Getting Over GI Problems is Not Difficult

I recently read a medical journal article on managing irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a common gastrointestinal (GI) disorder.  IBS, along with gastroesophageal reflux (GERD), are the most common GI disorders adults suffer from.  The article made it sound very complicated!  

There are the ROME IV criteria for types of IBS, to IBS with diarrhea, IBS with constipation, and IBS with mixed diarrhea and constipation.  These types of IBS all have their own new and expensive drugs to treat them, none of which go to the root cause of the problems.  They only manage the symptoms, with a number of side effects to deal with.  The same can be said about the drugs for GERD.  Yesterday a report came out that the long term use of the PPI drugs like Prilosec and Nexium are associated with early death!

These GI problems are a reflection of dysbiosis, or an unhealthy gut microbiome.  The one hundred trillion bacteria in our GI tract largely determine our health in ways still untold, but especially our GI health.  If you have chronic acid reflux or any type of IBS, you have a disorder of your gut microbiome.

Your gut microbiome complete depends on what you eat!  It is our responsibility to feed it, and feed it well.  Eat unhealthy foods and you will have dysbiosis!  Science better understood just this decade shows that the inflammatory proteins of grains (especially wheat, barley and rye) cause dysbiosis.  Processed vegetable oils and excess sweets and alcohol do the same thing.  Many people are stopping these inflammatory foods and soon they have a healthy gut with no more GERD, no more IBS, and no more drugs that are not healthy in the long term.

Getting over common GI problems is a simple as eating a healthy diet!

For more information read my book, Lean and Fit, and the books in the Suggested Reading section of this website for more information on just what constitutes a healthy diet for good GI health.

High Blood Sugar is Carbohydrate Overload

High blood sugar is common.  Most Americans have it by being a prediabetic or having diabetes.  This goes along with being overweight or obese.  Your genes have something to do with how high your blood sugar is relative to your weight and age, but everyone will get high blood sugar if they consume too many carbohydrates and develop too much body fat.

It is important to remember that our bodies do not need carbohydrates.  The Inuit living in the Artic regions are able to get all of their nutrition including vitamins and minerals from eating a caribou and no carbohydrates.  The same is true for the Samburu and Maasai tribes in Africa.  Our bodies are perfectly able to develop blood sugar from both protein and fat. When we get our blood sugar that way the level stays steady and normal.  No spikes in blood sugar or the drops of hypoglycemia.  No bouts of hunger pains unless we are truly starving.

The body fat we accumulate, especially around the waist, comes from eating too many carbohydrates, from grains, sweets and excess alcohol.  Fat is stored energy and carbohydrates are nothing more than a rapid energy food we can actually do without.  Many high performance athletes do well on diets of fat and protein and become fat burners with a steady blood sugar. That is a great formula for endurance and the ability to fast, all part of being lean and fit.

Since eating too many carbohydrates is one of the biggest problems with our Western diet, we should rethink how we describe the common health problems of overweight, obesity, prediabetes and type 2 diabetes.  Becoming overweight is from eating an excess of carbohydrates, and becoming obese is a more extreme version of that.  Prediabetes and type 2 diabetes are from chronic carbohydrate intoxication.  Think of these problems that way and it will be easier to say no to bread, cookies and cakes, ice cream and other sweets, and that second and third drink you do not really need.

Intermittent Fasting – A Great Way to Right Your Metabolism, Lose Weight, Control Blood Sugar and Increase your Mental Alertness

Joseph E. Scherger, MD MPH

Amazon sells more than 5000 books on fasting, and many were written during this decade!  Fasting has exploded in popularity, and for good reason.  Fasting is a very healthy thing to do.

We can live for weeks, some of us for months, on no food if we have adequate water intake.  Prolonged fasting, more than three days, is not to be advised since that will cause some breakdown of your body other than fat. Intermittent fasting up to three days can be a very healthy thing to do.  When we fast, and drink water, we live off our body fat.  Even thin people with less than 10% body fat have enough fat energy to sustain themselves for days.  When you burn fat for energy, ketone bodies form, the breakdown product of fat.  This is also called nutritional ketosis. This is not to be confused with the state of ketoacidosis that happens in type one diabetics when there is no insulin to metabolize sugar.  The ketone bodies formed from burning fats are healthy and have great anti-oxidant properties.

I wrote about the ketogenic diet in my previous Blog so I will not repeat that here.  The ketogenic diet is regularly eating very low carbohydrates and foods rich in fat and protein.  Fasting is a nice complement to this and can jumpstart blood sugar control and jumpstart the body into burning fats for fuel.

There are several methods of intermittent fasting, and I regularly practice the first method.  I got some of this material from a self-published (on Amazon) short book by Steve Blum, Intermittent Fasting. Remember that ability to fast comfortably is enhanced by eating plenty of fat and protein form natural foods and avoiding the grains and sweets that drive hunger.  Remember to drink water! Coffee or tea without sugar (light cream is OK) may be included.

1.     12 hour intermittent fasting – This is the easiest method of fasting and fits into any lifestyle.  We normally fast while we sleep, but that is typically 6-8 hours.  The 12 hour fast means that you do not snack after dinner and you may delay breakfast some.  For example, finish eating at 7 PM and do not eat again until 7 AM.  If you have a later dinner for social reasons, delay breakfast until 12 hours later.  You may or may not lose weight with this method depending on what you eat during the other 12 hours.  Also, if you consumed a lot of carbs, including alcohol, at dinner, you may not go into a state of ketosis during the 12 hours so be mindful of that and avoid overeating and drinking.

2.     16 hour intermittent fasting – This is more serious fasting and may be done regularly or occasionally as a “cleanse”.  Here you reduce your food intake to two meals a day in one eight hour period.  For example you start eating at 11 AM or Noon and finish eating at 7 or 8 PM.  Blum suggests that women have a tendency to require more frequent eating and should strive for a 14 hour fast.

3.     5:2 Diet or The Fast Diet – This approach to intermittent fasting has you eating whatever you want 5 days a week and only eating about 500 calories 2 days a week.  It became popular in the UK by health journalist Michael Mosley in 2012 after his  documentary on the BBC called Eat, Fast & Live Longer. The diet quickly spread in Europe and the US.  Several books including cookbooks have been written about the 5:2 diet.  There is nothing special about this ratio, only that if you fast two days a week you will definitely get the benefit of intermittent fasting.  To fully benefit you should eat healthy foods all week, rich in fats and moderate protein.  If you eat too many carbs, your hunger will interfere with sticking to this diet and receiving the benefits.

4.     One to three days of intermittent fasting – Fasting for 24 hours or longer can be safely done up to three days, and the benefits are the same as listed for the ketogenic diet.  This length of fasting requires fortitude and limits how much physical activity you can do during this time.  I have not tried this but David Perlmuter MD (Grain Brain and Brain Maker) does this every three months. 

Whatever method of intermittent fasting appeals to you, I highly recommend you build this into your nutrition lifestyle.  It is a great way to rapidly return to a healthy state, especially after a period where you diet may not have been as good due to holidays or travel.