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clear search termsThe Surprising and Fascinating World of Bowel Movements
Hi!
I am so excited to share this Facebook Live and THESE POWERFUL PEARLS of functional medicine with you. At SAFM we teach our students to be both confident and highly skilled at “puzzle piecing” and finding the interconnectedness between pieces of each patient’s unique case. In this presentation, I’ll share a few stapled but also some unexpected connections which might surprise you!
Check out this video to get some clinical pearls you can use right away. You’ll learn:
Powerful Pearls about BMs, the Colon, and Motility
- What *actually* drives motility and most often impairs it (hint: it’s not the fiber!)
- Why magnesium is not the end-all-be-all solution
- Microbial solutions for constipation and diarrhea
- Surprising reasons for cramps (it’s not always SIBO)
- When the best solution is NOT in the GI tract
- Why BMs should be the First focus
Thank you very much for joining in the fun and learning!
With warmth, love, and gratitude to you for sharing your gifts with so many –
P.S. If you are passionate about transforming healthcare through the power of functional medicine, we encourage you to learn more about our training program here.
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Wondering if dairy sensitivity or lactos intolerance could come into play with celiac people re your comment about the brush borders being damaged and not being able to generate enzymes. Should celiac folks avoid dairy as well as gluten 100%? Is that a given?
Yes! Yes, yes, yes. Excellent thinking about interconnectedness. Every celiac I have ever known/supported also have dairy sensitivity and chooses to avoid it either 100% or feels fine using only ghee. This is likely a direct result of brush border damage, but it’s also true that many sensitivities coincide with celiac disease due to molecular mimicry in creating “cross sensitivities”. This is where an offending substance (e.g. dairy, rice, oats) looks a too much like the main culprit (in this case gluten), and the immune system rejects it too, as a result. There are tests specifically for gluten cross-reactivity foods e.g. Cyrex Array #4 https://www.joincyrex.com/the-cyrex-system/array-4-gluten-associated-cross-reactive-foods-foods-sensitivity (there is a list of the most common culprits here too).
this was great… surge of prostaglandine > symtoms of IBS. thanks!
Great session and GI review. I loved your pearl to not push fiber and shouldn’t necessarily be your go to. Love water and Mag. citrate
What a wonderful talk, Tracy. Much appreciation! Difficult to choose one favorite pearl. The info about estrogen dominance that can flip into progesterone dominance during the effort to correct the imbalance with the related knock on, had my jaw dropped. I have estrogen dominance currently and my FM advised high dosages progesterone. Suddenly I have a bit of a constipation situation which I could not figure out and voila! You’ve just put me on a new path to investigate.
Another great session Tracy!
So many pearls 🙂
I love that so much of the digestive system function can be discovered by looking at poop-it can be quite the illuminator!
Also linking hormones and their effect on the gut-both in gut motility and metabolites needing to be moved through quickly enough to support detoxification & prevent reabsorption . Not to mention minerals and bacterial balance. Such a fascinating system!
I love Tracey’s videos. I always learn so much and then race off to do more research. So many gems today. I have to say the discussions about hormones and your gut fascinates me. Progesterone and estrogen dominance and it’s effects also the whole cortisol and thyroid effects on our metabolism. I will be checking out the Bristol scales as well as this was new to me.
Everything affects everything else – find the root cause, cure the disease.
Sorry if my comment comes too late. I left my comment on FB.
f I need to pick one thing I would say that I am particularly interested
is the information about the specific strains of bacteria that are most helpful for IBS, as well as the information about estrogen dominance. Thank you for all your inspired teachings!
In health,
Lauren
I love all Tracy’s videos …and this one was just as inspiring.
I appreciated all the information, if I need to pick one thing I would say that I am particularly interested
is the information about the specific strains of bacteria that are most helpful for IBS, as well as the information about estrogen dominance. Thank you for all your inspired teachings!
In health,
Lauren
Very interesting about role of hormones and constipation (hypothyroidism).
WOW! Fantastic 411. I didn’t have to look beyond the mirror to find a client.
So much resonated: thyroid, dehydration, fiber but the real pearl: mistaken
hormone imbalances for IBS! Yaaassss! For years. Thank you. Thank you.
Tomorrow I will deep dive into a new self discovery project.
Greatly appreciate your talks. Anxiously awaiting the next semester.
Cheers!
This lecture was extremely helpful and I love how you explain things. This is a topic that was just discussed in my family so it was extremely timely. I loved the explanation of different types of stool colors and consistency and what that means and where to look for a problem in the body based on certain types. I definitely need to join this school. I made a mistake and joined another and I really wish I would have joined this one first. I have heard nothing but extremely positive things about you and your school. I just talked to Jodi Franklin today and she is a great advocate. Thank you for helping others be better medical providers!
Wonderful webinar Tracy! So many pearls. You created such a clear picture of not just the connection of insufficient magnesium to constipation (which I knew), but also the pervasiveness of magnesium deficiency due to so many factors (dietary, insulin resistance, diuretics, PPI’s, etc.). With the prevalence of constipation, this makes so much sense! Interesting about gluten and loose stools, dairy and sluggish stool. I’m very excited to take the new Conquering Constipation mini course. I just love listening to you explain the bigger picture of things with such clarity. This kind of multi-directional and multi-level depth of information is clearly critical to solving the puzzle pieces of a client’s health issues. So happy to have found you. This is exactly what I have been searching for. July cannot come soon enough!
Very informative! I am fascinated by poop talk. It’s such a taboo topic but such a vital part of our systems. I wish people realized how important it is. This was a huge refresher in anatomy that I learned in nursing school.
The chart will be very useful in talking with clients.
It utterly fascinates me that sex hormones can play such a critical part in bowel health. This connection, and of course, everything connected, playing on each other still blows my mind. We’ve been conditioned for so long by so many that each system is independent. Oh the possibilities!!
I appreciate the thorough breakdown of symptoms and solutions and the connections you make by connecting the dots. Amazing how many different ways you can get to constipation and you really need to educate yourself in order to ask the right questions. So many times I listen to one of your talks and i immediately have to pull out client’s notes to add a question that I need to ask next time I see them. I am looking forward to the Core 101 semester!! I missed the live talk so I could celebrate my youngest’s tenth birthday and will need to rewatch this again and again and take better notes when I am better rested! When are you opening registration for the June start?
The body is so amazing. I recently learned about the connection between the gut and serotonin so I was happy to have that information reinforced. Thanks for always sharing.
Maldigestion issues! Thanks for speaking to this. It makes sense that low stomach acid and poor digestive enzyme support would lead to this. I’m thinking eating hygiene may also be contributory? If someone isn’t chewing their foid thoroughly, they are likely to see undigested foods right? Also w the stomach acid, importance of hydration before meals. Thank you so much for this valuable presentation! Thanks also for the identification tips! I think I may make a chart to show clients of various states of health or dis-ease based on BM’s…is that totally weird?!?
Thank you for another brilliant discourse from a FM perspective on the wonders of our body, this time on poop. It was good to review for me and what a wonderful diagnostic tool it provides. Having spent 3 months working as a junior student nurse in a bed-pan sluice room in the 1970’s, I learned first hand the importance of understanding how feces and urine can give an immediate direction to diagnosis. So now I look a little further to the root cause!
The one thing I didn’t learn was your ever present pearl of magnesium and its effect on our gut. It was also a great reminder that too much magnesium can itself cause low magnesium.
The other pearl was hormones and how important they are in bowel function.
All wonderful gems!
Really informative lecture. I really learned a lot. I learned what the color of stools indicate and then the different reasons for constipation or diarrhea. My clients mention this often and I did not know what it meant until now. I am happy that I will be able to understand this topic more. And thanks for pointing out about the Bristol scale, and that we can print it out.