Irritable Bowel Syndrome is a medical label to describe a set of digestive issues. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with your bowels other than sensitivity. Just because that sensitivity makes you prone to digestive problems does not mean that you have to live with it forever.

There are things you can do to heal that delicate gut. I spent years learning how to heal mine and I started this web site because I want to share what I learned with you.

Digestive issues don’t have a one size fits all cure, but here are some valuable strategies that can bring you closer to the healthy gut you dream of.

5 Steps to Healing Your Gut

Step #1) Balance

Digestive issues signify that your body and gut are out of balance. Western doctors don’t do well with this concept of balance, they concentrate on attacking the problem with medications. Most medications don’t heal digestive issues. They might help ease a symptom or two but the underlying problem/imbalance won’t be fixed. We want to fix the underlying issues.

One of the biggest and most common problems with most digestive issues is imbalanced gut bacteria (also called gut flora). Our bodies are full of bacteria, both good and bad bacteria. The good bacteria is a line of defense against foreign invaders. It also protects your gut lining and manufactures healthy vitamins and protective chemicals. Good bacteria keeps the immune system running smoothly and helps digest certain foods.

If your bacterial balance is screwed towards the bad guys and low on good guys, your body’s defenses will be weakened. Your body becomes much more sensitive to foods and irritants that would not bother it if you bacterial balance was good. Lack of enough beneficial bacteria in the gut has not only been linked to digestive problems but also arthritis, allergies (food and environmental) and autoimmune issues.

Want more details about improving bacterial balance? I made a video to explains it all. Watch it here!

Once your bacteria is thrown off balance there are things you can do to bring it back but it’s not a fast process. Consuming probiotic supplements and cultured, fermented foods like plain yogurt, sauerkraut/kim chee, miso paste, umboshi plums, apple cider vinegar, kombucha or kefir can help you build up good bacteria up.

The other part of the equation is cutting off the food supply of the bad bacteria. Bad bacteria thrives on sugar! In fact your sugar cravings may be due to all the bad guys living in your gut! That’s what they ask for! You can starve the bad guys (yeast, parasites, bacteria) by lowering simple sugar and simple carbs (pasta and bread) in your diet.

Many popular yogurt brands are loaded with sugar which makes them less effective than plain yogurt.

Here’s a link to an article on making your own plain yogurt!

What causes bacterial imbalance?

Antibiotics are the main cause. There are trace amounts of antibiotics in conventional beef or dairy so we get tiny doses when we eat these foods.

The birth control pill can also cause bacterial imbalance, as can chronic stress, lack of rest and eating a diet high in sugar and simple carbs.

Step #2) Rest

Rest is often the most overlooked part of healing, but it is essential. You can be eating all the right things and taking the right supplements but without proper rest, the body does not have the chance to do deep repair and healing.

Rest is actually the best way to combat the effects of stress on your body. Yet, our society is set up to encourage constant activity. When people are busy or feeling overwhelmed by the demands of life, rest is the first thing they give up.

Constantly struggling to keep up with daily tasks or responsibilities puts your nervous systems in a constant state of fight or flight and it becomes reactive and exhausted. Adrenal glands can’t keep up with the constant hormonal demands of this lifestyle and become exhausted.

Rest is the greatest antidote to stress and overwhelm. Yet when your body is inflamed with stress hormones the last thing you might want to do is slow down and rest. However, even 15 minutes of REAL rest can reset and replenish your nervous system. You might feel antsy lying still for 15 minutes at first but eventually you can train your body to let go in a short amount of time.

Watch this video to learn how to get real rest.

Rest has the power to calm and heal your gut. The resting mode of your nervous system is called the “rest and digest” response. In this mode, your body is not only properly digesting food, but it is also digesting emotions and letting them go.

Here’s a tip I didn’t mention in the video: If you’re too stressed or wired to lay still at first you can burn off that nervous energy with 3 to 5 minutes of aerobic exercise. You can do jumping jacks, run up and down stairs or take a very brisk walk around the block. Physical activity makes it much easier to settle into rest.

Step #3) Eliminate

One of the most common causes of digestive issues is an intolerance or allergy to one of more of these foods: soy, corn, wheat (gluten), dairy (sometimes yogurt is tolerated), sugar, nuts (particularly peanuts) and eggs.

These 7 foods seem to be in everything so giving them all up will be a big change. You can start by eliminating a few foods at a time and work up to all 7. And pay attention to your reaction to this. If you have a strong craving for one or more of these foods and it feels impossible to give up it may be a sign of an allergy. Strangely our bodies become addicted to the foods that cause an immune system response and inflammation in our bodies.

I’m not telling you to cut out these foods forever. The suggestion is to eliminate these foods for a short time (2 to 4 weeks) to see how you feel when you don’t eat them.

If you in turn have more energy, your digestive issues subside and other health issues go away then you know that one or more of these foods trigger your problems. Many people have food allergies without even knowing and the elimination diet shows you what foods cause problems as you add in each food one by one after avoiding all of them for a couple of weeks. This is a much more accurate test than medical allergy testing.

When you start adding in one food at a time to test the problem, I suggest starting with eggs. Wheat and dairy typically cause the most problems for people, so if you want to start with eliminating only two foods, they are your best bet. And don’t forget to read food labels. You would be surprised how much wheat/gluten/dairy is a hidden ingredient in unexpected places.

Other less common allergens are shell fish and night shade veggies (peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant) so if you want to test more foods then these are the next best bet.

If you discover a food allergy that doesn’t mean you’ll have them forever. Often avoiding allergen for a year and building up beneficial bacterial in the gut can reset the body and prevent the immune response. By following a strict diet for a year, I was able to reverse all my food sensitivities.

Sugar is not an allergen but it is one of the worst things you can feed a sick and sensitive gut. It always a good idea to avoid sugar while healing the gut.

Step #4) Cleanse

Another common cause of digestive symptoms is toxic overload. That means that your body is ingesting (eating, drinking, breathing, bathing in) more toxins than it can process and release through natural detox channels of sweating, going to the bathroom and breathing.

When body can get overloaded with toxins from:

Chronic stress
A processed, high sugar/simple carb diet
Heavy metal in your dental fillings or from eating high mercury fish
Taking pharmaceuticals
Environmental toxins in your home, air or water….

Toxins that are not eliminated through natural detox channels get stored in fat cells and liver cells and sometimes in the brain.

Don’t get anxious. There are many things you can do about it. There are many detoxification methods out there that can slowly clean your body over time. Sometimes unpleasant symptoms can result from cleaning out. Bad breath, head aches, fatigue, skin break outs and nausea can occur. But these symptoms pass quick and are a sign that you are on the right track.

When the body is carrying a toxic load it compromises the function of the liver and make it work slowly and sluggishly. A sluggish liver, like an overworked, burnt out employee, has trouble keeping up with its many important metabolic jobs. This can also depress immune function and cause diarrhea and/or constipation.

The symptoms that are common to IBS can in fact be symptoms of a toxic, sluggish liver. Detoxing the liver is a big topic, and I’ll discuss it further when I talk about my cure. The best way to cleanse the liver is to reduce sugar, starch and simple carbs and to eat bitter foods like lemon and green veggies.

The liver loves anything green and is best cleansed by green veggies. Dandelion tea, lemon squeeze in water and supplements like chlorella and spirulina are very effective liver cleansers. And so is rest (step #2).

Cleansing the liver will also increase metabolism and help lose stubborn weight.

Step #5) Investigate

This step deals with how to approach healing systematically. The cause of digestive issues is usually a puzzle that needs to be unraveled with trial and error. That’s why doctors find digestive complaints too time consuming to heal and write them off as “in your head”/stress related or a lack of dietary fiber. That is also why they call IBS incurable, because they can’t be bothered to cure it.

But you sure can. You are the one in pain my friend and you are the one with the motivation to do this. I know that’s how I felt.

The most common challenge for self healing is the overwhelm of information out there. A lot of the healing info out there also contradicts each other. If you are doing this for the first time how are you supposed to know if raw food, Paleo, GAPS, FODMAPS or the Candida-busing diet is the right approach.

Most people get paralyzed by the choices and give up. Or they try one or two approaches and find them too difficult.

Here is the trial and error system that I developed after undertaking my own healing journey:

Whenever I chose a diet or treatment I wrote down how I felt after each meal and at the end of the day. If you bring that level of awareness to the healing program you are testing then you can test each approach for a much shorter period of time to learn if it is or isn’t working.

Commit to trying each healing approach for two to three weeks each. Try the elimination diet or the Paleo diet or the FODMAPS diet for no more than 3 weeks and keep notes. That way you can go back and start to see patterns in what makes you feel worse or better. Believe me you are never going to remember this valuable data in your head and having it down on paper will begin to unearth the patterns of what is and isn’t working for you.

With this method you learn something with each healing attempt instead of feeling frustrated and hopeless when you are not feeling better after lots of discipline and sacrifice. The list of data you develop as you try different approaches will be your healing gold mine.

If you decided to work with a natural healer like an acupuncturist, a naturopath or a health coach, you will have extremely valuable data to give them. Your chances and speed of success will greatly multiply.

If you don’t know which healing diet to try first, here are a few helpful hints:

The Candida diet, Paleo diet and GAPs (Gut And Psychology) diet all have the same underlying idea in common, eliminating sugar, grains and simple carbs. Of the three, the Paleo is the least restrictive and easiest to follow, it just requires eating like hunter gatherers did before agriculture was invented.

Fruits and veggies that grow wild such as fruit and greens, etc. are all ok, as are meat and fish. Traditionally cultivated foods like grains, beans, soy and corn are excluded from the Paleo diet.

The Candida diet starves yeast-like bacteria, by excluding all sugary foods, including fruit. What complicates this diet is that the list foods you can and can’t eat changes based on the book or web site you read. That drives me crazy.

Another hint is that the raw food diet can too hard on the gut. While it’s cleansing and detoxifying, it’s also very restrictive. And it takes lots of effort and energy for a struggling gut to digest nothing but raw food.

So do some research and pick a diet and try it. If it doesn’t work, take a break and experiment with another one. Observe your body’s reactions and take notes in your food journal. At the end of this process you’ll know your body well! What better thing to be an expert in than yourself?

Bonus: Get Support and find inspiring role models

Making changes is so tough. Support is crucial. If your friends or family are not supportive of your healing, then find a community of like-minded people who are. Health coaches, nutritionists, acupuncturist or naturopaths not only provide healing expertise and guidance but they can also provide support if you see them regularly.

The nutritionist who worked with me to heal my gut issues was a great help and comfort to me. I spoke to her every two weeks. I also befriended like-minded people who were interested in health and spent a lot of time online on community bulletin boards reading about other people’s digestive struggles and healing experiences to feel less alone.

Befriending or interacting with people who have healed themselves successfully is one of the most supportive and motivating ways to improve your outlook for your own healing process.