#87 How Your Gut Shapes Everything From Your Mood to Your Love Life

Your gut isn't just about digestion—it's the command center for your entire wellbeing. What if those "normal" symptoms like heartburn, bloating, or irregular bathroom habits are actually signals that something deeper needs attention?

As a functional medicine certified health coach, I've seen how transformative proper gut health can be. When your digestive system thrives, everything improves—from mental clarity and skin appearance to your effectiveness in relationships. This episode breaks down the fundamentals of gut health that conventional medicine often overlooks but that could revolutionize how you feel every day.

I share my personal journey with gut healing, including how an elimination diet helped me lose 10 pounds (twice!) and finally understand my digestive patterns. You'll learn about powerful testing options like the GI Map that can reveal hidden parasites and bacterial imbalances, why shopping the perimeter of grocery stores matters, and how to decode nutrition labels to avoid the 65 different names for sugar that might be sabotaging your health.

The connection between gut health and seemingly unrelated issues like ADHD, unexplained weight gain, and even mold exposure might surprise you. Whether you're struggling with specific symptoms or simply want to optimize your health, these practical approaches can help you build a foundation for overall wellness.

Curious about your own gut health? Try the simple elimination protocol outlined in this episode, or explore the testing options mentioned. Your body might be trying to tell you something important—and finally listening could change everything. Text me using the number in the episode description with your questions, and don't forget to share this episode with friends who might benefit from this information too.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Gut Health Basics
• 1:47 Elimination Diet Explained
• 4:05 Testing Options for Gut Issues
• 5:51 Functional Medicine Approach
• 7:10 Food Choices and Label Reading
• 9:02 Final Thoughts and Contact Info

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Straight from the Source's Mouth podcast, frank. Talk about sex and dating. Hi everyone, tamara here I'm going to do something a little different today and talk about gut health. Gut health affects everybody. It affects your life. If you're a better, if your gut is happy, you are happy, you're a better dater, you're a better partner, better parent. So I just want to cover some basics of how gut health is literally, how you have health. It affects every system in your body your brain, your skin, your organs, digestion, obviously pretty much everything. So I just want to cover some basics in case it will help you out. So I just want to cover some basics in case it will help you out.

Speaker 1: 0:44

And for those that don't know, I am a functional medicine certified health coach. I figured I would just let all the other health coaches out in the world take care of this for everyone, but I have several gut issues that I'm working on again with a functional medicine doctor. So it just reminded me and she also offered a class and she reminded me of all this stuff I used to know to do and stopped doing so. Now that I'm relearning everything, I just really feel the need to pass this on. I don't have clients anymore. I only had clients when I was getting my certification. I just love sharing the knowledge and helping people. That is why I'm doing this as well. So, first things, first people. That is why I'm doing this as well. So, first things first.

Speaker 1: 1:26

If you are belching, get heartburn, have acid reflux, have pain after eating, have constipation or diarrhea, you have an issue with your gut. These are not normal things and it's also the root cause, as I said earlier skin issues, brain fog, adhd, extra weight gain, but for the gut and digestion specifically. So the first thing we did when we were learning to be health coaches was go on elimination diet If you haven't heard of this before. You basically cut out for three weeks. You cut out a lot of stuff that causes issues for people. So no gluten, no dairy, no alcohol, no caffeine, no sugar, no soy, no corn was added recently because of the way it's processed here in the US. You eliminate all that. You have grass fed meats, you eliminate chicken. There's a bunch of stuff, but you do it for three weeks and then you see how you feel and then you can reintroduce each food, one at a time, just to see, and then, if you have a stomach issue right after you eat it, then you know you have an issue with that type of food and I lost 10 pounds the first time I did this I had, and previous to that I didn't know it wasn't normal, I was.

Speaker 1: 2:41

I went on a cruise one time for 11 days and never went number two that's, and I didn't even know that was a bad thing. Obviously it didn't feel great. But if you watch Bachelor in Paradise at all, there was a woman who wasn't going to the bathroom and they actually had her leave the show, go to a hospital to make sure she could finally have a bowel movement. So little did I know. It was like, probably pretty dangerous of me as well. But once I got home I was a little better.

Speaker 1: 3:08

But all that to say, when I was in my health coach training and actually everything was flowing and digesting properly and eating well, like every all that extra stuff just left TMI, sorry. So at the same time you're eliminating all the bad foods, you're eating a lot more of the good foods and the intent is to eat a rainbow of foods, colors of food, especially vegetables, some fruits, but eating lean meats and lots and lots of vegetables of different colors will help feed the good gut bacteria as well. And also, if you weren't aware, ideally you have one to three bowel movements a day. I know most people don't have that, but when you're eating this way, it actually happens and that's how you clear out all the toxins from your body. So give it a try, see how much better you feel and you'll be more inclined to keep doing it, which is what I've done, especially the second time around, after relearning all this stuff.

Speaker 1: 4:11

And in addition, there are tests you can take. The GI map or the gut zoomer are both stool tests. You can get it through your doctor, through insurance potentially, and then there are some sites where you can just order on your own and have someone interpret the results. You can go online and get the results as well. See how to interpret the test. And what you can find out from these tests is that if you have parasites which are extremely common, and probably everyone has overgrowth of bad bacteria small intestinal bacterial overgrowth I'm in, or was in, two Facebook groups of over 140,000 people who have that issue and it's just one of the symptoms there are many things going on with the gut.

Speaker 1: 4:54

I also have overgrowth of two bad bacteria and then I have two good bacteria, which one is non-existent and one is like very minimal. So all of that combination does not make for a healthy gut and unfortunately conventional medicine doesn't know a lot about this or help. There's GI doctors, but for three months I went through all the conventional medicine doctors trying to figure out what was going on. All the tests come back that everything's fine, but obviously the way you feel is not fine. So I highly recommend using a functional medicine doctor, a naturopathic or holistic doctor, to help you figure out your gut issues.

Speaker 1: 5:37

They can run the test, like I said, and they actually understand a lot more because they look at the whole person, the whole body, not just bits and pieces of each body part. And the gut is the root cause of most everything. Your immune system is in your gut. Like I said a few times now, it's definitely the most important part of your health. Another area my functional medicine doctor, who is Dr True out of Atlanta. She also suspects some mold exposure, which is another cause for your gut to not be working properly. So that's another benefit of all the testing and working with functional medicine doctors and they don't just guess, they actually look at all your labs. They call for a lot more labs. One company as well as Function Health. They'll do annual well, it's biannual testing of different labs and you can sign up at Function Health. I have an affiliate link to it. I can add it, but I told people about it before I started getting the affiliate link. I told people about it before I started getting the affiliate link. But yeah, it's just, you know you get a better picture. And then I said, like the stool test, they send you the stool test to your house directly, so you do it in your privacy. You mail it off to like FedEx or UPS, so you don't have to it's nothing embarrassing or weird about it Collecting all the specimens for these tests. And then Function Health you actually go to a lab in your town and they schedule everything for you. It's super easy and you get a better picture of what's really going on.

Speaker 1: 7:12

And going back to food, you know, after the elimination diet, just eating in general, if you read, ideally you shop around the edges of the grocery store and don't eat packaged foods at all. If you do choose to eat packaged foods, make sure you read the ingredient list and not just the like fat and calorie content. You want to read the longer the ingredient list, the more processed and the more harmful it is to your health. So you want to look for ingredient lists that only have like five ingredients or less and just so you know, there are like 65 words for sugar and now they had to add added sugars to labels. So if you look at the content, you know calories on there. They add how many sugars and they add how many added sugars. So the more added sugars, the unhealthier the food is as well. So definitely read labels before you buy food.

Speaker 1: 8:03

There's also toxins in the environment that we can get into, and drinking filtered water is best. Epic water filters are really good. So many things you can do. But another part of the elimination diet is eliminating the toxins, and that helps you lose weight because your body is smart enough to realize that it's getting a toxic overload. So it starts maintaining water weight to deal with a water soluble toxins in your body. So as soon as you release all those toxins, you lose all that water weight as well. That's how I lost 10 pounds Both times I did the elimination diet. You lose all that excess toxic waste.

Speaker 1: 8:42

So obviously this information has not been exhaustive, but I just want to give you little tidbits of things to think about and if you like this content and want to hear more or have any questions about it, I mentioned in my mid-roll message about sending a text those texts it's at the top of each description of each episode and it's anonymous to me. I only read the information. I don't know who you are, where it was sent from, I can't reply to it. But if you have any questions or comments about this topic or anything else or ideas for other topics, please reach out and if you like this episode, be sure to tell your friends about it and rate it as well, and hope you have a great day, thank you.