Running Reconnected with Dr. Angie and Kevin Brown
Dr. Angie and Kevin Brown are here to help runners reconnect to themselves to become physically and mentally stronger runners through conversations about training, mindset, nutrition, health and wellness, family, and all the crazy things that life throws at us. The lessons that we learn from running can carry over into all aspects of our life (and vice versa), and we are here to explore those connections through current research, our experiences, and stories from real people out on the roads and trails, so that you can become a physically and mentally stronger runner and achieve the goals that matter to you.
Running Reconnected with Dr. Angie and Kevin Brown
411: Unlock Your Potential Through Gut Health with Dr. Nikki DiNezza: How Tending to Your Gut Can Fuel Your Energy, Recovery, and Resilience
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In this empowering and eye-opening episode, I sit down with the incredible Dr. Nikki DiNezza—a true expert in the world of gut health. Whether you're a runner, a health-conscious human, or someone who’s just trying to feel better in your own skin, this conversation will resonate with you.
Dr. Nikki shares her fascinating journey into gut health and explains how our digestive system is so much more than what we often think. We talk about why runners, in particular, need to prioritize their gut—especially if you've ever struggled with GI distress on a long run (yep, we’ve all been there!).
Together, we explore the vital role of fiber, why stress management is essential for your gut and nervous system, and the truth about probiotics and prebiotics. Dr. Nikki also gets real about common pitfalls—like jumping too quickly into elimination diets or getting overwhelmed by functional medicine rabbit holes.
What I love about this conversation is how practical and holistic it is. We talk about mindful eating, training your gut (just like you train your body!), and tuning in to what your body needs—without falling into restriction or fear.
💡 Whether you're looking to improve your digestion, optimize performance, or just feel better day to day, you’ll walk away with actionable tips and a renewed sense of connection with your body. Dr. Nikki is all about helping people become “citizen scientists” of their own health—and I couldn’t agree more.
Dr. Nikki DiNezza is a functional medicine practitioner and the founder of Infinity Holistic Healthcare. She’s also the creator and lead instructor of the popular program FODMAP Freedom in 90 Days, where she helps people struggling with IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) and SIBO (Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth) finally flatten their bloated bellies and poop like champions—without giving up the foods they love.
She’s passionate about helping people get their lives back through holistic, evidence-based approaches to gut health.
👉 Connect with Dr. Nikki:
🌐 Website: https://www.fodmapfreedom.com/
📩 Email: doctor@fodmapfreedom.com
📷 Instagram and YouTube: @gut.microbiome.queen
00:15 Dr. Nikki’s story and how she became a gut health expert
01:33 How stress impacts your gut, your health, and your recovery
02:49 Why gut health matters so much for runners
03:31 Gut health 101: the basics we all should know
09:01 Probiotics vs. prebiotics: what to know and how to use them
17:30 Why fiber is your gut’s best friend (and how to get more of it!)
24:29 The tricky side of fiber and food sensitivities
27:39 When elimination diets help… and when they hurt
35:31 Why tracking your nutrition can reveal powerful patterns
41:54 The often-overlooked role of protein in digestive and muscle health
43:26 How to “train” your gut like you train for a race
56:40 The surprising links between gut health, blood sugar, and sleep
01:00:05 Angie + Nikki’s go-to tips for better digestion today
This episode is packed with takeaways you can start applying right away. It’s one of those conversations that sticks with you—and might just change the way you think about your gut, your health, and your running!
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Today we're diving into a topic that affects so many runners on and off the run, yet often gets overlooked until it's causing major issues. We're talking about gut health, and trust me, this is not just about mid run bathroom emergencies. Today I'm joined by the incredible Dr. Nikki Deza, a gut health expert and nutritional therapy practitioner who helps people heal from chronic bloating IBS and sibo. Without having to eliminate every food under the sun. She's also the founder of the FODMAP Freedom Program and fun fact, a talented painter whose artwork now decorates her office walls thanks to a pandemic era creative spark. In this episode, we talk about the real connection between your gut. Your nervous system, your running performance, and your overall health. You'll learn why so many runners struggle with GI issues, how to actually feed your gut microbiome because it's not just about probiotics and how stress, sleep, and even sunlight impact your digestion. Whether you've been chasing food sensitivities for years or just want to run stronger and feel better, this conversation is packed with insights and plenty of laughs you won't wanna miss. So let's dive in. All right. Welcome to the show today. I am so excited to welcome Dr. Nikki Deza to the podcast. What's up, Nikki? Hi, what's up Angie? Good to be here. Thank you so much for joining us. Nikki is a gut health expert and I'm so excited to talk all things gut with you. But for our listeners that dunno you yet, tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, and who do you help.
NikkiOh my goodness. Yeah, so I primarily help people with tummy problems, if that wasn't abundantly clear. Most of the people I work with have gone down the rabbit hole of going to three GI doctors, five naturopaths. They've tried all the things and a lot of these people have received the diagnosis of irritable bowel syndrome or sibo or candida, leaky gut, one of the more integrative, sexy diagnoses. At the end of the day, these people are struggling with bloating, indigestion, pooping problems of every shape, size, color, and form you can imagine, whether it be constipation or diarrhea, and they just don't feel good. And that's where I come in and oftentimes help them diversify their diet, which is a really big problem in this community. People hack out foods left and right. And they're looking for the trigger food or the culprit food, and now they've whittled their diet down to nothing. And I'm the person who gets the fun job of helping them reintroduce all of the things that are painted behind me. So that's a little bit about what I do.
AngieYeah. So for all of you that are listening to this podcast, instead of watching, she's got a gorgeous background filled with all sorts of paintings of fruits and veggies and all sorts of fun stuff. So who painted all of those, did you, I. Paint. Yeah, I did. Really? Oh, that's so fun. Yeah. That's so fun. So
Nikkifunny enough, the very short version of a long story is that this was a covid lockdown hobby. Okay. Turned into decorating the office. I had the realization maybe about two months into the lockdown that I was much more stressed than I was consciously aware of. I thought the whole couple of months in the beginning, I was like, man, I'm crushing it. I know the world is ending, obviously, but I'm hanging in there. It's fine. I'm not anxious, I'm not depressed. I'm doing fine. But my body screamed at me and said, girl. Now we need to talk. And I was losing copious amounts of hair.
Just
Nikkihandfuls of hair. And I did the kind of cliche functional medicine thing, and I got a bunch of testing done. I checked my hormones, I checked my thyroid, I checked my iron. Everything looked fine. Everything on paper was squeaky clean. And I finally just had to swallow the difficult pill of realizing it was quote unquote all in my head. And I was more stressed than I realized. And so I picked up acrylic painting during the pandemic. Cool. And did it help? It did. Yeah. Yeah. Fortunately, unfortunately, like it's laughable. 'cause again, like it's hard to admit that to yourself when you're in the throes of not feeling good or having a symptom like that, but it really did help. That's great. And now I have a beautiful backdrop for when I do podcasts. You do. And YouTube videos, so it's all right.
AngieI
Nikkilove
Angieit. So let's jump into kind of our topic at hand here is like, why are we talking about gut health on a running podcast? And my very quick and easy answer is, lots of runners have gut issues and not just on the run, but also just in our daily lives. And it's very important. Gut health is extremely important for us, as we absorb nutrients and all sorts of stuff. But, runners specifically have some very interesting gut issues, which I'm not sure how familiar you are with like, our running specific stuff with people having. Some very interesting GI stuff on the runs, which can be very
Nikkidiarrhea. Namely mid run.
AngieYes. Like the runner trots, I think is one of the things that they, someone calls them. But let's talk about gut health specifically. Let's start in general, like why is gut health so important for us as humans? Yeah. And then we'll kinda narrow it down.
NikkiYeah. Start broad with humans and then narrow it down to runners specifically. Yeah. And I think you hit the nail of the head. Gut health. Gut health is having a moment right now. You know how cauliflower has had a moment Yes. For the last decade or so and like they're making everything outta cauliflower now. Yeah. I feel like gut health is similarly having a moment right now. That's good. It is good to a degree, like maybe we'll talk about that at some point, but we're having this like renaissance of understanding of, whoa. The gut is connected to literally everything in the whole body. Yeah. Either indirectly by way of our nutrition, right? Like here you are eating all of these good proteins and carbs and vitamins and minerals and you are eating those with the assumption, with the hope that you will absorb them and that you could build muscle and build healthy tissues from those nutrients. But if you are mal absorbing or maldi digesting that food. The stuff you're putting in your mouth isn't making it to your muscles. So there's that sort of that link with it. But also inflammation. Like even I'm thinking of things like delayed onset muscle soreness or your ability to recover from a workout. That's gonna be largely influenced by how inflamed you are. And a lot of inflammation is cooked up in the gut. Either directly from the foods we eat or because 70% of our immune system hangs out in and around the gut. And if those immune cells get ticked off, then you're off to the races with an inflammatory immune response. And that can impact all areas of the body, including the muscles, but also, brain, skin, thyroid, lungs, heart, you name it. Yeah. So it's pretty important. And then, like you said, the runner's trots, yeah. The gut issues themselves. Certainly if you have bloating, indigestion, diarrhea, constipation, then you should care about this topic very much.
AngieYeah, I totally agree. And it's funny when you say cauliflower is having its moment. I remember this meme that came out that said, honey. Cauliflower can be pizza, you can be anything.
NikkiI dunno if you saw that. I might've seen the same one. Yeah.
AngieI love it. I love it.
NikkiIsn't it the truth?
AngieYeah, it is the truth. And I love what you say here too, because I think that as more research emerges, we are starting to see how important the gut is, but not just the gut, but all of these things in our body and how everything is connected and everything goes back to stress. And then there's our gut and our nervous system. All of these things are connected. And depending on what corner of social media you like to hang out in, you'll hear more about one thing than the other. But ultimately, we are one human body and the gut is really important and plays a huge role in that. So what do we have to know in order to have a healthy gut? If I asked you what are some key things that I need to do as a runner or as a just a person to have a healthy gut? Gut, what would you say?
NikkiYeah. Yeah. So I'm gonna answer this question, assuming you know nothing about the gut. Okay. Sounds good. And that way, like anybody who's listening right now, no matter what level they're at, then we've got 'em covered. Yeah. So there's the tissue of the gut that is made up of your cells. So like the cells that make up the lining of the stomach. The cells that make up the accessory organs like the pancreas and the liver and the gallbladder, the cells of the colon. But there are also a lot of bacteria and yeast and even parasites and viruses that live in the gut, and that's their permanent home. And we collectively call them the microbiome Now. The thing that we have the most research on, and the thing that is the most well established out of those different kind of critters I rattled off is the microbiome that is the bacteria. But know that there are yeasts and parasites and viruses and other things like ArcHa that live in there. We're gonna assume we're talking mostly about bacteria just 'cause that's where more of the research is at.
Okay.
NikkiBut when we feed those gut bacteria, they make cool beneficial compounds for us so they can make things that lower inflammation and educate our immune system and help with absorption and heal the gut lining. AKA that, that idea of leaky gut.
Like
NikkiThe permeability of the gut wall. You can heal that with stuff that your microbes make for you. But they only ever make those good beneficial compounds for you if you feed them. So you have to be a good shepherd to your microbiome. And that's where a lot of us as human hosts are failing at that job. Okay. Dietary fiber is the biggie here. We need to get, again, all the stuff painted behind me. We need to get squash and apples and cherries and guacamole and onion and garlic, and all of these primarily plant foods. And fiber foods and feed our microbiome that way. And unfortunately, oh, I was just gonna say about 95% of the American public does not get enough dietary fiber. Wow. So that means 95% of people are not feeding their microbiome and being good shepherds to their microbiome like we maybe should. And then we wonder why everybody feels like crap. We all have brain fog, fatigue, aches and pains, chronic diseases, diabetes, hypothyroidism, whatever it might be. It's, I, it's probably not coincidental. And a lot of times it is connected to the gut.
AngieYeah. I definitely agree. I think that, when we think of bacteria, oftentimes we think bacteria are bad, right? Like bacteria is a bad thing. And so I love that you point out like, these are good bacteria that we really need and we have to feed the bacteria because we've heard about. Probiotics, but I think that less people are. So probiotics are actually the bacteria themselves, right? Yes. Like when you take a probiotic supplement, you are putting bacteria into your gut, but not as many people are familiar with prebiotics co. So can you speak a little bit more to prebiotics?
NikkiYeah. And I'll mention really quick I'm not anti probiotics. Like I have an empty bottle right here on my desk. Yeah. However, the thing about probiotics that a lot of people don't understand is that they are pooped out after you stop taking them. So you can exert a beneficial yet largely temporary change on your microbiome. Yeah. By taking a probiotic capsule or eating something like yogurt, kimchi, kombucha, keefer, sauerkraut. That's gonna be largely temporary. So you can take it and it, again, it could be beneficial, it could absolutely help. But if you stop taking that probiotic, you're gonna poop out all of that probiotic in a matter of 10 days.
AngieOkay.
NikkiAnd the majority of it is gone within two or three days for that matter. Okay. But
Angieso quick question about that before we jump into prebiotics with my question. A lot of people think that they should be taking this probiotic supplement. So basically what I'm hearing you say is that your body then becomes dependent on it, be for it, and as soon as you stop taking it, then you, your body gets rid of those things. I've also, is that correct,
Nikkiish? Can I elaborate a little bit? Yes, absolutely. I may be oversimplified slightly. What I will say is if you judge the efficacy of a probiotic by the presence of that probiotic in the colon or the stool sample, so if I take lactobacillus acidophilus And I take a strain that I could track, and then I do stool testing to measure what is coming out in the stool sample. If you judge the success. Or failure of that probiotic by the presence of the bacteria. We're gonna poop it out within days of stopping that probiotic. However, I will say this, by introducing a new player into the ecosystem, we can manipulate the other good and bad, add medium bacteria and yeast and whatever else in that ecosystem. That some of those changes can be longer lasting than the presence of the probiotic strain itself. Okay. So that's the weird middle ground with probiotics is that if you look at a stool sample and you say, I don't have any lactobacillus, therefore I'm gonna take a pill with lactobacillus. You only get that as a transient effect. But if, if we had somebody with a candida overgrowth, a yeast overgrowth and we did probiotics as part of the treatment plan to get rid of the candida, then assuming that we address the root cause of the candida and we get, the nutrition, the antibiotic use, the whatever. Those probiotics could help with the treatment. And then when we take away the herbs or the probiotics, that person should be able to resume normal life without having a candida overgrowth because it was treated effectively with the help of the probiotics. Okay. It's complicated. That's a recurring theme for this whole episode is it's complicated. 'cause we've only really been studying the gut microbiome in, in any sort of. Bigger capacity for the last 20 or 30 years. And it, the field is just in its infancy compared to some of the other fields and things that we've been studying. Yeah.
AngieAbsolutely. And there's always nuance obviously with any, in any field. But one of the things I have heard about probiotics is that there are people that don't recommend taking probiotics because they can lead to an overgrowth of certain bacteria. Ah, and we're supposed to have these millions of bacteria that naturally occur in our gut. And if you're taking a probiotic, a lot of the good ones only have what, 20, 25 like at most. But most probiotic supplements have a lot less than that, have just a few strains and it can lead to a, an overgrowth of those. And then not as much diversity in the gut.
NikkiWhat's, I don't think I agree with that. Okay. I think. Going back to the main question probably is the idea of should everybody be taking a probiotic and should we like click on that Instagram ad? I don't, right? 'cause that's what it's, yeah. I don't think everybody needs a probiotic. And I think that for the purposes of maintaining your health, like if you feel pretty good and your gut is reasonably healthy, you could get a lot of mileage running, pun intended by the way, from things like yogurt. kefir kimchi, et cetera. And you probably don't need to go out and buy yourself a bottle. Where the bottled probiotics come in really handy is that we could be a lot more prescriptive with them because we do have some, not a ton, but we have some human clinical trials showing this particular strain is beneficial for constipation. This particular strain is helpful for c diff. This particular strain can help with candida. This particular strain can help with leaky gut, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. So that's I think, the difference. I think that everybody should be trying to get beneficial bacteria. Somewhere, and I think we should all be trying to feed our beneficial bacteria with fiber rich plant foods. It's just, do you need to spend the extra money on like a proprietary blend or specific strains, because you need to know that it has some efficacy for the condition or the symptom you're trying to target. Or could you just get away with having some Greek yogurt as part of your diet every day?
AngieYeah. Yeah. And I think that's true. Like a lot of people could get away with yogurt and some of these fermented foods that you're mentioning. Yeah. And the other thing is probiotics can be pretty expensive now as we liquid, liquid expensive. Yeah. As we wrap up like this probiotic conversation there's the ones that I've seen that are like in the refrigerated section and then there are capsule forms that don't need to be refrigerated. And again, someone once told me that the refrigerated forms are better because the ones that are in capsular forms. Are already dead. And so they're not actually effective. No, not true. Okay.
NikkiAnd actually that, that brings up an interesting, I'm aware of one study where they did this. So the question of does a probiotic need to be alive to be effective? Is something that we have to abate. We all have the assumption, understandably so that the probiotic needs to be alive in order to exert a benefit to the host. That might not be true. Interesting. There was at least one study, I believe out of Japan, where they intentionally killed the probiotic with heat. Before administering it. And it still worked regardless if it was dead or alive.
Huh.
NikkiAnd you could apply that same argument to people who say. A, again, another one that's having a moment right now is spore forming probiotics or soil-based probiotics. And what proponents of that world will say is that only the spore forming soil-based probiotics will survive the stomach acid and not the, and lactobacillus and bifidobacteria, these other types of probiotics do not, okay. Therefore, it's spore formers are bust. This is the only way we should do probiotics now. And it's first of all, that stands in direct. Conflict with the hundreds, if not thousands of human clinical trials demonstrating that lactobacillus and bifidobacterium are wildly effective and beneficial for the human host. Okay. But also, does it actually matter if the bifido or the lactobacillus in your probiotic or your yogurt dies before it gets to the intestines? At least with that one particular study, the answer might not be as solid of a yes as people wanna say. Just take your probiotics. I think we overcomplicate it.
AngieYeah. Don't we all like we overcomplicate so much nowadays.
NikkiHumans.
AngieYeah.
NikkiIt's part of the human condition. We just, I know we love to make things complicated. It's true. But but if I could circle this back around. So we talked about probiotics, right? And those are. The bacteria that we consume. Hoping that they will confer some sort of a benefit to our bodies. Then prebiotics, as you mentioned before, is a prebiotic is something that feeds your resident good bacteria. A lot of these are gonna be fibers, so things like high FODMAP foods have a lot of inulin and oligosaccharides and longer chain starches that we can't digest. And therefore they make it down to the colon and they're saved as a little snack for the gut bacteria. Okay. Which is nice. It's kinda like they get our leftovers. But there are other things like polyphenols, which is a class of flavonoids found in plant foods, and those also feed beneficial gut bacteria. So these would be things like berries, tea, coffee, dark chocolate capers, olives, like a lot of these antioxidant rich foods have polyphenols and those also exert a prebiotic effect. Even exercise has a prebiotic effect to some degree. It's maybe not gonna be the same as eating a peach, but exercise has been shown to diversify and strengthen our gut microbiome.
AngieOkay. Excellent. We have to eat more fiber. This is one of the statements that you mentioned before, like 95% of Americans, or you said, or was it humans? Americans. Yeah. Americans. Okay. 95% of Americans are deficient in fiber. So how do we go about getting more fiber into our diet?
NikkiYeah. And I'll throw out another stat from that same study. So 5% of people get enough dietary fiber. I am proud to be in the 5% club for the record. Nice. You would hope, given what I do, right?
Yeah.
Nikki33% of Americans believe that they are getting enough dietary fiber. But in fact are not. So as the kids would say, nowadays, 33% of people are d Lulu and they're not getting fiber. Yeah. Even though they've convinced themselves that they are, and that the remaining, I don't even know, I didn't calculate this very well. Six, what is it, 62% or whatever the remaining group of people are like, you know what? Screw it. I know. I'm not getting fiber, whatever. I'm just gonna be honest with myself. Yeah. So I think the first step in this journey is just to put your money where your mouth is and actually track it a little bit and just see, find out are you in the 5% club or are you not? Very good odds that you're not. Yeah. But the first thing is just having a come to Jesus moment with yourself and Yeah. Assessing if you are getting enough fiber. Then from there you could try to increase, but I'll put in a plug and I don't know how much you recommend nutrition tracking as part of what you do. But I think anybody who's trying to strive for better athletic performance. Probably is familiar with this idea, but there are free apps out the wazoo now. You've got MyFitnessPal. I love Chronometer personally. There's probably other ones that I'm neglecting, but we have so many free or really cheap smartphone apps where you can literally scan a barcode. If you eat a processed food that has a barcode, it's so easy. Just get yourself a $12 kitchen scale and a free chronometer app and you're off to the races and you can track for three, four days. And just see if you're getting enough fiber. So that's, I think the first. Step for people. Yeah. Then if you do find that you're coming up short as again, the majority of Americans are then really fruits and vegetables are gonna be the biggest thing for you to focus on. But I will also say that beans and lentils and legumes are gonna be good sources of fiber. Also, you just, you don't wanna go from eating zero fiber to eating like five servings of black beans a day and think that. That's the answer, right? Beads are gonna be gassy. And they ca they're very high FODMAPs, so they can be a little bit much for your tummy to get used to. So you might wanna introduce the ultra high fiber foods like beans and lentils a little bit more slowly. Okay. And don't go, totally ape it right in the beginning. Again, like a peach or a nectarine or some butternut squash or apples or whatever, fruit or vegetable. I think that would be a really good emphasis for most people.
AngieYeah. It's going to be a great idea anyway, to just get more natural, fresh. Foods into our diet as well. Yes. Like just for our overall health. So yeah. Yes, they are good for our gut and they also have so many other nutrients and vitamins and minerals that are going to help with inflammation and all the other things as well.
NikkiBingo. And that actually segues beautifully into something I wanted to bring up and that is the idea of eating a diverse diet. And not just overly relying on one or a few food sources. Yeah. Now, again, this is something I see a lot with people who have IBS or SIBO or Candida because they've been told that they need to do a really restrictive elimination diet, or maybe they got bogus food sensitivity testing done with their naturopath. And they were put out a really restrictive diet from there, but. The first name of the game and the easiest thing to work on is just making sure that you get the quantity of fiber necessary. Okay. So for women, for example, that's 25 grams of fiber per day. For men, I think it's 38 grams of fiber per day, if I'm remembering correctly. Okay. So they need more fiber than we do. Once you get to that point and you get in a rhythm and you have an understanding of how to get that quantity number. The next step is to focus on diversifying your fiber sources. Okay. And I'm gonna throw my uncle under the bus. I always talk about the poor man. I told him, I'm like Uncle Paul, you're famous. I talk about you all the time, but I'm not even joking. My uncle Paul, is one of the worst eaters I've ever seen. He will eat pizza, pasta, instant mashed potatoes. Maybe a hot dog, I don't know. But the only vegetable the man will willingly eat. Carrots. Okay. Nothing else. Broccoli has never touched his lips. Zucchini is a foreign word to him. You might as well be speaking Chinese if you say the word zucchini.
Yeah.
NikkiI'm greatly concerned for him and his microbiome health and his metabolic health. So it's a running gag in the family now that we're always trying to sneak vegetables into his diet. So for example, years ago so I have three uncles that live locally and everybody goes over to my mom's house for Thanksgiving every year. It was the first year we lived in North Carolina and we were over at my mom's house and we all decided to trick Uncle Paul and we got carrots and parsnips to chop up and like roast in the oven and that was gonna be the carrot dish. So I, being a liar, I made a big deal of it and I was like, look, uncle Paul, I got carrots and white carrots for you. So it's gonna be a special carrot dish this time. And I kid you not my uncle Timmy, who I love to pieces, but he is such a nudge. My uncle Timmy from the other room goes, aren't those pars snips? They look like pars snips to me. Those are pars snips. I was like, shut up Uncle Timmy. You're ruining it, dude. Damn it uncle. The jig is up. My uncle Paul knows, but we get him to eat the parsnips once a year on Thanksgiving. And that's something that I will treasure. But my point is, even if my uncle Paul eats 38 grams of fiber from carrots per day, he's only gonna feed the bacteria that really love carrots. Poor, the poor gut bugs that he's carrying around. In theory, if they're not dead by now, but the bugs that he's carrying around that would prefer an apple or a rupe or a grapefruit. They're either starving and emaciated or they're dead and long gone. I don't know at this point. But if you can get. The right quantity of fiber and you could get it from a wide variety. So you're getting a little bit of your fiber from avocado, a little bit from onion, a little bit from peaches, a little bit from mushrooms, a little bit from strawberries, a little bit from carrots, a little bit from whatever that is going to not only diversify the nutrition that you as a human being receive, right? 'cause you could get some vitamin C from the strawberries, some, zinc from the whatever. You can get many different nutrients for your body to benefit from, but you also get different types of fiber and polyphenols and plant compounds that different microbes are gonna benefit from. And now you're growing a diverse tropical rainforest of bacteria in your gut, and they could make a diverse array of beneficial compounds for you. Quantity first. Then variety is how you feel. Quantity
Angieand then variety. Okay. So what would you say to someone that has issues with certain foods? Because I know you mentioned FODMAPs before, and so can you define that term for us? Because I know that I've heard that term of the FODMAPs and people go on a FODMAP diet and there's certain people can't eat certain foods because it irritates them. Yeah. Can you speak a little bit and educate us there?
NikkiYeah. Yeah. So FODMAP is an acronym. It's, it stands for Fermentable, oligosaccharides. Monosaccharides or I'm sorry, fermentable, oligosaccharides. Disaccharides. Monosaccharides and Polyols. Okay. And it's basically these different types of indigestible carbohydrates that have prebiotic qualities and feed the gut microbiome. But they can be a bit irritating for sensitive tummies and people with IBS or SIBO who have a lot of what's called visceral hypersensitivity. Okay. Basically what happens is these prebiotic fibers act as an osmotic laxative, and they draw water into the bowel. Okay. And that's normal. That's not a bad thing. And again, they're not digestible by our enzymes and our machinery. So sometimes you'll hear that these are poorly digestible or malabsorbed and that's, yeah. That's the definition of a fun mouth. That's the point. But people say that like it's a bad thing and it's no, but that's just what it is. That's fiber for you, but. They draw water into the bowel and that can create distension and pressure and that could cause cramping. So you get this vicious cycle with people who have visceral hypersensitivity where they eat a high five map food. It draws water into the bowel, it puts pressure, outward pressure on the hose that is our intestines. Now the muscles and the nerve endings that surround the intestines feel that pressure and they go, oh my God. And they clamp down. And now that pressure and pain is 10 times worse because now you have the same amount of pressure, or I'm sorry, you have the same amount of contents in the intestines. But now the muscles are clamping down. So now it's 10 times worse, and now you could get bowel habit changes, you can get constipation, diarrhea, cramping, abdominal pain. Sensitivity like bloating. And these are all the symptoms that we see with IBS sibo. Okay. To a certain degree, it's understandable that a lot of people go on a mission to eliminate the trigger foods. If you observe with yourself enough times, oh, every time I eat wheat, I get cramping, bloating, pain, and diarrhea. That it makes logical sense to cut that out. But what ends up happening a lot of times is that people go too far down the rabbit hole and they restrict more and more until they're left with 20 foods in their diet. And now if they even look at a piece of onion, they blow up and are in pain. So it's this sticky situation. What I would prefer to do, and what I do in my work is I am. I'm hashtag blessed to never be the person to tell people to restrict, at least at this point in my career, I'm not the person who tells you to restrict more. I'm the person who helps you heal your gut, heal your microbiome, enhance your digestive capacity to a point where you can now tolerate those same high FOD map previously triggery foods.
AngieOkay. And that
Nikkiyou could have your cake and eat it too.
AngieOkay. So that makes me then ask and wonder about the whole idea of elimination diets in general. And I know that you and I had some brief conversations on Instagram about, functional medicine and testing and elimination diets, and I think that there's a lot of people out there that believe that a testing is necessary, and B, they need to start eliminating all of these things. I, I know I have a good friend that went on a, an elimination diet relatively recently, and. The things that she was, that was on, she did one of those tests. I don't know which one. Yeah. And then she got this list of foods that she's allowed to eat and then she's not allowed to eat anything else besides that. And she had to eat this very restrictive diet for a couple of weeks, I think. And then she could gradually start reintroducing things. But you're saying No, I don't tell people to eliminate, is generally not Okay. So can you walk us through this whole thing? And
Nikkiwhat I will say too is that part of it might be the people that I attract and the point and the journey that they're on by the time they find me. Okay. So there probably are some, like I'm picturing a more standard American diet eater kind of situation. Sure. As they're coasting through life, drinking coffee in the morning on an empty stomach.
And
Nikkithen they go to Panera for lunch and then they have, pizza and maybe a handful of baby carrots for dinner and then the cycle repeats. There is some merit to eliminating foods for a period of time and it doing that kind of experimentation. And I'm one of those I figured out that my body doesn't appreciate gluten. I'm pretty sure I have a celiac. I never got the endoscopy to test it, but I actually did a food sensitivity test years ago that included the celiac antibody on it.
And
Nikkinot only was it lit up like a Christmas tree Ooh girl, you don't do well with gluten. But I had the celiac antibodies on that test, so that was good enough for me. And I never would've done something like that, like had it not been for functional medicine testing and had it not been for playing with elimination diets for a little while at that point. Yeah. So it's not that it's all bad, it's just, it's like any other tool. It's like you could use a tool appropriately or you can overuse and abuse it.
Yeah. And
Nikkiwhere I see things go wrong, I think is that I. Again, oftentimes it's gonna be like a naturopath or an integrative doc or a functional doctor. And they get somebody in their door and they, the first thing they do is roll out with the food sensitivity test. It's a brand new patient. You barely had them do like a half-assed food diary out a back of a napkin for you. Yeah. You don't, you haven't looked at their vitamins, their minerals, their macros, their total calories. You don't even know what's going on. And they are then told, okay, here's a food list of bad, no, no red foods that you could never ever eat. And here's the 30 things that you are allowed to eat and now go forth and try not to develop disordered eating the process of this.
Yeah.
NikkiAnd meanwhile they probably had a lot of other lower hanging fruit that they could have worked on prior to getting to that point. Okay. So I think for me, I don't lead with food sensitivity testing. And I haven't in a lot of years, although there was a point in my career where I did, 'cause I, I was very enchanted. By this idea.
Yeah.
NikkiI don't lead with it anymore. I reserve that for when people are eating a reasonably balanced diet and they're getting most of their vitamins and minerals and fiber and protein from food. They're doing the things nutritionally they need to do. They're working on sleep, they're working on stress. They don't have crazy blood sugar issues. They're moving their body, they're getting, they're getting a lot of their ducks in a row and yet they still don't feel right.
Okay.
NikkiAnd then maybe we have that tool in the very back pocket, but I'm gonna be honest with you, using it this way. I maybe run like one food sensitivity test every four or five years now. Wow. It's that infrequent that I need to pull this outta my back pocket. Wow. The majority of what's going on with people can be corrected with nutrition, sleep, stress management, blood sugar regulation, making sure you know you're moving your body. These really like unsexy, unfun basic things.
AngieYeah. Yeah. It's wild. And that goes back to everything is connected. We just wrapped up our first in-person retreat this past weekend, which was amazing, and I had a couple ladies come in. And one of my big things was making sure that I was serving like delicious health, quote unquote healthy food. A diverse all sorts of delicious things. And one person came in and she said, she told me she has issues almost with everything that she eats. And then another person was asking me about what are the recipes? She's oh, this recipe, can you share? I'm like, don't worry, I'm gonna share everything at the end. I'll give you guys a Google doc. And she was talking to me, she's like one. And then the other person was like, yeah, I usually have issues and I haven't had any issues this weekend. Like all of the food that we've had has been delicious and so amazing. It has not triggered me. And there was another person sitting there. She said, yeah, me too. And I said I love,
Nikkiwas it the food or was it your life that was triggering you? God?
AngieAnd that's what I said. I said, I love that you're appreciating the food because I love, it's one of my love languages. I love cooking for people and people enjoying my food. But don't underestimate the power of your nervous system and all of this as well of you're here focusing on yourself, you're disconnected, you're stress free. Don't, yeah. Write about that part too.
Yeah. I think that
Angieso many people don't think about that because we are just walking around as little stress balls in our life and it's no wonder our guts are. Not happy with us or
Nikkistressed. Yeah, and I think you lightly touched on this maybe but the gut brain axis is the superhighway connecting our brain and our gut. Yeah. And I'll tell you, your gut doesn't do much of anything all on its own.
It's
Nikkigetting input from the brain by way of the vagus nerve and that gut brain axis and the vagus nerve is telling your stomach to make stomach acid. It's telling your gallbladder to release bile. It's telling the pancreas to make insulin. It's telling the intestines to contract and do motility and clear debris out of your small bowel and to poop. And all of these things are regulated by the vagus nerve or the gut brain axis in a broader capacity. But the thing is, you only get good vagal tone and you only get that vagus nerve activation and therefore all of the nice digestive benefits that come from it when you are vagus nerve believes that you are safe. And connected. And maybe even happy enough to digest your food and rest.
Yeah.
NikkiLike sitting down to eat a meal is a very vulnerable position for an animal to be in. And sleeping is really vulnerable. We basically are paralyzed from the neck down when we're in deep sleep. Yeah, that's a really big deal. And your nervous system needs to know that you are safe enough to sleep. But similarly, if you think of animals at like a watering hole or a giraffe that's putting its head all the way down to eat I guess that's a bad example. A zebra giraffes would be up in the trees. A zebra that's putting their head down to eat grass. You're putting your head down, that's a vulnerable position to be in. You're maybe not gonna see the lion that's about to attack you. So your vagus nerve is only gonna let you digest when you feel safe and connected enough to do but again, like you said, we're running around like little stress balls, chugging coffee on an empty stomach, running to the next meeting, shoving a granola bar in our face on the way to the gym. Running to the next meeting. Maybe skipping lunch altogether. Eating erratic times. Yeah. It's a nightmare for our digestion. And then we wonder why so many people have tummy problems.
AngieIt's so true. So going back to people that have irritation when it comes to eating certain foods, what would you suggest? Do they just start to find or try to find foods that don't irritate them? Do they start with certain ones? What would be, 'cause like one of the things that we talk about too inside of our program is, getting. All the things that we're talking about today, right? Getting more fruits and more vegetables and the importance of gut health. Especially as women going through perimenopause and menopause, with all these hormonal changes that are happening, it becomes even more important. And there's people that say, yeah, but when I eat cruciferous vegetables, I'm just, I'm gassy, I'm uncomfortable. Yeah. So what do we say to those people? Like, where do they. Start, what should they do? Yeah,
NikkiI think so a couple of things. They should join my program. There you go. That's the whole thing that I do for a living. Thanks. But to summarize I think a, you could try to still focus on nutrition and look for foods that you tolerate that could still fill nutritional holes. Okay. So if you do a few days of chronometer and you notice, wow, I do not eat any folate whatsoever. You don't have to start with beads and lentils and gassy foods to get folate. Maybe you start with lettuces and other stuff. Okay. Or, if you get gassy, I'm trying to think of another like very specific kind of nutrient. Theoretically, let's say that you weren't eating enough vitamin C. You could get vitamin C from broccoli, but what if you don't do well with broccoli? And you're not tolerating that and it's gonna make you gassy. What if we try to get your vitamin C from bell peppers? Or strawberries or guava or, some other fruit. So I think that you could still benefit from going on an app like chronometer, assessing where you're at again, like real truthful assessment of where you're at. Yeah. And I'm gonna pause and I'm gonna confess something to you. Hi, my name is Nikki and I'm a recovered vegetarian.
Oh,
NikkiI was a vegetarian from the age of 11 until 22. Okay. Which was, or no, 23. It was right around the age when I went gluten-free and at the time, dairy free. And I was starting to muck with my diet and I basically reintroduced meat because I was whittling my diet down in other ways. And I didn't wanna be left with only organic ice cubes to eat. So I did this flip flop where I went from eating a lot of gluten and dairy as a vegetarian to no gluten, no dairy, but then I had to work the meat back in.
But my
Nikkipoint is and I'm, I've, I really try, I'm not an egomaniac. It's not. It. It wasn't about that, but I still fell for the brainwashing enough that I believed in the core of my being, that my diet was intrinsically healthy, intrinsically perfect, because I was a vegetarian. So this is gonna sound so dumb, and I hate saying it now. I was a rower in high school and college. And in college, they had one of the nutrition or dietetic students come and give a presentation for our team every single year. And every year I largely tuned that nutrition student out. Because I thought I'm the healthiest eater on this team. This is the conversation that's not for me. It's for all of those jam oaks who eat garbage. I'm gonna go back to eating my hummus sandwich and I'm hunky dory. And now I look back and I'm like, Ooh, Nick. Oh, you sweet dummy.
Yes.
NikkiIf only you knew. I know, right? My diet was reasonably healthy, but I guarantee you, if I could go back in time and draw my own blood, I was definitely deficient in iron. B12, zinc. Protein. I tried to make up for the protein thing by eating unearthly amounts of nuts and seeds and trail mix. It's like I had stuff to work on, but something about my. By being brainwashed by diet dogma. Yeah. Or my ego or some combination thereof prevented me from really having that honest moment with myself and then looking at my nutrition. Yeah. So my point is, don't be the person who assumes that you're nutritionist. Fine. Please put your money where your mouth is. Yeah. And actually do a few days of tracking. I promise it will not kill you and it'll take you maybe five or six minutes per day to log your food. Yeah. It's really not hard with these smartphone apps. At least I have the excuse that this was the early two thousands and the apps and smartphones did not exist. Yeah. Yeah. So like I would've had to write it down on paper and then find some janky HTML coded website to go try to find a calculator on, or I would've had to do a dietician appointment. But yeah, it's so easy to do this. I. Forgive me, I forgot what my original point was because I got sidetracked on Don't be a dummy. Yeah. And don't let your ego get the better of you.
AngieYeah. But I think that's something that so many runners also, right? Like we as runners pride ourselves in being healthy and we run and we eat healthy. And I think that we do trick ourselves slash lie to ourselves a lot of times. I'm a coach. I do these things and sometimes I found okay, so I'll give you my confession here. As well, just a few weeks ago, maybe a month ago, at some point I was just noticing like my energy levels, I was more sore after my workouts. I'm like, what's going on? And so I did decide to, I was gonna track for a week. I don't typically track every day, but I do you agree that tracking can be a very useful tool when used for a short period of time to give us insights on what is actually happening here. And I so quickly, after a day, 'cause I know what I eat every day. Like I'm not, I eat basically the same things every day. And so I could. I tracked for a dent. I'm like, oh my gosh. Like I'm not eating enough carbs. Like I'm not eating enough carbs. 'cause like I've been so focused on protein and like all these other things. But that's
Nikkiokay because carbs are evil. Now didn't you get the memo from the keto and the carnivore community? The carbs are evil. So you are just doing the healthy thing Girlfriend, we're just doing the healthy
Angiething. Yeah, but like hormones
Nikkiand serotonin be damned.
AngieScrew them. Care about those, especially runners, like runners need energy. Runners need carbs, right? Women. Yeah. And so I started eating more carbs and I kid you not, I like was healing better. My energy levels, everything was better. And I lost, I dunno, like a couple pounds, like three, three or four pounds over the course of a week, which is insane. Because your metabolism came back online. Yeah. Like welcome back, and I was probably like, I was bloated. I was like probably holding onto water, whatever. So tracking can be a very useful tool. And I do think that even those of us that know better, quote unquote sometimes we fall into habits or sometimes we just think we're doing totally the right thing. Totally. And we're like, oh, oops. I I guess not so well
Nikkifor me, I do this for a living. I talk about nutrition Yeah. All day, every day with my students. Yep. Yet, even as recently as last year, I had a little cub to Jesus moment with my tracking. And I'll go through periods where like I'll track for a couple weeks or maybe a month, and then I won't do it for a while. And then I'll track again for funsies, and then I won't. And it depends like what my fitness goals are, or if I'm making a big change or if I'm working on a goal. But I finally had this kind of cub to Jesus moment of, oh, I don't think I ate enough protein. Like I'm six feet tall and like 190 pounds. I am a big woman. So I probably need more protein that I was eating. But again, I confess, I'm a recovered vegetarian. So I think that my sort of default programming still is to lean more into the plant foods and away from protein. Sure. Rich foods. So I had to again, have this moment of truth with myself. And then made an effort on it. So this would've been February of last year, I had this realization and thought, okay, we're gonna work on this, Nick. This is gonna happen. And then I gave myself six months to just focus on protein, not tracking, not measuring, but like making a conscious effort to add a little bit of whey protein or have three eggs with my breakfast instead of two, or eat fish with my lunch more often, versus having hummus for my lunch. Do things like that. I gave myself six months to just work on that until it felt normal and routine. Yeah. Then I did another round of tracking in October to verify, hey, I tried to do a thing, did I succeed in doing the thing? Yeah. Like you don't just teach yourself Japanese and then never try to speak Japanese to somebody to prove if you were successful in teaching yourself. So I tracked again, and by golly I got my protein up. Nice. And I might even need to go up another notch, honestly. But yeah. I am, these nutrition changes can be tricky and they can take time. And that goes for people with formal education in the topic. Let alone somebody who just found out today that broccoli has vitamin C, yeah. People who don't have that background might, it might really be more of a struggle, or it might take more time and diligence and effort, and you might wanna educate yourself a little bit on nutrition in the process so that you can do the back of the nap and calculation and think to yourself, oh, I didn't have any vitamin C today. I have some strawberries in the fridge, so maybe I'll have a couple of those for a snack. Yeah. Do that sort of stuff with yourself.
AngieYeah. For us as runners, it's extremely important that we fuel our bodies well, and this is one of the things that I wanna scream from the rooftops, especially for women in over 40, women in perimenopause and menopause, they start gaining weight, and one of our first things that we do is restrict, right? Yep. Start restricting calories, start dieting, doing all these things, and it could just throw your whole body into complete chaos and lead to the opposite result of what you want. There's a lot of women that when I tell them, okay, you have to eat before you run, you have to eat before your workouts. Like it is the best for your body to not train fast in a fasted state because of all the cortisol levels and all the other things.
Yeah.
AngieAnd people then say, yeah, but if I eat before I run, my stomach is all messed up. So I often tell them, start small. Can you train your gut? Is really my question for you. Like the whole idea of training your gut. By starting small and adding on, is that a good strategy for us to use?
NikkiI think so. And I think it's a combination of training your gut, training your metabolism, and training your nervous system to expect food at that time. Yes. Also, like your nervous system is just a big supercomputer, and it's a calculated, it's a calculating predicting machine. So you're taking all of your experience from your whole life, everything you've seen, heard, did, felt, tasted, heard, and you're using that information to try to predict the future and keep you safe. And so if your brain has come to the understanding from potentially 40 plus years of patterning that. We are gonna exercise with a shit ton of cortisol, a shit ton of adrenaline, and nothing in our stomach to fuel us. That is what your nervous system and your metabolism and your gut have come to expect. And that is gonna be the default programming. So it might take more than one or two instances to train that out of you. 'cause again, it's like you have 8,000 data points supporting this pattern. And just two or three new data points with a new pattern is not gonna convince the super computer that life is gonna be different now.
AngieSo that's so powerful because that's what happens, right? Like when they'll, they try it a couple of times and they're like, yeah, no, I tried that did work.
NikkiThis doesn't work for me.
AngieExactly.
NikkiYeah. No, you don't have different physiology than the rest of us. Sorry.
AngieBut it makes so much sense because when we're early, like earlier in our lives, when we're in our teenagers or our twenties or even our thirties, we can get a away with a lot more.
NikkiOh, you can get away with murder. I distinctly remember, and again, this was when I was a rower and I was waking up at 5:00 AM Yeah. I had to be at the boathouse at five 30. We were working out hard for two or three hours. Then we had second workouts with weight training three times a week. That was the fittest and probably most exhausted I've been in my entire life. Yeah. But. I kid you not like I treat, I treated my body like garbage. Oh yeah. Now a lot of my teammates went out drinking a lot. 'cause college. Yeah. But that's never been my jam. I, you're learning so much about me. I was in the anime club. Nice. So I would stay up late with my anime nerd friends and we would play like video games and Dungeons and Dragons and settlers to Catan. And then we would go, there was this big room and the student union that had a projector projection screen uhhuh. And we would watch anime until 2:00 AM Yeah. I would come home to my dorm room fairly regularly at one or 2:00 AM and then wake up at five. Yeah. And then go row really hard. Yep. And like race and do things. And then, skipping, skipping breakfast and running all over Tarnation for classes. I treated my body like garbage. And you can only get away with that so many times, but Right. Youth confers a certain amount of resiliency. And we take that for granted, and we come to expect that's gonna be the normal thing for all the rest of our days.
Right
Nikkinow, like in my late thirties, if I don't get minimum seven and a half or eight hours of sleep every night, I feel like a garbage human being and I have to take a nap in the middle of the workday. Like it's bongers.
AngieIt is totally different. It is. And I think that's what frustrates and confuses so many women because they're like, this I, it used to work. I don't understand. It's yeah, but you're not 20 anymore. Like you're now you're 40, now you're 50. Like things have changed your body changed. Your training needs to train change. Your nutrition needs to change. All of these things need to adapt.
NikkiAnd you bring up a point. Two is that your body from two years ago, or five years ago, or 20 years ago, is not the same body that you're living in right now. And there's the age piece of it, which I think most people can wrap their head around. But even so sometimes I will see people and they'll be like, damn, this herb or this probiotic used to work for me. But now the SIBO is back, the bloating is back, the constipation is back. And that same probiotic doesn't seem like it's working for me anymore. Yeah. What gives, but they, when I pick apart the story and grow them a little bit more, it always comes out, oh, I did have to have antibiotics for a UTI two months ago. Or, oh, I've been under like, an ungodly amount of stress lately. Yep. Or, oh, I did forget to tell you that I fell for the keto, Instagram world and like I totally cut all the carbs outta my diet and I didn't tell you. Or oh, by the way. Or I added this totally new product. Yeah. Or medication. And it's okay. And that's all fine. Like I'm not knocking, there's no judgment. Those things. Yeah. It's just your body is different now. And in the case of antibiotic use, your microbiome is a bit different now. So the probiotic that used to work for you, the prebiotic, the whatever that used to work for you might not work for the new version of you. And that's okay. Yeah. But I think that's why. At least for me, like with what I do and how I teach my students, I think a really big part of this is learning to be a little bit of a citizen scientist. Learning to lead with an inquisitive, curious kind of energy.
Yeah. And
Nikkijust using yourself as your own Guinea pig and trying things out. Okay this probiotic doesn't seem to work anymore. I guess I'm gonna try a different one and I'm gonna see what happens. Yeah. Or oh, I used to tolerate apples just fine. And then Tuesday I didn't tolerate the apple. Isn't that kind of weird? But oh, I did have a bad interaction or a fight with my boss. So maybe that was it. Like maybe I should try apples again and see was it really the apples or was it the conversation with my boss that triggered the bloating? Yeah. But it's all data points. It's all life is a big spreadsheet if you want it to be.
AngieYeah. Yeah. And it's like a big, I like to think of it as like that one of those connect the dots drawings as well. Yeah, there's all these different data points and all these different dots and it's the stress and the food and like all of these things. And so many of us, especially women, are. Thinking that we're doing all the right things and we've got, I've got all the dots on my paper, and it's yeah, but they're not connected, and like all of these things underneath it all are completely connected, like you say, when we can tap into that sense of curiosity versus frustration and judgment, we get so much of our power back because we're like, oh, we start to see some of these connections and how our body responds to it.
NikkiYeah. It's like you start to zoom out and you start to see the patterning a lot more versus the individual data points. Yeah. I will say too, I find that disconnect comes up where people think they're doing all the right things. Where they're like, they're targeting all the right things, but to your point, they're not connected. I find that happens a lot with supplement usage in particular. Okay. So I will see people clinically where they're like, okay, I, let's say they have bloating, indigestion, that feeling like. There's a brick of lead in your gullet and it's not going anywhere. When you're trying to digest your lunch and you're like, God, it's been there for two hours, why is it moving? And let's say the person is constipated and they're like, but I'm doing all the things I'm taking. I had died for my thyroid and I'm taking Metamucil for the constipation and I'm taking the such and such for the bloating. And I'm taking, peppermint oil for the bloating and they're on 8 million gazillion different supplements, yeah. For methylated folate for my M-D-H-F-R, whatever it might be. But it's all discombobulated and disconnected because that's not really treating the body holistically. Yeah. And I blame functional medicine by and large for this is like my. My profession to a large degree, likes to talk a big game of we treat the body holistically and we treat the person not the disease. And there's some truth to that, right? If you have 10 different people with rheumatoid arthritis, go to an integrative doctor, they're probably gonna get 10 different unique treatments. But that kind of goes out the window when we get into the functional diagnoses. So if you have 10 different people who are diagnosed with leaky gut
And
Nikkithey all go to the same integrative doctor or naturopath, I guarantee you, I will bet you a one crisp $100 bill. Now that single practitioner has one leaky gut healer, upper supplement that they love and they have it stocked in their inventory, and that's the only leaky gut healer upper they will ever use because the rep from the company convinced them it is the best. Yeah. End of story. But it's like. In the example of 10 people with rheumatoid arthritis, maybe only five of them have leaky gut per the functional diagnostics at least. And maybe five of them have candida, and then four of them have, inflammation levels that are detectable in blood. And maybe three of them are deficient in omega threes. So like they're gonna get a customized treatment plan from the conventional kind of lens, but again, if you have the same functional diagnosis, or like 10 people with SIBO walk into an integrative clinic, they're gonna get the same damn antimicrobials, the elemental diet, the same SIBO diet, and it. It again it cracks me up and it frustrates me greatly because this is a group of people who say we treat the person not the disease. And we treat everybody as an individual, but they don't. So I forget what my point was. I got too fiery there. I got No, but I'm distracted. I'm glad
Angieyou did though, because I think that is one thing that people often say okay, there is this more of a heyday now towards functional medicine and holistic medicine, which sounds great on paper, but like you're saying here is that it has its own problems also, right? Like conventional medicine has its own problems. Functional medicine has its own problems. And ultimately what we need to get back to is reconnecting to ourselves and starting to eat a diverse. Like nutrition, like diverse diet that has lots of fruits and vegetables, that has lots of good protein in it, that we can essentially take care of ourselves from the inside out. Yeah. And not have to rely on supplementation and all these other things.
NikkiYeah. And I wanna be transparent here. I, a part of my heart will always belong to functional medicine. I don't really hang out in that space all that much anymore.
Yeah.
NikkiBut a part of my heart will always belong to them. That field helped me and gave me a foundation of understanding the human body that I would never. In a million years give up. Yeah. But it's just it's just every field and it's just every tool in any given field, I don't care if it's physical therapy or plumbers or receptionist or whatever, there's gonna be a bell curve of people who are. Utterly stupendous at their job. People who are good but not amazing. And people who absolutely suck at their job. Yeah. And that's okay. Again, that's for every single profession. Yeah. On planet earth. Totally. There's just a bell curve. My dad always likes to joke, what do they call the guy who graduated lasted his medical school. Doctor. Doctor. Yeah. The guy who barely passed any of his medical boards, like he's still called the doctor and he still can be treating you. And again, like that's okay. And you don't know medical school is rigorous enough. I'm, he's probably still brilliant in this case, my point is with every profession there's gonna be the good, the bad, and the ugly. And every tool has a time and a place.
Yeah.
NikkiThere are a lot of medications that are overused and abused and it's making people very sick. But there's a time and a place for almost every prescription that we have. And it's not that prescriptions are all bad. I'm not gonna throw the baby out with the bath water and say that conventional medicine or pharmaceuticals are intrinsically a bad evil thing. As a side note, chiropractors love to say that kind of shit and it drives me crazy, but. For some reason, like they're the really hardcore, like no drugs, no surgery ever, never. And if you have taken a drug or had a surgery in your entire lifetime, then you're like a bad person. No, geez. Or you're stupid or something like, I, I bet so many chiropractors with that viewpoint. But yeah, my point is we could use things like food sensitivity tests. We can use things like elimination diets. We could use things like supplements and vitamins, but we could use them wisely and sparingly while still focusing 90 plus percent of our effort on the basic, boring, unsexy stuff that none of us want to do. Nobody wants to hear that sleep is important for gut health and physical performance. But I kid you, I'm not gonna lie to you though. No. I'm not gonna lie to you about, I know physiology and how the body works and what PubMed tells you. Sleep is important for gut health and it's important for physical performance and mental health. Oh yeah. And metabolism everything. And just because you, like everybody else wants to stay up late scrolling on your phone, watching K-pop music videos. Okay. Maybe this one's really specific to me. Reading your Webtoon comics and you want to just because you want to stay up late scrolling on your phone, that does not negate how human physiology works. It's like we need to just wrap our head around these boring, unsexy basic things and how foundational and crucial they are for human health. Yeah. Focus 90 plus percent of our time on those things. And then we could save the conversation for the fancy schmanzy targeted anti candida herbs or the fancy schmanzy leaky gut healer upper products. Or The fancy like M-T-H-F-R protocols, like we could save that as like a very thin icing on an otherwise healthy cake.
AngieThat makes so much sense. And I think that this. Like again, we have to just keep shouting it from the rooftops, that it is the boring, unsexy things that lead to the majority of our health and how we feel. And if we're getting enough sleep. And, I tell my clients like almost pretty much any study ever done does, no matter what they're measuring has shown, if you don't get enough sleep, that whatever you're measuring goes down. And if you get enough sleep, it goes up. Is like the one thing that across the board has very significant effects on whatever outcome you're measuring. Yeah.
NikkiAnd there are others, right? Like I mentioned blood sugar in the beginning of the episode, like blood sugar is so important for brain health, hormone health, thyroid health, metabolic health. Gut health. There was a study actually in humans. They did, I believe it was, I. MRI. It could have been CT though, so don't quote me on it. But they did a study and they compared healthy, normal people with diabetics and they were able to show that the girth of the vagus nerve was reduced by 50%. Wow. In people with diabetes. Really? Yeah. We wanna talk about vagal tone being important for gut health. If your blood sugar is on a roller coaster ride all day every day, good luck. Your vagus nerve ain't gonna work much if you're doing that to yourself.
AngieThat is insane. Wow. I'm so glad you shared that with me. That's amazing. Yeah. Horrifying. Nikki also. Nikki, this conversation has just I could talk to you for hours, I swear. 'cause I still have so many questions in my head, but I wanna be respectful of your time. Is there anything we haven't, there's a ton that we haven't talked about, I know, but anything that you feel you want to make sure that we touch on today before we wrap up?
NikkiOh goodness. Like you said, there's so much that's such a terrible question. And it's okay. Yeah. And I will admit being concise has never been my strong suit. Yeah,
Angiethat's, but the thing about it too, though, you just have, you have such great information and I feel like this is so important for people to hear and we could seriously, I have so many questions that are so popping up in my head right now, but again, we wanna, I wanna be respectful of your time. Any last thought that you wanna share with us and for our runners?
NikkiI will throw out there that I'm flexible on my end time here, so if you wanna throw out a question, you can. I think what I wanna bring up is going back to the idea of the person who says, I would love to eat more of these foods, but I get bloated, I get cramping, yes, I get diarrhea, I get constipated, whatever it might be. 'cause I think that you asked what would that person do? And I joked that they should join my program, but then I think I didn't actually answer the. I'm sorry. No, it's all good. It's hard when you have a fun conversation and you just go off on a rabbit trail. I know. It's about the original point. Yeah. So what I would say it, in truth, if they don't wanna join my program and that's not something that they wanna do, then I think that what I would have them do, like I said, is track on something like chronometer or MyFitnessPal. Look at your calories, your macros, your fiber intake, your vitamins and minerals, and see if you could fill any of those nutritional holes with the foods that you currently tolerate. Okay. And start there. For example, since a lot, but not a hundred percent of people who joined my program are on some sort of restricted, like IBS diet or SIBO diet, like low fodmap. I have a list of low FODMAP foods. Okay. And I have different cos for like fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, dairy products, et cetera. Okay. And sometimes I'll have them print that off and have it like, on their fridge or download it as a PDF on their phone and use that sort of as a grocery shopping list. Okay. And that way okay, if you're still in a position where you need to avoid the high FODMAP foods. That's okay. We're gonna acknowledge that the goal is to reintroduce those foods. But if you're in a holding pattern right now and you're feeling a bit stuck, let's try to optimize your nutrition as much as humanly possible while staying in the confines of that diet. And maybe you can add in some low FODMAP foods or some Okay. Some foods that are less triggery for you.
AngieYeah.
NikkiAnd I would say this, for any restrictive diet, I could have somebody on a low histamine diet and we could have a conversation of, okay, let's think of creative ways to get vitamin C and riboflavin and niacin and these things, but while still operating in the confines of a low histamine diet so that we don't trigger your symptoms and make you feel like garbage. Okay. Yeah. So I think that's the first step is track. Then second step is try to diversify your diet and fill nutritional holes with the foods that you currently tolerate. Okay. Then I would start ex and during this process, I would examine those unsexy foundational basic things. Yeah. Yeah. Sleep stress movement. Do you get sunshine on your eyeballs ever? Ever. A lot of us, myself included, spend so much of our day trapped in indoors. And I'll tell you what, I have all of my filming lights lit up so that my backdrop was all pretty for you for this podcast interview. Yeah. But if I step outside, my eyes will be shocked by how bright the sun is compared to not even joking. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 lights. I have lit up in this room, not including the worthless light in the ceiling. Yeah. Like I have so many lights lit up in this room. Yeah. And still the sun is so much brighter and more powerful. And as a side note, another cool study, I think this was outta Japan also, there was a study where they took people and they fed them a standardized diet. And they had one group in, or they had. People. One of the days they had them in a bright light room, which was set to mimic natural sunlight. And they fed the breakfast, lunch, dinner, and they measured breath gases throughout the day. Okay. In response to that food, the other group was in a dim, dimly lit room, which was meant to mimic normal indoor lighting that most of us live in. Sure. The group that was in the sunlight mimicking room produced less intestinal gas, like 50% less gas. Wow. Yeah. Versus on average there, some people it was a lot more, a lot less than that, but on average, the people who were exposed to something mimicking sunlight made while they were eating less. Same food, same damn food.
AngieYeah. But like during the eating process.
NikkiYes.
AngieYeah.
NikkiThey made less gas compared to the people who were in a dimly let lit room, which again to clarify, was meant to mimic normal lighting inside a building, inside a house or an office building. Wow. And that's what we all live in. Yes. So get your ass outside. You might not need to spend money on the $60 bottle of probiotics. You might just need to get your ass outside. Eat outside or just go outside. Or go for a walk. Yeah. Or just sit on your butt. You don't even have to do anything. Just sit on your butt outside. Yeah. It's, it's
AngieBut especially if you're eating black beans, eat those outside.
NikkiI don't know. I eat block beads inside all the time, but I also I don't catastrophize a little bit of bloating here or there, so maybe that's part of it.
Yeah.
NikkiBut yeah, so I think that's the other thing that I would focus on, is just nailing down some of those unsexy basics. Yeah. Put your phone away a few hours before you go to bed. Read an actual physical book before bed. I know. It paids me to say that. 'cause I love WebToons and I love YouTube so much, but, just, yeah. Or stretch, do some yoga. Do some breath work, like
Yep. Wind
Nikkidown, give yourself a little pedicure. There are so many things you could do.
Yeah. In
Nikkithe 30 to 60 minutes leading up to sleep. That would be better for your brain and better for your body as opposed to scrolling on your phone.
AngieYeah. And I think that I like one last point that I wanna make too is. How you eat matters as well, right? If you are eating and scrolling on your phone Yes. And you're not paying attention to your food and you're just eating as fast as you can, you're in the car, you're on the go. Like that matters in your digestion also. And not a huge, so many people don't understand that. Like they, or yes, I'm just eating, like eating. Doesn't matter where I eat, it doesn't matter how I eat. And it like, no, all of it matters.
NikkiYeah. Yeah. And that there's a lot of connectedness with the gut brainin axis and like the sensory experience and the nervous system experience of eating. Yeah. I have, so I have something like 300 gifs and memes embedded throughout my program. Oh my gosh. And find that freedom. And I just, it's and I joke that people always learn my favorite shows and movies as a process of working with me because I have things peppered in from like The Good Place, the Office. That's so fun and rec. Yeah. You know the Matrix, like all of these Dweeby references. That's so cool. But there's one that I have in the section where we're talking a lot about the vagus nerve and your relationship with food and like how you're going into that meal. And there's this gif of Winnie the Poh and he's sitting down to eat probably honey, but it might be a B piece of birthday cake, I forget. And he's sitting at the chair and he's going like this and he's doing this adorable little like happy dance, wiggle in his seat. Before he eats whatever it is. And I tell people that's the goal.
AngieYeah.
NikkiYou want to be. At least neutral, if not thrilled to death to eat the food that you're about to eat. And that might mean occasionally eating the brownie and something that's unhealthy. Yeah. But I would rather eat a brownie and enjoy it than eat a 100% sugar free, grain-free, organic keto, low carb, low everything. Low joy diet for the rest of my days.
Cardboard.
NikkiYeah. Cardboard diet. Yeah. To your point, I think that how you eat in the sense of eating around the same time most days, giving yourself enough time and attention to really focus on your food and digest your food. Not shoving a granola bar or a protein bar in your face, dri hurdling down the highway on the way to your next meeting Yeah. While putting lipstick on in the mirror. Yeah. Like. How you bring yourself to the seat so that you could digest your food is important. And like I said, the mentality of do you actually like the food that you're eating is really important and overlooked. I remember, so I had the suit, so we do q and a's as part of the program that I run. And I remember we were on the section where we were talking about how you eat and the idea of maybe chew your food more, right? A lot of people don't chew, especially in this country at least. And so I brought this to the table. I'm like, you probably need to chew your food more. And I remember this one student, and she comes outta the q and a and she goes I've already been doing this for X amount of years and I still don't feel better. And I quote her now, she said, this was like four years ago. I still remember this vividly. She said, and I quote, I chew every bite of food until it's a disgusting flavorless paste. I was like. Whoa. You're like,
Angiethat sounds unpleasant.
NikkiYeah. Can you imagine what your vagus nerve is thinking if it had, if it had mind, own. Can you imagine the state of your VAs nerve? Oh my God. If you chew every bite of food to a disgusting flavorless paste, your vagus nerve is crossing her arms, shaking her head and saying, nuh uhuh. Oh my God, we are not doing this. Oh my God. This woman was particularly or Orthorexic had a lot of like beliefs around food and health that we're challenging to work with.
Yeah.
NikkiBut I remember on this group q and a, I remember te just, my jaw dropped and I think I paused. It's hard to render be speechless. But I think I was speechless for a couple seconds and I remember telling her, I was like, okay new. Recommendation. I said, everybody else on this q and A, your job is to go home and chew your food a little bit more. You, your job is to chew your food way less. 'cause that sounds gross. Yeah. And your VA nerve is not tapped into your digestive process whatsoever at this point. You need to make food enjoyable again. And it might've been her, I came up with this kind of barometer for disordered eating. I told, I think it was her, I told her in that moment, I said, honestly, it might be good if you just sit down and eat a bowl of Doritos. And I could judge how much disordered eating people have when I say the word Doritos. Yes. And they, if they look shook, as the kids would say, if they look horrified to the core of their being, I'm like, Ooh, we've got stuff to work on here. But if they're, if they get a little bit excited, shit. Your kid like Doritos. Are you kidding me? For real? That's okay. Like regular or cool. Ranch. What are we talking here? Yeah, like the nutrition expert is telling me it's okay to eat junk food sometimes. Holy crap. This is great. But yeah, I think that she was the first person that I busted out the Dorito hypothesis on where I was like, honestly, man, it might be good for you to just eat, pound out some Doritos and see how you enjoy that. And of course she didn't do it. Yeah. But it's, I was horrified and quit your program. You, yeah. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make 'em drink. Yeah. And that's very much true in the health and healing world.
AngieA hundred percent. And same thing in the running world as well. There are so many times that I find people come in and I'm like you're doing too much. Like you need to cut back. Like your hormones are so out of con outta whack, your nervous system is whacked out. Like you need to run less. Yeah. We need to pull you back. And they're like, like they get scared. And I, same thing with food, I tell them, you need to start eating more. Like honestly, you're not eating enough. Yeah. And they are genuinely afraid of eating more. And I'm like, okay, so what is it about this that makes you afraid? Because it's food. Like food's not gonna hurt you, but it's the conditioning, it's the decades of conditioning of I need to have a smaller body. Like I need to always be on a diet. I always need to be restricting what would happen if I actually started eating more. They just have this, vision that they're gonna grow in 400 pounds overnight.
NikkiYeah. It's hard, right? It is. Because there, there is some balance to strike, but it's, I straight up had a conversation with one of my students. Four days ago in my q and a and she told me, she said I've gained some weight since the program started. And this was week nine that we just did last week. Yeah. Nine outta 12. So we're about two months deep. And she said I have gained a bit of weight. So it's joy to your program? Yeah. But she said, you know what, I'm okay with it. Like it's fine. She said, because I realized in week one of your program that I was not eating enough and I had not eaten enough in a really long time. Yeah. And you know what? My bloating is gone. My constipation is gone. I feel great. I could eat basically whatever I want. And I'm just gonna, I'm gonna work out, I'm gonna make sure that I'm strong and healthy. And if it means putting on a little bit of adipose tissue, a k, a fat, yeah. Maybe that's okay. And I just, I'm gonna just. Chill with that. And that was really rare to hear something like that. 'cause most people wig when they gain a few pounds. But it was, I give her a lot of credit for saying that. Absolutely. And we had this big discussion of like, all right, there's this really difficult conversation and especially with the dialogue in the world right now, is that a lot of people wanna have, thank God, I hope that I don't insult anybody here or go off too much auto rail off the rail. But there's this body positivity, anti-D diet kind of movement, right? Yep. And I get that and I embrace it to a degree, right? Like I grew up at a time where America's next top model was on the TV and I saw Tyra Banks be raided girls and call them plus size models when they were a size six. That was, or like the biggest loser. I just saw something pop up on my feet the other day with Jillian Michaels absolutely be raiding this woman. Yeah. And I just. I forgot how much I hate that show and that woman and I was just like, oh my God. It's no wonder why us like millennials and elder millennials and Gen Xers have screwed up body images. So many eating issues, by all means. Like we don't have to be twig thin, we don't have to be super model K-pop idol thin. That's not sustainable and not healthy for the vast majority of us. However, there's this like spectrum of what could be healthy, normal body weight and where you would feel really good and you could still be like strong and fit and well-nourished and not have like IPS and amenorrhea. Yeah. But like where do those lines go? Where, for somebody who's maybe like 400 pounds. They were probably would be genuinely healthier if they lost some of that excess fat. But does that mean that somebody going from 120 pounds to 125 pounds is unhealthier because now they have the tedious bit of a belly pooch. No, I mean there's, and it's really tricky fighting out where that is for different people and like where their comfort level lies. Yeah. But yeah it can be a big deal. I
Angieagree. Yeah, I agree. I think that like anything, there's extremes, right? Like we want people to, to love and be proud and feel good in their skin and also make sure that they're living a, the healthiest version of their life that is possible, right? Yeah. And that's both mentally and physically. 'cause like you said, it's not good to constantly be. Constantly be thinking about food all the time. Yeah. There's a major issue with that. At the same time, you don't wanna be eating anything you want all the time in massive quantities. 'cause that's not good for you either, right? Like we have Yeah. There's, we have to avoid the extremes.
NikkiThere's gotta be some balance where yeah, we do the right thing and we try to eat healthfully and take care of our bodies and move our bodies and get sunshine on our cheeks and do those things 80 or 90% of the time. And then 10 or 20% of the time you just eat your brownie and you live your life. I think Americans are pretty classically less skilled with moderation. And I see a lot of people, for example, when we go back home to Buffalo and we see my in-law's side of the family. Yeah. A lot of my husband's side of the family type two diabetic, overweight. Hypertensive, eating a lot of sugar and junk food. Yeah. Donuts and ice cream and soda and all of these things. Yeah. And it's again, there's this continuum of, those are some people that I really wish knew a little bit more about health or nutrition or cared about. Health or nutrition a bit more. I think that their lives could be longer and better quality and their health could be a lot better if they thought about something like fiber, for example. But again, we have this other side of the pendulum where a lot of people get very obsessed at orthorexic and like their whole life is dictated by their running or their right, their super ultra clean diet. And that's not healthy either. So it's where is there this middle ground where you can eat healthfully and treat your body with respect and treat it with love most of the time, but also embody, witty the poo and eat birthday cake with your kid when they have a birthday,
Angieyeah. Amen. And I try to live that life. Yeah. And I think that's a great thing for us to shoot for a little dancing Winnie the poo when we're eating our lunch or our, whatever it is that we're eating.
NikkiOr Michael Pollen said it best years and years ago. Eat food, not too much. Mostly plants. Yep. We again, hu we started the episode and now we'll end the episode by saying human beings love to complicate things.
Yep.
NikkiAnd it's one of our greatest skills and we overcomplicate the ever loving crap out of gut health and nutrition and exercise performance. Yep. But it's really not rocket science at the end of the day. At the end of the
Angieday.
NikkiYeah.
AngieYeah. Absolutely. Couldn't agree more. Nikki, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for all of your time and your expertise. Where can our listeners connect with you so that they can continue to learn more from you?
NikkiYeah. So I am, I have three places where I hang out on the general internet. So I have a YouTube channel and an Instagram handle by the same name. And that is the gut microbiome queen. Ooh. It's point to title, but valid nonetheless. I love it. Yes. Gut microbiome queen on YouTube and Instagram. For Instagram, it's Gut Do Microbiome Queen. I dunno if that'll matter much in the search. And then I have my own podcast, and I was telling you before we came on that I co-host that with a friend of mine who's a registered dietician, and she also works in the IBS gut health space. And that is called the IBS Freedom Podcast, the IBS Freedom podcast. Yep. And we talk about. All things gut health, but to your point earlier, everything is connected. Yeah. So we have episodes about hormones or histamine or the gut skin connection or anxiety and the gut. We have a lot of different topics on there as well as, more stereotypical gut topics like leaky gut, constipation. C diff, et cetera. But yeah. And then that is on that has its own YouTube channel. So if you want to see Amy and I, you could see us on camera. Or you could just listen to it on a normal podcasting app. Awesome. So yeah that's all of where I could teach you, on the internet. And may I mention my program? Where you going for that as well? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And we'll of course,
Angiewe'll of course link everything in the show notes as well. Oh, okay. Yeah, go ahead. So
Nikkiyeah, so my program is called FODMAP Freedom in 90 Days, and it's a 12 week, three month process where I lead you through like the user's manual for the human body. In a way, I joke with people all the time, we didn't get a user's manual when we popped up here on earth. We just figure it out and wing it our whole lives. Yeah. But. I'm really big on educating people and helping them understand how the body works. At least to a certain degree, right? Like you don't have to have a medical degree, but understanding kind of how blood sugar works and why it's important. Or how the vagus nerve works and why it's important. So I lead you through that journey and teach you a lot of things in the 12 weeks. And then throughout that we have live Q and as peppered in. So I have a nutritionist who works for me that I've trained, and then I have my own q and as. So basically it's a cycle of new content will post in the portal and then people will watch those lectures on their own. At their own pace. It's called a flipped classroom. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but. You watch the lecture kind of content at your own pace throughout the week, then we convene for four live q and as a week. So my nutritionist does two and I do two per week. And then the new module drops the following day and the cycle repeats for 12 weeks. Cool. And then there's also, there's some ongoing support. 'cause we give support for a full year. Once you enroll in the program. Awesome. That's kind of it in a nutshell. That's awesome. And I mail people some goodies as part of the process. Excellent. We didn't even get into this, but I I fully embrace the fact that we don't know everything and that we don't have research. That's definitive on a lot of these topics like probiotics yet. So while there is good research, and I know that these are great tools, it can be really tricky to recommend a specific product for a specific person. Even if you know their diagnoses and their test results and their symptoms, it can be really challenging. So what I do with a class of herbs called Prokinetics, which basically regulate motility and probiotics, is that I send my students a package and it basically, I give them tester samples of all of these different products, and I just kick back and say, you tell me which one you like. Yeah. I don't know. Cool. And that's really great. The prokinetics can help tremendously with bloating and bowel movements in particular, and reintroducing the FODMAPs without bloating or pain. Okay. And then the probiotics can help with all sorts of stuff, but yeah I baggy those up and send packages as part of the process too.
AngieSweet. Yeah. Awesome. The eagle, I you. Awesome. And we'll definitely link up all that stuff in the show notes. And those of you that are members of real life runners, Nikki's also gonna be doing a workshop for us in June. So stay tuned for that and I'm excited to dig into some of the stuff that we didn't get a chance to talk about today on that session. And she'll also be holding a q and a so that all of you can get your questions answered. So that will be another way that you can connect with Nikki if you are a real life runners member as well. So yeah, I'll, this is awesome.
NikkiThat alright, Nikki? I think we could talk for another five hours if we wanted to. Seriously.
AngieWe really could. So maybe we'll have to schedule a part two like later this year or something. It'll be fun. Let's do it. All
Nikkiright. Cool.
AngieAll right. Thanks so much for being here and we'll talk to you soon.
NikkiThank you for having me on.