5 Ways Your Digestion Can Go Wrong

Are you over feeling bloated and uncomfortable after every meal? Do you often go more than a day or more between bowel movements? While these symptoms are not normal, they have unfortunately become too common. They are red flags that should encourage us to check further “under the hood”. In this article, we’ll look at the different ways that your digestion can go wrong.

Here are five ways dysfunction can happen:

1. Weak function as a result of ineffective digestive secretions. To effectively digest your food, especially protein, you need optimal stomach acid output.₁ Sufficient digestive enzymes and ample bile are also needed to break down food into nutrients that can be absorbed. Without adequate digestive secretions, uncomfortable symptoms like bloating, gas, heartburn, acid reflux, nausea, constipation, and diarrhea can occur. What’s more, undigested food can lead to a cascade of issues further down the digestive tract.
2. Infections in the gastrointestinal system can occur due to parasitic, fungal, or bacterial pathogens. These infections can cause damage and inflammation to the gut lining leading to digestive dysfunction and symptoms such as bloating, gas, diarrhea, constipation, and abdominal pain.
3. Gut environment issues, including dysfunction caused by a “leaky gut” or intestinal permeability, decreased GI immunity, and an imbalanced microbiome. All of these can cause a lot of havoc in the digestive system and lead to chronic gut problems like bloating, gas, and irregular bowel movements to name a few.
4. External stressors such as food intolerances, sensitivities, and allergies. Plus, environmental stressors including mold, heavy metals, chlorine, pesticides and herbicides, and overuse of antibiotics, can upset the balance of the microbiome and cause dysfunction.₂ These stressors can lead to a variety of issues such as bloating, gas, abdominal pain, and diarrhea.
5. Dysregulation in the nervous system. There is a direct relationship between the brain and the gut. It’s essential to be in a parasympathetic or rest state with your nervous system for digestion and peristalsis. You need to “rest to digest”. Nervous system dysfunction can cause weak digestive function which can lead to a variety of issues like bloating, gas, abdominal pain, and diarrhea.

Digestion is key to all parts of our health. When the digestive system is unable to digest and absorb nutrients effectively, it changes the vitality of the entire body. The health of the body begins with effective digestion. The good news is that there is a lot that is within your control.

Here are some ways to support overall digestion

• Support healthy mealtime habits. Pay attention to how you eat. Sit down to eat and remove distractions, such as your cell phone and laptop. Aim to chew your food 20 to 25 times.
• Eat a diet full of nutrient-dense foods. Eating a wide variety of foods in their whole form supplies you with an abundance of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, amino acids, fiber, and antioxidants which are all supportive of your gut and microbiome. To learn more about nutrient-dense foods, read this article.
• Manage stress. When we are stressed, our bodies will prioritize managing stress over digestion. Working on managing stress levels during the day and before meals is very important to optimal digestion.
• Move regularly. Getting your body moving is super helpful for lowering stress levels. It also helps to support digestion, decrease the time that food spends in your colon, and helps with constipation.
• Avoid external and environmental stressors. Identify food allergies, sensitivities, and intolerances. Make water and clean air a priority in your home, and start to decrease toxic cleaning products and hygiene products, and makeup. If this sounds overwhelming or expensive, start with just one thing. Replacing an item when it gets used up can be a less overwhelming way to approach it too. I’ve replaced many things over time, not overnight. There are also many DIY recipes for cleaning products and self-care products. Wellness Mama is a great resource.
• Test, don’t guess. Working on the foundations can go a very long way, and can often be at the root of dysfunction, but functional testing can be very helpful if you’ve tried many things already. I offer the GI MAP Stool Test. It provides an abundance of information about the state of your gut microbiome, including bacterial and viral pathogens, parasites and worms, normal and opportunistic bacteria, possible autoimmune triggers, yeast or fungal overgrowth, intestinal health, and inflammatory and immune markers. It can help to uncover imbalances and other blocking factors that are preventing your digestive system from healing. I also offer the MRT Food Sensitivity Test which can help identify food triggers that are causing inflammation.

To summarize, digestion can become dysfunctional due to various reasons. Weak digestive function resulting from inadequate digestive output, infections in the GI system, gut environment issues, external stressors, and nervous system dysregulation can all cause digestive problems.

If you’ve been suffering from chronic digestive problems, it’s a good idea to work with a gut health practitioner that can take a “deep dive” into what’s going on. I take an in-depth look at your health history and lifestyle stressors, complete a nutritional and symptoms analysis, and can utilize functional testing to find the root causes of your stubborn symptoms. If you would like to see if my services would be a good fit for you, book a complimentary discovery call below.

References

1. Nutritional Therapy Association. Digestion: Dysfunction. [PDF file]. 2020. P 6.
2. Chiu, K., Warner, G., Nowak, R. A., Flaws, J. A., & Mei, W. (2020). The Impact of Environmental Chemicals on the Gut Microbiome. Toxicological sciences : an official journal of the Society of Toxicology, 176(2), 253–284.