire body. It’s not just bloating, right? If there’s inflammation in the gut, it triggers inflammation throughout the entire body. Systemic inflammation affects all of our hormones, and so it’s going to affect our cortisol levels, insulin, and our happy hormones. It really affects all of these hormones and it’s going to cause stress on our body. So it’s essential to really nourish our gut health to avoid creating systemic inflammation in the body and therefore causing stress on the body.

Food sensitivities

Another thing I need to talk about is food sensitivities. If we’re eating things and we are reacting poorly to them, we’ve got a gut issue here. Whether you’re experiencing bloating, maybe acne, an eczema flare-up, tons of gas, constipation, or diarrhea, we’ve got an autoimmune issue. Something that we’re eating is not working with our body because we’re suffering from a gut dysfunction. Every time we eat food that doesn’t work with us, we’re triggering inflammation. Eating these foods that don’t work with our body is incredibly stressful on the body, putting the body into high alert.

Initially, inflammation is actually beneficial. It’s our body saying “wait, send healing this way,” but if this continues over time, this wears on our body over and over again, which is exhausting. This is when we see the small issue of just a little bit of bloating become a much bigger issue potentially if it’s not properly taken care of. So these food sensitivities and this gut reaction causes major stress on the body.

The gut-brain connection

I also want to really touch on the fact that the gut-brain connection is so, so real. Our gut and our brain are intricately connected via the vagus nerve, which is a bi-directional pathway that goes up and down. The vagus nerve is so powerful, and it affects our ability to digest our food among many other things. A lot of people call the gut the second brain, but honestly, the gut is like the first brain because there are more messages sent from the gut to the brain than from the brain out to the entire body. Isn’t that amazing? So what’s going on in our gut affects everything: our mental health, anxiety levels, depression levels, brain fog, mental clarity, all of these things. A very simple way to understand this connection is thinking about when you get butterflies in your tummy.

This is an actual physical sensation that you feel in your gut that comes from just thinking. Feeling a little scared or a little nervous or a little excited, you can physically feel ‘butterflies’ in your stomach. So, these things are clearly connected, right? That being said, the foods that enter our mouth and our gut are affecting how we feel mentally. They’re affecting how resilient we are to stressors and affecting our anxiety levels. In addition to that, most of the serotonin (that feel good, happy hormone) in the body is actually physically produced in the gut itself. So if there’s a gut issue, we could potentially not be producing enough serotonin and that in itself is going to lead to more anxiety and depression.

So these things are so connected and it’s not just about the bloating. The gut truly affects our brain, our stress response, our anxiety, all of those things. So all of that was the education portion of all of this and why this is so, so important. I mentioned earlier that sugar really bumps those blood sugar levels and triggers inflammation in the body, tearing away at that gut lining. So, we really want to be mindful of the amount of sugar that we’re consuming right now. Processed starches, in addition to everything that I’ve just said, are also weakening for the immune system. And we really want to be supporting our immune systems right now.

So the sugar and the processed carbohydrates have got to go if we want to heal. THIS DOES NOT MEAN WE NEED TO FEEL SHAME IF WE’VE EATEN A COOKIE. I’m just equipping you with education to make empowered decisions on what you allow into your space because it is going to affect you in a very important way. It’s going to affect how you show up in this world. It’s going to affect how you feel in your body. Some foods that we can add when we remove the sugar and the processed carbohydrates are healthy fats (avocado, chia seeds, walnuts, almonds), and healthy proteins.

These can be beans and legumes if you follow a vegan diet. I find that being vegan is very difficult for someone that’s suffering from gut dysfunction, so I’m a fan of small amounts of high-quality animal protein. Wild salmon, organic, pasteurized chicken, whatever really works for your body. But we want to make sure that we’re getting ample amounts of protein because protein is essential for immune function. Healthy fats, protein, and lots of greens. Greens are good for so many reasons, but really, really, really important here. We also want fiber, like chia seeds and flax seeds. These are the things that we want to add more of into the diet to really support our anxiety and stress levels.

I list all of this out for you in my cookbook and all of my programs, and all of my recipes follow these guidelines. I have done this work for you! For me, things come in waves and I’m trying to manage it as best as I can. I feel like this might be happening for all of us right now. So for me, it’s essential that I’m eating these foods to support my body because it’s one of the only things keeping me going during this time.

I eat this way all the time because it’s so important for my life, for me to make it through the day, for me to feel happy, for me to be able have energy. So during this time of higher stress, uncertainty, and anxiety, please try to eat for your blood sugar curve and to support your gut health. It is so essential and non-negotiable. There are some other amazing lifestyle things that we can do to help manage our stress and anxiety levels. Meditation, breathwork, long walks, laughter. Don’t overlook laughter and the importance of laughter during all of this! It releases dopamine in the body and helps us feel good.

If you want a guide to do all of this while in quarantine, while self-isolating, while stocking your pantry, fridge, and freezer with things that are more shelf-stable and will last longer, I have packaged it all up for you. In my brand new Gut Health Survival Guide, quarantined edition, I made recipes that use mostly shelf-stable ingredients or frozen ingredients. All of them optimize your blood sugar levels, they all follow my gut health guidelines and I give you food storage tips so you can elongate the shelf life of all of these things that you’re buying.

We’re all trying to save money and refraining from going to the store as much right now. So these tips are essential, helpful, and amazing. I’ve also got lifestyle tips to manage stress and anxiety during this time. So I’ve given you an outline of what you can do throughout the day to support your digestive health, your stress levels, your anxiety, your skin health, all of these things. Because it also doesn’t help to be in this uncertain time right now and be dealing with bloating, fatigue, gas, and skin rashes. That would just make us more anxious and irritable, so I have packaged all of it up in this guide for you.

Make sure to snag it if you want support, if you want to feel more in your body, and you want to decrease your anxiety and stress levels. There is a link to my guide in the description of this video. My sister went through this program and she now helps women manage their anxiety through many different modalities. My program is an absolute game-changer for so many women because we are supporting your brain and your blood sugar curve throughout the entirety of it.

If you have any questions, let me know in the comments. I’ve got you. I’m here to support you! Get your hands on this gut health survival guide – it’s going to change the game for you. I’m sending you all so much love right now! Don’t forget to find gratitude in the little things. Take time for yourself, take many deep breaths, and be really compassionate towards yourself during this time. Find where you can do things that you can actually control during this time to feel a little more at ease during this process.

The post How to Reduce Stress and Anxiety Naturally Through Foods appeared first on Hannah Aylward Nutrition | Gut Health Expert.

How to: RESET THE GUT

Hannah Aylward — Sun, 03 May 2020 03:50:59 +0000

Here are my top six tips to reset your gut after traveling!

Tip #1: Eat an early dinner.

This is my biggest tip that I could give you. It’s so simple. It’s free, it’s so easy and it’s easy to implement. When we have an earlier dinner, we elongate the amount of time that we’re able to rest our digestive system. We’re simply giving the gut much more time to really repair and rejuvenate because the number one time when it actually gets to do this is when we’re sleeping. If we have that later dinner, either right before we go to bed or an hour before we go to bed, and then we wake up and we eat something first thing in the morning, that’s not a lot of time that our body has to really repair and rejuvenate because it’s spending most of that time actually digesting our food.

When we elongate that window, the body can digest all your food, which takes about four hours. And then after that, it gets to clean house, repair, rejuvenate and seal back up that gut lining. We’re also not adding in anything extra that could potentially be causing inflammation or requiring energy to be used towards digestion as opposed to healing, transformation, and repairing. I aim for around 5-6 PM for my dinner, but work with your own schedule and customize for your needs! For myself and a lot of my clients, when we move that dinner to around 5-6 PM, it makes a huge difference. You’ll feel like a brand new person in the morning! Do this a few days in a row for best results. It’s so simple, and one of the best ways to reset after traveling.

Tip #2: Remove dairy, gluten, and sugar for around three days.

Five days is awesome. Seven’s better. Forever is the best. But three days works, too. Dairy, gluten and sugar are things that I like to call common toxic triggers. They basically like tick off pretty much everyone’s body regardless of whether you have celiac or you’re lactose intolerant. Most of us don’t have the proper enzymes to actually digest and assimilate dairy as best as we should if we’re eating it regularly. Wheat crops are genetically modified, which affects gluten, and it creates serious inflammation. It also actually starts to pull away at that gut lining that surrounds the gut. This gut lining has things called tight junctions.

When we eat things like sugar and gluten and dairy, or we take antibiotics, or we’re under like severe stress and trauma, these tight junctions start to pull apart. When they pull apart, things start to flow through that really should not be flowing through. This is where the term leaky gut comes from. These tight junctions get a little leaky, and toxins flow through to the bloodstream where they shouldn’t be going. So, removing the dairy, gluten, and sugar is going to help secure the gut lining and those important tight junctions. This tip is definitely worth trying because it’s something that my clients see amazing results with.

And, it’s easier to implement than you think. Go for three days, or for five, maybe seven or forever. If you need any help with that, check out my 3 Day Gut Reset that’s posted below! My reset removes these automatically, takes out some other things that tick most people off, and incorporates a ton of other gut-healing benefits. You can download it for free below this video! It also has amazing recipes that are children and boyfriends-approved. My HAN Cookbook could be another amazing resource for you because all of the recipes in there are dairy free, gluten free, refined sugar free, and freaking delicious. My point here is: try removing dairy, gluten, and sugar for 3-7 days because they’re the biggest offenders to the gut.

Tip #3: Get some sleep.

Go to bed earlier. I know this can seem like easier said than done, but this makes such a huge difference. Remember what I said in tip #1 about sleeping and how that’s the time when the gut can repair itself? This is what I’m talking about. Research has shown that a few nights of poor sleep can negatively affect the microbial balance in the gut.

We have all these microbes and bacteria in the gut, and after just two nights of poor sleep, the bad bacteria start to outnumber the good bacteria, and the number of good bacteria actually decreases. Maybe you’ve heard of probiotics, which are good bacteria. So make sure to get good quality sleep, and aim for seven to nine hours. This is also hyper-personal, and you know what you need for your body. Try to prioritize the sleep because it’s going to make a huge difference for your gut health and therefore, everything else including your skin, energy, digestion, mood, etc. So go to bed earlier!

Tip #4: Hydrate.

Traveling dehydrates us, right? When we’re flying, we don’t have access to as much water and the plane air is super dehydrating. Even if we’re in a car doing a road trip, we’re dehydrated because we’re trying to stop using the bathroom. Maybe that’s just me and my family, but hydrating is so important during travel, AND after travel. Proper hydration has actually been shown to benefit the mucosal lining of the intestines, and it also just keeps things moving through our system how we want them to. Also, using the bathroom is the number one way that we eliminate toxins, so if we’re not doing that regularly, consistently, or properly, there’s something going on.

Monitoring this is so important because if it goes unnoticed, it can become a really big problem. Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth can happen, as well as skin issues. In all, we want to make sure you’re using the bathroom very regularly. And the number one thing to do here is to hydrate efficiently. Make sure that you’re getting in your eight glasses of water a day, if not more. I usually recommend more for a multitude of reasons, but a few other things that dehydrate you are coffee and exercise. If you drink coffee, drink an extra glass of water for every cup of coffee. If you exercise regularly or live in a hot climate, you need to drink more water to properly hydrate yourself.

Everyone’s body is different, so personalize it to what you need. Make sure to hydrate because it will benefit your gut by keeping things moving properly. It also helps to solidify and allow your stool to be easy to pass. Maybe that’s a little gross, but we need to talk about it! If you don’t like the taste of water, add some mint to it. Mint is also really soothing and pacifying for the gut. You can also add a slice of lemon. It’s also really helpful to get in your water through eating whole, fresh foods. Foods such as apples, big salads, carrots, celery, watermelon, and cucumbers are super, super hydrating.

Most of us don’t eat enough of them, so increase your intake of those foods and it will help you eat your water. Having a healthy gut is going to help promote really dewy, hydrated, fresh skin. You get that glow that everyone wants, a really high functioning immune system, better sleeping habits, less anxiety, a positive mindset, and definitely more energy.

Tip #5: Morning sun exposure for resetting your circadian rhythm.

When we travel, we’re likely in different time zones, on a different schedule, and out of our normal routine. And every human has an internal body clock. It is like a 24 hour set of rhythms that help determine when we go to bed and when we wake up. Gut research has shown that the gut plays a huge role in helping to maintain and regulate this body clock.

Getting proper sleep and resetting that natural circadian rhythm, allows us to sleep effortlessly and easily through the night. One of the things that really helps this is morning sun exposure. So ideally we are waking up with the sun and we are going to bed when the sun goes down. However, I’m not doing that, and most of us probably aren’t doing that. If you are, you get 10 gold stars. But with technology, with work schedules, with all the stuff that we all manage, chances are that’s not happening.

We can help those circadian rhythms by just going outside and getting that morning sun exposure first thing in the morning. Another reason why I like this tip is that it’s super easy to implement – and it’s free! Morning sun exposure is going to help reset you because your brain will recognize that it’s sunny out now, so later it’ll be dark. That recognition is what’s going to help reset your circadian rhythm. You’ll be producing more melatonin when you should be, and that’s going to naturally help you fall asleep. Just 10-15 minutes outside, first thing in the morning. This is not only going to help with jet lag, but it’s going to help get you back in the rhythm of things when you get back from traveling. Especially so if you traveled outside of your home time zone to a different country or something like that.

It also just feels really nice and relaxing to get outside first thing in the morning. You’re also getting in some vitamin D, which is good for all sorts of things like immune function and metabolism. So just expose yourself to some sunlight first thing in the morning, and aim for 15 minutes. It’s going to help everything, but it’s especially going to help you sleep during the night, and we know that the gut affects how much you sleep. This is why clients who have done my program report sleeping through the night for the first time in 10 years! We repaired her gut, transformed her gut health and then she slept through the night and didn’t need the medication she was taking.

Tip #6: Avoiding the late-night blue light.

These last three tips all correlate, all helping you get better sleep so your gut health is better and so you feel more on track. We all know that when we don’t get a proper night’s sleep, we’re way more tempted to reach for the candy bowl. Once it hits 11:00 AM at the office, we are more tired, we’re more likely to skip the workout. We are more likely to crave sugar and carbs and it’s kind of this vicious cycle, right? We’re also maybe in a bad mood, which is no fun. So my sixth tip is going to be avoiding that late-night blue light, which is going to help you sleep. Like I said in my last tip, the circadian rhythm needs external factors to trigger.

So, things like that morning sunshine are going to help your body recognize that it’s morning, and it’s going to help regulate that circadian rhythm. When we add the late-night blue light, this is going to do the opposite. It will trick your body into thinking that it’s still sunny outside, even though it could be like 11:00 PM and you’re watching Netflix – I’ve been there, no shame. But, the late-night blue light isn’t going to help you feel better after traveling or really help you feel better ever, so we want to avoid it. When it gets dark, your pineal gland produces a hormone called melatonin. This hormone helps you fall asleep and makes you feel sleepy. But, the key here is that this happens when it gets dark, so if you’re always in front of a screen, melatonin won’t be produced.

It could be your iPhone or regular phone, your computers, tablets, TVs, things like that. The blue light from these devices prevents the production of melatonin, which makes it harder to sleep when you should and that can then disrupt all sorts of other hormones and your gut health.

So, those are my top six tips to help reset your gut after a time that you’re traveling. Any questions? Let me know below, send me an email, or DM me on Instagram!

The post How to: RESET THE GUT appeared first on Hannah Aylward Nutrition | Gut Health Expert.

Hannah Aylward Nutrition | Gut Health Expert

Ep 4: Exactly How to Repair Your Gut After Antibiotics

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT IN THIS EPISODE:

CHAPTERS:

LINKS:

ENTER THE GIVEAWAY:

CONNECT WITH HANNAH:

Ep 3: Leaky Gut 101: The What, the Why, and How to Fix It

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT IN THIS EPISODE:

LINKS:

CONNECT WITH HANNAH:

Ep 2: The Difference Between Food Sensitivities vs Intolerances vs Allergies

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT IN THIS EPISODE:

LINKS:

CONNECT WITH HANNAH:

Ep 1: How Trauma Impacts Gut and Hormone Health

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT IN THIS EPISODE:

LINKS:

ENTER THE GIVEAWAY:

CONNECT WITH HANNAH:

HAN’s Top Black Friday Deals!

Top 7 Herbs for Gut and Hormone Health 🌱

MY TOP 7 HERBS FOR GUT & HORMONE HEALTH

6 Things To Do Daily To Heal Your Gut + Support Healthy Digestion

HAN Gift Guide + BF Favorites!

Nutrition/Home

Amazon Favorites

How to Reduce Stress and Anxiety Naturally Through Foods

How to: RESET THE GUT