EPISODE 29 - GUT HEALTH IN MIDLIFE: HOW TO IMPROVE INFLAMMATION

Episode 29: Gut Health in Midlife: How to Improve Inflammation

Gut Health in midlife. It can be a taboo subject when mentioning some of the symptoms that many of us have. Today’s guest has a passion to help women feel confident and understand their gut issues. In this episode, we discuss how to improve your gut health with Dr. Kate Ricciardi and how important it is to have a support system behind you in your journey of clearing gut inflammation.

Dr. Kate Ricciardi

After years of struggling with her own chronic health issues, Dr. Kate Ricciardi knew something had to change. She went through her own health journey where she had heard countless times:

There was nothing that doctors could do
Her results came back normal
You’re too stressed
You’re just too busy

Dr. Kate Ricciardi knew that there had to be something more to her chronic gut issues and wanted to achieve gut health in midlife. She knew that women were not meant to suffer and struggle with their own health.

Sick of the cookie cutter generalized recommendations, Dr. Kate Ricciardi sought to discover the root to her problem. She was able to discover a solution and soon was able to turn her diagnosis from unpredictable and stressful to calm and controlled.

Once Dr. Kate Ricciardi got her energy and confidence back, she became inspired to create an environment where women would feel heard and supported instead of alone and dismissed. She strived to create an environment where women were seen as more than their diagnosis and symptoms. Dr. Kate Ricciardi set out to find the root cause of a women’s pain and digestion distresses. With struggles with weight, hormones, fatigue, and many more symptoms Dr. Kate Ricciardi uses her root method approach with food to help women discover, nourish, and thrive in their bodies.

We begin the conversation with Dr. Kate Ricciardi’s personal experience with the struggles of gut health. Struggling with these symptoms can cause a lot of troubles in your daily living. Dr. Kate Ricciardi breaks down some of the common symptoms that may mean you are suffering from an unhealthy gut in midlife.

Symptoms of an Unhealthy Gut:

Chronic diarrhea
Constipation
Gas
Bloating
Excessive Fatigue
Abdominal Pain and Cramping
Nausea
Nutritional deficiencies
Poor Immune System
Brain Fog
Difficulty Concentrating
Insomnia
Migraines
Skin Issues
Depression
Anxiety

A lot of people do not connect these symptoms to digestion, but your gut microbiome plays a major part in everything and can impact all areas of your body.

Dr. Kate Ricciardi’s Root Method:

Dr. Kate Ricciardi’s root method is a customized approach that starts with the Mediator Release Test to look at what food and food chemicals may be causing inflammation. This is a blood test that can show what foods are triggering inflammation that in turn lead to a cascade of symptoms. This crucial first step gives the answers needed to build a personalized plan for every patient.
The mediator release test looks for the inflammatory and immune response of different chemicals that are coming out of your system. These inflammatory responses can cause the pain, bloating, diarrhea, and many more symptoms. The mediator release test is the gold standard of testing for anti-inflammatory eating. For achieving gut health in midlife, it can be an invaluable resource.
The mediator release test tests for 170 foods and food chemicals and is the most comprehensive test out there at the moment. Keep in mind that there are over 10,000 foods in our food supply, so it is impossible to test everything.
Knowing your trigger foods and food chemicals allows you to start clearing the inflammation and determine what foods you can have. The body can take up to 3 days to show symptoms and up to 10 days to completely leave your body. Dr. Kate Ricciardi described this step as “making you feel better so you can start saying yes to your life instead of having your symptoms tell you no.”
As the labs are being ordered and processed to receive results, Dr. Kate Ricciardi has her patients keep a food, fluid, and feeling diary. Hydration is an important piece of gut health. We are a whole person and are bigger than our diagnosis and symptoms so how we are feeling is just as important in determining our gut health.
Green-light foods are introduced while symptoms are monitored. Depending on how that person is feeling and how long it takes to clear the inflammation out this process varies from patient to patient. It can take about 6-8 weeks to get through all of the green foods and that’s when Dr. Kate Ricciardi slowly adds in foods that were not tested.
If yellow or red-lighted foods are brought on too soon it can actually bring worse symptoms and the whole process must start over. The immune system Dr. Kate Ricciardi explains has a memory and also remembers that the food hasn’t been in your system for a while. It mounts a bigger response than before as it thinks the body is under attack.
The program takes 4-6 months to complete. There is an option to go through just 4 months, but the patient is offered additional support for another two months. Dr. Kate Ricciardi wants to provide the support for her patients to look at food differently. She has learned that this gives her patients accountability to stick with their food program.
Dr. Kate Ricciardi also helps her patients with meal planning and how to put the foods they can start eating together into meals that do not feel so restricted.

FODMAP:

The FODMAP is a category of foods for patients who suffer from IBS. It includes different things that research has shown to most likely contribute to IBS symptoms. It is broken down into different categories of food where your gut can overproduce bacteria that creates the common IBS symptoms.
Dr. Kate Ricciardi shares that this is about 70% effective at managing IBS. If you are starting on the road to healing and calming your gut down, she suggests that this is a good place to start.
Dietary FODMAP

Pregnancy and Menopause Hormone Effects on Gut Health:

Symptoms can vary during or after pregnancy due to increased estrogen. In terms of hormones Dr. Kate Ricciardi shares that this is the biggest driver. When changes occur during pregnancy, you can see people feeling worse during pregnancy and better after or even the opposite feeling great during pregnancy and horrible afterwards. It all depends on how your hormones are being balanced.
Similarly, menopause also is can increase symptoms as women see a decrease in their estrogen. Less estrogen can change how the gut regulates things and can actually cause excess bacteria to grow in some people causing Sibo (Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth).
Menopause can also have an effect on the absorption of certain nutrients such as B12, iron, and calcium. You can combat this by taking good quality multivitamins and supplements. This can be beneficial in general Dr. Kate Ricciardi explains as the typical American diet is missing a lot of nutrients.

Additional Tests Performed as Women Age :

For Dr. Kate Ricciardi, she looks at the gut health for women in midlife as the root first and foremost. After completing the mediator release test, she takes the symptoms and feelings into account.
If the patient is not feeling above 80% then Dr. Kate Ricciardi will order a GI map stool test to see if this may be the cause. Dr. Kate Ricciardi will also run micronutrient tests in her one-on-one program when she is approaching nourishing section.
She will start to close the problem areas and deficiencies while healing the gut and see where the patient is.
Dr. Kate Ricciardi recommends further testing if symptoms are severe as untreated gut health can lead to bad things in some cases.

Suggestions to Maintaining a Healthy Gut:

Dr. Kate Ricciardi recommends keeping a food, fluid, and feeling journal to keep track of your symptoms and how you are feeling. This is a great place to start if you are having symptoms and are trying to find a place to start.
Keep track of the things you are putting on your skin. As your skin absorbs things, you can have sensitivities to things in lotions and cleansers.
Make changes with your relationship to food. Switch to whole real foods instead of processed items. Our food supply has a lot of chemicals, preservatives, and additives that are allowed.
Make sure to drink water and stay hydrated. Dr. Kate Ricciardi shares that too many of us are actually dehydrated.

SPECIAL OFFER:

Dr. Kate is offering anyone who books their comprehensive Digestive Health Assessment (where we take a dive deep into all the unexpected signals your body is giving you that your digestion needs a closer look and receive recommendations for the next steps to take so that you can start to optimize digestion and slash those symptoms) free access to my Menopause Like A Boss Course that covers all things related to midlife, menopause, mindset, movement, nutrition and hydration for women’s health that is coming out on June 1, 2020. Use promo code HFCT20 when scheduling your assessment to receive the Menopause Like a BOSS course (value $197) releasing on June 1, 2020. Offer expires 5/31/2020.

In this episode, we discuss…

[00:00] Show Introduction

[00:09] The Taboo Around Gut Health

[00:45] Introducing Our Guest

[02:05] Personal Perspective on Gut Health

[04:24] Start of the Interview

[05:01] How Did You Start Your Journey?

[06:34] Dealing with Lifelong Symptoms

[07:45] Digestive Issues

[09:11] What’s the First Step in Treatment?

[11:18] Mediator Release Test

[12:22] How Does it Work?