Address Gut Distress

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Do you struggle with bloating, diarrhea, anxiety, acne, and even depression? These can be symptoms of gut issues, along with more well-known conditions like GERDs, Crohn’s, Irritable Bowel Syndrome. 

Dr. Loredana Shapson of LifeMod Solutions goes over the obvious and not-so-obvious symptoms that can let us know that something is amiss with our guts. She dives into causes–that can range from pesticides in our food supply to chlorine in our water–and offers simple tips for long-term and immediate relief that she uses with her clients. She also points out which medications to avoid because of the havoc they create in the gut and what foods to include in the diet that are especially gut health-friendly. Finally, Loredana reminds us that our immune system, hormones, metabolic health and brain health all improve when we address our gut issues.

Visit Loredana’s website: lifemodsolutions.com

Become a member of the Weston A. Price Foundation

Check out our sponsors: Maui Nui Venison and Pluck

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Episode Transcript

Within the below transcript the bolded text is Hilda Labrada Gore and the regular text is Dr. Loredana Shapson.

Bloating, GERDs, Crohn’s, irritable bowel syndrome, acne, allergies, anxiety, and more. All of these issues are related to gut health. This is Episode 471, and our guest is Dr. Loredana Shapson. Loredana is the founder of LifeMod Solutions, a holistic health practice. Loredana explains why so many of us have gut issues and she offers straightforward tips that she uses in her practice to facilitate healing for her patients.

She tells us which medications to avoid, for example, because of the havoc they create in the gut. She also describes the critical role of diet in healing. She shares her personal favorite gut-healthy foods. She tells us what to look out for as signs of gut distress ranging from symptoms like diarrhea, anxiety, fatigue, and even depression.

She also identifies root causes of those symptoms ranging from pesticides in our food supply to chlorine in our tap water. Finally, Loredana offers simple first steps toward healing. She reminds us that our immune system, hormones, metabolic health, and brain health all improve when we address our gut issues.

Before we get into the conversation, I want to remind you that the Weston A. Price Foundation is a member-supported group. In other words, we can only do education, research, and activism with your help. There’s no other way. Please become a Weston A. Price Foundation member if you’re not yet. Go to westonaprice.org and click on the Join Now button. Use the code POD10 to join for $30 a year. Only $30 a year. I can hardly believe it. It’s so affordable and it means so much. Thank you in advance for your support and welcome to the family. This is Hilda Labrada Gore and you’re reading Wise Traditions.

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Visit Loredana’s website

Become a member of the Weston A. Price Foundation

Check out our sponsors: Maui Nui Venison and Pluck

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Welcome to the show, Loredana.

Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Gut Health And Bloating

I can’t believe that in many years, we haven’t touched on this topic much. The topic of gut health and bloating in particular. Let’s start with the story of the woman that walked into your office who felt like every evening she was bloating so much. It felt like she was pregnant.

I had a 40-something in my office who had unexplained bloating. She said at the end of the day her belly would descend as if she looked like she would be pregnant. Her belly would rumble and grumble after every meal. She had a lot of gas, so coming out burping and also the other end. It was unexplainable. It was every day all day and she couldn’t figure out why it happened. And

We started to work together and within about a couple of weeks, all her bloating symptoms went away. Her digestion was balanced. We used food, some lifestyle changes and supplements to help her feel better. What I want to share with people who are reading is if you have stomach issues, the stomach heals itself so quickly. In fact, the relining replaces itself every 3 to 5 days. You can see tremendous changes very quickly when you start getting rid of the bad stuff, the toxins and bringing in the good nutrition and replacement products to heal.

That is such good news. I didn’t know about the lining and replacing itself every 3 to 5 days.

It’s impressive and fast. I find that patients who come into my office have had a colonoscopy, endoscopy, and blood work. Everything comes back normal, but they’re still having these issues. They feel stuck and feel trapped as if this is something that cannot be healed. I’m happy to report that anybody can heal at any age if you put a little effort into it with good food.

I wonder why their blood work comes back “normal.”

Here’s the good thing, there are limitations with these tests. One of the biggest things about bloating is that there are bacteria present in the wrong part of the colon. When we talk about the colon, we have the small intestine and the large intestine. When you do a colonoscopy, you’re only getting as far as the middle of the large intestine. There’s no way you’re accessing the small intestine.

When you do an endoscopy, it goes down the throat and into the stomach. You’re only getting as far as the stomach. You’re missing part of the bowels. For a lot of people, what’s happening is there’s an overgrowth of bacteria in the small intestines that goes undetected through these tests. That’s why everything typically comes back normal but instead, they end up presenting with gut symptoms and the bloating that we talked about in the belching and the gas. Some people even have abdominal pain, cramping, nausea and vomiting.

Only because something is common doesn’t mean it’s normal or right. In other words, what you’re describing to me sounds awfully common. I’ve heard of a lot of people complaining of bloating, gas, and digestive discomfort. It’s more common, wouldn’t you say?

I would even say I hear it very often in children with their stomach aches and their belly aches. It’s becoming so perverse in our society. This is what I saw in my practice, too. I’ve been doing my holistic healing practice for many years now. I’m traditionally trained as a pharmacist and I did pharmacy for many years. I left that career because it was not satisfying.

What I have found in my six years of holistic work is every single person who came into my office had something going on with their stomach. I started to find this pattern. That’s when I specifically began to hyper-focus on gut health these past years because I’ve realized that when I fix the gut, I fix a lot of other issues. It is common and everybody suffers from it. Whether it’s mild symptoms or major symptoms. It is everywhere.

I was talking with a little girl who was about five years old, not too long ago. I forgot what I was saying to her. We were eating and she said, “I have a stomach ache.” I said, “I’m sure it’ll get better.” She said, “It’s unstoppable.” I was shocked. It doesn’t surprise me on some level though that you’re saying this is seen across the board with all ages.

It breaks my heart because you could hear that hopelessness in her response there as a child.

At age five.

If you think about what those kids are eating, it’s a lot of processed foods. It’s very low in vegetables and low in water. There are a lot of chemicals in those foods. That is not what our gut needs to thrive and flourish. Changing their diet to more whole foods with probiotics is the fix. I found that kids rebound even quicker than adults do.

 

What are some other symptoms of gut issues besides bloating? How could we have an almost a little alarm letting us know some things with our digestion to make us aware of the fact that we need to make some changes?

We think of the most obvious symptoms, which would be your stomach stuff, the bloating. We could have acid reflux or GERD. There could also be nausea, vomiting, and abdominal cramping. Also episodes of constipation where you’re only going to the bathroom maybe once or twice a week. Maybe three times a week. Also, diarrhea where you have a lot of loose stools. Those are the most obvious, but then there are also some not-so-obvious symptoms, which you may not connect to your gut health. Things like immune system issues.

People who have a lot of frequent colds over the winter or they get sick frequently. They have asthma, some breathing issues, or maybe they have rashes and hives. Also, autoimmune conditions have been tied back to gut health as well. People with autoimmune conditions, then there’s things like fatigue and general anxiety as well and mood disorders. Depression is also being seen among patients who have got issues too. Those are probably the most common, but it is pervasive. Every organ is affected at some level.

Dietary Shift

Let’s talk now about what we can do to address this. You talked about changing our diet. What are some of the first dietary shifts that you recommend?

Number one, is we need to go back to eating whole foods and eliminating processed foods for the exact reason that we have a lot of chemicals in our foods. They’re low in fiber as I mentioned. They also contain things like preservatives. Preservatives are another word for an antibiotic. We didn’t touch on antibiotics, but that is a huge driver for gut imbalances in the body. Antibiotics not only kill the good guys. They kill the bad guys. They kill everybody. The only guys who survive are the more virulent and the more angry ones.

We have to understand, we get antibiotics from our doctors. This culture has since improved, which I’m happy to see that when you go to the doctor, they don’t throw you an antibiotic right away. This has since calmed down, but there was a long history where antibiotics were given out like candy for everybody. In addition, we know that most of our antibiotic use happens in livestock raising in agriculture. When you are eating non-organic meats or not grass-fed meats, you’re being exposed to small doses of antibiotics in your food supply every single day. That is killing their gut bacteria.

That bears repeating. The greatest use of antibiotics in the world is with the animals. There’s more used in agricultural circles than in human pharmaceutical circles. Is that right?

Seventy percent of our antibiotic supply goes to the animals because they live in such close corridors and they try to prevent infection of the animals.

When we eat them, we get some doses of that and that can throw off our gut health.

Yes. I consider antibiotics like an atomic bomb. One dose is enough to decimate the good guys and the bad guys. This creates an imbalance. When you also take antibiotics, you reduce the bacterial population. What ends up happening is you increase the population of say, yeast and candida. That is another cause of bloating having an overgrowth of yeast and candida in the GI tract. That can cause other pervasive gut issues and a little slew of other health issues we’re not going to get into but maybe another time.

 

Antibiotic is an atomic bomb. One dose is enough to decimate the good guys within your body and create an imbalance.

 

I think it’s important to focus on the bad news so then we can get the good news. Let’s review the things that wreck our gut health from antibiotics and preservatives in the food, which you said are antibiotics if we look at it that way. What else is messing with our digestive system?

Similar to antibiotics and preservatives are things like pesticides and glyphosate. All of those are another word for an antibiotic. It kills the bugs that live within us. The next is even chlorine and tap water. It was such a necessary health addition for our survival. However, that’s why it was added. It was to kill microbes in the water supply. Now when we’re drinking that tap water, that chlorine is also affecting our gut balance.

We have things like our diet, which is high in sugar. Unfortunately, sugars prevent pervasive. Our gut bacteria eat what we eat. If we are constantly feeding them sugar, they’re going to ferment that sugar in our GI tract and that’s going to release gas. That’s the same concept as when you crack open a beer and you hear the hiss or you hear the champagne pop. It is that fermentation of sugar that creates a gas buildup. The more sugar and refined carbs that we eat, the more fermentation we have.

This is the first time anyone’s explained it to me with that illustration. That is mind-blowing. In other words, it’s not unproperly prepared beans that could cause a lot of gas and bloating. You’re saying sugar can lead to that discomfort on these issues.

This will be one thing as a solution is to reduce your sugar intake. Even like fruit. Fruit toast can be hard to absorb for a lot of people. We remove fruit from a lot of people’s diets in the beginning. It’s temporary anytime we’re going through gut healing phases, but fruit can be a problem as well. Back to like some other causes, food supply. We have things like constipation.

When we’re not emptying our bowels, we are holding on to toxic material. It sits in the colon and it irritates the lining of our GI tract and causes inflammation. That reduces our ability to absorb food and nutrients. Everything is slow and stagnant. Now, things are fermenting and growing in this space that probably should not be there.

It creates a breeding ground for unwanted microbes. Going to the bathroom every day is extremely important in this picture as well. Another thing to comment on too is stress. Even just like emotional stress. When our body feels like it’s running away from a tiger even though we’re not, it is not thinking about our digestive system. I always say, that when stress is on, your digestive system turns off. That means you’re not releasing your digestive enzymes and juices. Therefore, you are going to have trouble breaking down your food, and thus that’s when the bacteria get to it first and they’re going to start having their fun.

 

There are so many facets to this. I’m fascinated. When you mentioned constipation, I couldn’t help but think of the elderly population that sometimes has trouble with regularity. Maybe they think it’s part and parcel of what happens when you get older. You just start to have these digestive issues, but not necessarily. Maybe they’ve upped their sugar consumption. Maybe they’re stressed or not moving as much. All this causes, as you say, the digestive system to shut down and function improperly.

The lack of movement and water intake is a huge part of constipation as well. As we get older, we probably go to quick foods because we don’t want to cook. We don’t want to do all those things anymore. Now we’re eating more processed foods and quick foods that are low quality.

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It seems scary, we went over all these terrible things. I hope our readers are like, “Oh no.” Here’s the beauty. Once we understand what’s causing it, now we can go to solutions. Now we can figure out where we can fix things. That’s where we can come in with some good healing items. Back to your original question, which was what can we do to fix our gut health? We go back to whole foods. We need to get rid of chemicals, processed foods, grass-fed, and organic. This is all the Wise Tradition’s ways.

One of the biggest things that we need to focus on is probiotics. Probiotics from our foods are extremely important. We talk about things like yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi and beet kvass. Those are all the things that we heavily promote at Wise Traditions. I follow a lot of the Weston A. Price guidelines with my patients. Eating these foods every single day is extremely important to start bringing in the good bacteria. Let’s start bringing in our police force. They’ll regulate things and start rebalancing the gut.

This is so interesting. I think I used to consider gut health as a situation with you got the bad bacteria and you got the good bacteria. You’re trying to bring in, as you said, more reinforcements for the good bacteria so they outnumber the bad. Some people have told me and tell me what you think of this, Loredana. The bad isn’t necessarily bad. There’s just supposed to be a balance between these different kinds in the gut. If either side gets too big, it becomes imbalanced. Is that true? What do you think of that?

I do agree with that statement 100%. All of these microbes are supposed to live within us and that includes the good bacteria. We label it good and bad because it’s easy to help people distinguish the differences, but you’re correct. For example, people are afraid of, say, C. diff. That’s the clostridium difficile bacteria, which can cause severe diarrhea, dehydration, and even death in some people.

That is a dangerous thing when it overgrows but all of us have C. diff within us. It’s just kept in balance and in check. It’s when you start taking antibiotics that now C. diff overgrows then there’s too many of them. They’re the ones that start to cause the problem. You are correct, it’s an imbalance and we have to keep everybody in check.

Better Digestion

Eating more whole real foods, less processed foods, and lowering our sugar intake. What are the recommendations do you offer your patients?

Drinking a lot of water in between meals at room temperature so that we can make sure that you’re pooping every day. Eating more fiber. Eating a lot of vegetables. I would say for a lot of people too, when they have gut issues, I often find that my patients will say, “Every time I eat broccoli, my belly’s upset,” or “Every time I eat cabbage.” They list a specific vegetable and a food. It’s almost like a catch-22. The very food that I need to be eating now is the food that’s causing me more symptoms. What do I do?

This becomes an issue, but what we need to do at the beginning of our gut healing journey, is if you’re somebody who’s suffering now and this sounds like you. You need to eat more cooked vegetables. They need to be soups and stews. Specifically, broths because animal broths have a lot of collagens and proteins that are easy to digest.

They have a lot of minerals and basic nutrients that we need to rebuild the lining of our gut to strengthen that tissue. When you cook your foods and you cook your vegetables, now they’re easier to digest. It’s the low and slow cooking that is the best thing that you can do. In the beginning, I will have all my patients eat soups and stews for maybe 2 to 3 weeks. That is going to settle the stomach. It’s going to calm things down.

As you’re doing that, we start to bring in probiotic food. Maybe you start with a little bit of sauerkraut. I always like to start with vegetables first, because, for some people, dairy can bother their belly. We need to start with vegetables first. Start with the sauerkraut and the kimchi, if you’re okay with spicy stuff, or maybe some beet kvass or any other vegetables that you want to ferment at home. Start there, start small, and see how you do.

As you’re eating the healthy foods, the cooked foods, and now you’re bringing in the slow probiotics. One thing we didn’t talk about yet is that one of the things that probiotics do for us is they help us digest our food. They release enzymes, minerals, and nutrients. They help regulate our hormones. Even when we’re struggling to break down foods, our probiotics, the good bacteria are there to support our digestion system.

 

Now we’re starting to correct the underlying problem. We’re bringing in some probiotic foods. You can start bringing in some of those vegetables. When you bring in some of those vegetables, you have to think of it like training your gut like you go to the gym. You’re not going to eat a whole head of broccoli in your one meal just because you’re excited that you started. You’re going to start with maybe one or two bites.

I know that sounds very small, but we have to train the gut. One or two bites and see how you do. You did great. Perfect. The next time you eat it in the day or two, you’re going to have another extra bite or two. Now you’re at 3 to 4 bites. You slowly start to work your gut and prepare the bacteria to start working that out. In a matter of weeks, you’ll be able to eat almost everything that you weren’t able to eat before.

I can see that this is very Wise Traditions-based because some of our principles are, for example, every indigenous culture ate some of their animal products raw and cooked a lot of their plant foods. They were breaking down some of the anti-nutrients by doing so. They also fermented. They all had lacto-fermented foods in their diet and they made use of the whole animal with broth. You’re calling people back, Loredana, to eating more of the Wise Traditions way, which is beautiful.

It’s 100%. Everything that everyone needs to go back to. I was so excited to come on this show because I was like, “This is it. This is the people.” I know life gets carried away and we have our conveniences. We have our parties and our events, but we need to go back to listening to our bodies. If something bothers our body, we need to come back to wise traditions, clean house for a couple of weeks, and then reset our body so that we can heal again. It’s exciting.

Returning to the digestion piece, the way one person described it to me was that we only have one stomach as opposed to cattle, for example, or other ruminants that have various chambers. Some of which help them convert the grass to ferment it or neutralize anti-nutrients and make the nutrients therein more bioavailable. We don’t. Probiotic-rich or fermented foods, the pre-digestion that our single stomach bodies require.

I’m glad you’re bringing this up, this whole process of lacto-fermentation and sprouting. That whole process of making food more digestible. I will say that a lot of my patients, too. There’s a reason why we have to take these steps to prepare these foods in a particular way. It’s because it is so irritating to our gut lining. When we first are trying to heal our gut lining, I do remove from people’s diets grains and even sprouted grains, soaked and sourdoughed. I still remove it for a little bit.

We remove nuts and seeds for a little bit. We also remove beans because they are hard to digest for some people. Every recommendation is temporary. It’s only for a couple of weeks. Let’s let everything heal then you can start bringing these pre-digested foods back in and see how you tolerate them. You’ll know, “I had some beans and that didn’t settle with my stomach. I need to avoid that for a little bit longer.” Again, minding the principle that less is better at the start. If you’re going to be reintroducing beans, you’re only going to have a teaspoon or two or maybe a tablespoon. I know that sounds like a little bit, but that’s where we have to start, be kind, gentle, and slow and you’re gut will thank you.

You’re inviting people to pay attention to how their body’s responding. Already they know their body’s yelling at them, “Something’s wrong.” They’re coming in, but apart from that pain, they may not notice maybe the constant aggravation that their digestive system is dealing with until you have them slow down, eliminate a few things, and start over.

It’s interesting. You live in a culture where we have learned to ignore our own body cues and our symptoms. We mask it with over-the-counter medications and not truly handle it. I encourage everybody to feel back into their body. Take a moment and think about what’s happening. Talking about masking, there’s one thing I want to bring up which is very important because I’m a pharmacist.

 

In a culture where we have learned to ignore our body cues and symptoms, we begin to mask them with counter medications instead of truly handling them.

 

Acid Reducing Medications

One of my least favorite medications and one that I find doesn’t have much use in our human health is acid-reducing medications. These are things that you can find over the counter like Zantac, Omeprazole, and Prilosec. These are also known as proton pump inhibitors, but the Tums, all of them reduce stomach acid. They’re marketed for GERD. What we’re finding is that when we do that, we’re reducing our ability to break down food.

Acid in our stomach is an extremely important part of our digestive system. It is our protection from the outside environment. If you think about all the things that come through our mouth and all the things we’re touching. Our stomach acid is responsible for killing all of the things that shouldn’t make it any further down the line. When you reduce your stomach acid, now you’re allowing for the growth of unwanted microbes and creating an imbalance from what’s coming in and what’s also already in your gut.

This is such an important point because I’ve heard of infants that have been put on tums because they were having too much acid reflux. Tell me if this is right, Loredana. Some people say, “It’s not that they have too much stomach acid. It’s something else that’s off. Reducing that stomach acid is a bad idea.”

It’s a bad idea. It is the first medicine I get all of my patients off of when we start to work together. For that child who’s having that issue, you have to look at what you’re feeding that child. It’s mostly formula-fed babies that generally have that problem. If it is happening to breastfeeding mothers, what’s mom eating? What the mom is eating affects the baby as well. That’s an easy tweak of trial and error of removing some foods to support the baby.

Generally, I find that when people don’t tolerate foods or when people have sensitivities or issues with food. It’s generally because their gut is imbalanced. Maybe that child would do much better with a probiotic supplement. There are plenty of supplements available in liquid form for infants and children because they can’t eat the foods that we can eat yet. This is where supplements come into our lifestyle when you cannot have them in the diet. For children, that would be an appropriate addition for them to start bringing in some probiotic supplements for the baby.

Impact Of Gut Health

This was an infant. They weren’t capable of eating anything. They were either having formula or breast milk. I think you’re right. Let’s not just address the symptoms. Let’s look for what the root is. I’ve heard it said too that people always say, “You are what you eat.” Someone said, “You are what you absorb.” I imagine a lot of this gut dysbiosis or gut issues we’re having affect how much of the good stuff our bodies can take in too and benefit from.

When we talk about our digestive system, we need to realize that every single cell in your body relies on your digestive system to break down and absorb the nutrients it needs to function. For some people, when their gut is compromised, they start presenting with different issues. For some people, it presents baby as an autoimmune condition or it presents as a joint problem. For others, it’s a headache.

Your family history will queue you into which bucket you may fall into, but every single body part in the system is affected by your gut health. To touch on this even more is when we look at the data that’s coming out now, in clinical research that’s studying gut health in certain conditions. We see gut health support all over. I’m going to run through a quick list of what the research is showing. 

 

Every single body part in your system is affected by your gut health.

 

They have studied probiotics and probiotic foods in people with IBS, which is what we’ve been discussing, those gut symptoms. Things like mood, depression, and anxiety. We see improvements in people’s moods. We see things like respiratory infections get better in children. UTI infections improve in women when they start using probiotics, eating cleaner, and improving their gut health.

We see hormones get better, so women with PCOS and even some bone density scans get better. We also see people with allergies. For example, someone who cannot tolerate dairy, all of a sudden, after they’ve fixed their diet and brought in some probiotic foods and supplements. Now, they can tolerate dairy again. That’s what I discussed earlier because the bacteria can release enzymes that break down dairy for us. We don’t have to do the work.

There are other things we see too, which is exciting things like metabolic health. When we talk about blood work, our blood sugars get better. Insulin resistance gets better. Cholesterol numbers improve. We see weight loss after several months of gut health rebalance. I listed a wide range of conditions. We talked about the immune system, hormones, metabolic health, and gut health. All of these things, including brain health are improving when we fix our gut. Everybody should be focusing on this first when they’re trying to correct their health and then start tackling issues more specifically.

I’m so glad you gave that overview. I was thinking you probably mentioned this too, but even though you said allergies, but acne could have something to do with your body responding to some imbalance in the gut.

I say this to all my skin patients. I have a lot of patients who come to me with psoriasis, rosacea, acne, rashes, and hives. Your skin is made up of the same tissue as your GI tract. Your skin is a representative of going on what’s inside your gut. The same thing with your mouth. People forget that our mouth is a part of our GI tract, but what’s happening in your mouth is happening in your gut. Very tied together if we correct our gut, and I see this very frequently. We need to correct our skin.

Usually with skin conditions, what I see is typically these are patients who have had a lot of antibiotics in their history and in their lifespan and have not taken probiotics. They don’t eat probiotic foods. We see that they have an overgrowth of yeast and Candida. Once we start bringing in the good bacteria and we bring down the yeast and Candida population. I see that all those skin conditions get better.

Looking Back

That’s so encouraging. Let’s back up, Loredana. I want to ask why you left the pharmaceutical field to come into this gut health more holistic space.

I have two little paths for that. One is I’ve been in the industry for many years. I saw some disturbing unhealthy patterns. I’m going to use the word disgusting because it was. People would come in with one prescription, then the next thing, they’d be on another. It would get added on to where the average person was on 5 to 7 products. A side effect would come up and they’d treat it again.

The other alarming thing that I saw was that the conditions when I first got into the field like high blood pressure and diabetes. I would see that in older populations. Now, I was starting to see it in twenty year olds taking insulin and on three blood pressure medications. Children also on a lot of prescriptions that had started to become like, “I did not get into this industry to shell out pills and mask the problem. It keeps getting worse. We’re not getting to the root cause.”

That was my first driver was, “Something’s not right here.” I started to question it the minute that I was in pharmacy school. I was like that outlier and bad girl that was going against the grain in school. I’m not poo-pooing what I learned. I think that everything that I learned in pharmacy school is what made me who I am now and I’m very grateful for that experience.

The next part of this journey is my own personal health conditions were not resolved with the medical community. I, too, suffered from bloating where I looked like I was pregnant. I would drink a glass of water in the morning and it would be unexplainable. I would be embarrassed. I would start to develop social anxiety. Can I go out to dinner with friends and eat something or am I going to bloat like I’m pregnant?

I had my own personal issues with that. I suffered with constipation for most of my life. I tied it back to when it mostly started when I was in college in that teenage year. I had acne and my doctor put me on antibiotics. That was like the gold standard of care. I was on it for about four months. I can’t remember. It was so long now, but 3 to 4 months every single day, I took an antibiotic. That was when I started to see my whole entire gut health shift and change.

Once I came into my holistic world, I started to focus on gut health and I saw it in my patients. I said, “With my background and my education, I’m going to read all the clinical research that I can find and study this.” I feel like I have found the missing piece and figured it out. Now I’m focusing on gut health and my practice. It’s been amazing to get people off of medications now.

Morning Routine

It sounds so rewarding. I want to review to make sure I got it right. People may want to consult with you or some local health practitioner, but from what you’ve said, changing our diet is a good idea of widening the processed foods with all the preservatives and chemicals, lowering our sugar intake, and upping our probiotic intake could be through fermented foods or supplements and reducing their stress. Is there anything else you would recommend?

Some quick tips that people can apply for immediate relief. Every morning, if you could start your day off with boiling hot water and pour it over a half of a lemon. You can even put a little splash of apple cider vinegar in there. We talked about acidity and that’s that lemon. The apple cider vinegar specifically is going to add a little bit of acidity and jumpstart your digestive system. You could do that all throughout the day and with each meal.

I’d also recommend for people who are having some current stomach issues and even acid reflux, when you’re feeling that discomfort, apple cider vinegar or any vinegar that doesn’t have sugar is your friend. You would take a tablespoon of a vinegar and mix it into about 2 to 3 ounces of water. Not a lot of water and drink that. No matter what’s happening, with your meal or without your meal or you’re nauseous or your stomach hurts or you’re full. That’s going to start moving things downward correcting the gut with that acidity and starting to flow. Those are some immediate things that we can do to help us now while you work on your diet, while you let the probiotics do their magic and get things going from there.

Message To Skeptics, Probiotic Pills, And Personal Diet

Loredana, what do you say to the skeptic who’s like, “All these sensitivities, intolerances and even gut issues are in people’s heads. It wasn’t around many years ago. This is like a trend.” What do you say to those people?

Luckily, I don’t think I’ve come across any of them because everybody’s gut problems. What I will say that people probably don’t understand or unaware about is how much gut health impacts probably their other conditions that they don’t realize. There’s people out there that say, “I don’t have stomach issues. I shouldn’t take a probiotic.”

Maybe you have some other conditions that are going on. We know that probiotics and in clinical research, they reduce inflammation. They help the immune system. Whenever you’re reducing inflammation, you’re going to heal a ton of conditions. If you’re not sure, I would say try a probiotic for yourself. Stay with it. The clinical research shows that peak benefit occurs when you take a probiotic for at least 2 to 3 months.

I’m mentioning this because some people will take a probiotic. They’ll stay on it for a couple of weeks and they go, “I didn’t notice a difference so I stopped it.” I always say to them, “You didn’t give it enough time.” You can’t judge it yet. You still will feel improvements when you first start taking the probiotic. I would say stick with it for three months before you decide have your other conditions improved. I will say people, “Try it. Give it a chance and be patient.”

That’s a good point. Another thing that comes to my mind is something Sally has said a number of times to me, is that, “There are more probiotics in a teaspoon full of sauerkraut than in some of the probiotic pills that they’re selling over the counter.

It’s very true. When we think about this and I want to make this distinction, because this is very important. When you buy yogurt or kefir or fermented foods in a grocery store, they have found probably the minimum time necessary to get that fermentation right. The shorter it’s fermented, the less probiotics you’ll have in it.

For example, yogurt now can ferment for about four hours commercially, and you’re only going to get about 1 to 3 billion, is what probiotics are made as, in yogurt. They’re called CFUs. When you make your yogurt at home and you let it ferment for 36 hours, which is way longer than what commercial is. You can get over 200 to 250 billion in that same amount of product. This comes back to wise traditions making your own food at home giving it time and patience at it deserves. You’ll get way more benefit.

 

Loredana, I’m curious about your own diet and I know there’s bio-individuality. We’re not all going to go out and copy you. I imagine you have this water and lemon or water and apple cider vinegar regularly. What else do you make sure to include every day if you can?

I make a soup every single week, whether it’s a soup or a stew or a chili. That is a regular part of my diet to make sure that I’m constantly getting that broth in. If I’m not having a soup, then I make sure I have a cup of warm broth. Maybe with my meal or I’ll have it instead of water. I’ll replace it to get those good nutrients in. I try to make it myself when I can.

I use chickens and I have bones. I make my own bone broth. Thank you, InstantPot for cutting that time in half. I would say that a staple is broth, soups, and soos. The next thing I do is if I eat beans, my beans are always pressure cooked. I usually make a lentil soup or some lentil dish or chickpea or some bean. Beans are easier to digest when they are fermented or soaked as we discussed. Even more importantly when they’re pressure cooked because it does eliminate one of those chemicals within it. If I do beans, which is very important for fiber intake, for the good back bacteria. It’s always pressure cooked. The next thing I would say is a lot of animals. I eat every single animal. I do bison, elk, eggs, fish eggs, and a lot of sauerkraut as well. I’m a very much a wise tradition following girl.

You are in a diverse diet. I remember when I interviewed Chris Masterjohn on this subject, he said, “Our diets today are so limited.” You would think they would be more diverse than our ancestors, but they’re less.” The fact that you’re eating a variety of meats, you’re including the broth. You’re doing it the Wise Tradition’s way.

Think about when you go to the grocery store, it’s the same vegetables. It’s the same herbs. The same 20 to 25 foods. When you think about it ancestrally, we had access to over 300 different plants and herbs and things that we had in our diet. Go back to natural ways. Grow your own food and have your own garden. Enjoy the pleasures of diversity. 

 

Ancestrally, we had access to over 300 different plants and herbs in our diet. We have to go back to our natural ways by growing our own food, building our own gardens, and enjoying the pleasures of diversity.

 

Closing Words

I love it. I feel like you might have already answered the question I like to pose at the end, but in case you didn’t, I want to ask you. If the reader could do one thing to improve their health, it could be related to gut health or maybe not. What would you recommend that they do, Loredana?

I would say the apple cider vinegar for gut health. That is the most under-estimated easy to do and convenient thing that everybody has in every household. If you have gut symptoms, apple cider vinegar. If you overeat or you went out to dinner, you had some bad foods and some ice cream. Have some apple cider vinegar with that at that moment so you can support your gut health and reduce that stress. That’s the number one thing I would say.

I love it. Thank you so much for this conversation. It’s been a pleasure.

Thank you for having me.

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Our guest was Dr. Loredana Shapson. Visit her website, LifeModSolutions.com for more. I am Hilda Labrada Gore, the Host and Producer of this show for the Weston A. Price Foundation. Now for a show review from Apple Podcasts from Midwife Melissa. She titled it Loving This Show, “Wise Traditions enlighten with timeless health wisdom blending traditional knowledge with modern insights. Each episode feels like a clarifying guide through the world of wellness offering practical life-enriching advice. It’s a must-read for anyone seeking a balanced, informed lifestyle.”

Melissa, thank you so much. These words mean a ton and they might do their part in bringing prospective readers to our show. You too can leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Go to Apple Podcasts, and click on ratings and reviews. Give us as many stars as you’d like and tell the world why they should read. Thank you so much for reading. Stay well and remember to keep your feet on the ground and your face to the sun.

 

About Dr. Loredana Marzullo Shapson

Dr. Loredana Marzullo Shapson, PharmD, FNTP, is the founder of LifeMod Solutions, a holistic health practice in Newtown, PA. She is a pharmacist turned holistic with the mission to empower her patients to know they can heal at any age by providing answers, education and tools to live more naturally in our modern world. Dr. Loredana earned her Doctor of Pharmacy degree (PharmD) at Temple University in 2012 and is a pharmacist licensed in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In addition, she is a certified Primal Health Coach (PHC), a Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner (FNTP), a Reiki Level II practitioner, and trained in energy medicine using muscle response testing techniques to analyze neurological reflexes.

Whatever you put in your mouth, whether it be a food, a prescription medication, a dietary supplement, a nutraceutical, a herb, you name it, Dr. Loredana has the unique advantage of understanding how it impacts your health. After working in a pharmacy for more than 12 years, Dr. Loredana realized that prescription medications are not the answer to our chronic health problems, rather they act as band-aids, masking symptoms, and ignoring the root cause of illness and dis-ease. Thus, dis-ease continues and progresses, new symptoms arise, and health continues to degrade. Dr. Loredana has dedicated her life to research, continuing education and training, and she has uncovered the leading factors that negatively impact our health. From pain to purpose, Dr. Loredana successfully reversed her own health challenges including high blood pressure, weight loss, adrenal fatigue, and recurrent bacterial infections that required multiple rounds of antibiotics.

She was diagnosed with high blood pressure at 19 years old, and worked through three doctors that chalked it up to hereditary factors, and took 2 prescription medications for over a decade. After uncovering her root causes, which were heavy metal toxicity mercury and aluminum, she learned how to detox her body. Dr. Loredana is passionate about teaching others how to regain control of their health so they can take on life’s challenges full of youth, energy and vitality.

 

Important Links

• LifeMod Solutions
• Weston A. Price Foundation
• Maui Nui Venison
• Pluck Seasoning
• Wise Tradition on Apple Podcasts

 

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