Digestive Wellness: Strengthen the Immune System and Prevent Disease Through Healthy Digestion, Fourth Edition (2 page)

A 52-year-old woman who had suffered with daily headaches and frequent migraines for years found relief by clearing out the overgrowth of bad bugs in her small intestine with a new nonabsorbed antibiotic called Xifaxan.

A six-year-old girl with severe behavioral problems including violence, disruptive behavior in school, and depression was treated for bacterial yeast overgrowth, and in less than 10 days her behavioral issues and depression were resolved.

A three-year-old boy with autism started talking after treating a parasite called giardia in his gut.

These are not miracle cures but common results that occur when you normalize gut function and flora through improved diet, increased fiber intake, daily probiotic supplementation, enzyme therapy, the use of nutrients that repair the gut lining, and the direct treatment of bad bugs in the gut with herbs or medication.

A number of recent studies have made all these seemingly strange reversals in symptoms understandable.

Scientists compared gut flora or bacteria from children in Florence, Italy, who ate a diet high in meat, fat, and sugar to children from a West African village in Burkina Faso who ate beans, whole grains, vegetables, and nuts. The bugs in the guts of the African children were healthier, more diverse, better at regulating inflammation and infection, and better at extracting energy from fiber. The bugs in the guts of the Italian children produced by-products that create inflammation; promote allergy, asthma, and autoimmunity; and lead to obesity.

Why is this important?

In the West our increased use of vaccinations and antibiotics, along with enhancements in hygiene, have led to health improvements for many. Yet these same factors have dramatically changed the ecosystem of bugs in our gut, and this has a broad impact on health that is still largely unrecognized. Our diet has changed significantly in the past 10,000 years, and even more in the past 100 years with the industrialization of our food supply. This highly processed, high-sugar, high-fat, low-fiber diet has dramatically altered the bacteria that historically grew in our digestive tracts, and the change has not been good. Many other modern inventions including antibiotics (both those prescribed to us and those in our food supply), acid blockers, anti-inflammatory medication, aspirin, steroids, and chronic stress all injure the gut, alter our gut flora, and lead to systemic inflammation and chronic disease. Is your gut contributing to your chronic disease or symptoms? It is very likely it is.

Think of your gut as one big ecosystem. It contains 500 to 1,000 species of bacteria that amount to three pounds of your total weight. There are more than 100 trillion microbial cells. There is 100 times more bacterial DNA than human DNA in your body. A whole new field of research has emerged on the human “microbiome” and how it interacts to create health or disease and even weight gain or weight loss. These bugs control digestion, metabolism, inflammation, and your risk of cancer. These bugs produce vitamins, beneficial nutrients, and molecules that sustain your body and your ecosystem through a symbiotic relationship with you. The gut microbiome, probiotics, and prebiotics are well covered here in
Digestive Wellness.

When the balance of bacteria in your gut is optimal, this DNA works for you to great effect. For example, some good bacteria produce short-chain fatty acids. These healthy fats reduce inflammation and modulate your immune system. Bad bugs, on the other hand, produce fats that promote allergy and asthma, eczema, and inflammation throughout your body.

Another recent study found that the bacterial fingerprint of gut flora of autistic children differs dramatically from healthy children. Simply by looking at the byproducts of their intestinal bacteria (which are excreted in the urine—a test I do regularly in my practice called organic acids testing), researchers could distinguish between autistic and normal children.

Think about this: Problems with gut flora are linked to autism. Can bacteria in the gut actually affect the brain? They can. Toxins, metabolic by-products, and inflammatory molecules produced by these unfriendly bacteria can all adversely impact the brain. I explore the links between gut function and brain function in much greater detail in my book,
The UltraMind Solution,
and you’ll also find much about that here and in
Digestive Wellness for Children
.

Autoimmune diseases are also linked to changes in gut flora. A recent study showed that children who use antibiotics for acne may alter normal flora, and this, in turn, can trigger changes that lead to autoimmune disease such as inflammatory bowel disease or colitis.

The connections between gut flora and system-wide health don’t stop there. A recent study in the
New England Journal of Medicine
found that you could cure or prevent delirium and brain fog in patients with liver failure by giving them an antibiotic. Toxins from bacteria were scrambling their brains. Remove the bacteria that produce the toxins, and their symptoms clear up practically overnight.

Other similar studies have found that clearing out overgrowth of bad bugs with a nonabsorbed antibiotic can be an effective treatment for restless leg syndrome and fibromyalgia.

Even obesity has been linked to changes in our gut ecosystem that are the result of a high-fat, processed, inflammatory diet. This has been termed “microobesity.” Bad bugs produce toxins called lipopolysaccarides (LPS) that trigger inflammation and insulin resistance or prediabetes and thus promote weight gain. You’ll find a chapter in
Digestive Wellness
that discusses the role of obesity, insulin resistance, and diabetes in more detail.

It seems remarkable, but the little critters living inside of you have been linked to everything from autism to obesity, from allergies to autoimmunity, from fibromyalgia to restless leg syndrome, from delirium to eczema to asthma. In fact, more links between chronic illness and gut bacteria are discovered every day.

These bacteria thrive on what you feed them. If you feed them whole, fresh, real foods, good bugs will grow. If you feed them junk, bad bugs will grow. And when the population of bugs changes, the bad bugs begin to produce nasty toxins. Instead of
symbiosis
—a mutually beneficial relationship between you and your bugs—you create
dysbiosis
—a harmful interaction between bugs and host.

The ecosystem in your gut must be healthy for you to be healthy. When unfriendly bacteria grow in there, the friendly bacteria are pushed out and a toxic environment develops. This toxic environment affects your body and your metabolism in surprising ways.

If you have a chronic illness, even if you don’t have digestive symptoms, you might want to consider what is living inside your gut.
Digestive Wellness
is the user’s manual for the most important organ in the body, which connects to every other system in the body. A healthy gut is the center of a healthy life. Tending to the garden within can be the answer to many seemingly unrelated health problems.

Mark Hyman, M.D.

References

Bass, N. M., Bass, K. D., Mullen, K. D., Sanyal, A., et al. (2010). “Rifaximin treatment in hepatic encephalopathy.”
New England Journal of Medicine
, 362(12): 1071–81.

Cani, P. D., Amar, J., Iglesias, M. A., et al. (2007). “Metabolic endotoxemia initiates obesity and insulin resistance.”
Diabetes
, 56(7): 1761–72.

De Filippo, C., De Filippo, D., Cavalieri, D., Di Paola, M., et al. (2010). “Impact of diet in shaping gut microbiota revealed by a comparative study in children from Europe and rural Africa.”
Proceedings from the National Academy of Science USA
, 107 (33): 14691–96.

Margolis, D. J., Margolis, M., Fanelli, M., Hoffstad, O., and Lewis, J. D. (2010). “Potential association between the oral tetracycline class of antimicrobials used to treat acne and inflammatory bowel disease.”
American Journal of Gastroenterology
, 105(12): 2610–16. Epub 2010 Aug 10.

Pimentel, M., Pimentel, D., Wallace, D., Hallegua, D., et al. (2004). “A link between irritable bowel syndrome and fibromyalgia may be related to findings on lactulose breath testing.”
Annals of Rheumatic Disease
, 63(4): 450–52.

Sandin, A., Bråbäck, L., Norin, E., and Björkstén, B. (2009). “Faecal short chain fatty acid pattern and allergy in early childhood.”
Acta Paediatrica
, 98(59): 823–27.

Weinstock, L. B., Fern, S. E., and Duntley, S. P. (2008). “Restless legs syndrome in patients with irritable bowel syndrome: Response to small intestinal bacterial overgrowth therapy.”
Digestive Diseases and Science
, 53(5): 1252–56.

Yap, I. K., Yap, M., Angley, M., Veselkov, K. A., et al. (2010). “Urinary metabolic phenotyping differentiates children with autism from their unaffected siblings and age-matched controls.”
Journal of Proteome Research
, 9(6): 2996–3004.

Digestive Wellness
takes a functional medicine approach to digestive and systemic health issues. It’s foundation rests on the ideas of many people whose minds have helped inform my own—people like Jeffrey Bland, Ph.D., Sidney Baker, M.D., Leo Galland, M.D., Russel Jaffe, M.D., Ph.D., Daniel Hardt, N.D., Sally Fallon, M.S., Patrick Hanaway, M.D., Gerard Mullin, M.D., Paula Bartholomy, D.Sc., the faculty at the Institute for Functional Medicine, plus hundreds of colleagues and thousands of clients who have taught me so much.

I also would like to thank Mary Therese Church, Peter McCurdy, Nancy Hall, and the editors at McGraw-Hill for their careful handling of the manuscript and thoughtful edits.

I’d also like to thank my mom, Sylvia Lipski, who has been a consistent role model of strength, courage, and generosity, working for what she believes in, teaching me about the importance of family and relationships, and supporting her children’s freedom even when she didn’t really “get” what we were doing.

Welcome to the fourth edition of
Digestive Wellness.
The original idea for this book grew from the emergence of an idea: what if imbalances in the digestive system caused not only digestive symptoms, complaints, and disease but also symptoms, imbalances, and disease throughout the body? And what if by balancing our digestion we could have more energy, think more clearly, experience less pain, and have a better quality of life?

It’s estimated that scientific knowledge doubles every two to three years. That means, conservatively, that there is 32 times as much known now as when
Digestive Wellness
was first published in 1995. What we once thought of as a simple system becomes more complex with each advance of knowledge. In
Digestive Wellness
we’ll explore each of these topics more fully.

Research on probiotics, genetics, metabolism, neurotransmitters, the immune system, hormones, and the impact our environment has on health has mushroomed. Whole new fields such as genomics, proteomics, and the study of the microbiome have been founded. Yet the basic principles of great health—whole natural food, rest, satisfying work, communicative relationships, and movement—haven’t changed.