Trust Your Gut: Heal from IBS and Other Chronic Stomach Problems Without Drugs (For Fans of Brain Maker or The Complete Low-FODMAP Diet) - Softcover

Plotnickoff MD MTS FACP, Gregory; Weisberg, Mark B.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1573245887 ISBN 13: 9781573245883

Publisher: Conari Press, 2013

Synopsis

Drug-free, Natural Remedies for Digestive Problems

#1 Bestseller in Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Take control of your gut health with natural remedies for GERD or IBS pain. Inside, two leading doctors in integrative medicine offer a personalized plan to restore gut harmony.

Listen to your gut. Of the main human body systems, our digestive system is our center. In ancient wisdom and modern idioms, we praise intestinal fortitude, and when we have an intuitive hunch, we attribute it to our gut feeling. If you’ve been diagnosed with a gastrointestinal disease or exhibit symptoms like chronic bad breath, gastritis, nausea, bloating, gas, cramping, constipation, or even incontinence―your gut is trying to tell you something.

Stomach pain relief without drugs. Work towards lasting, natural pain relief with renowned mind-body specialists, Gregory Plotnikoff, MD and Mark Weisberg, PhD. Based off years of clinical research, their revolutionary CORE program offers a comprehensive, drug-free approach to healing. Inside learn how to reclaim your life by making simple changes in your diet and sleep and:

• Reduce pain and other gut symptoms naturally
• Promote a healthy digestion process without drugs
• Rewire your brain-gut connection
• Recognize and manage the five forms of stress that lead to digestive disorders

If you benefited from books such as The Mind-Gut Connection; Gut; or Heal Your Body, Cure Your Mind; then you’ll want to read Trust Your Gut.

About this title

About the Authors

Gregory A. Plotnikoff, MD, MTS, FACP, is a board-certified internist and pediatrician who has received national and international honors for his work in cross-cultural and integrative medicine. He has been quoted in the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the LA Times and featured on All Things Considered, Speaking of Faith and Science Friday.

Mark Weisberg, Ph.D., ABPP completed his Ph.D. and board certification in Clinical Psychology. He is a Community Adjunct Professor in the Center for Spirituality and Healing, University of Minnesota and co-owner of the Minnesota Head and Neck Pain Clinic. He currently teaches online classes and gives keynote addresses and consultations at numerous national conferences.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Trust Your Gut

Get Lasting Healing from IBS and Other Chronic Digestive Problems Without Drugs

By Gregory A. Plotnikoff, Mark B. Weisberg

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

Copyright © 2013 Gregory A. Plotnikoff and Mark B. Weisberg
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-57324-588-3

Contents

Introduction
Part I. Center
1. Find Your Center
Part II. Observe
2. Observe Your Gut
3. Observe Your Stresses
4. Observe Your Diet
5. Observe Your Sleep
6. Observe Your Life: Your Health and Wellness Autobiography
Part III. Restore
7. Ecological Rebalancing for Inner Peace
8. Harmonizing Your External Environment
9. Neurohormonal Retraining to Rewire the Gut-Brain Connection
10. CORE Calming Techniques
11. Resolve Difficult Emotions and Their Physical Effects
Part IV. Ensure
12. Maintain Your Gains and Achieve Sustainable Lifestyle Change

CHAPTER 1

Find Your Center

Flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free. Stay centered by acceptingwhatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.

—Chuang Tzu, Chinese philosopher

Your mind and body make up an integrated system, and when it goes out of balance, youbecome dysfunctional. The results of this imbalance are obvious in people who performfor a living. An Olympic gymnast who is uncentered crashes on the floor. An actressforgets her lines. A juggler drops the balls. A batter can't hit the baseball. That's why suchperformers always prepare themselves with some sort of centering technique before thecurtain rises or the first pitch is thrown. They get psyched up before the big game to keeptheir mind calm and focused, and their body flexible and alert. The mind and body mustbecome one. When they stay centered, they perform perfectly—the slugger gets a hit andthe gymnast gets a 10.

You need to know where you are headed—and why—before you can become centered.

It's no different if you suffer from chronic intestinal distress. You have an imbalance in yourbody/mind system, and you can only find lasting relief by becoming centered. No one seesyour problem, but you know it preoccupies you way too much of the time. Whenever youwalk out the door to go to work or out on a date, you are on stage. The problem is youdon't always understand how to center yourself beforehand. You lack the techniques tokeep your mind sharp and your body under control. You have been given various pills andbeen told to relax, but it doesn't exactly work. You never stop worrying, and you never feelin charge of your life.

Centering is the first step in our CORE program. You need to know where you areheaded—and why—before you can become centered. That's why we begin the COREprogram with centering.

Uncentered Kevin

It was hard for Kevin to make it through his day's work because he just couldn'tconcentrate. His mind was preoccupied with the dread of an imminent attack of gut pain,bloating, diarrhea, or constipation. It was hard to sit still, and if he did sit still andhappened to notice a sensation in his gut, he'd get quite angry. He would urgently startstrategizing how to respond to this latest attack. Should I take a laxative? Should I go for awalk? What the heck am I going to do?

He was so off center that he couldn't even focus when he was at home with his family. Hisanxiety and worry about his symptoms took over his entire day. All he could do wasanticipate the worst.

His bloating was so bad, he bought extra pants to accommodate his expanding waistline.He had a thirty-six-inch waist, but he kept a thirty-eight- and a forty-inch pair on hand towear on any given day, depending on his level of bloating.

Kevin increasingly saw himself as being damaged. He had no hope that his symptomscould get any better. These cumulative anxieties kept stirring up his nervous system andmade the bloating and the pain even more intense. Kevin was totally off balance, but henever even thought about it that way. His physician kept giving him medications for hissymptoms and his psychologist kept telling him to relax. Nothing worked, and that justmade it worse.

Becoming Centered Is a Process

Telling people to relax doesn't make them relaxed, unless they already know how to relax.If an angry parent is yelling at his son's little league coach during a game and you tell himto relax, he's more likely to punch you than to mellow out. But if you ask a Buddhist monkwho has practiced meditation for thirty years to relax, he could easily produce ultra-calmtheta waves within a minute or two. Likewise, you can tell a professional opera singer toget centered, and she could become poised with a few deep breaths. But if you told Kevinto get centered, he'd only get more frustrated. He'd be more likely to resemble the angryparent than the Buddhist monk.

Learning how to become centered requires a change of attitude and the acquisition of newskills. It's not a mere intellectual process that only requires thinking—it's an experientialprocess, an activity. The Olympic gymnast may not be able to verbalize what it is to becentered, but she certainly knows how it feels. Being centered is a psychophysiologicalstate—both physical and emotional. It is also embodied; you can feel it in your gut. If youkeep thinking too much and a worrisome dialogue keeps replaying in your head, you'renever going to finish your routine.

If you are a gut sufferer and find yourself in a hopeless dead end, the most important stepon your path toward centeredness is to learn to trust your gut. This means getting a newattitude to replace the current mixture of hate and fear you have for your gut. As wementioned earlier, ancient wisdom tells us that the gut is the seat of the emotions and thefocal point of human energy. We can all learn much from this idea of the gut as a kind ofsecond brain.

The Ancient Wisdom of the Gut as Center

Our everyday language uses phrases that depict the gut as a source of power, emotions,and intuitive intelligence. We say a person with a strong will has a lot of guts. A braveperson performs gutsy actions. We praise one's intestinal fortitude. But those who showgreat fear and run away at the sight of danger are gutless cowards or yellow bellied. Evena slight fear such as stage fright before a performance can give you butterflies in yourstomach. And when we know something through an intuitive hunch, we attribute it to ourgut feelings or our gut instinct.

When you exercise or play sports, you can feel that your gut is your center of gravity.Balance is everything when you perform well. In traditional Asian medicine, the gut is thecenter of the body in another way: it is the source of your life energy. That center alsorequires a balance, because it is when our energies become imbalanced that we becomeill. The gut is our battery, and we must live a lifestyle that keeps it well charged withenergy. Because everything in your body/mind system depends on this energy, a lack ofchi can affect your mood as well as your performance. In Japan's kampo tradition ofmedicine, the diagnosis of all illnesses begins with examining the gut.

If you've ever done yoga, Tai Chi, or any of the martial arts, you know what it is to feel thatenergy course through your body. It has different names—prana in Sanskrit, ITLχITL inChinese, and ki in Japanese—but it all means the same thing: the vital, life-giving, andlife-sustaining force necessary for health. This flow of energy from the center is the basisfor success in the martial arts, Zen meditation, flower arranging, Zen archery, and everyother mindful activity. Centered practitioners perform in a relaxed and effortless mannerwith calm and focused minds. Like the best actors and dancers, they make it look easyand natural.

Asia wasn't the only place where the gut was seen as a major center of vitality andemotion. Some translations of the Bible also depict the guts as the seat of strong emotionssuch as compassion, mercy, intuition, and empathy. For example, in the story about thewisdom of King Solomon, in which he proposes cutting a baby in half to solve anargument between two women who both claim a child, the Cambridge edition of the KingJames version says "her bowels yearned upon her son" (I Kings 3:26). In our effort torestore your faith in your gut, we are harking back to the wisdom of the ages.

CENTERED UNCENTERED

Relaxed Anxious
Effortless Struggle
Focused Scattered
Functional Dysfunctional
Aware Confused
In control Out of control

The Breath Connection

Everyone knows that the gut is the center for the ingestion and digestion of the essentialsfor life—food and water. But the gut is also the center of our breathing apparatus. Sure,the lungs are what fill with air, but the abdominal muscles are what provide the strength ofthe bellows that keep us alive. If you watch a baby breathe, you will see her belly expandand deflate. That is natural deep breathing. Asian medicine acknowledged this truth bynaming the energy that flows from the center after the breath. Chi, ki, and prana all literallymean "breath." Actors and singers around the world are taught to breathe from the gut.They know that you get more air that way and need to pause for a breath less often.Breathing from the chest is a human invention that takes in less air. Gut breathing is deepbreathing, while chest breathing is shallow.

Breathing is one of the few bodily processes that run automatically when we are notpaying attention, but yet we can take control of our breath when we want to. This is usefulbecause our rate of breathing correlates directly to our state of mind. Deep breathingmakes us calmer and more centered, but when we are uncentered, confused, andanxious, our breath rate and pulse both become more rapid. This breath connection isevident in the case of Carol.

Carol Gets Calmed

Carol was a senior executive who suffered from a long list of medical conditions—constipation,bloating, fatigue, poor concentration, and much more. She sought the adviceof many doctors but to no avail. She felt hopeless, and she blamed herself for hercondition. "I am a mess. My gut is a mess," she said. "After I eat, I bloat so much, I looksix months pregnant. I am so sensitive to everything—if I could just get calmed!"

She was finally referred to Dr. Plotnikoff, who had Carol keep track of her diet andsymptoms for two weeks. When she began to read her notes to him, she was so scatteredand nonlinear that her efforts to please even sent Dr. Plotnikoff off center. He was toodistracted by her frenzied effort to hear what she was trying to say.

After ten minutes, he realized Carol was so agitated that he needed to interrupt. Hesensed that she needed to focus. He moved on to the physical exam and told her hewanted to check her pulse. "I took her right hand in mine and placed my left hand over herright wrist to feel her pulse. I noticed that she closed her eyes. I felt her pulse for oneminute. Her hand was not cool or damp, as I had expected. Her pulse was a veryreasonable seventy-four beats per minute. I switched to her left hand for another thirtyseconds."

The energy in the room changed significantly with that simple act of checking her pulse fora minute and a half. They were both able to center. He asked what she was feeling, andCarol reported a sense of calmness and hope, of actually feeling better. He then led her insome breathing exercises focused on breathing into her center. She left the clinic havingdiscovered one approach for centering and grounding herself.

The Emerging Science of the Gut: The Intestinal Brain

Western science has increasingly come to consider the gut as much more than just adigestive tract. In the last twenty years, scientists have researched the neuralhormonalcomplexity of the gut, and more and more are now referring to it as the second brain. Theintestinal nervous system (or enteric nervous system) is composed of a cluster of morethan 100 million neurons. It has receptors for more than thirty neurotransmitters—thehormones such as epinephrine, serotonin, and dopamine that allow a neuron to send amessage to another neuron. In fact, more than 90 percent of the serotonin receptors andmore than 50 percent of the dopamine receptors are in the gut.

Of course, the brain in our head is vastly more complex and has a thousand times moreneurons than the intestinal brain. However, like the main brain, the intestinal brainreceives, organizes, and transmits information. That means that both brains allow rapidand coordinated responses to changes in the environment, and both brains can regulateour internal organs.

The intestinal brain has two main connections to the main brain: a calming route along thevagus nerve and an energizing route along the spinal cord. Both connections operateautomatically as part of the autonomic nervous system. When your body/mind is balancedand centered, the calming and energizing parts of your nervous system are likewisebalanced. They are complementary. But when these two systems are out of balance, theresult is often major intestinal problems like pain, bloating, diarrhea, or constipation.

When your body/mind is balanced and centered, the calming and energizing parts of yournervous system are likewise balanced.

For chronic intestinal problems in which all the life-threatening diseases and maladieshave been ruled out, one major cause of dysfunction is that your two brains havesomehow gotten their wires crossed. They have become conditioned—just like Pavlov'sdog—to react to a threat when no threat exists. That's why it can't be fixed by a pill. Theproblem is not a disease but rather something closer to a computer virus. It is a systemgone awry. The problem is not in your head; it's in your wiring.

Imagine a feedback loop that is out of control—such as a sound system in an auditoriumwhen someone talks into the microphone and you hear a squealing feedback sound. Theproblem in this loop is that the microphone is oversensitive and picks up not just thenormal voice but also the amplified voice over a loudspeaker. Then the microphone sendsthe amplified voice back through the amplifier and out the speaker again, only louder andmore shrill than ever. In a fraction of a second, the shrieking sound gets so loud, it hurtsyour ears. The speaker has to stop because nobody can hear her anyway, and then youhave to turn down the microphone or move the loudspeaker farther away to interrupt thefeedback loop.

In the case of an attack of digestive distress, instead of an oversensitive microphone youhave a hypersensitized amygdala—a primitive part of the main brain that decides whethera threat exists. It can take a small, harmless sensation and encode it as threatening. Thissends a danger signal to the gut, which reacts by tensing up and causing distress. Theintestinal brain sends these amplified distress signals back to the amygdala, which totallyfreaks out and sends more emergency signals back to the gut, so then the gut goesbonkers as well. The feedback loop has gone berserk and keeps accelerating, but insteadof a terrible noise in an auditorium, you get awful pain and distress in your gut.

Sally Sees a Tums

Sally was a young professional who suffered from IBS and had recently gone through apainful diarrhea and constipation cycle. She was on her way to a date and stopped in aconvenience store for lip gloss. While there, she saw a shelf of Tums and other digestiveremedies. Almost instantly she felt a minor rumble in her abdomen. What just happened?

The main brain and the intestinal brain just had a little scene together. The main brain tookin visual input of Tums, which sparked memories of recent diarrhea and constipation, andautomatically assigned an emotional evaluation of threat. The oversensitized amygdalaexaggerated the severity of symptoms and sent an alarm message via the spinal cord tothe intestinal brain, which activated her gut. If the threat is seen as a crisis, the systemreleases stress hormones such as cortisol or adrenaline—which cause a series ofreactions including tightening of the gut muscles, resulting in pain, bloating, cramping, andmore. Sally ended up canceling her date—not because she was sick but because she sawa Tums and that set off a feedback loop gone bad.

Neurohormonal Retraining

The good news for Sally and all gut sufferers is that there is an adjustable link in thisautomatic chain of events. The part of the brain that decides whether a threat exists, theamygdala, is retrainable. On the negative side, the amygdala can be falsely conditioned toarouse a fear response when there is no actual danger, thus setting off a feedback loopgone awry. But on the positive side, the amygdala is the loophole in the main-brain/intestinal-brain circuitry that provides an opening to fix the erroneous programming.The process of fixing this feedback loop is called Neurohormonal Retraining, a key skillyou will learn in this book.

Ecological Rebalancing

Because everything is connected, a variety of imbalances in your body/mind system canhave negative effects on the function of your gut. Your connections outside your bodycomprise your exterior ecology—everything from your personal relationships and homelife to your workplace and environmental surroundings. Your interior ecology includes thefood you eat, the levels of vitamins and minerals in your system, and the health of yourmicrobiome—the 100 trillion microbes that live inside you. These are the bacteria that helpyou digest food, strengthen your immune system, and keep you in a good mood. Whileyou may not find it amusing that several pounds of microbes are dwelling in your gut—faroutnumbering your human body cells—if your microbiome is imbalanced, it could be acause of your gut distress. Throughout this book you will discover techniques forbalancing your inner and outer ecological systems.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Trust Your Gut by Gregory A. Plotnikoff, Mark B. Weisberg. Copyright © 2013 Gregory A. Plotnikoff and Mark B. Weisberg. Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Conari Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1573245887
• ISBN 13: 9781573245883
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256