Bowel Issues

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Bowel health is the number one key to good health as far as a naturopathic nutritionist is concerned - and we spend a lot of time talking about bums and bowel movements!

The bowel is the main route for toxin elimination and is where many minerals, water and other substances are absorbed. It also plays a very important role in immunity.

Often, whatever a patient comes in with, we will start by ensuring good bowel and liver health and most symptoms will solve themselves as a result.

Lots of things can go wrong with digestion and bowel health. Some of them are relatively simple to deal with, and others a lot more complex.

Digestive System Problems

Bloating and wind/flatulence problems are often caused by lack of digestive enzymes, poor bowel environment or too much of the wrong foods. Check out more on this in the IBS factsheet.

Indigestion and heartburn are most often caused ironically by lack of stomach acid even though the symptoms seem to suggest overacidity. Check out the low stomach acid page.

Constipation can be because of a sluggish digestion, underactive thyroid, depression and other emotional factors whilst diarrhoea is usually a food intolerance or bacterial problem. I wrote an article for Foods Matter on constipation which you can download here for free.

More serious issues include irritable bowel syndrome, crohns and colitis, all inflammatory bowel conditions that need a gentle, comprehensive approach, sometimes combining hypnotherapy, NLP and Bowen Therapy for best effect. See the IBS factsheet.

Other problems such as eczema, thrush, depression etc can also be bowel related.

Most things can be helped at least with the right dose of probiotics to start calming and healing the gut. Check the Probiotics section for more help on this.

Sometimes, a bowel is upset because of some form of bacterial, mould or fungal infection (see candida below). If you can't fight something off, it could be that your mucosal immunity is low, and we can measure this with an SIgA test. See an article I wrote about SIgA testing and treatment here.

Candida overgrowth is a symptom of an upset bowel environment, although in some circumstances it can become pathological and systemic, making a person feel very poorly. It takes time, but this situation can be reversed and symptoms can often be relieved quite quickly once liver function is improved, dietary measures introduced, stress levels lowered and bowel environment rectified. Read more about candida here.

Iridology (studying the iris of the eye) can tell us whether there is a lot of bowel matter, if a leaky gut is likely and even if your foggy head is caused by bowel catarrh!

We may suggest lab tests if we need them, but more often we will ask you to do simple tests at home.  Whatever your bowel or digestive complaint, we will use our bowel management programme combined with any other factors we feel appropriate to treat you. Much of our emphasis is on detoxifying the bowel and liver and probiotic therapy.

Important

Remember - always check out with your health practitioner or GP before starting anything new especially if you are taking any other medicines, are pregnant or trying to conceive or have high blood pressure. See here for more advice on interactions with meds and general cautions.