Episode 41: The Healthy Gut Guide: Fiber, Food Sensitivities, and Microbiome with Emily McGlone

Ever wondered what’s actually living in your gut—and how to keep it healthy? Registered dietitian and owner of LexStart nutrition Emily McGlone joins us to unpack everything you need to know about your gut microbiome.  We explore what probiotics and prebiotics really are, how to get them in your diet, and why fiber and plant diversity are essential for gut health.  We cover practical ways to reduce bloating, support digestion, and use targeted diets like low FODMAP to find your food triggers. Whether you struggle with constipation, diarrhea, or just want better gut health, this episode is packed with simple, doable tips. 

Better digestion starts here—because a healthy gut means a healthier you!

Find Emily McGlone:

LexStart Nutrition

@lexstart_nutrition

thestartinggatepodcast.com

Email us with questions and topics you want us to cover at
contact@thestartinggatepodcast.com

Follow us on social media @thestartinggatepodcast




The content in this podcast is for general reference and educational purposes only. It is not meant to be complete or exhaustive, or to be applicable to any
specific individual’s medical condition. No information provided in this podcast constitutes medical advice and is not an attempt to practice medicine or to provide specific medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. This podcast does not create a physician- patient relationship and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Please do not rely on this podcast for emergency medical treatment. Remember that everyone is different so make sure you consult your own healthcare professional before seeking any new treatment and before you alter, suspend, or initiate a new change in your routine.

Transcript

Episode 41: The Healthy Gut Guide: Fiber, Food Sensitivities, and Microbiome with Emily McGlone

[00:00:00] Before we start today's episode, I would like to quickly read you our podcast disclaimer. The content in this podcast is for general reference and educational purposes only. It is not meant to be complete or exhaustive or to be applicable to any specific individual's medical condition. No information provided in this podcast constitutes medical advice and is not an attempt to practice medicine or to provide specific medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

This podcast does not create a physician patient relationship, and it's not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please do not rely on this podcast for emergency medical treatment. Remember that everyone is different, so make sure you consult your own healthcare professional before seeking any new treatment, and before you alter, suspend, or initiate a new change in your routine.

Welcome to the starting game. We're your host, Dr. Kitty Dotson and Dr. Sarah Sheets. Two internal medicine doctors who spent years practicing traditional primary care. Over time, we realized something was missing from modern healthcare, a [00:01:00] real understanding of how everyday lifestyle choices impact overall health.

We'll help you cut through the noise of the countless health influencers and their conflicting opinions because no matter who you follow, the basics of lifestyle medicine are at the heart of it all.

Welcome back to the starting gate. We're your host, Dr. Kitty Dotson and Dr. Sarah Schuetz. So we're excited the next few weeks to be focusing on the gut. It's something that oftentimes people don't wanna talk about when they're having problems with it, but it's something that affects us so much every day.

And so we're going to be getting into topics. Today about the gut microbiome and how our diet affects this, how the gut microbiome can affect things, not just with our weight and with how we digest food, but even so far as our mood and other systems of the body. And in the coming weeks, we're gonna be talking a lot about some other issues.

We're gonna be talking about fatty liver disease, IBS, irritable bowel [00:02:00] syndrome, colorectal cancer. So we have a lot of really great guests in this field of gastroenterology that are gonna come share their insights with us and help us explore how to take better care of our gut and in turn how this will help our whole body health.

So today we're 

gonna start 

with one 

of our favorite topics, nutrition. Woo. We're excited to have our guest, Emily McGlone. She is a registered dietician who has done additional training in integrative medicine and functional medicine, and has a passion for optimizing gut health for her patient's needs, whether it's related to food sensitivities, autoimmune diseases, P-C-O-S-I-B-S.

She can do it all. She's the owner of Lex Start Nutrition here in Lexington, Kentucky, and we're super excited to have her on. Emily, if you could just give a little summary about you, we'd love to hear it. 

Sure, yeah. Thank you so much for having me. This is such a fun and exciting opportunity.

With LexStart Nutrition like they said, I am the owner and registered dietician with LexStart Nutrition. We are actually a group practice, so we [00:03:00] do have a couple other practitioners in our practice. But when I started LexStart Nutrition, my whole goal was to help people with autoimmune conditions.

So a little bit of a backstory. This was near and dear to my heart because of family members who have autoimmune conditions. And honestly, in school and in nutrition we are taught about nutrition and medical nutrition therapy, but we don't tend to go as far into it about how that can really impact our gut and then how our gut can impact these different conditions.

And so I started to do a little bit of additional training to really get more knowledge and understanding so that I could help people. we've been around for about eight years. We are a in-person and virtual private practice. We do accept health insurance, which I think is huge to our practice and can set us apart 'cause we can really help people at an affordable cost.

But we also bring in integrative techniques. So we will do additional testing to help us get us from point A to point B if we need to alongside those nutrition therapies. And at the end of the day, the whole [00:04:00] goal with our practice is to be able to figure out what food works for you.

How can we expand your diet how can we create diversity to eat as many different things to improve those systems and your gut health. 

So since you also do virtual, do you ever see patients outside of Kentucky? 

I do. It is a state by state basis, so I am licensed in Kentucky.

Kentucky is a licensure state. There are many other states that are also a licensure state. And so if that state requires licensure, then I am, if I'm not licensed in that state, I'm not able to see them. There are a select amount of states across the United States that do not require licensure, so I can do that.

We are in the works as dieticians in the works of getting a compact licensure. So there is hope that we will be able to work across from east to West coast in the future without having to deal with all of that. But I will say most of the people that we work with are locally within Central Kentucky.

And then of course, beyond. 

that's great. Can you just tell us, I think we hear this all the time in the media, gut health, and it's a [00:05:00] really hot topic, but what is gut health? What does that mean? That's a great question 

because 10, 15 years ago, we were not really talking about gut health.

not saying it wasn't a thing, but we weren't really talking about it. I think when we think about gut health, you might think of it in two different forms depending on what's going on with you. So if you're experiencing digestive symptoms, you're dealing with bloating, constipation, diarrhea, heartburn, reflux, whatever it is, you're thinking about gut health in that lens, it has been said that about 60 to 70 million people in the United States have some type of digestive disorder.

So you're not alone if that's happening. But you're probably just focusing on those specific symptoms in regards to gut health. If not, if you don't have any of those symptoms. Then you're probably thinking about gut health and hearing about it as it's being mentioned with weight or with diabetes or mood diseases or other chronic diseases, autoimmunity, your immune system.

So when we think about gut health, [00:06:00] we know that it can affect so many different systems in our bodies. Specifically when we think about gut health and the immune system, we know that 70 to 80% of our immune system actually is within our gut. If there is some type of imbalance, so this is also called dysbiosis.

Between that good and that bad bacteria within our gut, that can create inflammation, that inflammation can then lead to other systems in our body not working how they need to, whether that be other chronic disease states like diabetes or heart disease or arthritis or mental disorders affecting our mood with anxiety and depression.

Yeah, I know that is one thing I do not think they said. Anything about med school was the gut brain access and like how that impacts it. And there's just so much research that's going into this right now, and I think we know we, we now will accept that this is a big deal, but it is definitely something that's more cutting edge and we are just learning more and more [00:07:00] all the time about it.

So it's not that. It wasn't important. It's just we didn't realize how important it was, and now everyone's finally paying attention to it and we realize this is probably critical in some of the chronic diseases we're seeing today and why they are advancing as much as they are. 

Yeah. 

And in chronic diseases that don't seem like they're related to your gut or your GI tract.

Mm-hmm. So that's, I think, what's so interesting and how that dysbiosis that you mentioned, that kind of bad bacteria overriding the good bacteria can cause problems in any area of the body, which is crazy to think about 

for sure. Yeah, and I love that you bring up the gut brain axis because all have probably heard, maybe our listeners have not heard that your gut is also called maybe your second brain.

So there is this nerve called your vagus nerve, which is your largest cranial nerve running from your brain to the gut. It's constantly talking to each other. They're bi-directional. And so what's happening in our brain can affect our gut and what's happening in our [00:08:00] gut can affect our brain. 

Yes. And I see this in practice.

There's many conditions that we know that connection impacts how people feel. As well as if we're not addressing the gut health, it can feel like you can't get great management of a chronic condition. And that's sometimes the missing link there. Now, when we talk about the gut, usually in gut health, we start talking about the microbiome and the gut barrier.

What are those? What's a simple way to explain those to our listeners? 

Yeah, so I'm gonna first start with the gut barrier. So the gut barrier has three different layers. The first layer is this mucosal layer, and this is where you're gonna find that gut microbiota. You're gonna find something called the secretory iga.

A. Antimicrobial properties. This is like the first line of defense to what's going on from these outside things that we're putting into our body, or what our body is exposed to, to what is then potentially going into our bloodstream or hopefully preventing what's going into our bloodstream.

And with that we have [00:09:00] mucosal layer, then we have the single layer called the epithelial layer. It contains something called tight junctions. And then beyond that we have something called the laman Propria. this is going to have a lot of your innate adaptive immune system components to it.

If these are weak, that it can increase something called permeability. And so this kind of leads us into, you've probably heard of leaky gut before. I think that can be a hot topic. The literature says leaky gut is basically increased intestinal permeability. So we really wanna make sure that we are doing what we can to strengthen all of these layers to prevent things from coming into our bloodstream, which then could affect.

The different disease states that we are talking about. 

And when you're talking about this permeability, what are the things that can weaken our actual gut barrier? What should we be concerned about being detrimental? 

Yeah, so there's some that are in our control and some that are out of our control, right?

It can be impacted through how we were born, which mode and delivery were we born. Our age, our [00:10:00] geographical location, the environment that we live in, our exposure to different toxins, potentially medications, like antibiotics. Stress is a really big one. So that is something we may or may not be able to control depending on kind of what, where we're at in life and what season we're in.

And then of course diet. And that is within our practice, what we are focusing on. How can diet impact the gut microbiome?

And I think maybe you can help us think more about how this microbiome works and what it is. And I'll say, today on this podcast, we will use the word gut microbiome interchangeably with gut microbiota. If you're someone listening that is very technical about this and gets irritated with this, I hear you.

Technically, the gut microbiota is the organisms themselves and the biome is the DNA of those organisms. But in general, we use those words interchangeably. So if you're someone that cares about that, don't get mad at us today. We're just gonna go with it. [00:11:00] So can you tell us a little bit about .

What these bugs are. Why are some of them good? You've said some of them are good, some of them are bad. What is happening in there? 

Yeah, so microbes are basically these tiny little organisms that could be things like viruses or fungi or ArcHa bacteria. Bacteria is what we're talking about.

Bacteria is the star. Most of the bacteria, even though we have some type of microbe over all of the surfaces in our body most of this bacteria is within our gut, which is why we're talking about gut health. You could have three and a half to four and a half pounds of bacteria, , in your gut. I know that set always blows my mind.

It's just there's all these things inside of me, just tiny things just living in ya. Yeah, it's crazy. There can be a hundred trillion different types of bacteria, hundreds and hundreds of different types of species. There are, certain kind of parent species that are more dominant. we won't really get into today, but if we talk about the good and the bad bacteria, basically the good bacteria is also known as this commensal bacteria.

So its role is [00:12:00] to extract nutrients and energy from our diet. It can produce vitamins, so things like vitamin K and biotin. It helps to maintain that gut barrier function, so keeping it nice and strong and protecting against those bad guys or those pathogens that could come in. And then with this good bacteria, the bottom line is diversity as best.

We want to have as many that we can and we want them to be nice and strong and tight. And so that bad bacteria, we could also call the pathogenic bacteria. Like I said, it can be influenced through several different things like stress or viruses or antibiotic use. And also diet. The whole point is we're all gonna have both.

We're all gonna have good, we're all gonna have bad, but we wanna make sure that we don't have too many bad bacteria. We don't wanna have too few good bacteria. It's all about that balance. so how do we get 

more 

good bacteria? Yeah. So let's focus on diet because that's [00:13:00] what I do. With that good bacteria with gut health, you've probably have heard fiber and probiotics.

I think those might be the two most common types of things , that we hear about. And for a good reason, they're both very helpful. Before we even get into that I want to just start like looking at your diet as a whole, what's going on there? We have to lay the foundations first before we can really get into all the nitty gritty components of it.

So when we say foundations and we look at the diet, we're looking at are we getting a balanced diet? Are we getting carbohydrates, fats, proteins? Vegetables. How many plant foods are we getting? All of those are gonna benefit us or your gut in a specific way. So if we start with carbs are predominantly fiber, right?

So what provides us carbs, grains, fruits, vegetables, beans, legumes. If we are consuming enough of those and we are consuming a diverse amount of those, then we have a great opportunity to be able to get in that fiber that [00:14:00] we need to support the gut. Health. Fiber then can create something called short chain fatty acids.

And then that can go in and can help build up that mucosal layer that I mentioned at the beginning. Make it nice and strong and tight and feed that, that mucosal layer. Fats are another thing. We wanna make sure that we are getting enough of that unsaturated fat. This unsaturated fat is also anti-inflammatory.

It's going to help to support that good gut bacteria and reduce that bad gut bacteria. Then the other macronutrient that we're really focusing on with that balance is gonna be the protein. So protein can also create these short chain fatty acids, which can help to benefit that good gut bacteria. And then when we think about protein in general, we wanna make sure that we're getting enough of this plant protein as well.

So those are the big kind of key components. I mentioned, vegetables, fruits, plants in general when we are getting enough of these plant foods, if we are eating the rainbow. So going back to that old saying, we're also gonna be able to provide ourself not only this [00:15:00] fiber, but these antioxidants that come from these plant foods.

Antioxidants are another key component to building up the good gut bacteria as well. And then we get into fiber itself, if we wanna talk about that. There's different types of fiber. So we have soluble fiber and we have insoluble fiber. They each serve a purpose. So that soluble fiber kind of bulks that stool up.

Examples of this would be things like your chi seeds or your flaxseed, your avocado, oats, pears, edamame applesauce, psyllium husk, beans or lentils. And then that insoluble fiber is the fiber that's gonna help move things through a little bit more. So this would be things like nuts and seeds vegetables, specifically these root vegetables like carrots and parsnips and potatoes, whole grains, like the brown rice, the quinoa the oats, beans, lentils, apples, and pears with their skin on it.

We wanna really try to get a good amount of both of those. Now, if you're suffering from some type of digestive issue, we might spend more time on focusing on one more [00:16:00] than the other. But really as a whole, trying to get both of those fiber is something that most of us are lacking. 

Isn't it like the number one, nutrient that we're deficient in at this point. Yeah. It's so sad. Yes, it is. 

And I think it's maybe a little easier now because of the products that we have on the markets you might find like high fiber bars or protein bars that have higher fiber in it, or these gut health sodas that have this fiber in it.

And so you might get a little bit more if you're consuming those than you used to. But on average, Americans are only getting about 12 to 15 grams of fiber in a day. Our goal at minimum, is try to get about 25 grams for women and about 38 grams for men. And so we have some work to do. 

Yes, we do. I know following patient's intake of fiber you're like 25.

Oh, I totally, I totally get that. But until you actually like, start counting, you're like, wow, that I'm not even close is usually what happens to most patients the first time they pay attention to their fiber intake and [00:17:00] realize . I would say most people are in that 12 to 15 mark.

They're off by at least 10 

because I think most people think, okay, let's say I have a salad at lunch. But unless you're putting some really high fiber foods in there, , if you've got mostly lettuce and a, some cheese and meat in there and they think, I have this for lunch and then I've got broccoli with dinner, you are not even close with that.

No, not even close. You think you should be, but you're 

not. A cup of lettuce is less than a gram of fiber. So you can use salads to stack. Fiber if you're adding a bunch of different things into that salad. If we're adding beans, that's a great way to get that fiber in. 'cause you can get five to seven grams of fiber for half a cup of beans.

That's amazing. But yeah, I think in general we might think, oh, I'm getting plenty of fiber. Doing those little audits and those little check-ins to track and see how much are we doing can be really eye-opening for a lot of people. 

Yeah, no I truly believe that. And then the next question that always comes is if I'm only getting 12 to 15 in my diet, should I just supplement the other 10 grams?

Yeah, that, that's a great question. I think it's so case by case. We always [00:18:00] wanna try to do food first. So first I would say if you're only getting that, then what are some modifications that we can do? What are some things that we can add to your breakfast or add to your lunch or put in for snacks to increase that fiber as a whole food.

Some people again, depending on what's going on with them and their conditions and digestion, they might benefit from a fiber supplement. There's many different types of fiber supplements out there. And so I encourage you to really work with your provider or practitioner first before doing that to make sure it's the correct kind for you.

If you don't know where you are, the free version of MyFitnessPal, you can track your fiber or even using chat 

GBT today. Oh, okay. You can just throw it in there and be like, approximately how much fiber if I ate this food for the day? It's not perfect by any means, but if you just want a quick look, that's another option too.

Ooh, I love 

that one, Sarah. So maybe just, do that and then ways, I'll tell you my favorite way of adding fiber, which Sarah is I know what this is. Drum roll hemp seeds seed. I love some hemp seeds. I'm team chia seed. But anyways, I also [00:19:00] gotten more chia too. I really do too. Yeah. But I had not eaten seeds, honestly.

I had not eaten seeds. Until I started learning about lifestyle medicine and really understanding fiber and stuff. But that is such an easy way. It does not take any time, just keep a couple bags of seeds and they might seem like it's expensive for a bag, but that bag will last you forever months.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's cheap. It's a really easy way to start increasing your fiber. What are some other easy ways? Yeah, you mentioned beans. Sometimes I'll just keep a can of black beans in the fridge and , you can almost add just like even a couple tablespoons to. Almost anything you're eating without making much of a difference, 

especially when people are on the go.

Or if you didn't have a good week of meal prepping or something, I was like, beans are my friend. Like I can always just they're quickly make it, make a quick salad and throw some on there. Even if I didn't have anything else. I know I'm getting fiber and protein by adding that and I don't have to think too hard, which is great.

Tell, tell us some more things that we don't have to think too hard about. 

First I wanna just say I love the seeds. We actually call 'em sprinkles in our [00:20:00] house for my young kids. That's what I do. I call them, I call 'em the adult sprinkles. Yeah, sprinkle 'em on top of pancakes, waffles, yogurt, sandwiches, whatever.

Soup. Super great. And wait, before I stop you there, do you put 'em in a sprinkle jar? I was just thinking about my son loves Oh, I didn't think about 

that. So I wonder 

If it would be more fun for them if they could sprinkle themselves. 

Yeah, it would be more fun. Fun. I do put them in a little kind of mason jar and we have a teaspoon that we'll use to scoop 'em out.

Now that's not the easiest way for a three-year-old to do it. There might be a little bit of a mess there. But they love to do it and getting them involved is super important. Yeah. So seeds are wonderful and chia seeds are much more than just that chia pet that we think about originally many years ago.

Chi Chia, exactly. Yeah. So I think when we talk about fiber, really I would challenge us to all come back to the planning part of it. So easy things are gonna be different for different people. So we have to figure out what's going to be easy for you. And then knowledge on top of that, knowing what types of things are gonna be higher in fiber to start with so that we could figure out how to plan that or how to work that [00:21:00] into your routine.

We mentioned beans. Beans are great. You can put them with anything on top of salads. You can do lentil or chickpea pasta. So that's another way that kind of boost that fiber intake with meals. Vegetables, we can get vegetables and stack those vegetables most vegetables are going to be a couple grams of fiber.

There's some that are higher than others. And so thinking about those vegetables and really trying to diversify it and stack them and add several different ones to a meal could help to increase that. Regarding fruits, our highest fiber fruits are gonna be things like our berries, our apples, our pears, our kiwi.

And so figuring out how can we make that and integrate that into a snack. There's a couple other things that I really like. Like the, that's it. Bars great. Oh, yes. Yeah. They have a couple grams of fiber. And minimal ingredients. Minimal. It's two, yes. Minimal ingredients. Granola products can be really good because it has that soluble fiber in there as well.

[00:22:00] And so I think when it comes down to it, again, we first have to figure out. How can we plan, how can we make time to plan? What types of foods are gonna be considered high in fiber? And then how can we work that into our routine? 

Yeah. Another one of my favorites is avocados, because I'm getting those I always like, just like beans are like, you get the bonus of some protein and fiber, avocados, healthy fats and fiber.

Yeah. So that's another one that I like to sneak in on a regular basis. Love it. you've mentioned diversity, so we talk about soluble and insoluble fiber, but fiber from a kiwi versus fiber from an avocado. When you're trying to work on increasing your fiber, should we also be thinking about getting our fiber from different sources and multiple different plants? 

Yes, we should. If we can increase the amount of plant foods that we're consuming on a daily basis or a weekly basis, that is the greatest way to increase the amount of different bacteria that we have in, make them nice and strong within our gut [00:23:00] microbiome.

30 in a week is what we're aiming for, and that can seem really daunting and really scary. But they can add up really quickly. So just another kind of one of those. Take a step back. Look at your week. Can we plan? Trying to push ourselves to make changes. And this doesn't mean recreating a meal, but if we're doing yogurt for breakfast and we're having a fruit on there, can we do blueberries one day and blackberries the next day?

Or can we change it up if it doesn't seem possible to do that within a week. Can we change it up next week? And so trying to figure out how we can do that is really important. my two strategies are eat what's in season. 'cause that will help you to create that diversity, find what's on sale.

Because if we are shopping at the grocery store, things are going to be on sale at different times. In different weeks. And so that's another way to push you to try new things and change it up. 

Yeah, no I like to use that method as well because especially when it comes to produce, shopping, what's on sale and in season makes it easier to eat a lot of it 'cause [00:24:00] it's cheaper.

But remember too, even things like nuts is not one, walnuts would be one plant. Exactly. Almonds would be another plant. instead of just getting peanuts, if you can get a mixed nut, you're gonna be getting more diversity that way. And herbs also count Not just a little sprinkle of something, but right now I've got a pretty good looking basil plant on my back porch.

So I try to grab a hunk of that. So there's another plant just by adding a pretty good chunk of basil to something I'm making. So it's not as hard as you think and it does push you if you do start tracking it. You may not get to 30, but you'll find yourself getting yourself maybe to 25 more often than you would otherwise.

It's a challenge. Yeah. Everybody likes 

a 

challenge. 

It is fun. I know that in the office, I have a little sheet that just gives ideas so people can check off their plants for the week. And it's really easy to create one of those if you're, 'cause sometimes we just forget things that we like 'cause we just start making the same [00:25:00] things.

But, we're creatures of habit. I know that recently, we got some mangoes and I was like, man, I forgot how much I like mangoes. And so it's just remembering to try new foods sometimes because it can bring that benefit. We're talking a lot about fiber and when we talk about fiber, a lot of times we also use the word prebiotics.

This is very confusing. I didn't learn this in med school either. when we say the word prebiotic, what does it mean and how does that relate to fiber? 

Yeah, that's great. So all prebiotics are considered fiber, but not all fiber that we consume are considered prebiotics.

It's a little confusing, I know. But basically with prebiotics, these are certain types of dietary fibers that aren't necessarily digested by the enzymes that we produce in our body. And so it can create this kind of byproduct or this fermentation to then feed these microbes, these microorganisms within our gut.

So some examples of this would be artichokes, onion, garlic, oats, [00:26:00] asparagus, banana, honey, peas, beans. If we can consume more of these, then this can be the fuel for these microorganisms, this gut bacteria that we have. Work hand in hand with the probiotics, which is another, hot topic when it comes to gut health.

And 

what about probiotics? Yeah, what probiotics? Probiotics. Like how 

do we get those? Yeah. So probiotics by definition are live microorganisms that when given in adequate amounts can benefit the host, which is us, right? And so there are certain products that provide these probiotics. We think about fermented products, and this can include our yogurt and our keiffer

A lot of times, if you look at the back of those labels, it's gonna say what specific strains of probiotics are added to that? These are live microorganisms. 

so if someone's going to the store and they go grab some yogurt is there anything they need to look for on the packaging?

Or can they assume that is a probiotic? 

Yeah, I think it will say, so you'll see things like [00:27:00] lactobacillus acidophilus on there. It'll say a lot of times, like live and active culture, and it'll list those things off. Most yogurts are going to have this in there. The other part when we think about probiotics, we might group the fermentation in there, or fermented products. You can't necessarily guarantee what strains are in these products or how much is in that, like we can with the yogurt and the fer. But examples of those products would be things like kombucha, sauerkraut, kimchi, miso pickles, raw unfiltered apple cider vinegar.

Studies do show that those still can help us. It's just we might not know exactly what strains are in 'em or how much we're getting through that. 

Let's talk about pickles. Yeah. 'cause I think that's one of the ones that's the trickiest. Is there a way to know, am I getting good pickles or is are these pickles helping me?

That's a good question. I'm a big ingredient person when we can. So really taking it a few seconds to look back turn it around, look at the label and see what is in there. [00:28:00] If we see that it is cucumber, vinegar, salt, dill, whatever then we know that's a great product. We don't necessarily know based off the fermentation like how long it's been pickled, so we just do the best that we can in that scenario.

But yeah, I think looking at the ingredients in general can be really helpful just when it comes to the gut health. Yeah. 

Yeah. That 'cause I, I feel like I get that question. I was like, pickles, 

how do I know this? I know. I don't know why I never really thought about pickles. Yeah. But I keep a bag of kimchi in my fridge. Just because sometimes yogurt, I don't do well with yogurt all the time. 'cause that seems like the easiest. I think yogurt seems like the easiest way to get, it's a quick vessel to get that in cultures that I just keep kimchi in there and I'll just take two fork fulls of kimchi. At least I try to do it at least one today.

And is that teaspoon or two. Okay. So you feel like that's a good way to get my fermented foods? I do. 

I love sauerkraut too. And Costco has a great sauerkraut. So we I keep sauerkraut and kimchis in the [00:29:00] first and yes, and I think that's a good point. 'cause I think people, when we think about this, they're thinking, they're having to eat a lot of these foods and they're like, eh, this isn't, but if you almost look at it, it's this is a medicine for my gut.

I'm just gonna have a little bit on the side. That's all you really need. You don't have to make it complicated. 

Okay, so you've told us we've got fiber giving us our prebiotic, which is then fueling our organisms. so how does a probiotic pill fit into the mix of this? 

There's so many different strains of probiotics.

I think that a probiotic pill can be helpful and beneficial for some people. I think we have to know what we're looking for, what strains we're looking for, what condition we're after when treating that, let's go back to if we have a certain amount of good bacteria, certain strains, and then we're adding that exact same kind of probiotic on there.

It's not necessarily gonna do anything. It's not gonna populate anything. We're just like buying expensive supplements that we're just gonna poop [00:30:00] out really. I think with probiotics, there is a time and a place because there are certainly strains that are going to be warranted for certain conditions, but it is not a one size fits all.

And that's why we go back to what are we doing nutrition wise, diet wise, and how can we impact our gut through that first? 

Yeah, and I think one thing that is a common misconception is oh, I take a probiotic. I'm fixing my gut health. But if you're not changing how you eat, you're not, actually trying to help these good bacteria flourish again, you're wasting your money.

So 

I think of it as that, like if you're just taking that probiotic. You're taking it, but then it's going right out. So unless you're eating, I'm not colonizing a lot of things. Yeah. It's not colonizing meaning, it's not like setting up shop, it's not making a home in your gut. So you really have to eat that regularly for it to make a home.

And then you have to give it the prebiotics that it needs, the fiber that it needs for it to stay. Otherwise, it'd be like if it came to a hotel, but you don't have [00:31:00] any food at the hotel, it's gonna move on. Gonna leave. Yeah. So you need to make sure you keep the bacteria there and you'll do that with these other things that you're talking about.

Which 

brings up 

a really good point because when we talk about how long it takes to change our gut microbiome, and we're talking about making these different changes, 24 to 48 hours, we can start to see a change, but it won't last if we're not being consistent with that change. And so the whole point is what can we do?

To be sustainable and be consistent so that we can have that long lasting gut health change for the better. 

Yeah. I know this is something that I realize after a week of vacation, if I don't keep my normal habits, I've just become so tuned in with my body is if , I am not consistent with my fiber and all these different things.

And then at the end of it I'm like, oh gosh, my gut health is not great now. But it just takes a couple days of being like, okay, I gotta get back to these things. And and [00:32:00] I can feel good again. So it's not something that you have to feel like it's 

gonna take months, years, it's gonna take months.

And it, but I will say that if it's been a long time since maybe you have eaten a lot of fiber and you've had a really low fiber diet, it can take a while to make it.

Easy on your gut to digest. And I know that's something that Kitty and I talk about a lot is if eating these foods that are higher fiber or new to you, you gotta escalate them slowly and not all at once because , your current gut bacteria may send out signals, oh my, that was too fast.

It takes some time to adjust. Yes. Low and slow is 

The name of the game. Making sure you eat enough water 

Yes. To 

push that fiber through as well. 

What about I get this question a lot I have so much going on. I can't totally change my diet and introduce 30 new plants.

Can I just take this powdered green or is a G one the name of that? Yeah, I think that is a popular, that's a popular, there's lots of them out [00:33:00] there too. Yeah. Can I just take this green juices, powdered green juice thing and that be the end of it for me and then I'm good for my gut health. 

Yeah, I think with gut health and when we look at a lot of those drinks, they're not loaded with fiber.

They might have all of these different fruits and vegetables and different things and you might be getting the antioxidants from that, but there's a couple grams of fiber in there and so you're really not getting as much fiber for your gut health as you think that you are. And then fiber beyond Gut health does so many other wonderful things for our body when it helps with satiety and blood sugar it could be an added tool potentially, but at the end of the day, like we still have to figure out what can we do that's feasible for you and your lifestyle to make that change. It can be one small change. We focus on that and then we move on to the next. Once we get really good at that habits stacking and making those little behavior change is gonna be the most impactful thing.

She's mentioning our favorite notes.

I know. I love it. 

So let's talk about some really common symptoms that people correlate with their gut health. One of the number one symptoms [00:34:00] related to the gut that I hear about is bloating.

what is going on with America's bloating problem? That's a good question. 

And before we talk about food, I wanna back up and actually talk about what I call meal hygienes, because I think this is such an important. Step that, again, is part of those foundations and we can't overlook that because if we're trying to, do all the things to, to help alleviate bloating, but we are not chewing our food really well.

If we're eating in a stress environment, then we're not doing our body any good. So with meal hygiene, I really want to challenge us to think about taking a step back, looking at your food, smelling your food tasting your food. All of this starts with the cephalic phase. This is what's happening in our brain.

It's called the cephalic phase. And this is really the start of digestion because it's releasing about 20% of these digestive secretion. So these enzymes of the stomach acid to help break things down. So this is crucial. If we can do this, that's step one. If we can chew our food, like I mentioned, [00:35:00] that's step two 30 times is what we're after.

So applesauce consistency. I don't know about you, but I think I catch myself a lot, not chewing by food third different times. Absolutely. But what if we're just eating our food within one to two bites and all of a sudden because things aren't broken down, that's another part to our bloating, right?

So I think that we have to first think about that, our meal hygiene, our posture, and then we can get into what's going on with bloating on a deeper level. 

 We all grow up like in this fast-paced environment. We have 20 minutes to eat our food.

We're running from here to there. We're eating in the car. It's part of life. But what are things that we control within our life? Are there times on the weekend? Are there times in the evening that we can start to put that into practice first to get that behavior going, and then we can continue to create that behavior?

Yeah, I think that's great. We don't think about that enough. I think probably starting that at a young age of slow down, actually chew your food. And I don't think about that enough either.

No, I don't. So thanks for that reminder. I never heard that term meal hygiene 

before. Okay. All [00:36:00] right. So we are gonna work on our meal hygiene then. What do we do? So food wise, 

We probably want to first just again, assess some of the foundational things. Looking at fiber. Are we trying to increase that fiber, like we said, too much, too fast and that's causing bloating?

Are we not hydrated enough? Are we not getting enough liquids in to help move things through? If that is in check, then we're probably gonna assess a couple other things. There can be sensitivities, there can be an intolerance in it. So again, working with a trained practitioner to decipher between that can be helpful.

If you have something like a lactose intolerance, then you're not gonna be able to break down that carbohydrate lactose, because we don't have enough of that enzyme lactase, and so that could cause additional bloating. We also might look at things like carbonation. Carbonation can be an issue for people.

Are we doing a lot of carbonated beverages, whether it's the carbonated water or sodas themselves? Yeah, it's not just 

sodas. It's like all the sparkling waters that are, they're loaded as well.

Yeah, I mean that truly can be an issue for some people. We might be doing a lot of like cruciferous [00:37:00] vegetables, which are wonderful for us, but maybe we're doing them in more of a raw version and our body just doesn't tolerate that as well right now.

And so we might need to cook them right now. So cooked fruits and vegetables could be a strategy. Okay, so this is where I wanna get into, fodmap. So this could be talked about for bloating, for constipation, for diarrhea all of the above. If you are listening, you probably have heard a FODMAP in some form or fashion, especially if you're struggling with some type of digestive issue.

And basically, FODMAP stands for an acronym that stands for Fermentable Oligosaccharides. Disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols. What does that mean? 

That sounded very fancy. It did. Yes. These 

are just types of carbohydrates that because of its nature and its makeup, the chain that it is might not be broken down quite as well.

And so it can be mal malabsorbed in the small intestine and it can create this fermentation and that could cause these digestive issues like bloating, gas, constipation, diarrhea. So it can be a tool to look at what we're eating. Are we getting [00:38:00] a lot of foods that are high in FODMAP and that is causing an issue for the bloating or the constipation or diarrhea?

If so, how can we start to figure out what we can do to tweak that diet to see if we can at least see some temporary relief? But I do wanna just stress with fodmap. That's the FODMAP diet is an elimination diet that is not meant to be forever. It is not long term. It is designed to be two to six weeks.

And so you really wanna work with a trained practitioner professional on the FODMAP diet if that is something that you're going to try to see if that helps with your symptoms so that they can kinda walk you through to figure out how can we continue to nourish your body, how can we keep your meals, your breakfast, lunch, and dinner snacks as consistent as what you're currently doing and replace it with these lower FODMAP foods.

And so then how's that work? Let's say you work with a practitioner and you are trying a low FODMAP diet because you tend to have lots of bloating. So you eliminate these [00:39:00] foods But then how do you add 'em back without getting that bloating again?

Yeah, that's a great question. So systematically we want to figure out first what is maybe one of one category that we wanna add back in again, low and slow. With these FOD maps, I mean it really is more of an intolerance and there can be a very big threshold component with that.

So we might be able to add some things back in and do great in a sufficient amount, like a very high level. We might add some things in and be like, ah, like I can only have this in small levels. If you start adding things back in and failing across the board, you're not able to add anything in digestive symptoms, come back.

That diet is probably not for you. That is probably not the issue. We need to dig a little bit deeper and see what else could be going on. 

Yeah, and I unfortunately, in practice in medicine, I saw a lot of patients just staying on a low FODMAP diet for a long time and never trying to introduce the foods back.

Because many people, it's not all those foods you removed, it's just maybe it could be [00:40:00] one or two that were being the big culprits. And as you add 'em back, you realize that. So I think it's just sometimes not done appropriately and people are left with very strict diets for no reason. 

Yeah. And that's not good because when we talk about the gut microbiome and we talked about diversity, we want to have as much diversity as possible.

So if we are on this very strict elimination diet long term, we're starving our good gut bacteria. Then even at a deeper level, when we think about these FOD maps, a lot of them have these prebiotic foods. They're the things that are fueling those microorganisms, those gut bacteria. And so we wanna make sure that we can get to a point where we can add them back in and still feel really well.

And what are some of these foods that are high FODMAP foods? 

Yeah, so if we just briefly go through the categories. The first one is lactose. Foods that are gonna be high in lactose, which would be like milk products yogurt, cottage cheese, some softer types of cheeses. You can still consume some lactose products, but we wanna make sure that they are going to be lactose free, meaning they've added those lactase [00:41:00] enzymes in there, or they're the harder cheeses like cheddar cheese, Parmesan cheese, et cetera.

Some other really common ones that we see are garlic and onion. Again, prebiotic foods. They're great, but they are high in FODMAP and. They can be hidden in a lot of different things. And so again, coming back to that threshold, we could be getting garlic and onion in many different dishes, many different things that we're eating.

And if that's not something that we're tolerating, then that could increase it. Yeah. 

And those two specifically are the sneakiest reflux Causers. Yeah. That so many people don't realize make the reflux worse. Yeah. So anyways, that one's like a, and they also make everything taste better.

They do. They do. 

But they're strict, so they're in a lot. So like with the garlic and onion, if you really want the flavor, you can do an infused oil. So you can take an olive oil or garlic oil, and you can add those CLOs of the garlic, or you could add a cut piece of onion into the oil, let it sit for a little bit, discard the garlic and onion, and then use that oil to cook with.

Then you'll have that flavor, but we're not actually eating the product itself. 

[00:42:00] That's a great tip. 

Oh, 

that's such a smart idea. Okay, so I interrupted you. I'll let you keep on going on your list of foods. 

Yeah, so I think just other things that , come to my mind that are maybe more common for people.

Things like asparagus, which again is a good prebi food. Apples, watermelon blackberries would be another one. Avocados, like you had mentioned, avocados can be fine, but a very small amount is really what we're after if we're doing a lower FODMAP diet. Unfortunately, gluten containing grains are also high in fructan, which is one of the FODMAPS.

And we want to be mindful on what type of grains we're consuming and be careful for a period of time with that. A lot of our beans are gonna be considered high and fodmap, some are gonna be okay, like our chickpeas and our lentils are edamame. But it is a very like threshold component.

It is a quantity basis as well. If we think about these like high fiber products, a lot of them have added inulin and chicory in there, and those are also gonna be considered high in fiber. I know 

that is one that is so sneaky that just [00:43:00] like you're saying, there's many products or. Food options that have these extra fibers in them, but they are some of the fibers that I think are the least tolerable Yes.

When they're added that way and we joke about it in our house and have come across some of these options and have eaten them, and then they quickly get labeled as fart bars in our house. So I don't know anyone else out there has experienced that. 

Yes, I have experienced that, Sarah, which is why I just do not eat bars because you're not gonna wanna be around me afterwards.

So,

And it could be letten fiber, it could be the amount of fiber exactly. In there too. And that's upfront now, wasn't paying much as much attention. Then I caught on to the types of fibers that were added and was able to realize that some of 'em just do not agree with us as a family, as others.

Okay. I'm gonna need your list of non fart bars, Sarah. Oh goodness. Okay. So let me just make sure as the non dietitian here, let me just make sure I understand For someone that is experiencing a lot of bloating, they try a FODMAP diet and they feel [00:44:00] better. Most likely it's not all of those foods that you mentioned, but maybe one or two.

And so they should just go through the category one by one, add that back for a week or two, see what happens. 

Yeah, exactly. Is that kind of how that works? That's why we try to be as, as systematic as we can, because maybe it's just a lactose issue. And if we figure out how can we do lower lactose products or add that enzyme in, then you're perfectly fine.

And all of the other FODMAP things that are a little bit higher, you're able to tolerate. Maybe it's just a fructose issue. So we talk about apples, we talk about watermelon. Both of those are higher in fructose. And so when we do an elimination, , we want to first assess how are we feeling?

What percentage of improvement did we get? Is it, worth continuing to do for that duration of time? Then if we are improving, how can we add things back in? And how do we do that systematically so we can figure out, hopefully yes, we're able to tolerate most of these items and just kinda figure out maybe our own little personal triggers.

that is great. And it can be challenging to do this. It's really great to work with a [00:45:00] practitioner who knows what they're doing. 'cause they are gonna make your life easier trying to figure this out. So I'm so glad that you are able to do this for your patients. Okay. Another one I think that plagues Americans is constipation.

the amount of people who talk about constipation. I had to experience it with my son a year ago. It is literally can consume your life when you deal with horrible constipation. So what are some things that you are working with? When you're trying to, and use food to help constipation.

'cause a lot of times when you go to see a doctor, we're not using food to fix the constipation. We're using lots of medicines. But I know that food can fix a lot of constipation. 

Yeah. So I think first, again, thinking about fiber, are we getting enough fiber in, in a day and are we getting the correct types of fiber?

Really we want a good balance between that soluble and that insoluble fiber to bulk things up, to push it through. Are we getting enough fluids to help with again, [00:46:00] moving everything through as well. I think another thing that might be overlooked is, are we eating enough food? So if we're not eating enough food, which I know can be really hard when you're experiencing constipation 'cause you don't feel well, you're not gonna trigger that gastrocolic reflux.

And so then that's not gonna help to push things through or help with that motility as well. Some functional foods that have been shown to be effective would be things like kiwi. I know that kiwi, 

there's a Kiwi study that's pretty impressive. 

Two kiwi a day. Yes, two a day. So give that a try. Cilium husk.

And side note, this is the active ingredient in Metamucil, so sometimes that's what we would do. You can also buy cilium husk, on its own. I really like to use that. Blend it up into smoothies or mix it into a peanut butter or an almond butter. And it just like mixes up and dissolves and use that to dip apples in or carrots or whatever.

Put it on a spread if you want. 'cause most of us aren't just eating like the cilium plant. We're gonna have to get at some type of supplement form. 

So you get like one of the stir peanut butters and then dump some psyllium in there. [00:47:00] Mix it up. 

Yeah. I'll take a little bit of peanut butter, like a couple tablespoons, and put it in a little jar and then I'll add whatever my desired amount of that cilium husk is. Mix it and it's just goes together. I'm gonna use that on Alex. Thank you. You can certainly mix it in things like yogurt or oatmeal, but because of its nature it is. Going to , form this gel.

And so the longer that it sits there, it might not be as palatable. So that's why I would say something like smoothies, if we're gonna drink it quickly, the nut butter or even like a baked good, you can add it to a baked good. Okay. 

So don't mix it into the jar and then put the jar in the fridge and things?

Probably not. It's probably gonna be weird. Yeah. Might be a weird, okay. 

Yeah. Yeah. Ground flaxseed would be another one that, that we can add in. And then this kind of deviates, of course, like from the fodmap depending on what route we wanna go with that. But some items like pears or prunes also can act as a laxative to pull water into the gut and help if we're experiencing constipation.

Yeah. All those are great tips. 'cause again, many times we're not leaning into dietary changes to [00:48:00] fix our constipation, so it just becomes very chronic. And I do feel like that's a condition that we're not good at getting at the root cause and fixing it. For sure. The other end. There are lots of people who experience chronic.

Diarrhea. They've had workups, with their doctors. And if you do have chronic diarrhea and you haven't had a workup, please go get one because there's many things that need to be ruled out before you're looking just at dietary causes of diarrhea. But what are some of those just big topics that you're thinking about from nutrition when people experience those loose stools on a regular basis?

I agree with you. I think for every topic you definitely wanna be working with a practitioner to see if there's additional diagnostic testing that needs to be done. Even bloating or blood 

like that sometimes is if you have a lot of bloating, you should tell your doctor about it just because that symptom plus other symptoms you may mention can lead them down one path.

Constipation, same thing, just because it's common doesn't mean it doesn't need a workup. And I think we have normalized bloating, constipation, [00:49:00] and diarrhea in America. That we just think everybody has it. 

What's the Pepto-Bismol? A nausea, heartburn, constipation, upset stomach, diarrhea.

Yeah. It's okay, of course you have that. Just take this. Yes. That doesn't want fixes at all. But actually I'm hearing fiber fixes at all, is kinda what I'm hearing. Yeah. Okay. So tell us how do we treat diarrhea or that person that's like running to the bathroom as soon as they eat? 

Yeah. So again, there's so many questions that I ask people when we have these symptoms.

Relating to like lifestyle and stress and meal hygiene. Like we had mentioned things that , could be going on. Is there something going on the gallbladder, right? So are we eating like diets high and fat? And we're having issues with that. So that's something that we would ask about.

We might want to, in the meantime, if you're experiencing a lot of diarrhea, we might wanna back off the fiber just a little bit to settle things down. And then be specific on the type of fiber we're consuming. So if you remember, I had said soluble fiber kind of bulks things up. So we wanna try to be intentional on getting more soluble fiber.

When we are consuming fiber, we might also limit some [00:50:00] things that could be these kind of common triggers. So things like caffeine or alcohol or spicy foods could all also cause some additional problems. Again, the lactose that just tends to be a problem for a lot of people as we age.

That enzyme lactase does start to decrease. And you might find that. You're just deficient in this enzyme but depending on how much dairy you're consuming, this could be an issue in causing some of the diarrhea as well. Yeah, 

that's one. Again, if you could have tolerated dairy at a younger age, doesn't mean you're going to tolerate it at an older age.

So that one, I think that was a misconception of a lot of people. It's oh, I've always been able to do this. How in the world can it be my milk and ice cream? I ate that five years ago without any problem. But that is one that changes a lot as we 

age. And you mentioned gallbladder. This was a complaint I got from a lot of patients after their gallbladder was removed, that their stool was a lot more loose.

Is there anything specific those patients can do to try to regulate their system more? Yeah, so eventually we hope 

that it comes back to [00:51:00] normal. Again, at the beginning we might need to modify the fat intake to help to prevent that kind of like bile acid diarrhea that could be going on.

I tell people all the time, even if you don't have a gallbladder, you can work on bile support and fiber. And we come back to fiber, like fiber is gonna be a key component to that. 

We love fiber, we do. And then a last bucket, 'cause I think this one is very confusing for many people or is the whole idea of food sensitivities and we are talking about, and I wanna stop here.

Food sensitivities, not food allergies. Those are not the same thing. And I think that's critical because sometimes when people are talking about that, it's actually marketed as an allergy and that is, that's a different bucket. When we're talking about food allergies. But when we talk about food sensitivities, is there anything else that you commonly are working on with patients that you see or an issue when it comes to food sensitivities?

Yeah, so food sensitivities, it truly is like a case by case basis. I can't say [00:52:00] this is a common food sensitivity that you're gonna. So very different than allergies. Like you had said, they do both involve the immune system. It's just the food sensitivities are non IgE mediated. And even though it's involving the immune system it's different than allergies because we can still have them.

It just might depend on how much we can have. So it's a very dose dependency thing. And then you might find that symptoms don't happen immediately, more like a food allergy does, but it can have this kind of delayed reaction. there are some tests that can be used for food sensitivities.

But really trying to do like journaling and kinda looking at your overall pattern and diet can be a really good tool to assess what are we consuming? How much are we consuming it? Do we need to space that out? Do we need to work on the threshold of the amount? Could be another key component to helping with food sensitivities.

And I know one that has talked about a lot is a sensitivity to gluten and that's always important to distinguish from celiac disease. And can you just elaborate just a little bit on that bucket because I think that's a common one [00:53:00] that people hear about being sensitive to gluten. 

Yeah, so with gluten, if we have celiac disease then, hard stop.

You have to follow a gluten-free diet. There's no, if ands buts about that. There can be individuals that have non celiac gluten sensitivity where maybe we've tested and it comes up negative for celiac, but they still just don't tolerate gluten itself. Again, I think this is a very kind of case by case basis.

The wheat, the rye, the barley, the products that make up these gluten containing grains still have a lot of great fiber in it. And so I don't think that we need to all just immediately cut gluten out. We really need to figure out is that something that's appropriate for you? And if so, then what can we do to replace these gluten containing grains with other types of grains, other types of fibers to make sure we're nourishing our body?

Are there any other just big common misconceptions that you feel like you hear from your patients that maybe they're seeing in the media or just something that, that we [00:54:00] often do that we should stop doing because we think it's helping us, but it's not? 

Yeah I think it comes back to maybe just relying on some of these supplements with things that this is gonna fix everything when it might help, but really it comes back to these behaviors like what are we doing day in and day out with the food that we're eating, with the lifestyle that we're living and figuring out how we can really start to create new behavior changes when it comes to our diet and our lifestyle.

And then maybe use these supplements. As a tool in addition to that, as an actual supplement. Supplement, not the main. 

Exactly. Yeah. So for our listeners, after they've heard this wealth of knowledge that you have, if they are wanting to set up an appointment with you, how can they go about seeing you as a patient?

Yeah, we would love to have you you could visit our website. It's www.lexstartnutrition.com, so LEX start nutrition all one word.com. If you visit that, you'll find you can actually go in and book an appointment online through that or you can find our email [00:55:00] or contact information to reach out.

We will get back in touch with you. We will answer any questions, again regarding insurance or other services with our practice, and then we'll get you set up from there. 

That's amazing. That's great. Yeah. And we'll put links to that in our show notes. And you also have a social media account people could look at as well for tips and tricks, right?

I do, yeah. So if you wanna follow me, I'm more active on Instagram, so the handle is at Lexar Nutrition. 

We really appreciate you coming on today and providing a wealth of knowledge. I know this was a topic that was requested by many of our listeners, so hopefully all of you all out there feel like you got to walk away with some good knowledge today.

Yeah, I know. 

I've learned some new things. Yes. So I'm excited to, to try some of these. I never heard of the word meal hygiene before either, so I think that's great. You'll now, you'll do it. Hopefully. So remember, you wanna just be working on making your gut have a nice, wonderful barrier.

We don't want leaky guts. And so you're gonna do that by trying to. Eat a lot of good fiber and nourish [00:56:00] your gut microbiota. And we want fiber, we want good unsaturated fats, and we want proteins, including plant proteins to help us do that. And you gave us some wonderful tips for bloating. Looking at how fast you're eating.

Are you staying hydrated? Are you getting enough fiber? Are you drinking too much carbonation? Do you need to try cooking some of your vegetables? So I think you've given us a lot of great thoughts that we can apply to anyone that's feeling any bloating. And also some wonderful thoughts on how to treat constipation.

So hopefully you're feeling motivated to hit up the produce section or the farmer's market and try some new fruits and vegetables. And so speaking of fiber, it's also something great for just colon health and colon cancer prevention. So join us next week because we are going to be discussing colon cancer with Dr.

Reema Patel. 

And if you all have any other ideas for shows, don't forget to click. Send us a text and give us some feedback on things that you want to hear about [00:57:00] and be sure to share and like our show. Look forward to talking to you all next week.