Heart to Heart with Hads

This ONE Thing Is Ruining Your Gut

• Hadlea Shaw

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We trace how extreme dieting and chronic stress damaged my digestion, why symptoms persisted despite “perfect” habits, and how the GI-MAP identified H. pylori and overgrowth so I could finally heal. Practical steps, stress tools, and what testing revealed that guesswork missed.

• bodybuilding prep leading to low stomach acid and permeability
• chronic stress compounding reflux, diarrhea and bloating
• why “clean eating” failed without targeted treatment
• GI-MAP insights on H. pylori and bacterial overgrowth
• structured protocol and measurable symptom relief
• performance, sleep and inflammation improvements
• stress management habits that support digestion
• when to choose functional testing over band-aids

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SPEAKER_00:

Hello guys, welcome back to the pod. Okay, we're just gonna dove dove I cannot get my chair high one. Dive right into the episode today. And we're just going to talk about the importance of having a healthy gut and just kind of my story on my gut issues and kind of what I've done, the tests I've done. We're just gonna we're just gonna go all the way back. So I personally don't remember having any sort of gut issues until after my bodybuilding prep, which was I competed actually in November of 2023 and December of 2023. So it's been almost two years now. Now when I was in prep, my digestion started to get worse towards the end. Because here's what happens is whenever you're dieting and you're eating very, very, very, very, very little food, and I'm talking about 1100, 1200 calories a day, you're not getting in very much nutrients, right? You're not feeding the good bugs, the good bacteria inside of your gut. And whenever your body's in a stress state, which my body was very heavily in a stress state, right? I was doing two hours of cardio a day, plus eating very little, plus training on top of that. And that is a recipe for disaster on your body. Bodybuilding is not healthy. I will, I'm not afraid to admit that bodybuilding is not a healthy thing to do. Yes, you have healthy habits in play, right? You're exercising, but you're exercising to a point where you're over-exercising. You're dieting, you have a healthy diet to the point of where you're over-dieting, right? It is not healthy. You get extremely, extremely shredded. It's not healthy when you compete. It's healthy when you're and you're off season and things are good, your hormones are good, all the things. But whenever you're not in that off-season, you are in that competition season, it is very unhealthy, right? And so what happens, like I said, when you have all of these factors where you're over-training and you're under-eating, your body is stressed. Physiologically, it is stressed, right? Psychologically stressed too, because there's no good, no good nutrients coming in to make you feel any sort of good. And so, with that being said, those stressors, chronic stress, decreases your stomach acid. What happens when your stomach acid is decreased? Acid, your stomach acid is let me start over. Why can I not speak? What happens when your stomach acid is low and decreased? There is more room, more susceptibility for you to pick up a certain type of gut infection, overgrowth of bacteria, because your stomach doesn't have good enough acid, adequate acid to fight off any sort of infection going on, right? And another thing that happens when your stomach acid is low, your metabolism is also low. Your metabolism is also slowed. So we're gonna talk a little bit about, you know, how stomach acid can actually feed bad bacteria, right? When we don't have enough stomach acid, that bad bacteria, it comes in, it invades our gut, right? And then our another thing too is when we are chronically stressed and overdieted and all these things, is our gut lining is more permeable. Permeable. Why can I not talk? Our gut lining is more permeable, meaning foreign things can come inside, right? And inside of our gut. And this is really bad because we get foods, you know, after another thing too, is like after prep, you you start to eat more food, and maybe you eat more foods that are off plan and things like food sources that you are not used to that you haven't eaten in months. And so that comes in and that leaks through that that gets through your gut barrier, right? Because it's so permeable and it makes you have a terrible cascade of issues that are not even a hundred percent related to your gut, and so this is why it's so incredibly important that you don't whenever I'm not saying anybody listening to this is gonna be prepping for a bodybuilding show, but whenever you are good dieting, you can't go too hard, which most people, lifestyle dieters, are not going to go to that extent, to that extreme, right? But also in that same instance, like knowing that chronic stress and what chronic stress can do to your gut is excuse me, is is big as well. And I'm really passionate about this for a multitude of reasons. The biggest one being my dad literally died of colon cancer, and colon is your intestine. So that plays a big part in gut health. And thinking back as I was experiencing my gut issues, and as I was experiencing health issues, I was like, okay, dis-ease in the body happens when something is out of alignment. We're not in homeostasis. And I was thinking back, okay, what was his lifestyle like? And I'm not gonna sit here and say that he was the most unhealthiest person ever because he wasn't. He was probably like the typical average American person, right? He liked to drink beers on the weekend, he liked to, you know, eat crappy foods, he didn't have a very nutrient-dense diet. He let he was a, I gotta, I just gotta say this. And I think he took me to middle, he took me to school in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. And we would go to the donut shop every single day. Every day before school. And if we didn't go to the donut shop, we would go to Casey's and get a Casey's pizza. Gas station pizza. This is what we would do every single day. So I know for sure his lifestyle habits, the the alcohol, right, the not getting any nutrient-dense foods. I know he had gut issues. Like I vividly remember him being constipated. This isn't TMI. He would want me to share my story and his story in hopes of in hopes of helping other people, right? Then you then he wouldn't sleep well. And like all of these things, right? If maybe he would have eaten better and brought down the inflammation inside of his body, he would have been able to sleep better. And I'm not gonna sit here and say, like, oh, I'm so resentful of no, that's not what I'm saying. Because I lived the same lifestyle as he did. We the whole her whole family did, right? Nobody we were never taught that. We were never, you know, it was never enforced because you think that, you know, if you exercise, which he did, he was a very active person, he was a coach, like you think all these things, you think it will happen to you until it does. And then it, and then you get this wake-up call. I got this wake-up call, and I was like, okay, I actually need to take care of this because having these chronic prolonged gut issues are not going to are literally going to make like stress me out. And so my goal was to get on get on top of it. And so many people, whenever I was telling my friends that they're like, you need to go to the doctor, you need to go to the GI doctor. And I'm like, I'm not going to the doctor who's not going to help me get to the root cause. They're going to hand me a prescription pill, they're going to hand me a PPI because I did have a lot of acid reflux. I still do, which I'll explain in a second. They're going to hand me that. They're going to give me a diagnosis of IBS. And I'm just not going to take that, right? IBS is usually a what's it called? A diagnosis for something underlying going on of a symptom that you have going on underlying, which is what I had. I had alternating between diarrhea and constipation, which was mostly diarrhea. I could see food in my stool. That's a really big sign of low stomach acid in your body not being able to fully digest the foods. But I was like, okay, so then what's the reasoning for that? And so let's say I think it was like six, six months after my bodybuilding show, I was still having gut issues, right? So I got a GI map done, and the GI map showed just like low bacteria in general. So we incorporated some bacteria back in and beneficial bacteria. And I still don't think I ever truly resolved the issue at hand because we just didn't do as we were supposed to do with that. The GI map, which is fine, you know, you live and you learn. And so then I I started my own business, and I don't know if you know, but starting a business is a really big stressor, especially whenever you're first starting out, you you don't know what you're doing, this is your only source of income, right? I went full ham on this at 22 years old, the ripe age of 22 years old. Actually, I think I was 21. I don't know. No, I was 22. I had like just freshly turned 22. And that brought on a whole nother load of stressors, right? Along with my boyfriend and I were living apart, and then we were like, okay, like, are we gonna live together? Like, we're not gonna make this work. Like, there was so much that happened in a in a short period of time, and I think a lot of that mental stress really alluded to what kind of the age power that I have now. But any sort of gut infection can really stem from having low stomach acid, and it can feed on that bacteria. And so, fast forward to a couple months ago, I got a GI map again, which was almost like how many years later? A year and a half later, I would say. And what came back was I had H. pylori and some other bacterias were like super duper high. So I had an overgrowth of bacteria, but I was having diarrhea. Like I was going to the bathroom multiple times a day, and I was so upset and frustrated. I would look in the mirror, I would hold, pull up my stomach into the mirror, and I would literally look like I was pregnant. And I was like, I'm eating healthy. I'm the epitome of fucking health. I eat 30 grams of fiber, I eat potatoes, I eat vegetables, I eat healthy proteins, like I eat bone broth, I do all of the wellness-y gut health things you could ever think of, but that's not enough if there's something underlying going on. And if you're doing the fiber, you're getting the water, you're going to the gym, you're doing every little thing that you know you have to do. If there's probably other coaches that have been in my similar situation, and you're still dealing with the gut issues, you have to dig deeper, you have to test, you have to. I hate using root cause because it's become so mainstream, but you really have to get to the foundation of what's going on. And so that's when I did the GI map. That's when I hired my functional functional health coach, and I really got to that. But all that to say, I figured out I had H. pylori and I've done followed his protocols and I've seen a lot of really big improvements, right? I'm not seeing as much undigested food in stool. My acid reflux is getting better, but I'm not having diarrhea, right? I can eat meals. Another thing, too, is like I was going to eat food, going out to eat meals at restaurants, and I would physically be feeling sick. Like I would be nauseous. No matter what I ate, if it if it wasn't literally no matter what I ate, it didn't matter because, like I said, I was eating healthy, I was eating the healthiest foods, and I was still having diarrhea. Like I would have to go to the bathroom after every single meal. Like, and that's what happens when you have H. pylori. There's several different side effects that come from that, but one being the belching, the acid reflux, the diarrhea, or the the fluctuation between constipation and diarrhea. And now I feel good. Like last night I went to eat dinner, had a steak, french fries, and some ice cream. And I didn't have the bubble guts. I didn't feel like I was gonna shave my pants and nothing come out. I felt fine and it didn't affect me. I didn't have like I would sometimes get like rapid heart rate after eating something that wasn't on my plan. And I was like, what's going on? But I knew now I know that that was causing systemic like inflammation throughout my body because my gut was reacting to that. And if you don't know, your gut literally plays a role in everything inside of your body. Anyways, I digress. I know I'm speaking a lot, but all that to say is I've finally gotten to what's going on, and I've finally been able to incorporate the protocols that I need to in order to get it under control. But you have to prioritize your gut health because your gut health plays a role in everything else. Since I've been able to minimize my symptoms, inflammation has gone down, like two pounds down since when I started, and my food intake is pretty much the same. And my training is still the same. I'm training three days a week. Like I'm not even training, I'm not training a bunch a week. I'm not doing any extra cardio. I'm just all I'm doing is fixing my gut, and my body is loving that. Obviously, I got some acne going on over here, which I think that could just be because I need to change my pillowcase, but I've been paying attention, like really in tune with my body on the things that have been affected by my gut, prioritizing my gut. A lot of it has been, right, I've felt better in the gym, my performance is better, my energy is better, I sleep better. I cannot tell you. I think you probably, if you've listened to some of my podcasts in the past, like the summer months and when I first moved here, I could not sleep. And that's really when my gut issues became super exacerbated. And so I think my gut had a lot to do with that. I've literally done everything, like leading up to the GI map, which the GI map is the holy grail. Without that, I would have been second-guessing, been throwing supplements in and just really trying to figure out. I even tried peptides. I tried peptides, peptides didn't give me hardly any relief at all. I tried so many different supplements and literally nothing worked until I was able to just swallow my ego, swallow my pride, and do the GI map. And obviously, I know how to read a GI map. I just want a coach to tell me what to do. Coaches have coaches, right? I could sit here and I could do my own protocol. Like I know the things that I need to do, but I wanted an outsider looking in perspective because I don't know everything, right? I know how to read GI maps. I can help people interpret theirs and give them protocols, but not when I've never seen a case like like mine before, right? H. pylori, a lot of gut bacteria overgrowth, and you know, just different dietary recommendations that I need to do. But I feel like I've truly, since having those two GI maps done, I'm like, okay, I'm a fucking master at the gut now because I know what I need to do, like I've had to do to solve my own issues. And so I'm very confident that I can do the same for other people that are maybe in the same shoes. Like they're doing everything right. Like I said, you could be doing everything right and still have the issues. 15 minutes. I'm 15 minutes in talking. I I feel like I've been talking for a really long time. But yeah, I wanted to kind of go over like my issues and the things that I've been dealing with, but how impactful the GI Map has been for me and how I know it can be for you too. And I just wanted to shed light on this because when you go to the doctor, they're not, they don't have access to these functional labs. There's there's modern medicine and then there's functional medicine, right? And I think both are great, right? Modern medicine is great for you have an injury, you're on your, you know, deathbed of like something just happened to you tragically, you need surgery, you need this. That's why I love modern medicine. Now, when it comes to getting to those root cause issues of like the high blood pressure, the diabetes, the blood sugar issues, the gut issues, that's where I think functional health kind of can take over because we're looking at the whole body and we're not just throwing a band-aid on the problem. We're actually realizing, okay, what's causing this to happen? And these these lab tests that we get that are not just your traditional blood work, whenever I physically have to shit in a little carton that looks like something you'd put French fries in at a baseball game, and then you have to scoop pieces out, like different pieces of your poop, put it in this vial, shake it up, you send it off in a in a thing, FedEx, and then they send you the results three weeks later. And I'm not gonna sit here and say this stuff is cheap. This is a like a$400 ordeal, right? I would rather spend my money on this than continue to go to a specialist go and they just keep referring me and giving me medications that aren't doing anything but but giving me a short-term little fix when I want to know exactly what's going on inside of my body so that I can fix it and I can prevent it from not happening again, right? So I know now, like, yeah, I got the H. pylori. Now it's like, okay, what caused that in the first place? I know is the low stomach acid. I know is the constant stress. And I have, I can honestly say I've been so much better about managing my stress, about letting shit go. And I think it just comes down to being able to deal with so much stress or having so many stressors that have happened in your life to just finally be like, when are you gonna let that shake go? Because you have to know that stress in any type of form is going to happen no matter what. But it's in our control to figure out how we're going to deal with it. And so I've really been focusing on my breath work, my meditation, right? I've been focusing on my breath, learning how to breathe, breathe with my nose, and be able to sit in stillness and not be constantly consuming or doing or creating, just being chill vibes and being grounded and being out in nature and just letting shit go as as cliche and silly as that sound sounds. I have let more shit go in the past two months than I probably ever have in my life, right? But just expecting stress to happen because it's going to happen, and learning how to continuously deal and man deal with it and manage it. And it's come with practice, right? You don't just wake up one day and you're like, oh, I'm not stressed anymore. Like, I know how to manage it. No, it takes time and it takes you continuously facing the stress and you just having a good stress management, a good meditation practice of chill, vibes, putting your phone up, like setting these daily little boundaries with yourself and sticking to it. That's the hardest part is setting those boundaries and then sticking with them and then making them a non-negotiable, making them a part of your day, a part of who you are. So I hope this gives you some insight on kind of the GI map, who would need it, and how it could help you in so many ways, right? I don't want to get to 40 years old and be like, wow, I have had these chronic gut issues and I've done nothing about them, and then be more at more of a risk for having colon cancer or any sort of stomach cancer that I could have prevented just by taking care of myself at a younger age. So hopefully this helps. Hope you guys love this episode. Share it with somebody, whatever you gotta do. Um, I just needed to get that off my chest. So I'll see you guys in the next episode. Love you bye.