Heart to Heart with Hads

Why Healing Your Gut Should Be Your Top Health Priority

• Hadlea Shaw

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Hadley explains how gut health is the foundation for overall wellness and shares essential strategies to improve digestive function and prevent serious health issues. 

• Digestion begins in the mouth with proper chewing and saliva production
• Eating in a stress-free environment and taking 20-30 minutes per meal is crucial
• Liver function must be supported for proper digestion and detoxification
• Common gut issues include bloating, constipation, food sensitivities, and bacterial overgrowth
• The 5R Protocol: Remove irritants, Replace enzymes, Re-inoculate bacteria, Repair gut lining, Rebalance system
• Gut health directly impacts hormones, metabolism, immune function, and weight management
• Testing options like GI-MAP can identify specific gut issues when symptoms persist
• Daily fiber, water intake (100+ ounces), and regular movement support gut motility
• Always address gut health before treating hormonal imbalances

Join my FREE gut masterclass on August 27th at 6pm via Zoom where I'll dive deeper into how stress affects your gut, how gut health impacts hormone production, and the gut-metabolism connection.


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Speaker 1:

Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of Heart to Heart with Heads. Woohoo, okay, I think the last two episodes I literally did not have my flipping mic used so it probably sounded very terrible quality and I apologize for that. Like really really apologize for that, because that was not my intention and I need to get better about my computer settings being all figured out, because what the heck actually, hadley, are you doing? Anyways, today's episode we're talking about your freaking gut and I'm just going to go all in on kind of the basic, on covering every single thing that I know about the gut so that you can be equipped, and also just plugging that I'm having a gut masterclass on August 27th at 6 pm free. It's Zoom link.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to be diving deep on the gut how stress plays a role in your gut, how your gut is affecting your ability to properly excrete and produce hormones and to be continued, and also how your gut plays a role in your ability to, inability or ability to properly lose weight. Your gut is definitely a big proponent of your metabolism. Your gut can definitely throw off your thyroid if there's dysbiosis going on inside of your gut. So I'm going to be going really, really in depth on all of those things. You're probably like Kathleen. That's so stupid. No, if you want to learn how to fully take care of your health, it starts in the gut. So I'm going to start off this episode with the fact that my dad died of colon cancer. If you didn't know, the colon is in your large intestine and your large intestine takes up the majority of your stomach. Okay, we're going to start with the basics and I'm going to explain a lot of this in depth on my masterclass as well. But think about it this way Digestion starts at your mouth. You know how, whenever you get super hungry, you start to salivate like oh my gosh, I'm really hungry. My mouth is watering right now, like what the heck's going on. This should happen. This should help your body start to prepare for the breakdown of the food.

Speaker 1:

So whenever you first take a bite of food, first things first. Actually, let me back up. Whenever you're about to eat a meal, how many of you are either stressed on the go, crazy Like no, the first thing that you need to do is make sure that you're in an environment where you're pretty chill. Now there is some occasions where I have to eat on the go, and it hasn't happened a lot recently, but it does happen every now and then. So making sure that you're in a stress-free environment Maybe that's you're going out to eat to lunch with somebody, or if you're in your office closing your computer, whatever it is so that you're fully present in what you're doing, so that you can properly break down and absorb the food right. So we want to make sure that we're chewing, we're chewing our food to a pulp.

Speaker 1:

Whenever you eat fast, you do not get enough chewing in, and so that's why I always say make sure that you're eating like eating. One meal should take you anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes, especially if it's a meal that's high in protein vegetables. You're getting a lot of carbs. Whatever it is, you need to be properly chewing your food. So think it is you need to be properly chewing your food. So think 20 to 30 times for one chew. I think that's right. Yeah, 20 to 30 times for one chew, and it also should take you 20 to 30 minutes. So just remember that number.

Speaker 1:

Next thing if your food is not properly being broken down obviously going down your esophagus and you're not eating slow, that can cause you to have the acid reflux, the indigestion that you're dealing with, and also indigestion, acid reflux, can come from the type of food that you're eating as well. So think foods like sometimes foods like tomatoes can do that, foods that are a little bit high like in acid. So tomatoes, ketchup, I always get it, sometimes with salsa I get it, and so just kind of limiting how much you are of those things or if those things cause you some issues, limiting it obviously. But if not, don't worry about it. Bananas can also cause it as well, but the big thing is just making sure that you're eating slow, right. Then it travels down the esophagus and then it goes down and food first has to pass to your liver before it goes into any of the other organs. And so if your liver is backed up, if your liver is not properly detoxifying that when it gets to those other organs inside of your digestive tract, it's going to not do what it needs to do. So if liver function is not good, which there are some things you can do to help support your liver function but if your liver is backed up and this can be with things like toxins, heavy metals, nasty food, you know, if you're someone that regularly drinks alcohol, like your liver is not going to probably be able to detoxify properly.

Speaker 1:

If you're someone that takes a lot of medications, it's probably already backed up. Birth control can do this. Any sort of prescription medications automatically going to make your liver a little bit more burdened, and so this is why holistic Hadley wait, that's actually cute Holistic Hadley is like okay, let's see how we can minimize our liver being burdened as much as possible. So I don't drink alcohol, for one. I don't take any medications, I only take a handful of supplements and I take a binder which is just going to help with overall liver detox and help bind to the toxins and metals so that they can properly get out of your system, right, so I'm going to give you a couple of supplements there. Going to give you a couple supplements there. I like NAC, dandelion root or leaf, whatever. Ox bile is good. These things help support. You can also put castor oil in your belly button and I I think this really does help.

Speaker 1:

Um, and just eating foods that are good quality, obviously, making sure you're getting in enough fiber. Fiber is not only good for your gut, obviously, but your liver as well. So your gut, to me, consists of your intestines and the I lost my train of thought for a second and the liver. I don't necessarily consider gut, but I guess it could be. Liver is like the number one important thing to address first before going into your gut, and so this is why I have all my clients do a liver detox when they first come on. We use some medical foods, we literally give them like 60 grams of fiber, and they're not shitting a lot. I'm not saying that they're going poop all the time. They're at least going once a day, if not two to three, and they are good bowel movements. But they're also just properly detoxing. They're taking liver support supplements, just making sure that their body is fully able to detox so that their gut can run smoothly. Sorry, I was getting a call. How very unprofessional of Brock to call me right now. Anyways, so that's a little bit of talk on the liver and how we can kind of support liver.

Speaker 1:

Now, when we get into gut, there's a couple different things that could be going on with your gut. Right, if you're dealing with things like bloating, you're not able to go to the bathroom every day, which, if you're not, that's not normal and you need to get that checked out ASAP. Another thing too is like colon cancer is one of the most common cancers recently, and not common, but it's. It's becoming more prevalent because everyone's gut health is getting really bad just because of what's in our food, for one, and the things that we're putting inside of our body inside of our body and outside of our body, even things that you put on your skin. Your body still has to detoxify that properly, right? So your makeup, your perfume, your candle, your deodorant, your shampoo, your conditioner, your body wash, like these, are things that people don't think about when it comes to properly detoxifying and excreting these things out. So that was a little bit on the liver, but gut.

Speaker 1:

Going back to gut, like the bloating, not being able to go to the bathroom, um, acid reflux. There's so many different variables that go into a little bit of gut issues going on. There are a lot of different gut issues. You know. There's small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, which can be just bacteria overgrowth inside of your gut. That's not causing you to be able to go to the bathroom daily and you this often causes people to look pregnant at the end of the day because there's too much bacteria overgrowth. There's a lot of methane. What's the terminology for it basically? Um, there's methane producing gases going on inside, so your body's not able, your motility slows down your ability to go to the bathroom, and so these things are prevalent and people don't really even realize that they have them.

Speaker 1:

But I think just going to stick to some basic things that you can do If you're noticing food sensitivities, like dairy or gluten. Those are things that you're going to want to cut out for a period of time so that your gut, of the immunity inside of your gut, can get calmed down and so that you're not in this spot of oh my gosh, like this inflammatory state essentially. So whenever you can cut those out for a couple of weeks sometimes I even like upwards to eight weeks then your body will be able to restore its kind of function and immunity. But also, to supporting this, there's some supplements, essentially, that you can incorporate. I still like NAC, I like zinc, carnosine, I like aloe vera juice, I like glutamine. There's several supplements that you can incorporate in. These supplements are all going to help repair the gut lining so that whenever you do introduce foods back in, your gut lining is a lot more repaired. Immunoglobulins this is going to increase. It's going to help your body properly detoxify as well, just a natural detoxification, but also, too, it's going to help the immunity inside of your gut so that you can handle more food.

Speaker 1:

Say, you know, you do go out to eat and it's not totally the best meal that you'd have at home. Your gut isn't screaming and fighting for its life. Now, that being said, getting into whole foods there's a lot of talk around oh, like whole foods, this whole foods that you know we need to cut out processed foods, and this is so real If you're someone that has a highly processed diet and I'm talking processed foods I don't think people understand what processed foods mean. There's process and then there talking processed foods, I don't think people understand what processed foods mean. There's process and then there's ultra processed, so you can still get processed foods that have good ingredients. You can get cereal with good ingredients. It's still a processed food. Even some meats are processed, yogurt is processed, cottage cheese is processed. There are so many things that are quote unquote process, but when it's, whenever we get into things like the ingredient list is fricking 10 ingredients long of things that are not good for your body. So one thing that I recommend people to get is either the environmental working group app or you can see what kind of foods um are good for you oh, I hate saying um, I just need to pause anytime I need to say um, foods that are not totally the best for you. And you can also look on the Yuka app. You can scan products and you can also see the ingredients in there. Some of them are harmful.

Speaker 1:

There's just a lot of research around gut playing factors into other parts of your health and it leading to other things Like your gut can literally cause you to have insulin resistance if it's not treated. I'm I have a client right now whose daughter that I'm working with. She literally got a GI map done and because she came to me and said that she was like they diagnosed her with type two diabetes she's a young girl I'm like this is just totally not normal and there could be something definitely underlying going on. So I had to order the GI map. Sure enough, there was things on the GI map that came up and that's a whole nother topic that we could talk about on another specific episode. But just for time's sake, gi map just tests a lot of the commensal bacteria in your gut. It tests if there's any you know parasites going on, h pylori you won't see SIBO in there. You'll see if your zonulin's low, if your immunoglobulin secretagory immunoglobulins are low or high. There's so many different things that you can see. That can kind of pinpoint, okay, what's going on and how can we support the gut from here.

Speaker 1:

Another thing going back to the removing triggering foods you want to remove alcohol, corn, soy, dairy, caffeine, things for, like I said, a period of two to upwards to eight weeks to give your body some time to reset and incorporate those foods. You'll also likely want to make sure that you're. There's two different ways, two different things you can do. So if someone eats fiber and fiber doesn't make them go to the bathroom, then that's when we can kind of go okay, we need to pull some fibrous foods out and keep it low FODMAP for a while, because fiber can also feed on the bad bacteria in the gut, making the methane more high, more gas produced and so that can cause slow motility. But on the other hand, majority of people just need more fiber in the diet. Not everyone deals with the SIBO where they actually have to do.

Speaker 1:

Low FODMAP, not having a lot of fiber, most people need more fiber and so literally I can tell you a whole list of fiber, but you could look up on yourself. Look up yourself on Google what are the foods highest in fiber? How can I incorporate these into my day? Or you can literally go on a strategy team like, hey, give me a meals that will get me 30 grams of protein for the rest of the week. So there's literally do it for you things out there. It's just a matter of you implementing it into your routine in your day today.

Speaker 1:

Now, with that being said, fiber is huge. Water is huge. I say 100 ounces of water per day for everyone, no matter what, 100 ounces plus, obviously, getting in enough water helps support the motility, walking, movement. If you're someone that's a chronic sitter, you're sedentary, you don't get up, you get less than 5,000 steps a day then we need to make sure that we're increasing that. I say 7 000 Minimum for every single person just to ensure, when you're walking and moving, you're standing upright, your bowels have a chance to get moving. Another thing you can do you can use a squatty potty. Put your feet up and it puts your body in more of a position to. I don't know how to explain it, but basically your digestive system is kind of like pulled up a little bit or like downwards, so that it can just come out, unless, without your feet having to be like on the ground, you have more of a more to work with, if that makes sense. I don't quite know how to explain it, but hopefully you kind of get what I'm saying Fiber, water, even movement too, aside from walking, going to the gym, making sure that you're sweating this one's huge for properly detoxifying.

Speaker 1:

There's literally so many things related to gut, and I could go on and on and on about this, but I really wanted to do this to kind of help promote the masterclass that I'm doing, so that you can really get hands on. I'm like okay, what foods are causing issues? How can I structure my meals throughout the day to make sure that I'm getting enough food? What does the liver detox look like? Because the liver detox is what I do in phase one of my program, where inflammation is lost throughout the body. Most clients lose upwards to five to eight pounds just in a two-week time frame, just because they're decreasing so much inflammation from foods, environmental toxins, all sorts of things and I love it for everyone, and it gets your body into a state of calm, chill, rest and digest.

Speaker 1:

During that time. We don't do any training in the gym. We just focus on things like yoga, breath, meditation, walking, especially outside, making sure that they are Not distracted, that it's fully just in presence with nature. That brings me to my next point. If you're someone that's Overdoing it with your workout, whether that be you're running too much, you're doing too much hit, you're training too aggressively inside of the gym Me, I've done that in the past then your body's not able to fully get into that rest and digest state. And I know you've probably heard rest and digest before, but it's huge.

Speaker 1:

If your body cannot like calm down, then you're not going to be able to have the regular digestion You're going to be dealing with the constipation or the diarrhea, or and there are several different things that can cause constipation and diarrhea you know having multiple stools throughout the day, kind of like a dumping effect. There's so many things. You're not absorbing fats or different foods properly, but this all goes back to making sure that your gut is properly functioning. And another thing, too, along with the properly functioning gut, is if you notice that you're dealing with a lot of the symptoms you know the bloating all the time, the constipation, despite doing everything. Then you can go into a process called 5R, and so 5R, let me explain to you, um, kind of what that looks like, so that you can kind of understand you know what may need to, what you may need to do.

Speaker 1:

So the first thing is removing things. Phase one remove, so stressors, any gut irritants. Like I said, pulling things out. You need to replace, making sure that your stomach acid, stomach acid is in a good spot. Stress also decreases stomach acid and we need enough stomach acid for your body to properly digest and absorb foods. We want to replace, you know, nutrients from foods, bile. Hold on one second. Okay, and um, sorry, I lost my train of thought.

Speaker 1:

So one remove stressors and gut adherence, gut irritants. Two replace and replace too. If we need to kill off anything, anything inside of your gut, then that's where we do that too. Sorry, I'm trying to pull up my, uh, my thing so that I can better explain it in depth for you guys. Okay, okay, got it. So remove.

Speaker 1:

We want to remove the food triggers, right, the toxins, the stress, the bacteria, the biofilms, all of that. So gluten, dairy corn, soy FODMAPs, oxalates, histamines, alcohol, coffee, caffeine, high-intensity exercise, processed food supplements, um, tylenol, proton pump inhibitors, a lot, a lot of different things that we want to remove. And while we're in this phase, we also want to utilize supplements that are going to help kill things off. We think of replace like I said, we want to make sure that our body's properly digesting so digestive enzymes and then nutrient support from good foods, electrolytes, minerals, all the things. Now, when we get to re-inoculate, we've kind of done some kill-offs.

Speaker 1:

So in this re-inoculate phase we want to make sure we're getting our bacteria, our good bacteria, in a good spot so that our body does not, you know, do this again essentially. So re-inoculating with some things like probiotics, prebiotics, you know, fermented foods, fiber, adding that back in and then repair, so repairing the gut lining, which I think repair you can do at the beginning, I think repair you can do the whole entire time. Like I said, zinc, carnosine, um, the immunoglobulins, aloe vera juice, the bone broth, all of these things, and then obviously rebalance. So you just want to make sure things are staying in a good spot, so just making sure that our stress is not going back through the roof. We can use some different things like ashwagandha, core ease, magnesium, glycinate and then overall, just immune and inflammations apart. So your essential vitamins A, d, c, k, zinc, and then obviously your omega-3s, so a lot of these things can really really really help your immune system for one, reduce your inflammation, improve your hormonal balance, your better sleep, obviously, be able to absorb nutrients better and your immunity levels as well will be so much better and improve your mental health.

Speaker 1:

So many different things. Now it does suck because it's like you have to be in a spot of restriction for a little while just with the foods that you're intaking. But it is super, super helpful and in my mentorship they kind of explained it. Mentorship, they kind of explained it this way. So I'm going to explain kind of what they said.

Speaker 1:

So really kind of just comparing the five R's. So remove is like removing the weeds and seeds from the lawn and then replace You're replacing it with healthy soil, re-inoculate, you're repopulating it with new seeds. So that's the spot where you're adding in the new bacteria, right, and then the repair you're restoring healthy nutrients, fertilizer, filling any holes, and so filling any holes is making sure that your gut lining is in a good spot, and so that's kind of like what I mentioned those supplements that you could add in to just make sure that your gut lining is healed, and then the rebalance just maintain the healthy environment, the sun, the water, the food, et cetera, to just support the lawn or support your gut. And so that's whenever we have to make sure that we're our immune system is staying healthy by incorporating the maintenance supplements and eating the right amount of foods, right amount of fiber, plus the managing stress. So that's kind of it on the 5R protocol.

Speaker 1:

But I didn't really mention a lot of the gut issues that I mainly see. I usually see people having like too many bowel movements a day or the constipation and usually just by changing the type of food sources, limiting our stress and really prioritizing just overall whole foods, nutrient dense, like just a whole lifestyle changes, when you really start to see a change. Now, if you're someone that's dealing with more complex issues and that requires further testing, like I said, the GI map is good for that, but overall it really just comes down to kind of what symptoms you're facing. And I like testing, especially if you've dealt with like really in depth problems with gut and you haven't done anything else to kind, or if you've done things to try and fix it. Then that's where the testing comes into place. But if you've literally tried everything, then that's where testing comes in.

Speaker 1:

And if there's other things kind of going on like, oh, your blood sugar's high, you're not able to lose weight, you know your hormones are off. But one thing I will say is you always have to address the gut first before going into hormones. Gut is going to majorly impact the way that your hormones are affecting you. If you're having symptoms, like if you're thinking that you have PCOS, or your progesterone's low, your estrogen's low, or your periods suck really bad or you don't have a period at all, you always want to look at your gut and adrenals, and adrenals is cortisol. So that's that in a nutshell.

Speaker 1:

I hope you guys kind of got some good ideas from this and kind of just get you excited for what's to come in the masterclass that's coming up in two weeks. But if you guys have any questions, let me know. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Try to give you a brief breakdown of kind of all the things that I know and if you're going to want to learn more in depth about how this can affect your hormones, what foods to eat, what foods to stay away from all the things. I will be going in more depth on this on my masterclass, and I hope you guys tune in In the meantime. We will see you on the next episode. Bye guys.