Resolve IBS and IBD Naturally
This podcast is for you if you are struggling with symptoms of IBS and IBD and want to get to the root cause of your symptoms so you can take back your health through a holistic, whole-person approach.
Resolve IBS and IBD Naturally
Episode 47: The Truth About Sourdough: Why It's Not The Gut-Friendly Option You Think
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Food sensitivities are often overlooked as significant contributors to chronic health issues, with many people continuing to consume trigger foods like wheat and dairy "occasionally" while dismissing their impact on symptoms. Even small amounts of foods your body doesn't tolerate can trigger immune responses lasting up to 90-100 days, requiring complete abstinence for healing.
• Food sensitivity reactions aren't always immediate digestive symptoms - they can manifest as headaches, skin issues, depression, anxiety, fatigue, joint pain or cognitive problems
• Sourdough bread isn't a safe alternative for wheat-sensitive individuals despite the fermentation process
• Most therapeutic diets remove all grains initially to allow gut healing
• Food sensitivity testing like the Wheat Zoomer can provide valuable data, especially for skeptical clients
• Addressing hidden gut stressors like bacterial overgrowth, digestive insufficiency, and infections alongside food triggers accelerates healing
• Gut healing takes significant time and discipline but allows for potential food reintroductions as the body recovers
• The most reliable test for food tolerance is removing triggers completely, allowing symptoms to resolve, then carefully reintroducing foods
Link to a free 30 minute Gut Check Call
Disclaimer: None of the content discussed is meant to be taken as medical advice. All information presented is for educational purposes only and listeners and viewers assume all responsibility around implementing any changes to their health and medical regimen.
Introduction to Food Sensitivities
Speaker 1Welcome to Resolve IBS and IBD. Naturally, I'm Courtney Cowie, a nutrition therapy and functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner. If you are struggling with the symptoms of IBS or IBD and want to get to the root cause of your symptoms so you can take back your health through a whole person approach, this podcast is for you. Just a disclaimer that the information I'm presenting in this podcast is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as medical advice. You should always consult a qualified practitioner before making any changes to your health or medical regimen. That being said, let's get on with the show. Okay, so the genesis of today's episode is actually coming from a number of different client interactions I've had as of late, as well as conversations I've had with people ironically centered around the topic of sourdough bread, so I do want to be touching on that topic later in this episode. But, generally speaking, what these conversations sparked for me was just realizing how many people are not taking food sensitivities as seriously as they could be as part of their own chronic health struggle picture, and so what I want to really speak to in today's episode is just that whole notion of you know how important are these in the context of things and, of course, if you're listening, more than likely you're struggling with IBS or IBD. However, I really feel like this is an episode that would help you. If you're not struggling with IBS or IBD and maybe have some other chronic health condition that has food sensitivities as one of the root cause symptom triggers that you might not be taking as seriously as you should be. So what I find not only from these conversations with prospective clients, people out in the world, my own clients looking at client food journals is that more often than clients, people out in the world, my own clients looking at client food journals is that more often than not, people are eating common food triggers and then dismissing these as not playing a major role in their symptoms. In fact, I would say this is probably one of the biggest concerns I have with client food journals is seeing specifically foods like wheat and then regular dairy on there and then having to go through the educational piece of hey, you know, when we look at the most common food triggers that drive autoimmune responses, gut distress, that type of thing, it's these two foods and then typically the response I'll get is oh well, yeah, but I only eat these things once in a blue moon or I really only have them every now and again, or small amounts of them, and I know I've put this out there in past episodes, so I will just do this one more time to really hopefully hit this point home.
Speaker 1And the fact is that any small amount of food that your body is not tolerating well is going to kick up an immune response. You don't need to eat an entire couple slices of bread or bun with a hamburger to have a major autoimmune response or symptom trigger, right, it just takes these small exposures. And remember that some of the long-lived antibodies, like the IgG antibodies that are mounting responses to these food proteins. They can stay elevated in the body for up to 90 to 100 days, right. So it's not just a like every now and again I'll eat it and it's not causing an issue. You know, as much as I hate to say it, it really is.
Why Small Exposures Matter
Speaker 1If you want to do this by the book and really make sure your body has the chance to heal without that food trigger constantly triggering, it has to be a complete abstinence from that food. So the majority of food sensitivities I also want to note actually are not always going to be experienced as immediate symptoms like running to the bathroom or getting a headache within 30 minutes, 60 minutes, two hours of eating that food, especially if this is a food that's been in your diet for quite a while. And the way I like to make this comparison or this analogy for this process is think about your average diet, whether it's, you know more, on the standard American end, or maybe you're eating more of a whole foods diet already. But let's just say there's a number of foods in the diet that your body might already be reacting to. This creates a certain amount of noise and confusion in the body and in the immune system, and, given that most of us tend to eat a lot of the same foods repetitively over the course of a week, any number of those foods that are triggering bodily symptoms are creating a lot of noise in the background, which is not going to necessarily yield this clear-cut response from the body that, yes, we ate food X and now we're having symptom Y, and so there's a lot of immune activation potentially going on because of all of these triggers, but at the same time, in this situation, you're not able to get a very clear response from the body as to which of these foods are actually problematic or not, and so this can actually lead people to feeling like specific foods that actually are a trigger for them might not be a trigger, and one of the more common conversations I have with prospects is this you know, I feel like I'm sensitive to wheat, but then sometimes I eat it and I don't have a reaction, or we could be talking about dairy or any other food, right, and again, that's just one of those like misleading thoughts that can then put them in the space of like, well, this must be okay to eat. Therefore, it's got to be something else causing my symptoms, and we all have this tendency to do this right. We're human. We want to try to justify our actions through thought processes rather than looking at it from a different direction and really questioning our own tendencies and questioning the validity of our thoughts. And so realize, though, this isn't necessarily true, and I would argue that if your diet is a big source of symptom trigger for you, probably it's more than likely there's multiple foods that you're eating that could be triggering symptoms, and you're not going to necessarily always tell what those specific foods are based on having an immediate reaction.
Speaker 1Skin issues like psoriasis and eczema are actually classic examples of this, and I've worked with a number of clients in this boat where these types of conditions are autoimmune in nature, they can be very chronic and they can also take a very long time to heal, and I find that people who have that as their primary health complaint right like it's mostly skin stuff, they are actually the most likely to say you know, the hardest thing for me is when I eat a food. I really don't have any immediate symptoms and my skin is always bad no matter what I eat. So you know it can be very misleading. They often are very confused about, first of all, whether or not diet is really playing a role and whether or not there's foods they're eating that are triggering their symptoms. And so with psoriasis and eczema, it's not common that you know people are going to eat foods and then have an immediate flare. It's possible but not common.
Speaker 1Typically there's some degree of issue there, ongoing right, and what I have seen actually does happen. When these clients are very diligent with their diet and they're following a proper elimination diet and getting the majority of their food triggers out, we will actually start to see those conditions, like eczema and psoriasis, slowly heal. Now it can take some time. It can take upwards of 90 to 120 days to start to see the skin clear up, even with the removal of the majority of food triggers, and so, again, this kind of gets back to the point I made about having these long lived antibodies that can stay elevated for quite a while, even after the food is removed.
Speaker 1Now, this is why, whether you're dealing with a condition more like eczema or psoriasis, or maybe it's something else that's autoimmune in nature, or even if you're in the IBS and IBD camp, I really feel like, if there's any degree of doubt or skepticism around whether or not you're having sensitivities to particular foods, clearly identifying and valid you're having sensitivities to particular foods. Clearly identifying and validating these food sensitivities is going to be a big piece of your puzzle, and although I don't run food sensitivity testing on every single client I work with, depending on the nature of the client whether they're more of a data-driven person or inherently skeptical about food sensitivities I will often encourage those people to run them because I really want to be able to rule that in or rule that out, and I tell my clients all the time. I don't want to miss important pieces of your puzzle, and so we can take an empirical approach and have you follow an elimination diet without testing and get excellent results. But if that feels hard to justify, because you really need to know for sure that it makes sense to take a food out of your diet, let's go get the data and then we'll have a very clear cut yes or no. And probably one of my most favorite tests to run to check for wheat sensitivity is a test called the Wheat Zoomer, and I will be talking about that test more in detail in a future episode. But the wheat zoomer is excellent because it looks at wheat not only from a food protein level but from an individual peptide level, and it goes beyond just gluten sensitivity and looks at other components of wheat that people are often sensitive to, whether they realize it or not. It's an excellent test also just to check to see if a person has been successfully avoiding wheat and their immune system is not mounting response right. And oftentimes I find people will tell me they're avoiding wheat and they'll show up with lots of elevations on the wheat sliver, which again is a clear indicator they're getting exposure, and then we have to kind of go in and troubleshoot that and play a little detective on that.
Delayed Reactions and Body Signals
Speaker 1Are you struggling with chronic diarrhea or constipation and have been told by your doctor that there's either nothing wrong or that you're going to need to take a med for the rest of your life to control symptoms. What if there was another way, a way that empowered you to take back your health through a smart nutritional strategy and through running the right testing to identify true root causes? If you are ready to say yes to self-empowerment and to starting the journey to real improvement in your gut health, click the link to grab my free e-guide Now. The other thing I want to mention about food sensitivities is that they can go beyond just digestive upset and digestive symptoms like bloating, reflux, diarrhea, constipation. Right Like, obviously, if you've got IBS and IBD, that's probably your more likely way you're going to be experiencing food sensitivities. However, realize that food sensitivities can link back to headaches, skin issues whether that's rashes or even acne depression, anxiety, fatigue, body and joint pain, and even concentration and focus issues, and really it could be. Any chronic issue that you're having could relate back to a food sensitivity. And then, deeper beneath the food sensitivity issue is always the problem of leaky gut, and I won't go down that rabbit hole in today's episode. I've spoken on that at length in other episodes, so I'll refer you back to some of those other episodes in the show notes. However, just realize that there's a whole bunch of people in the population that will never have GI symptoms as far as they can tell, but they might be having some of these other things. And so if you're listening and you don't have IBS or ABD but you do have any of those other symptoms, chronic and ongoing chances are very good that you also are struggling with food sensitivities.
Speaker 1So let's talk a little bit about sourdough bread. I feel like this is one of those things that kind of goes in and out of mode, right in and out of fashion, as do many things, and I think there's just a lot of information um currently out in the internet, a lot of products probably coming to market that are trying to tout sourdough bread as an amazing alternative to wheat bread. And there's these enzymes in there that you know naturally break down the wheat protein and the fermentation process of the bread. And while that might be true, what I'm going to argue is that if you are wheat sensitive, eating sourdough bread as an alternative to regular wheat bread is likely not going to do you any good and I would argue, your body is still mounting an immune response to the sourdough. And again, when I go through the wheat zoomer in my future episode, I really encourage you to watch that episode in detail. I will break this down and show you how.
Speaker 1When most people are having sensitivities to wheat, it's not just the gluten component, right? So even if a portion of that gets degraded by these fermentation enzymes that are, you know, making the starter or in the starter of the sourdough bread, there's still going to be some residual wheat protein that's left in the sourdough itself. And so that is almost always, if you're a wheat sensitive person, going to yield an immune response. And so, again, with people who have gut symptoms, they're probably going to naturally intuit that that might be causing them problems anyhow, even if they've tried it, just to see if they can tolerate it better. It's often the people that don't have GI symptoms that are jumping on the sourdough bandwagon, thinking that this is actually going to be a great bread for them, and you know they're going to get minimal, if no, wheat exposure, and I just want to bust that myth and say that that's not true, right? However, if you do have IBS and IBD and you are on the sourdough bandwagon.
Testing for Food Sensitivities
Speaker 1I would say that would be one of the obvious places to start is to actually stop eating that bread and, of course, there could be a lot of other things going on as well but give your body some time to reset and really do try to stay 100% wheat free to see how you feel after that. And I feel like with sourdough whether we're talking sourdough or some other fad product out in the space the issue always seems to be that, you know, as a, as a people, as a population, we want to have our cake and eat it too, right, like being healthy unfortunately does take some work. It can take some discipline, right, and I think, if we're all honest deep down, we want to be able to scratch that itch and have these products that are comfort foods or remind us of, you know, the old favorites we had back in the day when we were eating closer to a standard American diet, that create a lot of dopamine response in the brain without having the negative health trade off right. And so when we see these products that are marketed very effectively to be, you know, with low gluten or wheat free but you can have this amazing bread that tastes like real bread. It's only natural to want to jump on that bandwagon and then justify that decision by saying well, of course, this is a better option than wheat bread.
Speaker 1So you know, just realize that if you have IBS and IBD especially, I would argue, your gut likely a bit of breakdown and degradation and dysfunction. That's happened over time. And so, to the extent that you're already having chronic digestive symptoms, you're probably going to have to work quite a bit harder than just switching from wheat bread to sourdough bread to get things under control and start the process of gut healing. And you know it sucks and I get it and I've been in that boat. But that's just the honest to god truth. And I feel like for other people who might not be in the digestive symptom camp but equally have a chronic health struggle that is debilitating on some level impacts our quality of life, I would also discourage you from from doing things like sourdough as kind of your next stopping point for healing your gut. It's going to take more than switching from wheat to sourdough as kind of your next stopping point for healing your gut. It's going to take more than switching from wheat to sourdough to try to help support gut healing, and so I just want to be very honest about you know my own personal experience and just what I've seen in the work I've done with clients.
The Sourdough Bread Myth
Speaker 1The other thing to keep in mind is, if you look at a lot of the therapeutic diets that are shown to help put gut symptoms into remission and heal the gut effectively, whether their dietary approaches like specific carbohydrate gaps, paleo, aip there's a number of them out there they all eliminate grains, and so it's not just wheat that's out on these diets but all grains. And so you know, even traditional cultures that ate grains did soak and ferment their grains, and I get that. That's what sourdough bread is attempting to kind of like, emulate or replicate. Right, but realize that those were also times when people had more robust gut health. They didn't live in a world that was filled with all of the pharmaceutical and other toxin and toxin and processed food exposures that we've all grown up with, which arguably lead to a more deteriorated gut condition, and so obviously, the stronger and the more resilient the gut microbiome and the gut membrane is in terms of not having conditions like leaky gut, the more you can handle foods that are inherently a little bit harder to digest and more antigenic, like grains.
Speaker 1However, the unfortunate truth is in today's world, with the condition most people are walking around in, they're likely in a state of breakdown that's going to require quite a bit more work to try to turn the gut around than just moving to an alternative to regular bread like sourdough bread. So I want to point that out that you know just all of the therapeutic diets I've seen do remove grains as an initial stage of food elimination to help the gut repair itself and then eventually help leaky gut heal. So just keep that in mind as you're thinking about you know what's right for you in terms of which foods you want to include and not include in your diet. The other thing I do want to mention about food sensitivities is that I truly believe that this is a big piece that absolutely does need to be addressed, especially early on in gut healing work, and I do this with all of my clients.
Healing Requires More Than Substitutions
Speaker 1But secondarily, we also need to take a look at hidden stressors in the gut, whether this is bacterial overgrowth, digestive weakness and insufficiency, other gut infections, parasites, those types of things and to the extent we can identify those hidden stressors and deal with those at the same time that we're removing the food triggers, that makes the whole gut healing process go so much faster, and so I'm a big fan of, you know, working with people on both fronts with the goal of getting them to a place where we can be able to hopefully start to reintroduce some of the foods that they weren't tolerating before and make their diet more inclusive as their gut heals and we're sealing their leaky gut. Now, from there, you know, the idea is to, as we're testing and reintroducing foods, getting a very clear feedback signal from the body, and again, what's so awesome about taking all of the food triggers out, or as many of them as we can identify, is that we're reducing the overall noise in the system, meaning that when the symptom load comes down, the immune system gets a little bit more balanced and quiet. When we start to go back after some months of avoiding a specific food and introduce it back in, we can get often a very clear feedback signal from the body whether this food is going to be well tolerated or not well tolerated. It's not always immediate, like within 30 minutes, but typically within 12 to 24 hours, sometimes even sooner, we'll start to get a sense of whether or not this food is going to work or not work for the time being, and this is truly what we want. And this is honestly the gold standard for evaluating whether or not you can tolerate any food. Even the best food sensitivity testing out there is prone to error. You know whether we're talking about whole food protein testing there's a lot of error that could happen there, as well as even, you know, peptides. We can only look at so many foods and test so many foods to get a sense of what a person can and can't tolerate, and so what we're really trying to do is identify of the most common food triggers. That tend to be true for most people. Are these things a problem for you? If yes, let's avoid them, and then you know. Work from a point where the body, hopefully, is not getting as triggered. Quiet everything down, calm the system down and then start to introduce foods and get that actual, clear feedback, which is what we're looking for as part of figuring out whether or not a person can really handle a specific food, and know that, with food sensitivities, this can change over time. As the gut heals, it should be able to theoretically handle foods it couldn't in the past. That's not to say you'll get to a point where you can handle everything everything, especially if you've had a condition like IBS or IBD.
Speaker 1A lot of those folks simply do best with a wheat-free, dairy-free diet at the bare minimum to function at their best. However, a lot of it just depends on the individual. A lot of it depends on how determined and proactive the person is in taking steps to maintain a really gut healing diet for a long enough period of time. Contrary to popular belief, gut healing can take some time. It can take a long enough period of time. Contrary to popular belief, gut healing could take some time. It can take a long time, actually and so this isn't a process that we just follow a diet in 90 days and we've done the majority of the work.
Speaker 1So I hope this was helpful. I hope this helps to bust some myths whether it was you know the sourdough one or you maybe you've been eating sourdough and thinking this is like gonna be a good substitute for you or bust some myths about food sensitivities and how important they are, or even how long it takes to heal a damaged gut. The truth is, all of this can take quite a bit of time. It does take some work and discipline and diligence with diet. There is unfortunately no great silver bullet workaround to that, but the reward is tremendous If you can stay the course and you start to feel better and the symptoms go back into remission. It's well worth it and a lot of people find that when they go through that curve and they're able to introduce more foods, they'll naturally get to a place where they feel their diet is complete and satisfied.
Speaker 1Did you find this episode informative and helpful? I'd love to have you leave me a five-star rating. Do you have questions about holistic approaches to optimizing gut health that you'd like to ask? Please leave your question or comment below and I will be sure to address it personally or cover it in a future episode. Be sure to check the show notes for any resources mentioned in today's episode. See you next time.