Why Everything Comes Back to Your Gut: Skin, Hormones & Energy

Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Love Me and a Tropical Podcast. Thank you so much for being here. I am excited to be diving into yet another episode today that is focusing on gut health. If you are new here, I love gut health. If you've been listening to the podcast or following me, you definitely know that gut health is my gem. And I really, really do believe that pretty much every single symptom can be tied back to the gut. And that is what today's episode is going to be about. So we're going to be diving into why everything comes back to your gut. And it's a little bit of a follow on from the last episode. So the last episode that I spoke about was talking about how your symptoms are not random and your body is communicating. And this is just following up on that a little bit deeper. So today we're going to be diving into that root cause because that is something that naturopaths like myself. We throw around all the time. We're like, this, what's the root cause of your acne? What's the root cause of your bloating and so, so often we can pin it back to some part of the gut. So we're going to be diving into your skin, your hormones, your energy, your brain, your immune system, all roads they lead back to your gut. Now we're going to be kind of diving into just little bits on all those topics because I feel like I could yupp about this for hours and hours. But I want to start off by talking about what actually is your gut. So when people say gut, it's not just your stomach or like your belly sort of region, near where your belly button is. It is your whole gastrointestinal tract, meaning it is what is going on from your mouth. Pull the way down to your anus and every single part of that system is included. So your esophagus, your stomach, your small intestine, your large intestine, your rectum, even things such as your liver and your pancreas and your gallbladder and even your appendix, they are all involved within that gastrointestinal system and they make up the gut. So your gut isn't just a digestive organ either. It's actually where 70% of your immune system resides. It also has its complete own nervous system called the interic nervous system. It is so important to be when we think about a symptom, let's say common recurrent colds to think about how can it lead back to the gut. And yes, the gut isn't everything and of course there is multiple factors that can contribute to symptoms. But today we're just going to be really honing into the gut and this is why in clinic we pretty much always start with gut health and I will always chat to you about your boughs and your bloating and your diet whenever you have any symptoms that are going on. Alright, so let's start talking about that gut and the brain connection. So the gut and the brain are very connected. This isn't something new and I'm sure it's something that you've heard of. Maybe that you've experienced. I always explain to clients. We can all or I do believe that we all have experienced the gut brain connection at some point. Let's say that you are feeling nervous. I know when I used to dance before a dancing concert, I used to vomit or before I had a test at school, maybe I got a sore stomach and that just really highlights that gut to brain connection, maybe even like butterflies before a first date. We have all experienced the gut brain connection at one point. It's not we were it's very real and this is something that I think that we can all link back to at one point in our life. Now your gut has its own nervous system. As I mentioned just before, it's called the interic nervous system. Now you have about 500 million nerve endings in your gut, which is more than your entire spinal cord. So there's more nerve endings in your gut than there is in your spinal cord, which I think is something that can just help you reframe that how much of your kind of mental health, neurological health, nerve health really links into gut health. Scientists literally call your gut your second brain because it thinks it feels it communicates independently. We do have something however called the vagus nerve. Now if you haven't heard of the vagus nerve, you're probably going to hear me talk about it over and over again from here on in. But the vagus nerve, think of it like a information super highway of your body. So it's a bi-directional communication pathway, which means that your brain talks to your gut and your gut talks to your brain. Most people assume that, "Oh, okay, if I am stressed, my brain is talking to my gut and then the stress causes those gut symptoms, but it's not always that way as well. Your gut is driving lots of the conversation. So what's happening in your gut, what's happening in your microbiome can really influence what's happening within your brain." And for example, when we do a microbiome napal, if you come to see me in clinic and we do run a stool sample, which is a microbiome test, which I'm sure you've heard of me talk about before, we can actually look at the GABA consuming and the GABA producing microbes within the gut. This gets quite sciencey and complicated. GABA is the precursor of a serotonin. My point is, is that the bugs in your gut, they literally help to create neurotransmitters, which then can influence motility and influence your mood. So it's just important to know that your symptoms are never just in your head. And even if you feel like the only option when it comes to anxiety, mental health depression is looking at like SSRIs and antidepressants definitely have their place. If you do have gut issues, I really urge you just to look a little bit deeper and maybe have a think about, how can my gut be influencing these things as well? Because stress is never just the root cause. I know personally, and if you've listened back to the very start of this podcast, I spoke about my own journey. What kind of led me to becoming a naturopath was having my own gut issues, feeling very, very dismissed and being told that every single one of my symptoms were linked back to just stress. And I was like 16 at the time being like, okay, great, I'm stressed. I wasn't that stressed. I've definitely been more stressed in my life. I was 16 at that point, didn't have a whole lot going on that was driving a lot of stress. But being told that every single one of my symptoms was just stress was very dismissive, very confusing, very overwhelming and only made me more stressed, to be honest. And now having the knowledge that I know, I understand that yes, stress is a trigger. So stress might have triggered my gut issues, but it wasn't actually the problem because there is always something going on physiologically underneath, whether it be like that, leaky gut picture, whether they're not be enough stomach acid, whether they be poor motility, whether they be a bacterial overgrowth, or not enough good bacteria. There is always always something that's causing those symptoms and then stress is just a trigger. So this is just your reminder that your symptoms are very real. And even though your stress, mental health, anxiety, busyness, overwhelm, whatever you want to call it, is most likely playing a picture. It's not the only thing that we can look at to improve your symptoms. So that's where I'm going to leave it for the gut and the brain connection because I feel like that's a nice foundation for us to build upon. Now I want to touch on the gut and your skin. So the gut and the skin, there's a communication pathway there. Let's call it the gut skin access. So this is the direct relationship between your gut health and your skin health. Now let's talk about leaky gut. Now leaky gut is something that maybe you've seen online before. It's when your gut cells, they should be glued together like this if you're watching the video. Now if you have leaky gut, the gut cells become like this, which is where those gut cells become have little holes in between them. Have a really strong gut lining and you don't have a really strong barrier. What this means is that things are no longer staying within that gastrointestinal system. They can move out into the bloodstream. They can turn your immune system on. Once your immune system turns on, that drives inflammation. The more inflammation you've got, this can show up in your skin, whether it be for an exma, for psoriasis, for rashes, for acne is a really big one that we look at. If you do have that impaired gut barrier, it's going to be really hard to clear up your skin. And oftentimes it comes down to inflammation because different particles such as your diet, such as environmental toxins, such as hormones, they should be able to stay in within that gastrointestinal gut. They should be able to stay within that gut wall. But if you have leaky gut, they're going to exit that. They're going to enter into the bloodstream, turn on the immune system and inflammation goes from there. I hope you're still following because I know that is a little bit complicated to wrap your head around. Now, no topical product will ever fully clear that inflammation if it's coming from the inside. Now, topical work when it comes to skin, so incredibly important, works so, so well. But unless you tackle what's going on inside, it's going to be really hard to improve the external inflammation as well. Like jawline acne specifically, so jawline acne is a really big sign that we can be looking at hormones. But then when we look at the reason why your hormones are in balance, it might actually come back to the gut. So we will talk a little bit about this in the next section. We're going to be diving into hormones. Now it's not only just about the gut barrier and the leaky gut that can be driving skin issues, it's about your microbiome. So when we look and when we talk about your microbiome, we're thinking about the trillions and trillions of bugs and bacteria and yeast and fungi and archaea that are living within your colon, they are living within your large intestines. Now, when we think about these bugs, we want to have a good balance of the beneficial anti-inflammatory bugs. And there'll probably be a little sprinkle of some not so nice pro-inflammatory bugs. Now, we want to have a good balance between the good and the bad. Now obviously, it's a lot more complicated than that, but just to put it simply, we want to have a balance between the good bugs and the bad bugs. And those not so nice bugs are higher. Remember, they are pro-inflammatory. Once again, it drives inflammation, turns on the immune system, which is going to end up in breakouts for lots and lots of people. And that can show up on your skin. Now, a big sign of acne that is linked to the gut is acne that doesn't really budge or it doesn't really follow your cycle. It's just quite random. You're like, it's staying up all the time. It doesn't flare or it flares at random times. Maybe it flares with food. Maybe it flares with alcohol. That's typically more of your gut-driven acne. Of course, hormonal acne still has a gut component and we'll get to that in a minute, but if you feel like your skin doesn't fluctuate, with the month. If you're on the pill, I would really be looking into your gut health and into your microbiome, which is usually we need to look at number one, your gut barrier, your gut lining, but then number two, your microbiome and what's actually happening within your gut. So that's what I would be looking at for that gut skin connection. Now let's talk about your gut hormone connection. Now your gut and your hormones very connected. I have a whole episode on this that I'll link it below in the caption if you wanna learn more about this topic. 'Cause once again, very complicated, very in depth, but we're just simplifying it for today's episode. Now when we look at the way that your body processes hormones, I'm gonna break this down. So step one, your body creates hormones. Let's use estrogen. So estrogen is produced by your body. Once your body uses that estrogen, it sends it to the liver. The liver is your body's filter. The liver says, okay, this is good estrogen. I'm gonna keep using this throughout the body and this estrogen is a waste product. Don't need it anymore. So that waste product, estrogen, it gets sent to your boughs, it gets sent to your gut. Once that waste product, estrogen is in your gut. Remember, it's supposed to be excreted through your body because things that are in your gut, they're gonna be removed from your boughs. That's what's happening in an ideal situation. However, lots of the time, what can happen is, is if you have that liggy gut picture, remember things that are staying in the gut, they're not always staying in the gut. Things that are supposed to stay in your gut, sorry. They're not always staying within that abdominal area. They creep out, they enter the bloodstream. The immune system turns on inflammation and this can show up with heavy painful clot-y periods, maybe headaches, maybe back pain, breast tenderness, hormonal acne, all those symptoms because the estrogen that is supposed to be removed from your body is no longer being removed. Now, there's actually a marker that we can look at within a gut microbiome panel that I do with lots of my clients that have heavy painful periods as well as gut issues and endo and that sort of thing. And it's something called beta glucodonorates. Now, beta glucodonorates is this pesky little enzyme that leaves within your belly, it leaves within your large intestines. What it does is it grabs on to that waste product estrogen so that estrogen that is supposed to be removed from your body and causes it to be re-circulated through the bloodstream. Remember, it was supposed to be a waste product when it gets put back through the bloodstream, back through your body, it is going to drive those pro-inflammatory estrogen dominant symptoms which is your heavy painful periods, your clot-y periods, headaches around your cycle, breakouts around your cycle, even if your estrogen was normal in the first place, your gut plays a really big role in the clearance and the elimination of these hormones. So when it comes to anyone that comes to see me with any of those hormonal symptoms, we can't just look at your hormones in isolation. And this is the point of this whole episode, is that the gut truly is linked to so, so many different symptoms. Already, I've showed you how it's linked to the nervous system, it's linked to the skin, now it's linked to hormones and we're not even 15 minutes into this episode, I think it just shows how much your gut has a very systemic effect on the body. I wanna mention as well, there's obviously so much more true hormonal balance and there's so many more things that we can look at. And I've just used estrogen as an example, but that beta glucodonorase enzyme that we often find in gut tests can be really linked to things like headaches and even things that are not necessarily cycle related. So just those detoxification issues as well can be really linked to that enzyme. So if you are interested in mapping out your gut microbiome, so looking at do you have leaky gut, are you interested in looking at do you have a bacterial imbalance, do you have high beta glucodonorase, you can book an appointment through the show notes below, whether you wanna just book in a free 15 minute call to have a chat or you wanna book in to actually get an initial console and a full panel, you can do all of that below because remember, we're not gonna know all of this unless we test 100% what's going on. We can treat based off symptoms sometimes, we can have a bit of a look, but getting that data is so incredibly valuable because it could be an interplay of all three. Sometimes symptoms don't necessarily match the data always and it's not what we expect. So I do really, really love gut testing. So if you have any questions you can comment or you can book directly below because if you're experiencing these symptoms, truly getting the data is the best way to get you the quickest, most accurate results possible. All right, let's have a bit of a chat about the gut and the energy link as well. Now I feel like lots of this does come back to inflammation. So if your gut is inflamed or dysbiotic, remember how I said earlier how GABA was produced within the gut or consumed within the gut, which is that precursor to serotonin. So you'll mood your motivation, your sense of well-being are really linked to gut health. And even just putting it simply, like taking the signs out of it, if you're bloated, if you're constipated, especially as women, we tend to then put that towards like our sense of worth and being really conscious of the way that we look in our bodies and not always, that's a big generalization, but that is going to impact our mental health. Then we've got something called neuroinflammation. So there's a bit of a saying that people say leaky gut, leaky brain, and it's a bit of a concept that inflammation is never just localized. And if your gut is inflamed, your brain is going to be inflamed, which is going to increase symptoms like your brain fog and your fatigue and things like that as well. And then we've got a huge link with cortisol too. And cortisol, very topical. I think I have an episode on this. I'll link it below. I definitely do love talking about cortisol and figuring out whether your cortisol is actually high or low, but let's say you do have chronic stress and you do have high cortisol. Cortisol is inflammatory. Cortisol damages your gut lining. Once your gut lining is damaged, it's going to drive more inflammation. And then more inflammation is going to drive more cortisol and it becomes this really vicious cycle. And it's not just about, it's kind of like what came first, the chicken, all the egg, like, where your cortisol high, and that's what caused the gut issues, or did you have gut issues and that drove inflammation and that made the cortisol high. And this is the importance of like nipping it in the bud. And I know we're talking a lot about gut health, but I always say to people, I can argue that most conditions come back to either the gut, or the nervous system. And I feel like that example really hones in on that. All right, now let's talk about your macrobion. So I spoke on this a little bit earlier, but I want to briefly give you some tips because I've thrown a bunch of information at you, but I feel like it's kind of redundant if I don't give you anything to do with it. Now it's one thing for me to sit here and say stress less, calm down, do breath work, do all those things when we live a busy lifestyle and yes, those things are so incredibly important. And supporting the nervous system will in turn support the gut, but I'm going to talk about some ways that you can support your gut that can then in turn support your nervous system and your skin and your hormones and your liver. Now firstly, feeding up your microbiome. The best thing that you can do for your gut health is to increase diversity. 30 plus plant foods a week is going to create a beautiful, diverse, healthy functioning microbiome. The more anti-inflammatory bugs that you have in the gut, it's going to decrease that overall inflammation throughout the body. Something else that's really important to think about is if you are simply not feeding your gut enough fiber and enough diversity and enough color, the bugs that are living it in your gut are going to eat at that gut wall. They're going to drive leaky gut, which is going to drive inflammation and then you end up in that really vicious circle. So focusing on diversity. Now different foods are going to be more tolerated to different people. Of course legumes and whole grains and chickpeas and beans are amazing for gut health that if you're super sensitive, don't start there. Start with some simple things, like some blueberries and some raspberries and some kiwi fruits and maybe putting in a tiny little bit of chia seeds that you don't have to do this overnight, especially if you're someone that has got a bland diet, totally fine, but don't go to putting in 30 plant foods overnight a week. Remember plant foods includes your herbs and your legumes and your seeds and your spices and those sort of things too. So you can really up with some fresh herbs and that's something that I often encourage clients to do is get some fresh herbs, get some seeds, like take it really slow and slowly start to up that diversity because diversity really is everything. The more diverse your microbiome is, the more resilient to everything that I spoke about in today's episode, you are going to be and you're going to become. Now when we look at things that can work against you, typically, now it goes without saying, lots of these things are very, very medically necessary. Things like antibiotics, PPI's do really damage that microbiome. So if you are using a lot of those things, I'd really recommend you to chat to a practitioner and see how we can mitigate some of the effects from that. You've then got chronic stress. We've already spoken about this, your ultra-process food, your alcohol, lack of fiber, and then things less to a lesser extent, you've also got the pill and then non-silted water, non-stick pans, those sort of things. So they are all going to decrease diversity over time, which are things that are super, super common within our Western diet. So we need to work hard to get that color in, that diversity in, something that is great to think about as well is whether it's quick to be like, oh, I need a probiotic and grab a probiotic off the shelf, but quite often probiotics, they don't have the effect that we think they do. I used to think that if I took a probiotic, it's going to live in my gut. And I'm introducing new bugs in my gut, and it's going to live there, and I'm going to have more and more species, and all is going to be well. I know that I used to go into like chemist warehouse and look at the back of a packet and pick the probiotic that had the most strains in it, because the more strains that we're in, the better. Yeah, that means I'm introducing more bugs. But the truth is, is that probiotics and strains of probiotics that are in products, they are transient, meaning that they have an effect, and they work. as you take them, but then you flush them out of your body. So they're just not having that effect that maybe you already knew this, but I know myself like five, six years ago, I actually didn't know this. And that was definitely news to me. So focusing on those prebiotics and the diversity through your diet is actually nine times out of 10 going to be the better option for increasing diversity within your microbiome, which is a big goal. Something else that I did want to plug is nervous. So there's a program called Nerva IBS. And if you do really think you're someone that has that big gut to brain connection, quite a lot of stress, I really, really do recommend it. It is a gut directed hypnotherapy that I recommend to lots of my clients that notice that their symptoms really, really flare with stress, but they struggle to kind of de-stress. And they feel like their body is just living in that state of fight or flight. It's NERVA. Have a bit of a look online, look into that as a program. There's lots of great evidence and research into it, but it's working on retraining that gut to brain connection, looking at that vague nerve that we spoke about at the very start of the episode and just helping your gut to know that even when your brain is overwhelmed, you're in that fight and flight, you don't physically need to respond that way. So I've had some really great results with clients using that program. So that's something that we can do. Once you up your diversity, you look at supporting your nervous system, you take your time when you're eating, you're chewing, you're doing all of those things. If you feel like the needle is still not moving, that's when testing is super, super helpful. I don't recommend random supplementation. Don't go by random supplements. Try those couple things if they don't work, figure out the why, figure out the why behind why your symptoms are there, because you will save, I promise you, so much time and money by just getting the data and figuring out what is driving your symptoms and what is driving your presentation. Now, I hope this is really helpful, just kind of giving you some things to think about, about, oh, okay, maybe I don't need a hormone balancing supplement. Maybe I need a heal my gut. Maybe I don't need magnesium to support my nervous system. Maybe I need to heal my gut. Maybe I don't need a skin supplement. That's the whole point of this episode. So I hope that that prompted a little bit of that within you. Please reach out if you have absolutely any questions, pop them in the comments below. There's any episodes that you would like me to film. And on this note, if you enjoy conversations like this, if you want to learn more about your gut health and you want to learn to decode your symptoms, I have a little weightless below that I would love you to pop your name and your details into. I am launching something very, very soon within the next couple of weeks, and you guys in the podcast are going to have an exclusive access to get it discounted and to get early access. So I know that's very vague and kind of sneaky and I'm not telling you much, but we'll be revealed very, very soon. Pop yourself on the weightless below if you'd like to get that exclusive access. Otherwise, I hope you have a beautiful day, night morning afternoon whenever you're listening to this. Reach out if you need me at all. Go shopping, pick up some new colors, pick up some new fruits, veg, nuts, seeds, and I will be in your ears very shortly.