Building a strong and diverse biome of beneficial bacteria is the most powerful things you can do to heal your gut.
A recent client case study illustrates this point.
What finally helped Ruxandra, after trying different kill protocols, was supporting her beneficial bacteria.
Killing pathogens and and detox protocols have their place, but energy should be spent on building up natural defences.
Ruxandra is letting me share her story and recipe to get more prebiotics into her diet, based on my suggestion. Prebiotics are starches and fiber that feeds beneficial bacteria.
Ruxandra is feeling better than she has in years, and this is how she did it.
Ruxandra’s journey
I have been working with Ruxandra on bloating, coating on her tongue, anxiety, OCD, fatigue and reaction to sugar.
After spending years eating a high sugar diet and not taking care of her body, she dedicated herself to rebalancing and healing her gut.
I run a stool test on clients called the GI Map to measure the state of their biome, their digestion, immunity and pathogenic load.
Ruxandra’s GI Map revealed many issues to address. There was h. pylori, a parasite, bacterial overgrowth, a low immune system, yeast overgrowth, a lack of digestive enzymes AND very low beneficial bacteria.
Ruxandra told me she ate veggies (but not a diverse amount and no beans because of bloat), and wanted to work on clearing her overgrowths and infections first. These infections and pathogens were like caused by low stomach acid from h. pylori.
We systematically addressed the pathogens one by one and though she felt better on the herbs, she reverted back to how she felt before she took the herbs.
Despite my suggestions, she put working on her nervous system (mind body connection) and biome as a low priority, preferring to focus on other interventions. She told me that she did not feel stressed.
But after a hormone test revealed adrenal issues and imbalance cortisol she agreed to work on her stress. Much of which she was likely repressing.
We supported her adrenals with adaptogens. Adaptogens are herbs that help the body adapt to stress by balancing cortisol production. Examples are Tulsi, Ashwagandha, lemon balm, chamomile, Rhodiola, eleuthrero and Siberian ginseng. We added a b vitamin complex, because the body burns through B vitamins when stressed.
Most of her stress was subconscious stress. In other words, she did not feel stressed or know she was anxious until she started paying more attention.
Even when stressed is repressed (below your awareness), the looping subconscious thoughts still drive a stress response (cortisol release) in the body.
Hypnosis helps with subconscious stress
We did a few hypnosis sessions around her anxiety, and OCD.
This helped her identify thought patterns and triggers before they stressed her. Once you make the unconscious conscious you have a lot more control over your stress reactions or responses.
Working on subconscious stress triggers has a balancing effect on the adrenals and immune system. And takes the body out of fight or flight and into a healing state. Beneficial bacteria are also influenced by the state of the mind body connection and respond to the messages sent back and forth from the brain and gut.
Eventually she decided to give prebiotics a try.
“Angela has been telling me about prebiotics for years, but I thought “how big of a difference can some powders make?”
“Well, they made a huge difference.” says Ruxandra
After adding prebiotics for a few months, Ruxandra’s GI Map retest showed an huge improvement in her beneficial bacteria, which had been low for years.
Note: if you have SIBO, you need to be careful with prebiotics but Ruxandra did not have SIBO.
Focusing on building up her beneficial bacteria made the biggest impact on her symptoms and how she feels overall.
“This is the best I have felt in years, my symptoms are drastically reduced. I wasted so much time not following Angela’s advice. But I thought that if I focused on killing the bad guys, the good guys will bounce back.” said Ruxandra.
The killing protocol was an important part of her healing process but she did not start feeling the results until she also supported her beneficial bacteria.
Addressing her adrenals, nervous system (though hypnosis) and biome were the missing pieces for her. I never pushed these things, I let her come around to it when she was ready.
Without any recent kill protocols, Ruxandra’s pathogenic bacterial load is the best I’ve ever seen it. Simply because the good bacteria started crowding it out.
As a result, her gut immunity, which has also been low for years, increased dramatically. Her leaky gut also improved as well as her enzyme production.
The yeast and parasites she previously had were gone from past protocols and the last thing to deal with is h. pylori. She addressed h. pylori previously but with her low immunity it came back. Now with her immune system optimized she has a good chance to clear it and keep in away for good.
A stressed nervous system and low gut immunity are the biggest factors for not clearing h. pylori or having it come back.
Now her biome, nervous system, adrenals and immune system will support her total recovery.
Why did I recommended prebiotics instead of probiotics?
First of all, probiotics did not work for Ruxandra. And while probiotics are beneficial, they are just visitors in the gut, and don’t take up permanent residence.
Prebiotics feed species that are already there so they grow.
While Ruxandra doesn’t do well with certain probiotics, she benefits form saccharomyces boullardii, a probiotic that boosts gut immunity. So along with the prebiotic fudge she took 2 sac b probiotic capsules daily.
To get her prebiotics in daily she mixed them together to create a yummy “fudge”. I share her recipe below. It tastes like fudge because of the carob.
She used olive oil to mix it and it tastes surprisingly good in the fudge. Olive oil has many benefits for the biome, but coconut oil or avocado oil can be swapped for it.
Summary of Ruxandra’s protocol
Initial killing protocols to get rid of pathogens
Hypnosis for mind body regulation
Adaptogens for the adrenals
Saccharomyces boullardii for immunity
Prebiotics for biome support
Chaste Tree Berry for hormone support
What we still need to do
We still need to work on Akkermansia, a keystone strain that supports the integrity of her gut lining. For this I typically recommend Poly prebiotic powder from Pure Encapsulations and pendulum Akkermansia probiotics.
And we will do one final h. pylori protocol to keep her biome and stomach acid balanced.
Prebiotic fudge recipe
Ruxandra’s prebiotic fudge is a mix of soluble fiber and insoluble fiber. It’s full of resistance starch to support faecalibacterium prausnitizii, which lowers inflammation in the large intestine by producing butyrate. We tried supplementing with Butyrate itself and it did nothing for Ruxandra. Making her own butyrate through resistant starch worked much better.
Ingredients
1 heaping teaspoon of each:
Green banana flour (made from unripe bananas)
Carob powder (gives it the fudgy flavour)
Sun fiber (also called partially hydrolyzed guar gum) helps you go to the bathroom
Ground flax (grind in spice grinder)
Olive oil (can be subbed for coconut oil or avocado oil)
Enough water to give it a fudge consistency. I used 2 teaspoons.
How to
Mix eveything in a bowl and add water until it is fudge. Eat with a spoon or spread over fruit or gluten free toast.
Angela Privin is proof that IBS is NOT an incurable disease, but a cry for help from a gut out of balance. When the body AND mind are complaining, it’s an opportunity to examine what’s not working and change it. After solving her own IBS mystery almost two decades ago, Angela became as a health coach to help others. Angela uses root cause medicine protocols personalized to the individual to solve each IBS mystery. Her tools are lab testing, dietary changes, supplementation, subconscious mind work and nervous system rebalancing . Learn more here.