Ep.81: The hidden cost of your GI symptoms

Have you ever told yourself, “It’s not that bad , I’ll deal with it later” when it comes to your gut symptoms (or anything?)?

I get it because I did the same thing. For years, I brushed off my bloating, constipation, and fatigue, hoping they’d go away. But ignoring those whispers from my gut eventually led to bigger problems: SIBO, Hashimoto’s, a slowed metabolism, and histamine issues.

Here’s the truth: your symptoms aren’t random. They’re signals & your gut waving a red flag asking for support. When you ignore them, they snowball into more complicated issues that are harder (and more expensive) to fix down the road.

In this episode, I’m sharing:

• How ignoring “small” gut symptoms can turn into bigger health issues
• The snowball effect of reflux, constipation, bloating, and diarrhea
• Why functional medicine isn’t just about supplements
• My personal journey of what happened when I didn’t listen to my gut
• Why your symptoms are signals, not something to fear

And for the very first time, I’m offering something brand new: the Gut Health Audit.

👉 This is the most affordable way to get eyes on your case! Just $89! You’ll complete a comprehensive intake form, and I’ll personally review it to identify the gaps in your care, highlight patterns, and share your next steps. Whether that’s with us in gutTogether® or something totally different, you’ll finally have clarity on what to do next.

But spots are limited, only 20 spots are available (and as a podcast listener you're the first to hear about it!)

Connect with Dr. Heather 

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gutTogether program website 

Transcript

Dr. Heather Finley: 0:03

Welcome to the Love Your Gut Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Heather Finley, registered dietitian and gut health specialist. I understand the frustration of dealing with GI issues because I've been there and I spent over two decades searching for answers for my own gut issues of constipation, bloating, and stomach pain. I've dedicated my life to understanding and solving my own gut issues. And now I'm here to guide you. On this podcast, I'll help you identify the true root causes of your discomfort. So you can finally ditch your symptoms for good. My goal is to empower you with the knowledge and tools you need so that you can love your gut and it will love you right back. So if you're ready to learn a lot, gain a deeper understanding of your gut and find lasting relief. You are in the right place. Welcome to the love your gut podcast.

0:55

Hello, and welcome back to the next episode of the Love Your Gut podcast. Today I want to have a very real conversation with you, and in order to do that, I feel like I need to start with my own story. If you go back and listen to some of the beginning episodes of this podcast, episode one and several of the first episodes, I talk through very specific details of my own gut issues. But I wanna bring up something that I haven't really talked about before, and that is that for years I brushed off my gut issues. I told myself that the bloating, the constipation, the fatigue were just normal because I. Kind of got to the point where I started believing that they were normal, because I really just didn't know anything different. I thought that I had tried everything. I had started feeling crazy every time I went to the doctor, and they told me, everything looks normal. We don't know why you're feeling this way. It's all in your head. You're stressed, you're depressed, whatever. Whatever it was. I thought that maybe. I probably just needed to be more regimented with my diet, or maybe I needed to exercise more, or maybe it was just stress. And for a while I just kept pushing through, thinking maybe one day it'll just change, or maybe I'll just get used to feeling like this. And the thing is, symptoms don't just disappear when you ignore them. They build, especially if you start believing that you're never gonna feel better. I had a really interesting conversation with another practitioner on a podcast that's gonna be coming out in a couple weeks about this very specific thing and that part of. Healing is being on board with the fact that you can actually heal and believing that that is possible. And I believe that because you're listening to this podcast and because you're searching for information you have. Even if it's a tiny, tiny piece of you, you believe that you can heal too, even if you've tried everything, even if you've been told everything's normal, even if you've gone and had a colonoscopy and everything was fine, it, I truly believe that if you are searching for information, there's a small piece of you. Even if it feels like the size of a mustard seed, that feels like you can get better. So in back to my case, in my case, especially in my early twenties, my symptoms were their worst. It was right after my dad had passed away. It was a really stressful season. I had graduated college. I was in grad school. I was working my first job as a clinical dietician. Really had a lot of imposter syndrome about how I couldn't even help myself and how could I help these patients that were sicker than me in the hospital and because I was doing all the wrong things and really just ignoring my symptoms, thinking that they might get better on their own, or maybe I just never would feel better. They snowballed into sibo. My thyroid start started really struggling. I developed Hashimoto's. My metabolism went crazy. It slowed to a crawl because I was way undereating, way over exercising. I was training for triathlons at the time. I've shared some pictures on social media before where my face was just. So puffy. My body was so inflamed and I felt like everything I did made my symptoms worse. I started reacting to more foods and was just getting worse. I developed histamine issues, was having crazy rashes. It made me feel like my body was just really rebelling against me, and maybe you can relate to that too. So looking back now, I can see those early gut symptoms where my body literally just waving a red flag saying. What you are doing is not working, please pay attention. But I just didn't know what to do and I wish, of course, like looking back, I wish I knew what I know now. Back then. But I just didn't have the tools or the framework to support my body or to really even listen to it. I was so disconnected from my body because I felt like I was working against my body, and my body was working against me. And the first step really is getting on the same page and. Telling yourself like we are starting this thing. Whether it's a protocol or a dietary change or whatever it is, like we are working together on this. We are not working against each other. And I see the exact same story playing out in so many women and clients that we work with. They start with really. Small gut issues, a little reflux, a little bloating. A year later, they're worse. They have more food sensitivities, more exhaustion, more hormone problems, even autoimmune conditions. And so today I wanna walk you through why ignoring your gut symptoms doesn't make them go away. How these symptoms can snowball into bigger issues. Why supplements or elimination diets alone don't work? And then how you can finally stop guessing and start moving forward. And just some easy ways to do that. So first, let's get into why ignoring the symptoms can cost you more. And here's what I've learned. Ignoring gut symptoms is kind of like ignoring a slow leak in your house. At first, it's just a little drip, it's a little annoying. But you can live with it. But if you leave it long enough, that drip turns into water damage mold. Suddenly you're not just fixing a drip, you're tearing out walls, replacing floors, spending thousands of dollars, and your gut works the same way. So at first, your body's just whispering like a little reflux after meals, occasional bloating, constipation. It's so easy to dismiss because it's like, oh, it's just, these little symptoms. But those whispers are your body's way of asking for help. And like I said earlier, when you learn to take those signals as cues and just a messages asking for help, your perspective can be a little bit different. If you don't respond, those whispers can turn into screams, fatigue, chronic inflammation, hormone chaos, autoimmune conditions, and I learned this the hard way in my own body, and I see it every single day in our clients. I spoke with a woman a couple months ago who I had had a call with three years ago. No joke three years ago. And at the time she was like, ah, I just don't know if I wanna jump into this. It's not that bad. I think I'm gonna just trial some things on my own. I'm gonna go see my GI doctor. And for the last three years she has been trying to DIY some gut stuff and. Has spent so much money on random supplements, random one-off appointments with her naturopath GI doctor appointments. She calls me three years later, so this is a couple months ago, and she's like, obviously hindsight is 2020, but she's like, I really wish I would've just addressed this a long time ago. And had like dedicated support. And again, hindsight is 2020. You don't know what you don't know at the time. But let's just break this down into some real world examples. So acid reflux is a common one. Most people will just pop a Tums, get prescribed a PPI, but that doesn't solve the root cause. Over time, reflux can damage the esophagus. This can lead to serious complications like Barrett's esophagus tissue damage. Long-term PPI use is one of the most common reasons that we see clients with. A lot of mineral issues. Low iron, low zinc, low calcium, osteoporosis. B12 issues that leads to anemia, fatigue, brittle bones, even neurological symptoms, and low stomach acid makes you more prone to bacterial overgrowth and infections. Next one would be constipation. I hear women say all the time, I've been constipated forever. It's just how my body is. But constipation is never just normal. When stool sits in your colon, toxins and hormones like estrogen get reabsorbed. And that's how constipation contributes to things like acne and PMS and painful cycles and even fertility struggles. And then of course, let's not forget the physical damage. So hemorrhoids, fissures, pelvic floor dysfunction. So what starts is like a little constipation can eventually lead to hormonal chaos and even structural problems. The most common symptom that we see is bloating. The joke of which is not funny by the way of I look six months pregnant after eating and I'm not pregnant. But bloating is not normal when it's left unchecked. This is often a sign of poor digestion or imbalances in your gut, whether it's SIBO or in your large intestine, and as people try to fix it on their own. By starting to cut out foods, eventually they're eating five stay foods and they're actually starving their microbiome, which is making them more nutrient depleted and making things worse. And this causes a lot of emotional frustration as well. Food fear, anxiety of social situations, always worrying about how you're gonna feel after a meal. And then the last one that I'll mention is diarrhea. So living with chronic diarrhea is exhausting, and it's not just IBS, it's your body saying something is inflamed, something is infected, something's imbalanced, and the cost is malabsorption. You lose electrolytes, you lose nutrients, you lose energy, you lose confidence. We have a client right now that. Was having horrible diarrhea in the morning and it affected their ability to leave their house at specific times. So over time, your immune system can get weakened, can leave you really vulnerable to infections, burnout, illness. So this is the snowball effect, and none of this is meant to scare you. It's just the reality of what we can brush off as normal, can really grow into a bigger issue. And this is what we see. harder, more expensive problems. But I wanna talk about the real issue here is something that I hear all the time is I tried functional medicine, but it didn't work. I spent hundreds of dollars on supplements and I didn't get better. And here's the truth. Functional medicine is not about supplements. Supplements are tools. True functional medicine is digging really deep to ask why are symptoms happening? What's underneath the reflux, the constipation, the bloating, the estrogen dominance, the fatigue, you name it, symptom. How are minerals, hormones, nervous system function, gut motility, digestion? The immune system all playing a role. Supplements alone will not regulate your nervous system. They will not help your body to feel safe enough to heal. They won't get you out of a fight or flight state. They also can't completely renourish your body. Only food can do that. They won't retrain your motility. They won't help you slow down and chew your food. They won't address. Major mineral imbalances that are throwing your gut off. If you're continuing to not eat enough, if you're continuing to deplete minerals because you're so stressed, and that's why piecing this together on your own just doesn't work. You're trying to solve a puzzle with half of the pieces missing by just taking supplements. And don't get me wrong, we love supplements. We use various supplements with our clients depending on what makes sense, for example. If you have h pylori, we're going to use supplements temporarily to address that. Or if you have mineral imbalances, we will use various minerals or even a custom blend to help support you. But still, the question becomes. Why? Why do you have the mineral imbalances? Do you have low stomach acid? Are you really stressed? Are you eating the same five foods? Why do you have h pylori? Do you have low stomach acid? Are you getting it from your spouse? What are we actually gonna do? To prevent this from coming back so that this isn't a recurrent thing. We're not necessarily trying to follow the pill for an ill mentality that I think both conventional and functional medicine do. Okay. Interrupting this episode really quick to tell you something that I am so excited about. I created the gut health audit, and this was based off of feedback that I got from you guys. I'm so excited about it because it answers the biggest question that I hear all the time. What is gonna be different this time? And what is missing from what I've previously done. So with the gut health audit, it's gonna identify gaps in your current care. It's gonna give you solutions and insights directly For me, I'm gonna be personally reviewing all of these. You're not getting any generic protocol or AI generated advice. You're getting. My eyes on your story, my interpretation of your patterns, my recommendations for your next steps, and then it will show you your next step forward that might be working with us and get together, or it might be something totally different, that better fits your needs. I'm not here to just tell everybody that they need to do our program. I'm gonna tell you exactly what I think would be helpful for you. So this is only$89. You'll fill out a comprehensive intake form. It'll cover the five key systems that you have to address for optimal digestion. I will personally review it and send you an analysis and recommendations for what to do next. So this is basically like getting a gut roadmap from me without committing to the full program. And then of course, if you decide that you want to jump into the program, you can apply. You$89 to any of our offers. So I've never offered anything like this before and I wanna keep it personal. There's only 20 spots and once they're gone, they're gone. And so if you've been listening, wondering what's really going on with my gut, what's missing? This is your chance to find out. So I'll put the link in the show notes. You can grab one of the 20 spots, and if you're listening to this on the day that this episode is released, you are the first person to hear about this. So go and jump on one of those spots if you would like to take one. All right, so now back to the episode. So now let's come back to the cost of waiting. Obviously there are physical. Consequences of waiting. Your symptoms don't just magically improve. They escalate, just like in my story, small gut issues turned into Hashimoto's, histamine issues, metabolism problems, sibo, et cetera. But financially, you spend so much money chasing answers, doctors' visits, supplements, books, powders, quick fixes, whatever you name it. And most of them don't work because they're not. Personal to you, and then emotionally for me, this was the biggest cost. You feel so disconnected from your body. You lose trust in yourself. You lose trust in other people. Let's be honest, you've probably lost trust in a lot of providers. You say no to things because you don't feel well. You're irritable with your family because you're exhausted. And then eventually you end up saying, the words that I hear is, I wish I would've done this a long time ago. So what actually works? What works is a step-by-step, root cause approach, a roadmap that rebuilds your digestion from the top down. That restores mineral balance, that addresses motility, that integrates. Your liver, your hormones, your nervous system, which is what we do in gut together, and this is why our clients often come to us having tried so many different things and are able to finally find relief. Because we're not just handing them a food elimination or a supplement plan. We've seen women who were bloated for 10, 20, 30 years be able to enjoy food again. We've seen people that thought that they could never eat gluten again, being able to eat gluten or people that hadn't eaten out at a restaurant in years able to do that again. But most importantly, I think the biggest win is energy, confidence, and joy that return. So here is what I want to leave you with. Instead of seeing your symptoms as your enemy, they are signals, they're your body waving the red flag and asking for help. You can either fight against those symptoms, you can numb them, ignore them, silence them, or you can lean in and listen to them. And when you listen early, hearing them or healing them. Is so much easier. So I want you to just think about like, what is the cost of my GI issues and am I outsourcing a lot of healing to the belief that either I can't heal, I've already tried everything, or this supplement plan didn't work for me, and realizing that there's probably a lot of gaps in your treatment. One year from now, you can either be chasing symptoms, you can be free from them, but it really truly starts with your belief that. It is possible and that you can heal regardless of how many symptoms you have. So start when they're whispering your gut and your future self. Well, thank you. Just felt compelled to share this because of my own experience and just how many clients are coming to us so sick because they've waited. For so long. So don't let that hold you back. And as always, I'm here with any questions that you have. See you next week on the next episode of the Love Your Gut podcast.