Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is an intestinal disorder that causes pain in the belly, gas, diarrhea, and constipation. Sometimes the condition goes away without treatment, and for some, it ends up being a lifelong affliction. IBS is often associated with stress, depression, anxiety, or a previous intestinal infection. IBS is often referred to as spastic colon or spastic bowel.
What’s the Difference between IBS, IBD, CD, and UC?
IBS: irritable bowel syndrome
IBD: inflammatory bowel disease
CD: Crohn’s disease
UC: ulcerative colitis
Dysbiosis: gut microbial imbalance
With irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), there is an autoimmune reaction to foods, bacteria, or other substances in the intestinal tract. Most conventional medical professionals do not believe that IBS causes inflammation, ulcers, or other damage to the intestinal tract. The digestive system looks normal under x-ray, but it doesn’t function properly. Conventional medical professionals believe IBS has a physiological basis. It is associated with stress, depression, and anxiety. But today, newer technologies are now being used with older methods to reveal specific abnormalities associated with IBS. For doctors keeping up with research, it’s no longer thought of as primarily psychosomatic.
Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) are both inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). IBD is not believed to have a physiological basis (it’s not associated with stress, depression, anxiety). IBD can be debilitating and can cause life-threatening complications.
How to Know if You Have Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Doctors call IBS a “functional disease.” A person with IBS will have many or all of the following symptoms, but current medical testing won’t show any physical explanation for these symptoms. IBS is also sometimes called spastic colon or spastic bowel. Symptoms will often fade or even become nonexistent for a period of time.
Symptoms of IBS can include:
- Abdominal pain
- Cramping
- Gas
- Diarrhea
- Constipation
- Alternating diarrhea and constipation
- Bloating
- The feeling that a bowel movement may be incomplete
- Stools that contain mucus, which may be white in color
- Nausea after eating
- For women, symptoms tend to flare up during their menstrual period
There is no test to definitively diagnose IBS. Doctors generally look at medical history and perform a physical exam along with other tests to rule out other conditions. If you have IBS with chronic diarrhea, the doctor should also test for celiac disease.
How to Know if You Have Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Inflammatory bowel disease is an umbrella term for disorders that involve chronic inflammation in the digestive tract. Types of IBD include ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease (CD).
UC is characterized by chronic inflammation and ulcers in the innermost lining of the large intestine and rectum.
CD is a chronic inflammatory disease characterized by chronic inflammation of the digestive tract. Crohn’s can affect any part of the digestive tract, from the mouth to the rectum, but it usually affects the small intestine near the connection to the large intestine.
IBD is considered a “structural disease.” This means there is underlying physical damage that causes the symptoms. With IBD, doctors can see physical signs of chronic inflammation or ulcers when they examine the gut.
IBD can cause serious longterm damage to the digestive system, and it will increase one’s risk of colorectal cancer.
New research shows that IBD may be the body’s way of compensating for a “leaky gut.”
“Both have significant overlap in terms of symptoms, pathophysiology, and treatment, suggesting the possibility of IBS and IBD being a single disease entity albeit at opposite ends of the spectrum.”
NCBI
“Irritable Bowel Syndrome may be related to chronic pain, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia and may be a strong correlation with Leaky Gut Syndrome.”
Alt Med
Our results suggest that when there is a chronically leaky intestine, defects in the immune system need to be present for the development of IBD.”
Charles Parkos, MD, PhD
Symptoms of IBD can include the previously mentioned symptoms of IBS and the following:
- Blood in your stools
- Black
stools - Weight loss
- Loss of appetite
- Fatigue
- Severe, frequent diarrhea
- Progressively worsening symptoms
- Fever
- Inflammation throughout the body
The Difference Between a Healthy Gut and an Unhealthy Gut
Scientists estimate that there are 100 trillion or so microorganisms in the human body, and they say approximately half of these microbes live in the gut.
“…the number of microbial cells we carry can be as much as 10 times greater than the total cell number in the human body, and their genetic information is at least 150-fold greater than that of our human genome.”
Microbial endocrinology
Dysbiosis (also called dysbacteriosis) is a gut flora imbalance. We now know that such an imbalance profoundly affects our wellbeing. We know that it can lead to neuropsychiatric symptoms and conditions, autoimmune disorders, allergies, cancer, bowel diseases, obesity, diabetes, and more. We know that a gut imbalance can exacerbate every chronic disease. On that note, I surmise that a gut imbalance is the cause of more than 99% of modern chronic diseases.
Scientists are just beginning to understand the importance of gut health and the connection it has with autoimmune diseases. For a naturopath, it’s a pretty interesting time to be alive. While social media giants are censoring natural cures, credible scientists are busy discovering that gut microbes are found all over the body, and how an unhealthy gut may make one more likely to suffer from adverse vaccine reactions, mental disorders, and autoimmune diseases.
Allow me to take some liberties to explain what’s really going on in the gut.
The Gut Microbiome
For a long time, we’ve had this idea that the gut lets certain items pass into the rest of the body and blocks certain items, end of story. Supple, permeable living tissue doesn’t work that way; it’s not so black and white.
A healthy gut has a healthy gut microbiome. A healthy gut microbiome is a gut lining of bacterial biofilm that covers the entire intestinal tract.
We are on the verge of a health revolution. In fact, we’re in the middle of one. Gut microbes are being discovered in various glands and organs and all over the human body. We also have recently come to find that there are not merely hundreds of different kinds of bacteria on our gut, but thousands. This number will keep growing for some time.
Gut bacteria does so much more than just digest food. A healthy microbiome breaks down and removes toxins from the body like heavy metals, glyphosates, and BPAs. Healthy bacteria can also cause an anti-inflammatory response in the gut and throughout the entire body. Our beneficial gut bacteria also produce enzymes we need for good health. The microbiome acts as a shield that lines the intestinal wall and breaks down particles before they pass through the intestinal wall into the body. This process not only allows for nutrient assimilation, but gut bacteria also synthesize vitamin K and B vitamins including cobalamin, folates, pyridoxine, riboflavin, and thiamine. And that’s merely what we now know. There could be many more necessary nutrients that our bacteria produce for us.
Let’s look at B12. It’s been said that B12 is only created in the lower intestine where we don’t absorb the nutrients. I suspect there may be a mechanism for which the nutrients can move up into the lower part of the upper intestine, but there’s no evidence of this. So the consensus has been that humans need to either eat meat, supplement with B12, or eat our own feces. But, a study found that there is actually some bacteria in the small intestine that can produce B12 in some people. This bacteria is less common in people who adhere to the Western diet, and this makes sense because the Western diet and lifestyle stifle bacterial diversity in the gut.
The gut microbiome also houses gastrointestinal immune cells, known as “Peyer’s patches.” These immune cells protect the intestinal tract against infection by releasing white blood cells.
In other words, our gut bacteria contains white blood cells (a healthy gut microbiome contains more white blood cells) and these cells and the gut bacteria together act as a barrier to keep undigested particles (and toxins) out of the rest of our body, and they synthesize nutrients we need. Our gut bacteria also suppresses cancer, helps regulate our hormones, and even affects our DNA! We need a lot of different kinds of bacteria to do right by us. Chronically ill people have less diversity in the gut microbiome. The diversity of gut bacteria helps keep each and every potential pathogen in check.
The Most Interesting Part – THE GUT ALWAYS LEAKS
In my mind, the most important and interesting job of our gut bacteria is how it affects our immune system throughout our whole body. As mentioned previously, there was this belief that our gut bacteria pretty much stayed in the gut, only leaking out of the gut if the gut is “leaky.” This is wholly inaccurate.
The gut “leaks” our beneficial bacteria into our entire body. A healthy gut is a factory that produces a vast array of, and massive quantities of, beneficial bacteria. This bacteria seeps into and all over the body to provide protection from
If you have an ache from an old injury that never seems to heal all the way, you have pathogenic activity infecting that injury, causing inflammation and pain. Damaged or dead cells in the body feed microbes. If the body is full of beneficial bacteria the damaged and dead cells will be feeding beneficial bacteria, and the dead and damaged cells will be broken down and cleaned up by enzymes and beneficial bacteria.
The “bad” bacteria and other pathogenic microbes attack the body, as we all know, and their lifecycle causes off-gassing that damages the surrounding cells while they feed off of the damage they create. With more pathogenic activity in the body, the immune system becomes overwhelmed and begins reacting to allergens.
Have you ever walked by the perfume aisle in a department store, or walked through the cleaning products in your grocery store and suddenly noticed a bad taste in the back of your mouth? This is post nasal drip caused by chemicals damaging the cells in your nasal cavities. Bacteria, fungi, viruses, and other pathogens feed off of or otherwise benefit from damaged cells. Damaged cells release sugars, starches, and fats that feed pathogens, and they allow the proliferation of viruses. If your body contains lots of pathogens, breathing in chemicals will cause an immediate proliferation of pathogenic activity, which can lead to illness.
A body with massive amounts of a wide variety of healthy bacteria will have a different reaction. The beneficial bacteria will still feed off of the damage like pathogens do, but the vast variety of healthy microflora eliminates the possibility of infection by any one type of microbe. If you have only a few kinds of bacteria in such a situation, one or more are likely to proliferate and become pathogenic, or yeast or other pathogens can take over. Many of the beneficial bacteria within us are capable of causing infection. It is the variety of bacteria that keeps everything in check.
This is a very simplistic way of explaining this concept. Many kinds of beneficial bacteria strains will not ever infect us. Some will only cause problems under very unusual circumstances, and many will cause problems if left to flourish without enough beneficial microbe diversity to keep them in check. Plus, there are also autoimmune reactions and allergy issues that can come into play in this scenario. But the point of this section is to provide an understanding of how important a healthy microbiome is to our immune system. Earlier I wrote, “allow me to take some liberties” because I do not yet see that science has discovered this function of our microflora. So, feel free to take my conclusions here with a grain of salt, but we do know that the gut bacteria work this way (warding off infection) in the gut, and we know how and why variety is paramount to good health (keeps bacteria and yeast in check), and we now know that gut bacteria also is found in the brain and the liver (it’s all over the body, we’ll discover this soon enough). And we know that gut bacteria evolves based on its environment. To understand how to achieve optimum health you just need to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
Dysbiosis Causes IBS and IBD and Other Autoimmune Diseases
As mentioned, dysbiosis is
Consider the examples above (the perfume aisle, aches, and pains that don’t heal). It’s easy to understand how chronic inflammation and autoimmune disease works.
Celiac Disease May Be Causing Dysbiosis
If diarrhea is a predominant IBS symptom, celiac disease or another gluten intolerance is a likely cause. Celiac disease is characterized by gluten causing chronic inflammation of the small intestinal mucosa. This causes the intestinal villi (small finger-like projections of tissue called villi which increase the surface area of the intestine) to atrophy (waste away), which leads to malabsorption (nutrition is not absorbed properly). Dysbiosis can cause these symptoms too, so it’s a bit of a chicken-egg issue. Gluten allergies and wheat allergies are also common with gut issues and may be precursors to celiac disease.
Research suggests that many people with IBS and IBD have celiac disease. Medical professionals are starting to see that wheat can trigger IBS and lead to IBD and celiac disease. Research also suggests that many more people have celiac disease than originally thought.
Celiac disease can be diagnosed using simple blood tests, but even if tests come back negative, other gluten intolerances are still likely.
If you have an impaired gut, get off wheat! Even the healthier varieties of breads are problematic until the gut is healed. For more information on why wheat is such an issue for so many, check out Gluten Intolerance, Wheat Allergies, and Celiac Disease – It’s More Complicated Than You Think.
How to Treat IBS, IBD, Dysbiosis
Like almost everything else in conventional medicine, treatments for IBS and IBD focus on relieving symptoms, not on curing the disease. Conventional treatments don’t work because they don’t address the actual cause. Conventional treatments include a wide variety of drugs to manage inflammation (which will make the health problems worse in the long run), minimal (insufficient) diet changes, and a few supplements (often of dubious quality) like fiber and probiotics. For IBS, many doctors also recommend therapy.
In order to manage dysbiosis, one needs to manage their diet. Cut out refined foods, wheat, dairy, and chemicals such as artificial colors, flavors, preservatives, soy, GMOs, and MSG.
How To Cure IBS, IBD, Dysbiosis
Managing disease is for suckers. Ridding the body of disease is a much better option. It takes patience and time, but it will likely take a lot less time than how long it took to develop the autoimmune issues.
Most prescription drugs cause or at least exacerbate gut problems. One can still make the gut much healthier and elevate many chronic conditions while on prescription drugs, but as long as prescription drugs are consumed the gut will not be fully well.
This is also true for over-the-counter medications, recreational drugs, and alcohol. And if you smoke, you’ll have to quit. Smoking wreaks havoc on the gut in a variety of ways. You will never have a healthy gut if you smoke.
One of my favorite quotes:
‘There is only one disease: cellular malfunction. And there are only two causes of disease: deficiency and toxicity.”
Raymond Francis
The key to better gut health is eliminating toxins and getting the proper nutrition. You might be thinking, “If only it were that simple…” And in a way, it is. But in other ways, our modern world complicates things.
Diet for Dysbiosis – How To Build Healthy Gut Microbiota
The best bacteria love the best foods. Nature wouldn’t work right if it were any other way. The healthiest foods are raw vegetables and herbs. A wide variety of healthy bacteria is essential for optimum health. Different bacteria like different foods at different stages of digestion. This means that if you blend your vegetables in a blender before you consume them you’re missing out on feeding some of the bacteria that would have broken down the vegetables to that state. Unprocessed, unadulterated vegetables and herbs are essential for building incredibly diverse, strong, and healthy gut flora. Salads are the key. And not just any salad. I’m talking about huge salads with 15 different vegetables and five different herbs. All fresh. Here’s the salad recipe: Detox Cheap and Easy Without Fasting – Recipes Included. The cranberry lemonade recipe in that article will also help detoxify and bring the body into homeostasis.
Many people can’t digest salads well enough. This may cause discomfort. I recommend starting off with smaller salads and building up while snacking on small amounts of random vegetables throughout the day. But any doctor who tells you that salads are bad for you because your body is different, or because you need more “heat producing” foods, or whatever, is wrong! Most people will benefit from ingesting huge salads right away, and a select few need to work their way up to them, but this is the most important step to building a healthy gut colony in the gut.
Other meals should only include whole foods and these meals should be prepared by you. Do not let a company prepare your meals. Don’t even buy nut milk. Make it yourself. It’s easy and much cheaper, here’s how.
I do recommend grains (brown rice, wild rice, amaranth, montina, quinoa, millet, buckwheat, and sorghum. But avoid oats until the gut is well.), legumes (when soaked and/or sprouted properly), and nuts and seeds (seeds are typically easier to digest than nuts). But these foods will need to be brought into the diet slowly if digestive troubles occur when they are consumed. Once the right kind of bacteria is flourishing in the gut, whole healthy foods are much easier to digest.
Cooked vegetables are also wonderful for you. I eat an 11 cup salad for breakfast and I also usually put tons of vegetables and herbs in my dinner. Dinner at my house usually consists of a grain, a legume, lots of veggies, and lots of herbs.
Meat from a healthy free-range animal is typically fine for people who are healing the gut. So are eggs when they’re from healthy chickens. Like with the aforementioned, these may need to be introduced slowly if stomach troubles occur.
Avoid sweet fruits at first and slowly introduce them later as the gut gets better and better. Most of the fruit that we eat is not what we would have found in nature. We’ve evolved to eat fruit seasonally, and most of the fruit we did eat was not nearly as sweet before hybridization.
The benefits of eating like this also include not having to take a bunch of vitamins and minerals. Vitamin and mineral deficiencies will normalize and the body will take what it needs and discard what it doesn’t. But if you still feel you need vitamins and minerals I recommend Total Nutrition and Liquid Light.
Best Supplements For IBS, IBD, Dysbiosis
Most Important:
- Formula SF722 – Thorne Research
- Abzorb Vitamin & Nutrient Optimizer (500mg) HCP Formulas
- Berberine 500mg – Thorne Research
- MycoCeutics MycoPhyto Complex – EcoNugenics
- MicroDefense – Pure Encapsulations
The SF722 kills all fungi better than anything else I know of. Abzorb supplies vitamin D, Magnesium, systemic enzymes, and a probiotic. Take Abzorb without food to heal the gut and with meals to help digest the food. Berberine is an anti-microbial pre-biotic with tons of other health benefits, read more here. The MycoCeutics is an anti-microbial fungal complex, and MicroDefense kills non-beneficial microbes including parasites.
Optional (depending on symptoms and budget):
- Shillington’s Intestinal Detox
- Shillington’s Intestinal Cleanse
- Shillington’s Total Healing Poultice Powder
- Syntol AMD – Arthur Andrew Medical
- Shillington’s Total Nutrition
- Liquid Light
Shillington’s Intestinal Detox is a clay, fiber, and charcoal intestinal detoxifier. It can slow down bowel movements. Shillington’s Intestinal Cleanse kills parasites and restores gut function. It can make bowel movements easier. The two work very well together. Shillington’s Total Healing Poultice Powder is good for ulcers. Syntol AMD is another probiotic enzyme blend. Total Nutrition is a good multivitamin that contains algae, astragalus, alfalfa, seaweed, lots of vitamin C and some B vitamins. Liquid Light is a multi-mineral formula.
If you’re curious about more supplements to help heal the gut here’s a list of 25 more.
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