Welcome back to the Trauma Informed Herbalist Podcast. I’m your host, Elizabeth Guthrie, and today we’re going to continue our discussion on trauma and autoimmune disease, and this time we’re going to talk more about the digestive system and the gut… and before we get started today, I want to thank everybody who has pre-ordered their copy of the Trauma informed Herbalist.

You can go to traumainformedherbalist.com to get a paperback copy – and especially for those of you who are international: Thank you. I’m really excited. I was surprised to see how many international fans I have.

There’s been a request for an ebook, and so we have formatted the book. It is available right now for pre-order, and after October 12th (2022), it’ll be available to order from Amazon. So just go to Amazon and search trauma informed herbalist and the ebook will come up and you can get your copy today.

All right, so moving into the second part of our discussion around trauma and autoimmunity. So we’ll spend a few minutes on the gut microbiome, probiotics, fermentation, fermented foods, and that kind of thing, and we’ll talk a little bit about the idea of leaky gut syndrome.

Leaky gut: what that is and what it isn’t, and then we’ll finish up with a little discussion on nutrition, restrictive diets, discussing whether or not an elimination diet is the right thing for people. So I do want to remind you that if you have struggled with eating disorders in the past, or if food is a trigger for your trauma response, You can absolutely skip this episode.

That’s gonna be okay. Remember what we talked about before, there’s so much information. There’s so many different things we can do that you don’t have to force yourself into a situation that is so uncomfortable that you’re triggering your trauma response while trying to use these techniques, right? . So you may find that you wanna stick with herbs, meditation, yoga, that kind of thing, and not delve too deep into nutritional changes or things that could be paralleled to a diet that just may not be something that you want to do at this time.

And that’s okay. Just go ahead and skip forward. All right. Let’s get started by talking about the gut microbiome. So the gut microbiome is just a fancy way of saying all of the bacteria that’s living in your intestinal tract, this bacteria is good. For the most part, we want bacteria in our our intestinal tract because it helps us with absorption of certain types of foods, breaking down certain things.

It helps send certain signals to our brain. And when the right bacteria is in your gut, then you generally will feel better. There’s actually some research that shows that the majority of the serotonin in our body is made by the good bacteria in our gut. So it stands to reason, especially when we’re dealing with unresolved trauma and mental health things, that we really do want the little guys in our gut to be happy.

Research is starting to show that a healthy digestive tract can be very helpful when somebody is trying to recover from PTSD and other similar issues. Of course, for a while now, many people have recognized the need to address the digestive system as part of healing from autoimmune disorders.

I love the way that one of my mentors, Rhonda Dial puts it.

She says that if you can’t absorb anything into your system, then it doesn’t matter what you’re taking supplement wise, herbs wise, anything like that. When your digestive system is not working properly, you can’t absorb the good phytonutrients into your body that will help you to balance out other body systems.

So when we can, we do want to pay attention to what we can be doing to help our digestive system while we are struggling with unresolved trauma. Now, does this mean that this is gonna be a cure-all for autoimmune disease and trauma? No, not necessarily. I have had teachers and mentors who claim that if you cure everything wrong with the digestive tract, then everything else falls into place.

I don’t see that necessarily in practice. I do know that that does help a lot of people. It does hit a majority of the people who are struggling, but that does not mean that it’s a cure-all. What I have experienced is that this does make a big difference for a lot of people, so we don’t want to ignore it.

There’s definitely a connection between our gut and inflammation. There’s definitely digestive system things that affect our nervous system and all of these different things and the stress that can be involved, especially when you’ve been through a really traumatic situation, can change the way that our gut microbiome works.

So this is less of a root cause discussion and more of a, “how can we help to manage some symptoms while we’re working to heal?” and I recently heard an herbalist pooh-pooh the idea of probiotics and fermented foods for somebody who is dealing with unresolved trauma. The idea being that it’s not really hitting the root cause and that if you are able to get people to focus on healthier foods, then all of this other stuff is resolved… and that’s great, but I also feel like there’s a little bit of, of privilege speaking when we say things like, because yeah, I could sit here and I could say, “right, well, all you need to do is eat some fresher fruits and veggies and make sure that you have two home cooked meals a day”…

And that’s not a reality for a lot of people. The idea of being able to cook and have fresh groceries is not necessarily the reality of some people’s lives, and we have to acknowledge this. So we’ll talk a little bit more about my favorite diet, the Mediterranean diet, a little later in this discussion. But do be aware that if you can’t do that kind of thing, if you can’t get into a place where food, fresh food is an option for you right now, there’s no point in stressing it.

Fed is best. We’ll talk some more about that in a minute… and if what helps you and helps your gut microbiome to stay in a better place so that you get a little bit better results with your mental health, which allows you to have more energy to heal, right, less energy spent on symptoms and more energy healing, then use the in probiotics.

It’s fine. Now, I will say this. There are certain people that are immune compromised. Probiotics may not be the best choice for them. You can always check with your doctor. These are all ideas we’re brainstorming, right? I’m not trying to make a list for you of things that you have to do to get better, but I encourage you to dig into this further and see if it’s something that could be helpful for you.

So if you hear somebody say, oh, well probiotics aren’t fixing the root cause, that’s true to some extent. They, they are not fixing the problem that’s causing your good bacteria to die off in your gut. There are foods that have prebiotics that can help to encourage good growth. Staying away from more chemicals will help to encourage good growth of the good probiotics or the good bacteria and those colonizing in your gut.

And obviously we want to strive for that eventually when we are in a place to do so. But I am giving you permission right here and right now to say that if you are not in that place yet, and if the probiotics is what helps kind of bridge you over until you are into a place where you can do that kind of thing – then grab those probiotics.

It’s okay. So now you may be saying, well, that’s cool. You’ve sold me on the probiotics, but where do I go to get probiotics? Most probiotics are relatively inexpensive. They’re easy to get. I’ve even had really good probiotics that came from Target. That doesn’t have to be something super complex. I will tell you one of my favorite lines of probiotics is by a company called Life Extension.

If you go to life extension.com, you look at FlorAssist, it’s F L O R A S S I S T, I believe, and they have several probiotics that have a lot of good benefits. There’s several different little blends that you can use. I encourage my clients to use one bottle of a blend, and about the time that they get ready to run out, they go buy a different bottle of a different blend.

So every 30 days or so, you – most bottles are set up for a full month, right? – So every 30 days or so, they’re getting a different blend of good probiotics into their system. So that’s kind of the first step, but we could take it a step further and get into fermented foods. If you’re feeling up to it and you wanna try things like kombucha, kimchi, all the different fermentation options that are available, this can be a great way to get that good bacteria into your gut.

And many people believe that the fermented foods actually allow for a little bit better bioavailability. And what’s meant by that is that you’re able to get more of the good bacteria out of fermented foods than the capsules that you take when you take probiotics. So that’s why I say this is kind of like the next step up.

If you take the probiotics and that’s what’s working for you right now, then go for it. If you think that fermented foods might be something that you wanna try, it can be worth looking into to see if it’s something that helps you even further. There is an author named Sandor Katz, and he has a couple of books out.

One’s called The Art of Fermentation. The other is called Wild Fermentation, and both are amazing. I feel like the Art of Fermentation is a little bit more in depth, whereas Wild Fermentation has a little bit more of a playful feel to it. So kind of depending on your personality may determine which of those books you prefer, but it can be really fun to look at fermentation, the different processes that are available.

Of course you can buy fermented foods and that’s great if that works. And if you want to make ferments, I encourage you to look at his books ’cause they have a lot of good information on how to do your own ferments. So during times where there’s a high level of stress in your life, or if you’re dealing with unresolved trauma, probiotics and fermented foods can be a fantastic way to help your digestive system stay in balance.

Also, if you’re in a situation where you’re eating a lot of processed foods, that can affect your microbiome. So that can be a good time to do some extra probiotics or some fermented foods. And also, if you’ve had an antibiotic, that’s another very good time to pick up the, the probiotics or the fermented foods to try to help replenish the good bacteria in your gut.

So let’s move on and talk for just a few minutes about leaky gut. Leaky gut is essentially a theory suggesting that the reason people struggle with excess inflammation is because their intestines are leaking, allowing larger molecules to go through the intestinal barrier and into the bloodstream, and these larger molecules aren’t recognized by the body.

And so it creates an autoimmune response. It, it attacks these larger molecules that should not be in the body, and there isn’t a lot of research that shows that this is the exact mechanism in which leaky gut happens. But we do have enough that many people are acknowledging that intestinal permeability is a thing.

So that combination of leaky gut and dysbiosis where you don’t have the good bacteria that’s colonizing appropriately in your gut can really wreak havoc on a person’s immunity… and stress exacerbates both of those situations. If somebody’s dealing with unresolved trauma symptoms, I already assume that there’s a good chance that we’ve got leaky gut stuff going on as well.

Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re gonna do a whole lot with it at first, but just knowing that that may be something that’s happening and is commonly happening to people who are struggling with unresolved trauma can help us to make better choices about what we, what we do, and how we address it.

So normally the way that people address leaky gut is to start elimination diets, which tend to be rather strict and they’ll temporarily work. A lot of people will find good relief off of them temporarily, but what usually happens is a client will start to have more flareups. There are new foods that are a problem.

Meals have hidden triggers, and that can cause people to struggle even further. When they thought that they were getting a meal that was safe and instead there ended up being other things that in the meal that were maybe additives that they didn’t know would give them issues. And so these highly restrictive diets are stop gap measures, but they’re not really the end all, be all of getting the body back, right?

We really want to work from the angle of healing up the gut, allowing the body to naturally heal itself by giving it the appropriate nutrients to do so. And I think it’s really important to keep in mind that this discussion is specifically around people who have dealt with unresolved trauma. And what’s the one thing that we remember from our discussion around the polyvagal theory and ventral vagal connection?

One of the ways that we connect as communities is to eat together. So when somebody is on a highly restrictive diet, then they can find themselves in situations where they don’t really want to go to these community events where the food is. Caveat here: sometimes restrictive diets are necessary depending on what somebody’s sensitivities are, but sometimes when we are going on a highly restrictive diet, but we don’t have direct symptoms related to certain food sensitivities, it could be an overreach and it could be that what’s happening is the restrictive diet itself is not what’s creating the benefits, but it’s actually the fresh foods that somebody’s needing.

So instead of going for a restrictive diet, I like to talk to people about the anti-inflammatory diet and the Mediterranean diet and have them do their own research into those diets to begin with. And I really despise the word diet because in in a lot of context, it has a very negative connotation. I prefer to see this as a lifestyle change, right.

We’re looking to adjust foods. We’re not looking to implement a diet, but the reality is, is that when you go out and you start looking into these things, if you’re gonna Google it, if you’re going to read a book on it, they call them the Anti-Inflammatory Diet and the Mediterranean diet.

The anti-inflammatory diet focuses on foods that reduce inflammation throughout the entire. Dr. Andrew Weil frequently recommends this, and he discusses different anti-inflammatory herbs, like what we talked about in the last episode. He also talks about rebalancing the omega 3 s and omega 6 s that you’re eating so that the body has what it needs to reduce inflammation. This is a good starting point, but I really prefer the Mediterranean diet over it.

The way of eating that’s described in the Mediterranean diet focuses on vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, legumes, and whole grains, as well as different herbs that are used as spices. You have some seafood. There is olive oil. That’s kind of considered a staple of the diet. I will say, even though I love olive oil, I think that we have not done enough research into other oils and other plant-based oils and what the benefits could be.

So there’s probably other oils out there that have benefits, kind of like olive oil. We just don’t have the research behind them that shows where those benefits lie when you’re looking at adjusting your way of eating into the Mediterranean diet. I know we think of a lot of like pastas and we think of the salmon and, and the different, like almost like you’re going to Olive Garden and eating the healthy stuff on the menu.

Um, but it doesn’t have to be. , it can adjust for Southern based cooking. I’ve seen people adjust it for, um, you know, if they’re particularly fond of different, different cuisines, different cultures. This type of understanding of how to eat can be adjusted for different foods.

Nutrition is very white. Studies have focused on white people food, and the, the research (as we’ve talked about before) is heavily skewed towards white populations. So we don’t see as much of the different types of maybe Mexican or Indian cuisine being shown from an angle of, is this healthy? We don’t have the same kind of…

It’s like rice and beans.

I, for a long time I just thought, oh, well that’s not healthy because it’s so inexpensive to get rice and beans and it’s so inexpensive and you see it in a lot of what you would consider poorer cultures, staples in the diet, and it’s not, that’s not the reality of rice and beans. If you get the right kind of rice and you cook it with some vegetables and things, it actually becomes extremely healthy very quickly.

So be aware of that bias and if you have, um, you know, a different culture in your background and you want to see: “how could I implement the, the ideas in the Mediterranean into my culture?” Try it out and see how it goes for you. Sometimes that can be one of the most healing ways to approach this: “How can I eat fresher within the meals that I grew up with?”

“How can I eat a healthier, more balanced version of these meals so that I’m still getting that taste of comfort while also eating healthier for my body at the end of the day?”

Fed is best. I said this at the beginning and I just wanna kind of bookend with this. We hear that phrase a lot with the debate around breastfeeding or bottle feeding and what is the better option?

And there may be some benefits to breastfeeding. If that happens to work for you and you happen to, to make that that connection, then great. And if it doesn’t, then that’s fine. Bottle fed works because fed is best, but we don’t always apply that to adults. Sometimes we think we should be eating better or people even develop what’s called orthorexia, where you’re so obsessed with healthy eating.

That you can’t bring yourself to eat other foods because you’re, you are either afraid of them or you’re nervous about it, or there’s a lot of shame. And so I’m here to remind you that fed is best even as an adult. And if food is something that is a real struggle, if there’s a lot of stuff going on with finances that make food a little bit more difficult, or what I see more often is that people are so busy and they genuinely have to stay that busy in order to survive. Sometimes eating three home-cooked meals a day is, is overwhelming.

There are other options. There are things that you can do to adjust, and in the meantime, Fed is best, right? This is not a revolutionary overnight process. We’re not going to tomorrow wake up and cross our arms like… I don’t know, I may be speaking to the wrong generation here, but the I Dream of Genie where she crosses her arms and then kind of winks and nods her head?

It doesn’t work that way, and we don’t poof into like the perfect existence. So remember to give yourself some grace as you’re looking into these things. I mean, it could be as simple as just adding in extra fruits and veggies, eating the rainbow. The idea of eating different colored fruits and vegetables, different servings throughout the week.

And since many of those colors in these fruits and vegetables are actually the antioxidants of said fruits and vegetables… Now you have a lot of different antioxidants that your body can use to help to reduce inflammation, to help you feel better in general. And that’s a great starting point, even if you don’t try to get into the details and the intricacies of trying to work through a specific plan for your eating and what you’re going to have at each meal.

So we’ve talked a little bit about the gut microbiome, fermented foods, probiotics, and some about leaky gut and nutrition, and you’ve had a bit of a window into my thoughts as to how we can support ourselves in these ways. The digestive system is very interconnected with the nervous system, the nervous system we’ve talked about with polyvagal theory and with how it responds to trauma.

In the next episode, we’re going to start digging into herbs, essential oils and other supports for the nervous system. The next couple of episodes are gonna be heavily plant medicine based, and then we’ll move on to talk a little bit about some of the different natural therapies such as meditation, yoga, just some of the things that we need to do when we’re in those scenarios to be a little bit more trauma informed.

Thanks for listening, and I look forward to catching you in the next episode.