Food First for Gut Healing

Why do we use a Food First approach in Functional Medicine? Why is this not how things are traditionally looked at in healthcare today? Let's dive in...

Food is information

Eating food is something that we, as humans, all do several times a day and has the biggest impact on our health, our mood, our mental health, our immune system, our energy levels, and more. Over 70% of our immune system is located in our gut! We absorb vital nutrients here. We obtain energy through the foods that we eat and make hormones based off of the foods that we eat. I hear Dr Mark Hyman say it all the time: "Food is information" and I could not agree more. Food has the power to change our health in both a good or bad way. I see it as the first step because it is something we all do anyway! If I know I can improve my health by adding more vegetables, protein or herbs into my diet VERSUS being sick or unhealthy I would rather make that change first and then go from there.

Healthy diet should be foundational in gut health

Many times people will have digestive complaints and do not realize that they could have food sensitivities that are causing this. It's a common thought process that "I have always eaten this and I am fine" until they start putting the pieces together and realize that maybe gluten or dairy (for example) has had a correlation with some of their symptoms that they have experienced. Once something is eliminated from the diet and reintroduced, it is much easier to see that pattern. I removed dairy from my diet and when I re-introduced it, I had all kinds of symptoms that it really started to make me think about my dietary choices. I felt so much better when I didnt consume it, then when I would have it one time I would react with digestive complaints, acne, fatigue. I really needed to listen to these symptoms that my body was telling me. Since I have limited my dairy consumption I have felt so much better and this was a simple strategy to attempt before looking at labs or expensive supplements to resolve my concerns.

Supplements are a great tool in gut health if needed

Supplements are exactly what they state. They are meant to supplement a healthy lifestyle and give us the items that we need to optimize our health, but maybe we arent getting enough of in our diet. For example, we need healthy Omega-3's on a regular basis but if you know you are not eating enough of these to optimize your health, then you may want to consider supplementing with a quality and reputable Omega-3 supplement. But first, we should be looking at what you are consuming on a regular basis and use this as a guide for what we should add in. Just like my business name suggests we want to look at Food First. This is where functional medicine really shines (among other reasons of course!) because it is a personalized approach. If you eat fish 4 times a week for dinner, you probably dont need that omega-3 supplement. If you find a practitioner that really takes the time to listen to you and understand your own unique lifestyle they wouldn't want you to waste your money on a supplement that is unnecessary.

Once we get a good idea of what you are consuming regularly, or not consuming and needing to supplement, we can take a closer look at healing your gut with targeted interventions. We can do this through functional labs and functional stool testing. This provides us with some deeper understanding of some things that could be occurring. It's important to recognize that taking a food first approach and building the foundations of a healthy diet and lifestyle should be established first. If we start off the bat with testing, we are going to have more work to do because you have to peel back the layers one at a time. If you are like me and have a dairy sensitivity and don't address that first, we are going to have a more difficult time establishing what is causing the concerns. By looking at testing, we might be able to see there is inflammation going on but we cannot pinpoint the exact reason for the inflammation. Inflammation in our gut could be caused by dietary factors, infection, or toxins so we can easily weed out the daily contributing factors first. In medicine, we always want to take the least invasive approach first, which is why this example is so easy to use. If you remove dairy from your diet and your symptoms go away, why would you need to spend additional money on expensive testing and supplements? You already addressed one of the foundational problems and have the knowledge going forward of looking at your dairy consumption first. Testing has some really great benefits and I am all for it, but I think its only beneficial if used in the proper order. Establishing our foundations are the most important, then we can go from there.

So maybe now you are wondering why your provider has not discussed this with you before. Maybe you have had some digestive complaints and been told to see a Gastroenterologist to help with these concerns. Or even worse, your concerns have been dismissed. This is why I do what I do. I felt like I received the run-around as well with my own health concerns. It's not that my doctor didnt want to help me, but rather they weren't taught to think this way. They get very little if any nutritional education in medical school and they are taught to mitigate symptoms with medication or surgery. It's not the standard way of thinking to investigate symptoms and look upstream to see what is causing them. It's also not the standard of care to look at diet first. It absolutely should be, but sadly it is not. In my 15 years of nursing, I have rarely seen an interaction between a provider and a patient that they asked the patient what they were eating or what their lifestyle was like prior to prescribing a medication. I have even been told by patients that their doctor told them they could eat whatever they wanted because it was all broken down to sugar. This is not to harp on anyone in the medical field as I think a vast majority of providers are doing their best with what they are taught. But this is to remind you, as the patient or client, that suppressing symptoms with medications is not necessarily going to make your problem go away. And that if you are not being asked about your food first, maybe you need to look at other options.

Gut healing involves removing offending foods that are causing problems, adding in healing and soothing foods for the gut, then adding supplements or herbs that can heal.

The power of nutrition should be explored more - some foods have the capacity to heal or help with certain conditions better than others and you really want someone in your corner that can help point you to these first, before looking at medications or surgery. This is how Food First Nurse name was born. I knew I wanted to help my clients take a less invasive approach first, and look at nutrition as something that can be healing to the gut. If it's not the food you are eating, then we can explore further and look for the root cause through functional blood work or functional stool testing.

If you are looking for someone to help you with your gut health, I offer 1:1 consultations to help you uncover your unique root causes without rushed visits. I take the time to listen and understand you as a individual and support you in your healing journey. I also offer free discovery calls if you are curious about what it's like working with a functional gut health nurse. Click HERE to get started!

Until next week - I am rooting for your healing, one bite at a time!

- Food First Nurse