I really wanted to write about this because I hear this a lot from my patients and I think understanding in this area is super important in order to properly heal.
Often in response to questions about gut health people tell me:
“I don’t have any issues with my gut “
“My digestion is great “
“My gut health is fine, it’s the other things (often skin or hormones)”
Yet these lovely people will be suffering from acne, eczema, allergies, hormone imbalances, endometriosis, period pain, PMS, PCOS, migraines, infertility, fatigue and poor immunity.
These are gut symptoms. Non-digestive gut symptoms.
(Also worth noting here that often people will have lots of digestive gut symptoms as well, or they might not realise they do and consider what they have as normal because they don't know any different).
When it comes to the gut, the common understanding is that the gut is involved in digestion. That’s its thing. If you’ve got constipation, diarrhoea, bloating, cramping, IBS, then you’ve got a gut issue.
Well my friends I’m here to remind you that the gut is responsible for so much than just your digestion.
You need to know this because in order to heal your skin and balance your hormones, you have to heal your gut. There's no way around it.
While digestion is super important and any issues here must absolutely be addressed, the gut is involved in some other vital functions:
Regulating inflammation and balancing your immune system.
These things are intertwined and the amount of inflammation in your body and the functioning of your immune system are dependent on your gut health.
Your gut microbiome (all the bugs that live in your gut) speaks directly with immune cells that live alongside your gut lining. They determine whether your immune system will keep cool and balanced or if it will swing into overdrive and trigger autoimmunity or allergies.
The integrity of your gut lining will determine what is allowed through into your system. An impaired gut lining, or 'leaky gut', will let things pass through the normally shouldn't, triggering an immune response from your body, leading to body wide inflammation.
Inflammation arises from poor gut health.
Inflammation is at the root of hormone imbalances; it throws your hormones way off!
Inflammation from the gut leads to inflammatory skin conditions such as acne an eczema.
So, hormones imbalances, acne, eczema, allergies… these are gut symptoms.
Making sense?
It’s wonderful to see when people get this, because then they can really get on board with healing and understand why I’m treating their gut when they’ve got cystic acne or endometriosis.
Otherwise it seems unrelated and they can think it’s a waste of time.
But it is here in the gut where you get to the roots of your issues. You have to look here. Always.