This week on the Less Stressed Life Podcast is a recording of a LIVE community call I recently hosted all about gut & stool testing. I want to do these calls monthly to be helpful, get to know your needs, and answer questions for you.
My next community call will be on Dec 20, 2022, at 11 AM MT/1 PM ET for 30 min, and we’ll be talking about testing for stress hormones. You can register for that one at www.christabiegler.com/community.
I’ve got a couple of tests I’m going to compare for looking at adrenal hormones in practice.
We covered:
BOTTOM LINE: Your symptoms are AS important as a test.
To paraphrase Andrea from our call, “the test will show you a problem but not solve the problem.”
You do need to find a practitioner that knows what they are doing with stool testing. It’s pretty useful in gut, skin issues, and fatigue, which are all topics in my wheelhouse.
If you’d like to work with me 1:1, I’m accepting a small handful of clients in December to complete testing and get started in January.
www.christabiegler.com/schedule
This week on the Less Stressed Life Podcast is a recording of a LIVE community call I recently hosted all about gut & stool testing. I want to do these calls monthly to be helpful, get to know your needs, and answer questions for you.
My next community call will be on Dec 20, 2022, at 11 AM MT/1 PM ET for 30 min, and we’ll be talking about testing for stress hormones. You can register for that one at www.christabiegler.com/community.
I’ve got a couple of tests I’m going to compare for looking at adrenal hormones in practice.
We covered:
BOTTOM LINE: Your symptoms are AS important as a test.
To paraphrase Andrea from our call, “the test will show you a problem but not solve the problem.”
You do need to find a practitioner that knows what they are doing with stool testing. It’s pretty useful in gut, skin issues, and fatigue, which are all topics in my wheelhouse.
If you’d like to work with me 1:1, I’m accepting a small handful of clients in December to complete testing and get started in January.
www.christabiegler.com/schedule
Christa (00:01):
Stress is the inflammation that robs us of life, energy, and happiness. Our typical solutions for gut health and hormone balance have let a lot of us down we're overmedicated and underserved at the less stress life. We are a community of health savvy women exploring solutions outside of our traditional western medicine toolbox and training to raise the bar and change our stories. Each week our hope is that you leave our sessions inspired to learn, grow and share these stories to raise the bar in your life and home.
(00:44):
So I decided my word for 2023 is going to be connection. And something that feels so weird sometimes in podcasting is when you talk and you can't talk back to people. So I thought I would try having monthly calls with you, the community to connect with you so you can register for the call every month. Every month there we update the page and you do have to re-register every month. You don't automatically get the invite And I change the topic every month. So what you have here on this episode is December's recording. So on this episode I did why would you care about stool testing or gut testing and what's the difference between functional and conventional stool testing? And then I answered questions from people that were there. Now I had of course hiccups at the beginning cuz sometimes links go out and they get disheveled by the internet.
(01:34):
And so I was a little flustered when I got started and then we got rolling. And I always love when people ask questions because then I can be actually the most helpful. So you can submit questions when you register and I'll answer them in the recording. You can always catch the recording if you can't catch it live, I try to keep it to 30 minutes. You can register for this monthly call by going to krista bigler.com/community. So I hope you enjoy this little bonus episode and maybe I'll leave around meet with you next month in January. All right, I just wanna introduce myself a little bit and I'd like to get to know you guys as well. So my name's Krista. I just wanted to give you a little background. I had a severe eczema and gut issues back in like 20 15, 20 16 and I saw a kind of famous ish gut health doctor and I did two different stool tests and he told me I could do nothing with it.
(02:23):
So I feel kind of compelled to talk a little bit about this topic and tell you a little bit about like symptoms versus other things you can find out during stool testing. So let's jump right into what I said I would cover. I'll try to make this take about five or 10 minutes and then we'll go right into your questions And just a couple more things if you wanna drop any questions you have around stool testing into the chat or just maybe chat and say I've got a question first or whatever. That's awesome. So we'll go through this little context piece a little bit. I've got some free submitted questions but you're the priority since you're here. Okay, so this is just based a little bit on experience of when I have clients come to me. There's certainly a use case for both conventional and functional stool testing.
(03:02):
When I have people come to me and say, Hey, I was in a cattle yard working cows. Cuz I live in the middle of nowhere and and there's a lot of cattle and they say I have got diarrhea. I say go into your doctor, it's probably gonna be camp. And it's a acute flare. So like if you have something happen where you're traveling, camping, something like that and you have some acute, what people often call that they will say food poisoning and I would not call it food poisoning. Sometimes there's some kind of infection that people get and so people get this acute flare where they're having a lot of loose stool and so people can have giardia or other things can't blow back, et cetera. So anytime you've got a lot of stuff going on, you sometimes it'll be picked up in the conventional stool test.
(03:42):
The main difference from what I can see is that the sensitivity of those are lower. So I get all the people who have more chronic things. So if you have chronic issues and nothing is showing up, whether you get a stool test from the infectious disease or with your pcp, functional stool testing often has a higher sensitivity. This varies a ton by company literally you have to really run tests side by side and see which ones you like best and see which ones show up better and get into the background of the testing company. That's my job, right? I do that. So they have a higher sensitivity. They show fragments of things like h pylori and other pathogens at a much more sensitive rate. Some of these other functional tests show other immune health and digestive health markers. They show opportunistic. I call these weeds of bacteria.
(04:25):
These weeds impact different enzyme production capabilities. So enzymes are what make everything happen. So that's from digesting estro or like breaking down estrogen so you don't have heavy period symptoms to breaking down food, right? Of course that's our most familiar use of enzymes. These will impair the ability of enzymes to break things down and then I'm looking for commensal or normal bacteria in different like flux ranges, fungus, et cetera. So big picture, when do you go functional when you have chronic low-grade annoying symptoms and when no one's finding anything else? I would say unfortunately you can't just you know, rely on a test to be perfect for you. Unfortunately there's a lot of people running tests that maybe don't know how to read between the lines. So I just want you to know this like when you're trying to decide should I order my own stool test?
(05:15):
Well there's a huge piece of reading between the lines. There is very significant positives like yep, the giardia is flagging very high and then there's some that are kind of lower level and then some of the tests and I can show you some of the tests if you wanna see them. Some of them just say positive, negative and don't have, which I don't think is the best way to go when they just say positive negative. I like it when it gives me an actual bacteria count because if there's borderline results then how can you tell if it's positive negative. So you also want to count symptoms as much as the test results. So I would say kind of relying on telling you a little bit about my own story things. I ran two stool tests back in 2015 and not much came up and the provider said well you could do nothing but I had really severe symptoms so that didn't really match up up and so you need to kind of lay the symptoms and the results next to each other.
(06:00):
So someone had asked a question about being able to afford a stool test and whatnot and I think you always wanna say like what am I trying to gain from this? First of all, you are trying to GA gain validation of your symptoms, right? That's first and foremost. And then also you're trying to figure out exactly which things you have overgrowth of so that way you can have a treatment plan that's effective for me. I'm looking for these particular different bacteria longus, enzyme production, et cetera. And that's kind of the baseline of what I wanted to tell you. So I wanted you to have a little bit of that background about stool testing information. And then I wanna go into whatever your questions are. So if I have a list of pre-B submitted questions, I don't think anyone is here that submitted questions cuz we had like 50 registrants.
(06:41):
So I will start with you guys that are here live. If someone wants to like hit the hand raise button or if you actually hold up your hand it'll start to hit your hand. Or if you just put in the chat, Hey I've got a question, awesome. If not, I'm gonna just go through some of these questions that are pre-submitted. So I'll kind of wait for you guys to let me know in the chat if you wanna share your case or you wanna ask questions about it. Otherwise let me go. I'm just trying to make good use of your time cuz I'm sure you're on your lunch break or whatever. So then I've got about 13 more minutes. All right so let me know in the chat if you've got questions. Otherwise I'll just kind of start with like the easiest to the most challenging.
(07:14):
I'm gonna start with this one from Julia. What do I think about the BioMAT home test? I have not been impressed with it. They have revised a lot, they've got a ton of money into it. It's a consumer based test. I don't think that's got a lot of clinical utility. What my experience has been with it is that you do it and it says reduce your intake of carbohydrates. Well if you have overgrowth of bacteria and you reduce your intake of carbohydrates, this is a preferred food source for the overgrowth of bacteria. Instead what I would say would be controlled bacteria so you can enjoy your carbohydrates and actually digest them and get energy from them. So I haven't been very impressed with the buy home at home stool test. It's definitely consumer rated. Everyone can make up their own opinion. I bought two or three of them years ago and I, I wish I had bought zero, right?
(07:53):
But it was a good experience to try them out. So Kristen's question was does your stool relate to your stomach or microbiome? It actually your microbiome is in your intestines actually. So it goes upper GI and then it goes stomach and then it goes small intestine, large intestine. So the stool test is looking at what the bacteria is in the colon. This really lends to a conversation around small intestinal bacteria overgrowth or cibo. You guys have probably heard of sibo. It's definitely a lot more commonplace now. It's been around for like 15 years and it takes about 15 to 20 years for something to go from research to go into practice. So now you can get SIBO testing, breast testing or at your regular doctor. I don't really love that test. Oh thanks for that question Adriana. I was gonna go through different stool tests comparisons and I've got that on a slide if you hope me to.
(08:39):
But I'll just, I can just tell you which one I like and I can bring up a few of them and show you as well. So we're looking at the colon and I just wanna mention with small intestinal bacteria overgrowth testing, I actually don't do that anymore. I don't think it's a very good use of $200 or I've had clients be charged their insurance to get charged $2,000. There's a pretty big spectrum of what it costs when you pay for things out of pocket versus what an insurance gets charged. I really find it tends to be like 10 times, which I find over like alarming. But I will say that I don't really care if for CBO testing anymore because it's really looking at two or three bacteria and your microbiome is quite a bit more interesting <laugh> two or three bacteria and I think if you can see what's going on downstream and also get markers around h pylori that are actually good, what happens with a lot of SIBO testing and treatment is that people take a round of a particular antibiotic that stays in the small intestine and then it comes back cuz they didn't address the upstream or the downstream.
(09:29):
So essentially what's going on in the colon or if they've got h pylori. So, and I will also just mention since I'm talking about h pylori, the test I like has a very high sensitivity for h pylori in the research. Like in the research the United States has a prevalence of about 30% h pylori. In other parts of the world it can go as high as 80%. So I could do an entire 30 minute conversation just about h pylori prevalence issues when I see it on a test you run it low levels, I check for symptoms, the upper GI symptoms are burping, indigestion, reflux, nausea, et cetera. And the lower GI symptoms would be the most common ones I see would be constipation with occasional dumping meaning you're constipated for four or five days and then like you go quite a bit. So Adriana, I personally like the GI now when I say that I'm actually, I, I'm kind of nervous to say it nowadays because so many people say it and not everyone knows how to interpret it.
(10:20):
So that's what I wanna say. And so what it's going to be your interpretation and how you look at the symptoms and how you look at like breeding between the lines is as much or more important in the test. So that's just good for you to know. I will often have clients that have run the GI map and their doctor looks at it differently than I do. So that's always a possibility. That's a possibility with almost any test. So I like to say that I've also had clients tell me they had a GI map run and then they send me their report and I say this is not a GI map. So that's just something to note. One second, I'm trying to get on click. Let me show you a couple tests if you guys want. Why don't you let me know in the chat if this would be useful for me to like take just a couple of minutes showing you a couple of different tests.
(11:01):
There's many more than this but I pulled up a few popular ones on the market. Okay so this is a great plains one. This is one from doctor's data. I do not like doctor's data but people update things and they revise them. So let me just show you, this is the one I use. These are all sample reports from the company. This is DAX solutions lab. So this is looking at like these I would call would all look like food poisoning. Things that are like these are really nasty pathogens and these come in and your immune system tries to fight them off within like a few days. So that's why people get like random diarrhea for like two days and then it goes away or it kind of goes away. But they might have low levels of this. So that's kind of like the big ones on the page one and then it's got h pylori.
(11:39):
So sometimes this'll be in black meaning like it's not flagging high, it's flagging at like a lower level. And then these virulence factors actually feel really strongly about this because when you have virulence factors for h pylori, these are related to cancer and I've known people that have died from esophageal and stomach cancer and then it's, it kind of breaks my heart a bit cuz I think that this is a a piece of that puzzle. All right, so commen and keystone are, these are normal bacteria, like these are the ones that everyone has and you need a certain amount of them. So like when the sacraments, which is a really helpful bacteria is low, that's not good. That's what we're learning from that. It's not good. These are overgrowth, these are what I call the weeds. And so you'll see that these are like what we have here is 2.56 times 10 to the fifth.
(12:16):
So five zeros behind this. So whereas some of these tests simply say negative undetected or not detected and those are parasites negative or not detected, that's pretty different than giving you a result that's got some levels of bacteria. So everyone's gonna interpret this a little bit differently based on their experience knowledge, what they think works. I like to make sure I'm treating for symptoms for sure. There's funky yeast. I want you to know that that doesn't always show so candida, right? That doesn't always show up in the stool. Sometimes you can have that and it's not shown up in your stool test. So you can have toal fungus athletes but you can have sinus congestion, you can have itchy ears, vaginal, so like history of chronic bacteria vaginosis or vaginal yeast infections. Those are like really big fungal signs and symptoms and it doesn't always shut out in the stool.
(13:02):
These are protozoa para single consultant protozoa and I'm just gonna tell you like pretty much very few tests are almost no tests are very good at finding parasites. There is a parasite test called, I think it's called PCI and they look at it with a microscope and I very, I sometimes use that. This is also giving you digestive markers like how well you're digesting. This is a little bit of a detox marker. This is, these are immune markers and one of these actually shows like if people are really gonna have a lot of food sensitivities as well. So this is the one I like but because I showed you and welcome to the LA a couple of people that just joined but because this has different levels of bacteria here, like 1.8 with three zeros, that's I think a lot better than just saying no or not detected.
(13:46):
You know, that's really not super helpful whatsoever. So that's kind of my thought process on that. I don't really care for that. Right? So I talked about the volume stool test, I talked a little bit about SIBO and large versus small intestine to kind of speak to Kristen's question. So Jill's question is about hormonal nere and body dermatitis. So I was just talking about if you have an imbalance of that commen or normal bacteria. So using these sample reports so then there's no lot of imbalance here or anywhere else on one of these tests, then that's gonna impair or affect your body's ability to digest things. And when you're not digesting things these weeds overgrow, it's like dandelion or lawn and then they give off toxins and then the toxins show up on the skin because the, it's an easy way for your body to get rid of things.
(14:29):
So if you have hormonal sub dermatitis, meaning I think she's saying she has, I'm not sure, but she might be talking about like she gets flares around ovulation in her cycle. Super common. It's because the same things that kind of contribute to like skin flares and detox, some of the same pathways your body uses to break down and eliminate estrogen. So when you do, when you you gut test or when you address gut health with an appropriate protocol, which maybe I should talk to you about what that looks like. Potentially cuz I think people do like poor protocols a lot. You can make a big difference. And I wanna mention that like body acne is a huge red flag for gut health stuff. Like depending on where the acne shows up and she's not asking about acne, she's asking about body dermatitis. I kind of profile eczema or dermatitis a very particular way when it's like dried leaky.
(15:16):
I think it's like detox support as well as the liver or the gut stuff. You need all of these, right? That was actually on my notes <laugh> Adriana somewhere. It was on my notes I wanted to say that she's asking about hs. It's basically like post jewels of not acne but it gets into like it often is in the armpits or the groin or interestingly where your lymph nodes are. But hs hydrous shiva that I have seen as someone who's had it and my daughter had it, it was very gut mediated meaning like it was all gut overgrowth and bacterial of overgrowth and could have been parasitic overgrowth as well. So body acne is for sure a bacterial overgrowth situation. So I would say that, okay, your question is about skin eczema types. So I have a quiz on, I have another website called eczema nutritionist and I have a quiz and it'll tell you with eczema types but really quickly if it's like if it's a child or if it's an adult and it's in like those common places, elbows behind the knees or it's red or it's super gut mediated, if it's got like a lot of dry flakiness to it, there's definitely a big liver component as well.
(16:17):
And if it's on your hands there's a huge stress component as well as liver and gut. It's all of them but like each area and where it presents and how it presents from like what I've seen resolved for clients. Hopefully that was like a really very short, short version of that. And if you just joined and you missed some things, you'll get the replay. But go ahead and type your, we went through some stool testing 1 0 1 stuff, you'll get the replay and otherwise just ask your questions. Totally. That's what I'm here for And I am also game for you just unmuting and putting your, and putting and putting your camera on so it doesn't feel like such a Oh wrong person. Andrea. Andrea, feel free, take it away. I
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Just was wanting to ask about the stool testing. You have several ones that you show but how often does those results change? Like oh every day work test and I mean you could test the next week and it could show up totally different. So okay, what is a reliable way to kind of measure what's, I guess really go, would it be a lot different that they would really reveal what the problem is or I don't know if you understand what
Christa (17:17):
I'm saying. No, I know what you mean. This is why I think your symptoms and your testing, you need to go side by side and you have to have someone kind of look at it that's looking at the symptoms. Because if I have someone come in like my own story, which was the doctor said you could do nothing cuz nothing was really shown up. I'm like that's not gonna work for me. Like I need, I need this to resolve. Right? So technically it can change and this is, that shouldn't be our microbiome is just fluid. So we want things to show up and sometimes like all this stuff shows up and it's so wonderful. Why do I do the stool testing? If not everything is perfect because one you should know no test is perfect. Two, when Giardia shows up or DT fragiles, let me just go and show you what I'm talking about really quickly when those things show up, it's a slightly different protocol.
(17:57):
So out of the gate I wanna know that cuz I need a stronger protocol for this, I need a slightly maybe stronger pro. Like if this is really high it's gonna tell us more things. Everyone loves the test and it shows up everything right? And some of 'em don't. Sometimes people have a lot of gut inflammation. Actually it shows a really crappy situation is when there's so much inflammation, there's like layers of things going on and you'll actually see a bunch of things look suppressed. That's actually a huge, huge thing when stuff looks really suppressed but the symptoms don't line up, then you have to go a little bit more with the symptoms. If the elastase is really suppressed, if these, if like I was saying dive two mu fragiles, which is a single cell pro zo, that's a slightly different herbal protocol than some of this other stuff.
(18:36):
So I keep talking about symptoms, here's what you do. Like I use the stool test, I start my clients on interventions and within three weeks I should see like very specific symptoms reducing and if not we need to tweak it. Right? And no matter what I like to make it, I don't like to put someone so like Brittany I think it was asking in the chat about finding a practitioner and I just wanna like kind of go over a little bit about like just how I would structure protocols a little bit. So I'm, I'm kind of using that, kind of using Andrew Andrea's question to help me answer or talk a little bit about that. So I'm gonna adjust things after about three-ish weeks if things are not improving because, and I work with like a ton of mold which is just a more aggressive fungus and this is a sneaky silly thing cause it's hiding.
(19:17):
It's hiding and people don't always know that they have it and alls it is is just more severe symptoms. And so conversely it's like a more significant protocol that you would use. So what I'm trying to say is that if you're working with someone who knows what they're doing, then your symptoms help tell some of the story. I always tell all my clients like if you have a positive or a negative symptom, all of it is helpful. Like if you have a reaction to some supplement, all of that stuff is helpful cuz it's telling us like okay the detox is a little sluggish, we need to turn that up, this or that. So I like to change up my protocols, gut protocols need to be a minimum of two months. They can be more like a more average timeline can be up to three months, three even into four.
(19:52):
I like to try to like do things as efficiently as possible. So I start with two and most of the time, like 80 90% of the time it's enough. But between month one and two I like to change up the protocol because different people respond to different treatments better because there's always gonna be more going on than what you can see inside. So I hope that that's, I mean that's how I view it. If we go by only the testing, we're gonna be disappointed all of the time. That's my opinion. Does that help a little bit? Yeah
Speaker 2 (20:17):
That does. That kind of answers the question. I was wondering with the one that you showed there, the diagnostic solutions lab that, is that a practitioner?
Christa (20:26):
It is order test. Yeah. And that was a question that I would wanted to talk about is like should you DIY things? Well I am a huge fan of people healing themselves but I don't know if like, you know, if you do a project for the very first time, like let's say you're wallpapering for the first time, you kind of suck at it, you know? I do. And so it's hard to know what to do correctly I guess. So you have to decide am I willing to fail at this like for a year or do I wanna get results in like a month? That would be kind of one thing cuz like if you look at this and you're not really sure what to do with it, then I'm not,
Speaker 2 (20:58):
You're not really solving the problem. Yeah you're just, you're looking at the problem, you're just not solving it. Yes.
Christa (21:03):
That's such a good point. And and I would say, and I have such a concern and like one big message is that your symptoms are as important, as important or more important than your test results. And the test is not gonna answer the problem for you or solve the problem for you. Like you need to know what to do with it. So, well
Speaker 2 (21:18):
You work and order these tests and work with people all the time. If you, you wanted to see a local physician is, I mean is there or a practitioner mm-hmm <affirmative> to get this type of test. Is this, is there a website that you can go to to find a local?
Christa (21:33):
So each test company doesn't have like a practitioner database. You can try the I fm website to find a practitioner. You can try, I mean you can just try Googling it and you can ask, you can always call and ask what kind of testing that they use. But the thing to remember is they may find a different test, more useful. I will say like I'm getting to, it used to be that people would go to their regular doctor and not, they would be like, well I still have symptoms and I'm not getting anywhere. And again this is just like what I'm seeing. So it doesn't mean it's a huge thing. But now I'm seeing more and more people fail out of different practices. So I mean always do your homework and find the person that seems like it's the best fit for you obviously. Right. But sometimes to kiss a frog and it works out and it becomes a prince and sometimes you don't and you have to kiss a few frogs to find a prince <laugh>. So I hope, I hope, I always hope people are really successful the first time but, well
Speaker 2 (22:22):
I mean they're not still a lot of the practitioners in my area, nobody really does gut analyzations. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> it's more like, you know, if you go see a gastroenterologist, they just wanna do a colonoscopy mm-hmm <affirmative> and they're
Christa (22:34):
Done. So they're very good at structural. So I like to give them credit credits due. They're very good at structural intervention, meaning they're good at like looking at pictures of that area, seeing if the vili is flatlined, et cetera. We're just not on the same planet for the stool testing at this time. Like the bottom line is that we have more sensitive testing that shows chronic low grade issues and it's not being used mainstream. So it is what it's, yeah, it's what, it's on the note of finding a practitioner, this isn't public on my website but I put in the chat box the link to schedule an appointment with me. I'm taking a handful of like not starting in December when I, I would have a call with someone help them in that moment. So sometimes I say like I'm not a right fit for you, I want you to go do this, this or this instead go forth and do these things <laugh> and if you still need help come back.
(23:17):
But you do a basically a case review call. So you put in all your stuff, we talk through all your stuff if it makes sense to work together, I send out the kits, you do them at home and then it takes about three weeks to get those results. So people scheduling to December will start in January cuz they've gotta send their poop into the lab. So I put that in the chat, I'm gonna tell you about it because I'm accepting just like a few clients for January. And so if you wanna talk about your case, awesome. If not awesome. I hope you have kind exactly what you're looking for no matter what. It's just everyone deserves to to feel good as good as possible. So we're kind of coming at to the end of the time, but if anyone else has a question, please raise your hand or hit in the chat.
(23:52):
I'll, I'll do a couple more questions. Shania had said, what's the least expensive way to figure out gut root causes when I can't afford a GI map? So if you've got gut symptoms, there's gut issues, right? So I, I think you have to decide what you're willing to spend on things cuz like we were just talking about with Andrea, just because someone orders a GM app doesn't mean like the work has done, it really just started at that point <laugh>. So there are like supplement companies that sometimes have generic protocols. I don't do those things in practice, right? I'm doing things that are very targeted personalized. But if someone was trying to figure out what to do and where's the least expensive way to experiment with something, right? A place people can experiment with is they can do probiotics and probiotics that is definitely not a one size fits all or a a solution for everyone but it certainly is not harmful or like if I'm thinking of like the least expensive way to do anything, it doesn't hurt doing like having a a decent diet does a lot to your microbiome as well.
(24:42):
I mean when I'm on a vacation and indulging all the things, I come back and cognizant and I'm aware, I'm like hey is my gut health doing okay? Do I need to check in? Do I need to adjust anything? So I just wanna mention that Susan, I don't know if this is a Susan that's here, but if it is, I wanna mention something that I think is important cuz you say parasites and ding one protocol and kids and adults. I just wanna share, I'm trying to normalize this and not make it so weird. I always like to people to Google CDC and pin worms. Pin worms. I just want you to know have the prevalence rate. The prevalence rate for pin worms is 50% according to C, the CDC and kiddos, right? Or if you work in an institution that would be a hospital, a school, a daycare, anywhere <laugh> where there's lots of people technically, right?
(25:21):
So I do like to normalize talking about it a little bit cuz we don't, itchy butts are a huge sign and symptom and pin rooms what they do is they come out at night and lay eggs on the outside and crawl back in. It's lovely <laugh>. And I would say like hands in mouth and chewing fingernails is a huge problem I see with it. So I just wanna mention that so that when the way that was phrased, I don't know if this is the season that's here, but that would just be a comment I have. The protocols for what you do for single cell parasites versus worms are different or multicellular. So there are lots of good medications on the market for a multicellular or worm situation. These can be really nasty, aggressive and they are harder to kill and they present themselves like you figure it out as you're working with someone like oh this is very parasitical, like the symptoms are kind of leaning more that way.
(26:08):
And sometimes you do a little more of intensive protocol for single cellular organisms, high doses of meme, black walnut or esha. All of those are common, nearly used herbs in the United States and there are other medications and then in other countries it's like commonplace for people to view worm. I don't really have strong opinions about that. I just think that we should probably not act like we don't have any problems here in the us So that would be my only comment there. All right, so I think I covered almost all of these except for Maria's and if you guys again like you're the priority, you're here Lori, I, I talked to Andrea, I talked to someone else with an A left. Barbara, you joined late. Do you join late? Susan you joined late. So if you guys have any questions, Lori? Actually, actually there was a whole different crowd of people here at the beginning.
(26:45):
So if you guys have any questions just unmute yourself. I'll answer those real quick and then we'll wrap up. But if not, I'll do Maria real quick. She said she recently done a, did a colonoscopy. Her doctor said she has an internal hemorrhoid and nothing to worry about, blah blah blah blah, blah. Okay, so she's got symptoms where she's not digesting certain things. So clearly there's an issue, right? So this is one of those situations where her colonoscopy didn't give her a ton of information. You know if, if Mario landed in my virtual office, I would run a stool test on her, address the gut imbalances, whether they're fungal bacteria overgrowth, parasitic overdose, I would correct those. I would make sure to set her up for success and do a lot of things around improving digestion and correct the problem. That would be my approach to this, right? So that would be my approach. Not like no one's helpless, like we have options. I just want, I think like that's another mantra I have is like you always have options. There is actually solutions and things you can do. All right Andrea did you have another question?
Speaker 2 (27:33):
I did. I just wanted to see if you could speak a little bit about digestive enzymes. Is that something that everybody should be taking or, I'm not really sure if I wrap my mind around how they really work, but it's a suggested protocol for a lot of people.
Christa (27:48):
Improving digestion is like a cornerstone of fixing. So I do a lot of like overcoming food sensitivity, fatigue, et cetera, not digesting things really like a stooling of meer. So ideally your body should make its own enzymes, better stress suppresses your stomach acid, which is a huge factor that digests protein and it's not like you get that back easily. Like you need to do some things to fix that. It suppresses bile, which is huge for fat digestion. It suppresses digestive enzyme function. So like there's so many things that are really challenging our ability to digest. We also are like eating while we work a lot, right? And not actually chewing things up. All of those things are really important. So like it's a simple honest question and I can't give a simple answer. I have to like say like there's a lot of factors and it's not meant to be bad.
(28:31):
I just want you to know like there's several pieces to this. We would like to eat in rest and digest and not in fight or flight, right? That should make sense, right? So our body ideally should make its own enzymes. If you've got a lot of bacterial imbalances at the beginning I was talking about those impaired enzyme activity, you got a lot of overgrowths of things, your enzyme activity is gonna be impaired for cheap symptom resolution enzymes can be a great thing to trial. So for the person that had asked like if I can't afford to do something at least supporting how you digest is like gonna be a step in the right direction. I would say. Should everyone take enzymes? No, I don't make blanket statements like that. I actually do some other things where I use some herbal bidders and different things to kind of stimulate digestion from an internal perspective.
(29:12):
I talk a lot about mechanical digestion when I'm working with clients. Like I'm doing a lot of things to optimize digestion and I almost rarely and never recommend enzymes cuz I'm looking for things that are better at longer term. I will say you can take enzymes, it doesn't correct your problem, but it certainly can help in the short term. And especially if like gut symptoms are really atrocious, I think it would actually be a really good thing if I am indulging a lot, like let's say it's a holiday and I eat a whole bunch of food, that's a lot to ask my digestive system to keep up with and I might take some kind of enzyme type product or something that's gonna help. There's actually certain bacteria and probiotics that I'll regulate enzyme production as well. So I'm gonna use something that helps me digest those things because if I have a lot of undigested stuff, it's actually gonna feed overgrowth and weeds.
(29:53):
Okay. So, okay, thank you. Blanket statement. I wouldn't say that I have feelings about it. So, well thank you guys for coming live and for the last people that came live. And if you're watching this on a replay, I hope you find this helpful. I'll do another community call. In what month are we in? It's November. This is May, November one. So my next one's actually in two weeks in December. And I'm gonna talk about minerals, I think. So I hope you're able to join. You'll have to register again to get the different call link at that time, but it's in my Instagram profile, which is probably where most of you came from. So anyway, hope to see you next month. And thank you guys for joining, sharing, and reviewing. This podcast is the best way to help us succeed with our mission. To help integrate the best of East and West and empower you to raise the bar on your health story, just go to review this podcast.com/less stressed life. That's review this podcast.com/less stressed life, and you'll be taken directly to a page where you can insert your review and hit post.