Digestive Wellness: Strengthen the Immune System and Prevent Disease Through Healthy Digestion, Fourth Edition
Authors: Elizabeth Lipski
Copyright © 2012 by Elizabeth Lipski. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978-0-07-170161-7
MHID: 0-07-170161-3
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This book is dedicated to Chris Dennen,
husband, friend, coworker, and playmate. Your unwavering love and support
allow me to spread my creative wings and fly. You are the banks of my river.
Foreword: Why Is Your Gut Making You Sick? by Mark Hyman, M.D.
CHAPTER
1
Changing the Way You Feel: When in Doubt, Begin in the Gut
CHAPTER
2
A Voyage Through the Digestive System
PART II The DIGIN Model and the 5 Rs
CHAPTER
3
Digestion/Absorption: Replace and Repair
CHAPTER
4
Intestinal Permeability/Leaky Membranes
CHAPTER
5
The GI Microbiome: “Aliens Have Overtaken My Body!”
CHAPTER
6
The GI Microbiome: Probiotics Naturally from Food and Supplements
CHAPTER
7
The GI Microbiome: Dysbiosis, a Good Neighborhood Gone Bad
CHAPTER
8
The GI Microbiome: Specific and Common Dysbiosis Infections
CHAPTER
9
Fire in the Gut: Immune and Inflammation
CHAPTER
10
The Enteric Nervous System: The Second Brain
CHAPTER
11
Functional Medicine/Functional Testing
PART III Coming Back into Balance
CHAPTER
12
Food Is Your Best Medicine
CHAPTER
13
Restorative Foods for Healing
CHAPTER
14
Food Sensitivities, Intolerances, and Allergies
CHAPTER
15
The Elimination Diet, or How to Feel Remarkably Better in Two Weeks
CHAPTER
16
Managing Stress and Finding Balance
CHAPTER
17
Rebalance Biochemistry: Acid-Alkaline Balance
CHAPTER
18
Cleansing and Detoxification
PART IV Natural Therapies for Common Digestive Problems
CHAPTER
20
The Esophagus and Stomach
CHAPTER
23
The Gallbladder, Gallstones, and Cholecystectomy
CHAPTER
25
The Colon or Large Intestine
PART V Natural Therapies for the Diverse Consequences of Faulty Digestion
CHAPTER
29
Cardiovascular Disease: The GI Link
CHAPTER
30
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
CHAPTER
31
Eczema or Atopic Dermatitis
CHAPTER
33
Interstitial Cystitis
CHAPTER
35
Obesity, Metabolic Syndrome, and the GI Connection
CHAPTER
36
Osteoporosis: The GI Connection
CHAPTER
40
Scleroderma (Systemic Sclerosis)
Why Is Your Gut Making You Sick?
Doctors are trained to identify diseases by where they are located. If you have asthma, it’s considered a lung problem; if you have rheumatoid arthritis, it must be a joint problem; if you have acne, doctors see it as a skin problem; if you are overweight, you must have a metabolism problem; if you have allergies, immune imbalance is blamed. Doctors who understand health this way are both right and wrong. Sometimes the causes of your symptoms do have some relationship to their location, but that’s far from the whole story.
As we come to understand disease in the 21st century, our old ways of defining illness based on symptoms and location in the body are not very useful. Instead, by understanding the origins of disease and the way in which the body operates as one whole, integrated ecosystem we now know that symptoms appearing in one area of the body may be caused by imbalances in an entirely different system. Everything is connected. The center of that connection is the gut. Nowhere are those connections made clearer, and nowhere will you find a better owner’s manual for your gut and how to keep it healthy, than in Dr. Lipski’s updated edition of
Digestive Wellness
, which I have used successfully in my practice for more than a decade.
If your skin is bad or you have allergies, can’t seem to lose weight, suffer from an autoimmune disease, struggle with fibromyalgia, or have recurring headaches, the real reason may be that your
gut is unhealthy
. This may be true even if you have
never
had any digestive complaints.
There are many other possible imbalances in your body’s operating system that may drive illness as well. These include problems with hormones, immune function, detoxification, energy production, and more. But very often the gut may be at the root of your chronic symptoms.
Many today
do
have digestive problems, including reflux or heartburn, irritable bowel syndrome, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, and colitis. In fact, belly problems account for more than 100 million doctor’s visits and billions in health-care costs annually. But gut problems cause disease far beyond the gut. In medical school I learned that patients with colitis could also have inflamed joints and eyes and that patients with liver failure could be cured of delirium by taking antibiotics that killed the toxin-producing bacteria in their gut. Could it be that when things are not quite right down below it affects the health of our entire body, including many diseases we haven’t linked before to imbalances in the digestive system?
The answer is a resounding yes. Normalizing gut function is one of the most important things I do for patients, and it’s so simple. The “side effects” of treating the gut are quite extraordinary. My patients find relief from allergies, acne, arthritis, headaches, autoimmune disease, depression, attention deficit, and more—often after years or decades of suffering. Here are a few examples of the results I have achieved by addressing imbalances in the function and flora of the gut:
A 58-year-old woman with many years of worsening allergies, asthma, and sinusitis who was on frequent antibiotics and didn’t respond to any of the usual therapies was cured by eliminating a worm she harbored in her gut called Strongyloides.