Tonight we’re going to dive right into some clinical insights. Sometimes my clinical insights aren’t all huge wins, but rather things I see all the time. So, today we’re going to start by talking about pooping. I saw a patient today who said she heard on a podcast that you should be pooping 1-3 times a day and she thought that was odd because she usually only goes once a week. That may surprise you to hear, but as a practitioner, I hear it so much more often than you’d think. She said that was how she had always been since she was young. On the Health Made Simple Show, I always say there are two things you should be doing easily, sleeping and pooping. 

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As I opened this conversation with her, she was defensive, as most people are when they realize that their lived experience may not be normal. Ideally, you should be having a good clearing of the bowels daily, at the bare minimum. The key is moving the bowels and getting full evacuation. Many people who have bowel challenges don’t know where to start. They may start with a probiotic, which isn’t always the right place to start. If you’re having trouble getting food out, you’re probably looking at an upper GI issue. People who don’t move their bowels much often have a high carb and sugar diet, which makes red meat and proteins feel very heavy. Using a little apple cider vinegar and bitter food will help those digestive enzymes. 

Once we break the food down, we need to transport it out. You need a good car and a good road. In this scenario, the car would be bile. We need to help the gallbladder and the liver produce the bile. We also need to help the microbiome in the intestines. 

The bottom line is, if you change your gut health, you will change your life.

You’ll have more energy, less brain fog, you’ll sleep better, and feel better overall. It’s an essential part of your overall health. Poor digestion can affect our lives in so many more ways than we imagine. Even things like arthritis can be a symptom of toxic bile syndrome. Prolonged toxic bile without addressing the root causes can even leave us more open to auto-immune diseases. If you change your diet and intake negatively even by 10%, you could even be triggering anxiety. 

One of the big challenges is that most people don’t even know how to describe their gut health. They believe their gut health is fine if they poop or don’t burp. They don’t relate pain or bloating or other symptoms. You need to do a gut check… literally! Do certain foods bother you? Is your gut noisy? Are you experiencing discomfort after meals? These are all important questions to be focusing on. I was seeing a woman who was on day 8 of her cleanse, who had started pooping three times a day. She was amazed that her joints had stopped hurting, just by clearing up her gut for 8 days!

Another interesting insight I had this week was about thyroid testing. Hyperthyroid is an issue that’s growing, and it’s about a 10/1 ratio of women to men. Of those women, about half of them also have an auto-immune condition. A woman handed me her labs out of the blue and I saw the high TSH levels, but without any other usual markers. At a quick glance, a lot of people would think thyroid issues, but that’s why it’s important to do deeper testing. You can have a condition like Hashimoto’s and have a normal-looking result on a blood panel. Often, there will be different antibodies that can tell us whether or not there’s an auto-immune condition in play, besides just hypothyroidism. If you have Hashimoto’s or another auto-immune condition, it will be attacking the body. If it goes undetected, it can really destroy whatever part of the body the disease is attacking. Proper testing is so essential to getting the complete picture of what’s really going on in your body. Many of these issues actually aren’t that hard to address, you just need a clear picture of what’s going on so you can have an effective strategy. In some cases, it’s as simple as cutting out gluten and seeing a direct response. Even taking an herb like Rehmannia Complex can make a huge difference if you know what to look for. 

If you choose to make the necessary changes, it’s important to test again in 90-120 days. This will allow you to see what direction you’re moving in and what results you’re seeing. Too often in healthcare, there’s a “Wait and see” approach. It’s a non-strategy strategy and it’s not a good way to deal with your health. We know what to expect, and if we’re not doing anything about it, we’re adding a negative psychosomatic effect to the issue. We can also try to suppress the symptoms which will only serve to allow the underlying condition to grow. In addition, the medications to suppress the symptoms have all sorts of side effects. If you’re going to measure, measure intelligently and take action based on the knowledge you gain. 

The bottom line is, it’s important to have the most complete picture of our health we can so we can make the most informed decisions. We need to be asking why and working with a healthcare practitioner who is interested in getting to the bottom of the issue. For example, before you get on a cholesterol medication, you need to know what your CRP level is. It’ll better explain why your LDL levels are high and let you make better decisions. Another inflammatory marker is homocysteine. Anything above 8 or 9 is telling us something is happening, usually a B Vitamin deficiency. 

The key is gaining the knowledge and using it to level up. Keeping an eye on how things are going and running a full lab panel is a great way to give yourself the best chance to live in your best health. The moment something starts to trend downward is the moment you need to take action, There’s no need to wait and see. We create a strategy and implement it so we never have to wait and see what will happen. We take control of our health and we create the outcomes we desire. 

And last, but certainly not least, this week’s action we can take to become superhuman is…

Be Your Best Health Advocate

I can’t expect that everyone is going to change their ways for me. All we can do is take the best that everyone has to give us and make the best decisions for our own life. We don’t need to try and change them, but we don’t need to be intimidated either. It’s okay to ask questions and seek the best strategies for yourself.

What’s Next?

We have put together a dashboard of all of Dr. Bart’s videos, based on health topics, in our Level-Up Health Membership.

This library of health content is low cost, so we can help you on your journey to becoming superhuman! 

Not only is it extensive, but it will continue to expand with new videos each month. Also, you will have the opportunity to share these videos with your friends and family!

Dr. Bart Precourt

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