After I had Dru, the ability to not lose the “baby weight” was one of 65 different issues that I experienced that were all related to my poor gut health.
If you’re wondering WTF I’m talking about, don’t you worry. I wouldn’t have believed it either, if I hadn’t literally watched my weight drip off, my energy skyrocket, my eyes become brighter than ever and literally heal all 65 ailments in 6 weeks due to transforming my gut health.
You see, I experienced a series of highly stressful experiences leading up to my pregnancy with Dru. Then, during the pregnancy, birth and postpartum, I experienced a whole new series of additional stressors, many unrelated to the journey into motherhood, which only compounded my underlying health issues.
The Symptoms I Experienced
Given that my wedding was 3 months postpartum, I was doing everything to accelerate my weight loss and wasn’t seeing any changes. Granted, I was breastfeeding and indeed baby weight can take about 9 months to a year to come off, depending on how much you gained, whether or not you’re breastfeeding (and how your body responds to that), other hormonal changes you’re experiencing, your sleep (or lack there of), stress, and so much else.
That said, as someone who always had a spitfire metabolism, has always been highly attuned to how my body works, was hearing from my mother that she lost all her baby weight in 3 months (don’t get me started 😜) and felt like I knew what my body responded to well historically, so I felt I’d have no issue losing the weight, I was shocked to find myself in a body that felt completely foreign to mine where I couldn’t seem to drop a pound no matter what I did. And it stayed that way for a while.
I then started to notice that every time I ate anything, I would feel immensely sick afterwards. I couldn’t eat anything without feeling ill.
After everything I ate, my stomach would bloat to abnormal proportions and aside from the fact that I’d look like I was 6 months pregnant, it was highly uncomfortable and I would also often experience extreme stomach pain.
I had no energy what so ever. I consider myself a social person and certainly like being around people, but I literally had no energy to mobilize, ever. (I had mono in my early 20s and this was worse). I had friends from my local moms group that were always meeting up and I was dumbfounded by the fact that they had any energy to do so.
This was concerning to me given that I was always the person that had “too much energy” that others couldn’t keep up with. I was perplexed how they had the energy to socialize and I didn’t. It saddened me too because I felt so lonely and depressed and wanted to both for myself, but for Dru, but just physically and mentally couldn’t.
My sleep was abysmal and this was not because Dru wasn’t sleeping through the night or because I didn’t have help. Dru was sleeping through the night starting at 4 months and taking her naps properly and my husband was very helpful, but I would be up all night, or unable to fall asleep and then exhausted the next day.
I had intense joint pain to the point where I couldn’t walk or type.
I had chronic migraines, hazy vision and would get very light headed and faint.
I lost my memory and my brain felt like it didn’t work. I couldn’t process thoughts, I couldn’t comprehend basic things, I couldn’t read a basic sentence properly without having to really pay attention, read it very slowly and keep repeating it so I wouldn’t forget what I read.
I had muscle aches, flu symptoms, fevers, very itchy skin, perpetual yeast infections, yeast overgrowth leading to itchy genitalia, dandruff, nail fungus, shortness of breath and difficulty breathing, rectal bleeding and more.
I went from doctor to doctor for 1 1/2 years to no avail. Every test came back inconclusive.
It finally got so bad, that one day I was driving on the highway and was unable to put my foot on the break because it hurt too badly. In that moment, I was able to pull myself over, called my husband in tears and said, “We need a doctor to can get to the bottom of whatever is going on. Nothing in my body works”.
The Diagnosis
I was led to my incredible functional doctor, Dr Jeffrey Morrison, who was able to identify the root cause of all of this.
The chronic, high stress I experienced for years prior, during and following the birth of Dru, resulted in drastically impacting the health of my gut, which is what was the root cause of all of these 65 ailments.
How Stress Impacts our Health
The gut is the gateway to health, and a damaged gut can impact all areas of our health, including our brain. In fact, the brain and digestive system actually share a two way connection, so not only does a healthy gut affect your mental state, but your mental state affects how your gut functions.
Emotional stress, in addition to medications, alcohol, gluten and pesticides compromise the integrity of the healthy cell in our intestines, resulting in something called “leaky gut”, also known as intestinal permeability.
Basically, what’s happening is, these inhibitors start to attack the healthy cells supporting our gut lining that typically prevent harmful substances from leaving our intestines and migrating into the body and our blood stream. The spaces they create between the healthy cells result in toxins, bacteria, antigens and undigested food passing through and going into our blood stream and systems.
This causes an immune response that results in food sensitivities, decreased and compromised digestion, less healthy gut cells, less nutrient absorption and weakened immunity.
Inflammation then spreads throughout the body, showing up in all of these symptoms and can often result in the onset of many autoimmune and other diseases.
Insane, right?
How I Healed My Gut and Hence, My Health
Detox
The first step was to detoxify my system to cleanse my system to eliminate any triggering or aggravating foods or toxins in my body and give my digestive system a much needed reset and break.
To detoxify my system, I took The Morrison Center 30 day Daily Benefit System, where 2 of my 3 meals a day were clean, plant based shakes, with fiber and glutamine for added nourishment and support, and 1 whole foods meal.
The Diet Protocol
I was put on a low sugar, low carb, AIP diet. An AIP diet eliminates any inflammatory foods in an effort to support healing, removing nuts and seeds, coffee, chocolate, seed-based spices (like cumin, peppercorns), all nightshades (peppers, paprika, tomato, potato, eggplant), beans (even green beans) , grains (all grains, even white rice) , gluten and sugar and artificial sweeteners , eggs and dairy (including ghee and butter).
I also removed all fruit and starchy vegetables due to my candida overgrowth.
However, while unrelated to my gut healing persay, I also had to aggressively add healthy fats in my diet such as olive oil, avocado and flax oil to support my compromised brain function.
Due to the stress and malabsorption, my cholesterol had dropped too low, to under 100, hence my brain not functioning properly. Our brain is made up of fat and it essentially didn’t have enough fuel.
I was given herbs and supplements to further support the detoxification process and relax my nervous system and support my adrenals from the high stress.
Gut Support
I was instructed to drink bone broth every day to support the healing of my gut lining and prescribed probiotics to help repopulate my gut with the good bacteria that had been stripped from it.
Since I just couldn’t stomach the taste of bone broth daily, I supplemented by taking Vital Proteins Collagen Peptides.Â
Movement and Mindfulness Protocol
I was instructed not to do physical exercise other than yin yoga or light walking. I was prescribed meditation, epsom salt baths and anything to calm my mind and nervous system, alleviating stress on my body. To read more about stress reducing solutions, click here.
The Result
From following this protocol that alleviating stress in my mind and body thereby supporting healing of my gut, cleansing my system of all stressors and toxins to reboot it, repopulating my gut with good bacteria to rebuild a healthy microbiome, increasing absorption and intake of nutrients to support increased vitality and energy and increasing healthy fats to fire my brain, 6 weeks later, almost all of my symptoms were gone and I was pregnant with my second child!
My eyes were bright, my brain was working like rapid fire, I no longer had any joint pain, I had no bloating, dandruff, migraines or yeast infections. I was sleeping well, no longer anxious or depressed, my memory was back and I was full of energy.
The After Math
Given that on that 6 week visit I was pregnant with my 2nd child, only to follow with a 3rd pregnancy shortly following the 2nd, my healing was not completely linear.
My gut & over all healing journey overlapping with 2 pregnancies and births took me through all sorts of symptoms, issues and challenges. However, by educating myself through becoming a certified holistic health coach with the Institute of Integrative Nutrition, doing immense research and experimenting on my body and through being supported and working with the incredible The Morrison Center, I learned so much about gut health; it’s importance to our overall health, triggers and healing strategies and more.
After my first hand experience in feeling the drastic impact stress had on my gut health and how that radically impacted my health, followed by the complete transformation in healing it, I am extremely passionate about helping others maintain optimal gut health in order to experience the abundant health and wellbeing they desire.
Are you experiencing any of the symptoms I did? Are you in need of a gut reboot? I’d love to know your thoughts, experiences and questions. Please share below!
