Healing IBS Naturally A Case Study by Dr. Alicia Armitstead

"When there is an imbalance of gut flora and the digestive system is weak, the toxin can come in and create a cascade of cytokines and inflammation, causing symptoms and, ultimately, a problem for the body to respond to."

- Dr. Alicia Armitstead

Helping A Patient Overcome Ten Years of Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Amber came to Healing Arts at 27 years old with no hope. She had lived her life since high school with such stomach aches and bloat with alternating days of diarrhea and constipation that now, after ten years, she thought this way of living in pain and planning her day around her bowel movements was it. After all, I was the 7th doctor she had seen. What could I do that was different? She had seen the top GI doctors and ran all the tests.

Fast forward three weeks. Amber comes into the office smiling, and I think to myself, "There’s the real Amber." After five days of no stomach pain and regular bowel movements, she was starting to see the light at the end of a 10-year tunnel.

What Amber had, according to Western medicine, is called Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). It is a group of symptoms that include repeated pain in the stomach and intestines and unhealthy bowel movements. Bowel movements may be diarrhea, constipation, or alternating. With IBS, someone can have these symptoms without noticeable signs of damage or disease in the digestive tract.

It’s just a list of symptoms, and Western medicine does not know what it’s caused by, so they don’t know how to help. Without knowing the root cause, they may recommend changes in your diet, give you medicines or probiotics, or suggest mental health therapies. Stress does play a role in IBS, and stress management is important, but Amber was tired of doctors telling her it was all in her head after medication and probiotics didn’t seem to help.

What gave Amber hope was the muscle testing we do to get the biofeedback from the body to see what the underlying issues were. The reason someone could have IBS, or any health concern, for that matter, is toxicity. We help the body detox, and with the proper nutrition, the body can heal. Toxins we look for when muscle testing are heavy metals, heavy chemicals, parasites, mold, bacteria, viruses, and food.

Once the toxins are identified with muscle testing, guided supplementation, lifestyle changes, and specific detox treatments are implemented. The detox program looks different for everyone, but it always includes the same four steps:

REMOVE foods and factors that damage the gut
REBUILD with healing foods
REPAIR with specific supplements
REBALANCE with probiotics

At Healing Arts, we identify all four steps to your specific needs. No 4-step plan to heal the gut is the same, but it always goes in this order. Remove, rebuild, repair and rebalance. Get rid of toxins, and with the proper nutrition, the body can heal. Rebalancing with probiotics is last because if we try to put good bacteria in the gut before it’s ready, it can cause discomfort. With the gut being toxic, it can’t handle the good bacteria.

Step 1: REMOVE Foods and Factors That Damage The Gut

Go through your kitchen and remove as much plastic and aluminum as possible. No plastic utensils, straws, cups, water bottles. No saran wrap, Ziploc bags, or Tupperware. Get Pyrex glass containers instead. If you buy a bag of peas, there is nothing you can do; leave it in the plastic packaging.

You have a water filter (and you should because chlorine is a different toxin to try to stay away from). It may be plastic, but it’s okay. No aluminum foil, pots, cans, baking sheets. Use parchment paper, glass, or baking stones in the oven. Don’t eat any canned foods; check and see if your deodorant has aluminum in it.

Foods to stay away from are anything processed and no refined white sugar or wheat, including white flour. White flour is wheat; they just bleached it to make it white. Yes, they use chlorine. Sugar will wreak havoc on your digestive system. It’s inflammatory and will feed yeast, candida, and bad bacteria, further damaging your gut. Bad bacteria create toxins called exotoxins that damage healthy cells, including the intestinal wall lining. The less alcohol you have, the better as well. It is inflammatory and puts stress on the stomach and the liver, which we don’t want.

Step 2: REBUILD with Healing Foods

One of my favorite ways of rebuilding the gut is by eating fermented foods. Consuming ½ serving DAILY of fermented foods will help rebuild the good bacteria. Daily is key, similar to how you would take probiotics regularly to maintain a strong concentration of good bacteria.

Another healing food is buckwheat. Don't go by its name. Buckwheat is not wheat but a nutrient-packed, gluten-free seed high in protein and fiber. Its health benefits include cholesterol-lowering effects, helping with blood pressure, and improving digestion by relieving constipation.

Drinking diluted apple cider vinegar helps enhance digestion by delaying the process of gastric emptying. If the food stays in the stomach longer, then it is more digested before entering the small intestine. Apple cider vinegar also enhances digestion by stimulating the stomach to produce more gastric juices. A known potent antibacterial and anti-inflammatory, Apple cider vinegar has properties that heal intestinal inflammation, ulcers, and other gut inflammatory disorders, including constipation and diarrhea.

Apple cider vinegar is excellent to add to salads, but to get the most remarkable medicinal effects, I think it’s best to drink a tablespoon in 32 ounces of warm water first thing in the morning and with an empty stomach. Wait 30 minutes before eating or drinking anything else.

Step 3: REPAIR with Specific Supplements

Repairing the gut with specific supplements varies from patient to patient. It depends on the muscle testing results to create a personalized supplement program for patients that changes throughout healing the gut through different stages and then ending with probiotics.

Bitters help with digestion by promoting digestive juices in the stomach that improve digestion and mineral absorption. Bitters allow food to remain in the stomach longer, ensuring that it is optimally digested—which, in turn, reduces gas and bloating and helps promote regular and healthy bowel movements. We can take a bitters tonic before eating or increase our intake of bitter food by eating more broccoli, cabbage, radishes, and arugula. These foods contain compounds called glucosinolates, which give them a bitter taste and are responsible for the health benefits I just listed. Besides helping digestion, these foods have cancer-fighting properties and help your liver process toxins more effectively, reducing your body’s toxic load.

Collagen is in the gut’s connective tissue. It helps support and strengthen the protective lining of your digestive tract. This is critically important when trying to heal from leaky gut syndrome. Increasing your collagen intake could help build up the lining of your gastrointestinal tract and promote better gut health.

You can take collagen supplements, collagen protein powder in a shake, or experiment with bone broth. Get muscle tested to determine which source is best for you.

Step 4: REBALANCE with Probiotics

After removing toxins, repairing, and rebuilding, we are now ready for step 4, rebalancing the gut flora with tons of probiotics to have a lasting, healthy environment. Beneficial bacteria protect us against their dangerous relatives (bad Bacteria) that can cause disease by crowding them out in the gut. They produce acids that inhibit growth, and stimulating the immune system to fight them off. When helpful bacteria multiply and thrive in our bodies, they act as our protectors. With a healthy gut flora, the gut can handle toxins better.

A healthy body should have a toxin come in, whether it’s aluminum, plastic, a virus, parasite, or, let’s say, bacteria from food poisoning, and be able to handle it without getting sick. A healthy body will allow a toxin to come in and get out with little disturbance to the gut. When there is an imbalance of gut flora and the digestive system is weak, the toxin can come in and create a cascade of cytokines and inflammation, causing symptoms and, ultimately, a problem for the body to respond to.

Getting tested for your specific probiotic is important, too. I have eight different ones in the office I test patients on. I often see that probiotics have to be rotated to get the gut to heal once and for all. Once healed, you won’t have to stay on a probiotic if you eat healthy. The body should be able to have the good bacteria grow.

The four steps to healing IBS or any other gut concern are: