30+ IBS Root Causes Your Doctor Isn’t Testing For
with Dr. Izabella Wentz
Dr. Wendy Myers
Welcome to the Myers Detox Podcast. I’m Dr. Wendy Myers. On this show, we talk about everything related to heavy metal and chemical toxicity, the health issues caused by toxins, and more advanced topics than you’ll hear on other shows. We talk about bioenergetics and the root causes of health issues. We’ll talk about advanced topics in biohacking. But today we’re going to be talking about IBS, finding and treating, and addressing the root cause of irritable bowel syndrome, and what you can do to get to the underlying root cause. We have my friend, Dr. Izabella Wentz, on the show, and she’s going to be talking about some of the problems with going to your primary care physician.
While you’ll just be managing symptoms, getting medications for diarrhea or constipation, versus addressing and looking at and finding the underlying root cause, which could be stress or anxiety, it could be just the thyroid issue, or a hormonal issue. It could be gut dysbiosis. It could be an infection. It could be parasites. It could be mold. It could be gluten sensitivity. It could be toxins that are affecting your gut microbiome, your hormones, or stress, or all of the above. So we’re going to dive into all these things and the simple steps that you can take today to find out what is happening with your gut and why. We also talk about IZabella’s new book called IBS: Finding and Treating the Root Cause of Irritable Bowel Syndrome. So it’s a really, really good show today.
Our guest, Dr. Izabella Wentz, is a compassionate, innovative, and solution-focused integrative pharmacist dedicated to finding the root cause of chronic health conditions. Her passion stems from her own diagnosis with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis in 2009, following a decade of debilitating symptoms. As an accomplished author, Dr. Wentz has written several bestselling books, including a New York Times bestseller, Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis: Lifestyle Interventions for Finding and Treating the Root Cause, and the protocol based number one New York Times bestseller, Hashimoto’s Protocol, and the Wall Street Journal bestseller, Hashimoto’s Food Pharmacology, and her last book, Adrenal Transformation Protocol, focuses on resetting the body’s stress response through targeted safety signals.
Her latest book is called IBS: Finding and Treating the Root Cause of Irritable Bowel Syndrome. It explores a root cause perspective on gut health. While IBS is often treated as a standalone diagnosis, an IBS diagnosis is often a sign of a deeper, unaddressed imbalance for those with autoimmune conditions like Hashimoto’s. Drawing on professional insight, current research, and real-world strategies, IBS: Finding and Treating the Root Cause of Irritable Bowel Syndrome outlines clear and practical steps to help readers identify the drivers of gut dysfunction, follow gentle healing protocols, and finally, feel better from the inside out.
You can learn more about Izabella’s work at thyroidpharmacist.com. Izabella, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Dr. Izabella Wentz
Wendy, it’s always such a pleasure to see you here.
Dr. Wendy Myers
You wrote a book about IBS that is very, very needed. I know several friends who have issues with this and have gotten really no guidance whatsoever from their conventional medical doctor. So why don’t you tell us about your story of IBS and why you came to write this book?
Dr. Izabella Wentz
People know me as a thyroid pharmacist, and I’ve written a lot of books and content about thyroid health. But what they don’t know is that six years before I got diagnosed with Hashimoto’s, I was actually diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome. It’s not the most glamorous condition to have as a grad student. This required me to run out of my classroom with explosive diarrhea. I would be on dates, having to excuse myself. I would be out at clubs with my friends, having to run to the bathroom. Of course, I was in my 20s at the time and didn’t really focus on what I focus on now. I didn’t know about nutrition. I didn’t know about root cause medicine. I was actually studying to be a pharmacist, and so all I knew were drugs, right?
I was taking Imodium. I was taking Pepto-Bismol. I was driving around with a shit kit in my car, which included meds, baby wipes, extra pants, and underwear because I never knew when disaster would strike. And it was just awful to live with the condition. Conventional medicine really didn’t help me. As time went on, I became more symptomatic every few months. So what started with IBS eventually turned into anxiety and panic attacks. And then I had hair loss and carpal tunnel and eventually got that autoimmune diagnosis. People experience a disruption in their gut barrier 5 to 10 years before an autoimmune diagnosis. And this is what happened to me. I wish I had taken IBS more seriously.
I wish there had been more information about IBS in the world and what some of the different causes of it are. Then perhaps I would not have had these awful symptoms for almost a decade. Also, maybe I would have never had an autoimmune condition and not lost so much in my life.
Dr. Wendy Myers
So, tell us what exactly irritable bowel syndrome is. I know some people can have constipation and diarrhea, can go back and forth, and really confuse people, as you know, to exactly what medications they should be taking and what they should do. What is IBS exactly?
Dr. Izabella Wentz
IBS is a cluster of symptoms that may typically include abdominal pain at least one day a week. They might have bloating. They might have constipation. They might have diarrhea. Some people can have an alternation between constipation and diarrhea. And generally speaking, if you’ve had diarrhea once, you’re not going to get an IBS diagnosis, or if you’ve been constipated once in your life, you’re not going to get that diagnosis. You have to have these symptoms present for at least like six months, and they have to be present at least one day a week in the last three months. So it’s a chronic condition. Now, we know that the label IBS describes the symptoms for us. What it doesn’t tell us is what’s causing the symptoms. This is why the medicine isn’t necessarily effective.
Dr. Wendy Myers
How many people are suffering from IBS?
Dr. Izabella Wentz
IBS is really common, and it accounts for 12% of primary care visits. It is one of the most common functional digestive disorders, and anywhere from 25 to 45 million people in the US might be affected.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Wow, that’s a lot. I know so many people have digestive issues for so many different reasons, but what are some of the underlying root causes of IBS?
Dr. Izabella Wentz
There are over 30 root causes of IBS. Conventional medicine doesn’t really talk about most of them, and most of them are glossed over. People are not getting a comprehensive workup when they’re struggling with the symptoms. They’re essentially given the label and told to go on about their day. The one potential cause could be celiac disease. Up to 25% of people with IBS might have celiac disease. And so fiber, probiotics, and stress reduction are some of the recommendations for IBS. If you have celiac disease and you’re still eating gluten, you’re still going to have IBS symptoms and a whole host of other health issues, even if you’re doing all the fiber, probiotics, de-stressing, and taking the meds.
Additional causes might include small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. People could have fungal overgrowth in their small intestine or large intestine. They can have protozoan parasitic infections. They can have enzyme deficiencies. They can have bile acid malabsorption. Various medications can cause IBS symptoms. When I was going through pharmacy school, the joke was like, if you never knew if you were taking an exam and you didn’t know what a side effect of a medication was, just write down digestive distress because most medications could cause it.
Some of the more notorious ones are going to be like GLP-1s and opioid medications. These can cause constipation. Some of the birth control pills can actually cause diarrhea and IBS. Beyond that, there are nutrient deficiencies. There are various sensitivities to foods, sensitivities to nickel it. Really, the list kind of goes on and on, and it’s important for a person to try to figure out what’s driving their unique symptoms. Because again, like if you’re following a plan for celiac disease but you actually have SIBO, you’re not going to get the help that you need, and vice versa.
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Dr. Wendy Myers
With celiac, that can be really difficult to diagnose. A lot of the gluten tests aren’t super accurate; the ones that they’re giving at their doctors. And so that can go undiagnosed for a really long time.
Dr. Izabella Wentz
Absolutely, and the tricky thing is some people might find that they just feel better off without gluten. And some of the tests, you need to be actively eating gluten and beyond celiac disease. There’s also a whole smorgasbord of gluten sensitivities that you can have. So you can be sensitive to gluten because you have SIBO. You can have a wheat allergy. You could be sensitive to wheat products because they contain high nickel foods. You could be sensitive because the American crops are sprayed with glyphosate. So there’s a whole host of different reasons why a person might actually react to wheat and gluten products. And some of that is because of celiac. But other people might not have celiac at all, but still feel significantly better off gluten.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Let’s talk about the gut microbiome for a second because there are so many different toxins like glyphosate, as you just mentioned, and other pesticides, mercury, and other toxins that destroy our gut microbiome and can contribute to IBS symptoms. Can you expand on and gut dysbiosis a little bit?
Dr. Izabella Wentz
Glyphosate and mold in our environment can significantly shift the microbiome. With glyphosate and mold, people tend to have a more clustered area, predominant microbiome. You may have heard of Clostridioides difficile, which is an antibiotic-induced diarrhea, ten times a day situation that’s very life-threatening. So mold and glyphosate can contribute to having more of those Clostridium bacteria that can wreak a lot of havoc on your gut.
You’re also going to be lowered in Bifidobacteria and Lactobacillus bacteria when you’re exposed to those toxins, which means fewer beneficial probiotics. The beneficial probiotics really keep our gut microbiome in check. The other things I’ve seen, especially with mold exposure, are that people might get colonized with mold, and then they become mold factories themselves. So their gut actually starts to grow mold. And then beyond that, they might have gut immune suppression. So they end up with not just mold in their system and not just more clostridium and more dysbiosis, but they can also end up with a fungal overgrowth.
Oftentimes, because the immune system is so compromised, they’re more at risk for having parasitic infections as well. And so you end up with like a really, really sticky situation when you’ve got toxins on board and all these infections and dysbiosis, probiotics target dysbiosis. But if you’ve got these toxins on board, probiotics are not going to help as much.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Everything you’re talking about is not necessarily going to be looked at when you go to your primary care physician, or if you’re only in the conventional medical realm, can you talk a little about that and what someone can expect when they go to their doctor for IBS? What are the options that they’re given, and what kind of testing do they really need to do to get to the root cause issues?
Dr. Izabella Wentz
Well, it’s really frustrating because IBS diagnosis is based on the patient’s self-report. So basically, I go to the doctor, and I say, ” Hey, I’m having a lot of diarrhea for the last six months. It’s happening all the time.” The doctor will give me a diagnosis. There are some red flag symptoms where a good doctor would say, ” Hey, you’re losing weight with diarrhea, or you’re having rectal bleeding, and you’re over 50 years old. And these symptoms just started now. They would actually refer to a gastroenterologist, maybe recommend a colonoscopy, maybe recommend some additional investigative work to be done to screen for things like inflammatory bowel disease, colorectal cancer, and parasitic infections. But that doesn’t always happen.
Even if you have these red flag symptoms and if you don’t have weight loss, if you don’t have blood in your stools, and if you’re under the age of 50, there’s a chance that you’re just going to be given that label. With the label comes a bunch of different prescription and OTC drug options. And so if you tend towards diarrhea, you might be recommended to take some Imodium every now and then. If you tend towards constipation, potentially some fiber or laxatives might be recommended. And then of course, there are different medication prescription options that are often given. Unfortunately, the success rate is less than like 25% even six years after the diagnosis, with conventional medicine recommending all the medications.
They might also do a little bit of preaching or education about, like, stress makes it worse. And maybe you should meditate, exercise, or take probiotics or fiber. But some of that advice, as well-meaning as it is, yes, we all need to stress less, but it is not going to necessarily solve the issue. And for some people, fiber actually makes their symptoms worse if they have, for example, SIBO or if they have dysbiosis. If they have histamine issues, some probiotics might make them feel worse. So, again, it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. And conventional medicine tries to make it a one-size-fits-all approach, I think.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I can only imagine how frustrating it is because I have a really close friend who has IBS and has dealt with it for years, and it’s just never really resolved at all. For two decades or more of going to doctors, it’s just still so present. So let’s talk about some of the lifestyle factors. Let’s talk about stress because you mentioned that it can obviously be a big factor. IBS is psychological. Is there a component of anxiety that contributes to IBS?
Dr. Izabella Wentz
My last book was on adrenals and the stress response. I’ll tell you right away that stress doesn’t make anything better. So stress can definitely impact our gut microbiome whenever we are more stressed. It’s very interesting. The research has shown that a few different things happen. One is that our stomach acid will be suppressed, so that’s going to be our first line of protecting us from the bacterial toxins that we have in our foods, parasitic infections, whatever.
The microbes we have in our foods might not be friendly, if we have enough stomach acid when we eat our foods, that stomach acid is going to destroy mostly everything that we need to worry about. When we don’t have enough stomach acid, all those microbes get a free pass, and they can actually end up in our gut and start colonizing our gut and start causing trouble. The second thing that happens is our secretory IGA, which is our immune response in the gut that gets suppressed as well.
So whatever opportunistic or pathogenic bacteria were in our gut now, they have more opportunities and abilities to attack our gut lining because that secretory IGA isn’t preventing that from happening. The third thing that can happen is when our opportunistic bacteria sense adrenaline, which is one of our stress hormones that gets released, that actually supercharges, which is really fascinating. It’s like a real action. You’ve heard of people, I’m sure, who have heard of some really stressful thing happening, and all of a sudden they start getting diarrhea, or they just get sick in the stomach as soon as something bad happens. And it’s absolutely an effect of stress.
So is the stress the cause? I feel like stress can set the seed right. So if we’re being stressed out for a long time and we have these microbes in our gut that are problematic, then yes, stress could be the cause. de-stressing always makes us feel better whatever we have going on, right? Stress reduction can help, but it’s not going to get rid of the infection necessarily. That infection might still be there. It can kind of set off the motion, and then we still need to treat the underlying issues, when we have low stomach acid and low secretory IgA. And these infections in our gut, too, we can become more sensitive to whatever foods that we’re eating.
People often say I’m sensitive to gluten, except for when I go on vacation. Then I can eat gluten. And they’re like, ” Is it because the gluten in Europe is so much better? And I’m like, okay, I have clients in Europe that are gluten sensitive as well. It’s not like European gluten is magical. Could it be that you are in Spain on a beach for two weeks straight? Of course, you’re not going to be as reactive, and your system is going to be more chill.
So we are going to have more food sensitivities when we’re under a lot of stress and when we’ve been stressed out for a long time, and those food sensitivities and then infections, they’re absolutely real. They’re not just in your head. There in your body. But we do know that our head and our body are connected. So part of a protocol for getting IBS into remission may include stress reduction. But oftentimes we do need to do more than that.
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Dr. Wendy Myers
What about sleep? How does sleep contribute to IBS? So many people are dealing with sleep issues, or their eyes are closed and they’re not getting quality sleep. Millions of people suffer from diagnosable sleep issues. How does that impact our gut?
Dr. Izabella Wentz
Again, with sleep deprivation, this is another big stressor. This is one of the fastest ways to get into adrenal dysfunction. And not getting enough sleep means that this is going to take away our time when we rest and digest. I know a lot of times, for many people, the worse their sleep was, the worse their digestive symptoms would be. And so getting enough sleep is also going to be helpful for proper digestive function.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I use an aura ring for that. I love, live and die by my aura ring because it really helped me to start competing against myself to try to get better sleep and go to bed at the right time and figure out my chronotype and what’s working and what isn’t when it comes to my sleep. And as I said, it’s really helpful to kind of get a baseline and figure out what you should be doing for sleep.
Dr. Izabella Wentz
I love my aura ring, but I will say it tends to be a little bit judgy when I’m waking up with an infant. I have a six-month-old baby girl right now, so I don’t wear it currently as it’s like you woke up at 2 a.m., I’m like, oh, I know I did. I do love it for every other time of life. I do wear one, and I’m amazed at how small changes, for example, eating dinner a little bit earlier can help us sleep a lot better. I find Epsom salt baths a great strategy for stress reduction and a great strategy for constipation. They can also really uplevel our deep sleep and our ability to get into that human state, right?
Dr. Wendy Myers
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Dr. Izabella Wentz
I love probiotics. So definitely they can be very helpful, as this bio says, if somebody tends to have more constipation, I like to utilize the benefit of probiotics. If they tend towards diarrhea, I like to use a beneficial yeast called Saccharomyces baladi. And this can be very, very helpful with symptom management and just repopulating the gut, clearing out some of the dysbiosis, and raising those secretory IGA levels.
I really love them. I think they’re a great place for many people to start, where things can get a little bit murky and problematic. Some best practices are one, a lot of the probiotics on the market, their doses are not necessarily therapeutic doses. So the doses that you would get from a Walgreens or a Walmart over-the-counter supplement are used for health maintenance. So if you have a healthy gut, they’ll help you maintain a healthy gut. But if you have really bad diarrhea, there’s a chance they’re not going to move the needle as much. And so that’s something to consider.
Are you getting the correct dosage of whatever probiotic that you’re using? Some people might need really high therapeutic doses. The other thing to consider, I mentioned the two strains that I like, depending on symptoms, there’s a variety of different strains out there. But probiotics, different ones, have been studied to do different things. Some of the Lactobacillus probiotics can be very helpful and very effective. However, in people who have issues like SIBO or histamine issues, they might actually find that they can make SIBO and histamine issues worse.
In those situations, I might be like, you tried probiotics, and they made you feel worse. Maybe the next step is to look at whether you have SIBO or if you have some kind of parasitic infection or a mold infection colonization that’s causing you to have histamine issues. And these are just some considerations because again, not everybody’s IBS is caused by the same thing.
If you are somebody who is doing great on probiotics, more power to you. I would say for most people, I do recommend also that they start at a low dose and slowly increase with time, because I did mention therapeutic doses of probiotics, but if you start with the big ones, there’s a chance you might be very uncomfortable as your microbiome changes. So I often recommend starting with maybe 5 billion colony-forming units of the lactobacillus probiotics. And then with time, you might increase it to 50,000 billion colony-forming units. That’s kind of the therapeutic dose of those. These are, in a nutshell, some of the more important things people need to know.
Dr. Wendy Myers
And where does just plain old sauerkraut fit in there? I drink sauerkraut juice, and I eat raw sauerkraut. I do kombucha to get my Escalade-V. What are your recommendations there?
Dr. Izabella Wentz
I’m Eastern European and I grew up in Poland, so I am a big fan of fermented vegetables. Capacita is like my best friend. So that’s fermented cabbage. And this is a fabulous way to repopulate your gut. If you have not had fermented vegetables, I do want to warn you that you need to get them from the refrigerated section in the store, because if you keep them at room temperature, they’re going to die off. And it’s not the same as you want them to be lacto-fermented. You don’t want them fermented in vinegar, because vinegar is like going to kill off the beneficial microbes. And generally speaking, I would start with like one teaspoon of fermented vegetable juice and start incorporating that into your routine. This is a very inexpensive way to repopulate your microbiome.
And after, it stimulates digestion. Fermented vegetables are bitter. It can be really, really game-changing. I will say again, if you have those histamine issues, potentially, fermented veggies can make your histamine issues worse. That’s when you look into the other causes.
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Dr. Wendy Myers
What are some first steps that people can take? We talked about a lot of different options and a lot of different underlying root causes. What are some tips you give to people just to get started? I’m just trying to assess what their underlying root causes are and ways that can alleviate their symptoms.
Dr. Izabella Wentz
Definitely if you are taking any medications, I would recommend looking at that list of medications. So if you are taking opiate medications, I would not be surprised that you are going to be constipated, right? If you are using metformin, that can cause you to have diarrhea and bile acid malabsorption. So you might want to look into alternatives for that if you are on the birth control pill. Yaz and Yasmin are the two brands of risperidone-containing progestin, which have been shown to really destroy the gut lining. I would consider alternatives again for that. If you are somebody who is eating a highly processed food diet, then I would also think about what it’s doing to your gut lining. There are artificial sweeteners, Splenda, sucralose.
There are food additives, such as guar gum, carrageenan, and some of these sugar alcohols that are actually marketed for healthy foods like zero-calorie foods. Some of the keto snacks that you might see, you can use things like erythritol to sweeten them. And these can actually all be very disruptive to the gut barrier. They have been tied to irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease, which is associated with rectal bleeding and ulcers in the gut. And so I would consider getting off processed foods.
You don’t need to eat like 100% all organic, but if you eat home-cooked meals and try to limit your packaged foods, you’re going to find that you’re going to feel a lot better. Your gut is going to feel a lot better. So I would do that inventory first. Then I would look at your food reactions. Gluten, dairy, and soy are some of the more common reactive foods that people might consider. Some people might have reactions to fatty foods. This could indicate that you have a deficiency, an enzyme, specifically, an oxidase or a light pace.
Pancreatic enzymes could be the reason because we need those to properly break down our fatty foods. Others might find they struggle with fibrous foods and raw vegetables. This is oftentimes going to be tied to dysbiosis in the gut, because it’s our gut microbiome that helps us break these down. And if we have some nasty buggers in our gut, then they’re going to produce some gases that are going to be offensive to us when we’re eating these kinds of foods.
So, figure out what foods are causing you reactions. The other step that I like for most people to take is to optimize their digestive process. And this looks like basically getting into a parasympathetic state where we’re in our rest and digest mode and getting out of that fight or flight. So, going back to stress, if you’re under a lot of stress and if you’re running a marathon and eating on the go, there’s a chance you’re not going to digest your food properly.
Now, most of us know that if we’re running around we’re not going to digest food properly, but in practice, we might be chasing children or eating at our desk while we work and are on a phone call. And so really taking that time to be mindful with your meals, slowing down to eat, taking a few deep breaths, sitting down properly, and digesting your food starts with your brain because this is where we start releasing our digestive enzymes. Then we go into chewing our food. If you’re chewing your food properly, that’s going to set off the digestive cascade as well.
You can do additional things like eating bitter foods, eating sour foods with meals, which is going to stimulate your own digestive enzymes or rubella lovers. This is your time to shine. I also love apple cider vinegar, lemon water, herbal bitters, and broad-spectrum digestive enzymes. I have one from Recology that people can just chew at the end of their meal, and that can be a great way to support their digestion.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I love papaya enzymes, and I’m definitely a big fan of those lately, just in digestion. As you get older, you need a little bit of help there. Everyone does. But let’s talk about the GLP-1 medications because the weight loss drugs can cause diarrhea or constipation. Some people may not connect the dots with taking those medications and gut symptoms. Can you talk a little about that since they are so popular?
Dr. Izabella Wentz
Yeah, they have been super popular lately because they have shown so many benefits for weight loss, inflammation, and autoimmune markers. I just had a baby six months ago and was looking for ways to optimize my fertility and apparently, there’s a whole craze of Ozempic babies where women who thought they were infertile because their inflammation markers or their blood sugar PCOS had been improved, and all of a sudden, they had these beautiful surprise babies, right?
One of the things that they can cause is digestive side effects like slowed gastric emptying. This can affect up to 80% of people. And then we’re also going to be eating less food when we’re on these appetite-suppressing medications. And so you’re just going to have slowed motility overall. Some people might report nausea and vomiting. They might have constipation, and others might have diarrhea. They might have abdominal discomfort. They might have bloating. And this is usually the worst during the first few weeks. Their symptoms might worsen with increasing dosages.
Some of the practitioners that I know are really well versed in utilizing these medications might put people on microdoses to try to keep those side effects at bay as best as they can, or they might prescribe a medication like Zofran, an antiemetic medication, to help with the nausea. This is something to be aware of. Again, it might be short-term thinking as your body gets adjusted to it, or you might be a bit overdosed with it. So some food for thought.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yes, I have lots of friends with terrible constipation. Let’s talk a little bit about maybe when it is time to reconsider your conventional medical doctor if you’re not getting healthcare and maybe switching to a functional medical doctor because everyone wants to use their health insurance and that it’s paid for already. But if you’re not getting health care or just not getting any relief or not seeing any improvement, what do you suggest to people?
Dr. Izabella Wentz
For me, it’s always to try something for three months. And if that doesn’t help, if you don’t get the answers, whether that’s a practitioner, whether that’s a protocol, whether that’s just choosing to ignore something, give it a few months, like three months. But after that, give yourself a timeline. So this person hasn’t been able to help me, and they don’t have a clear path going forward. They’re not really listening to me. They’re not helping me get the labs that I’m asking for. They don’t think this has value. Then it’s going to be time for you to move on. I mean, other people start with functional medicine, like at this point where I’m at, oftentimes, if I have a health concern, I’ll be like, what’s the functional medicine approach to this?
Or I’ll find somebody that’s in functional medicine that specializes in whatever I’m trying to fix, rather than spending three, six months, nine months, ten months, sometimes people spend years with symptoms. So again, I would say my time frame is three months. And that’s like pretty much also with reversing autoimmunity, if you’re on a clean diet and reversing IBS symptoms, if you’re on a clean diet for 90 days and you’re not 100% better, then that’s a time to look for deeper root causes.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, because I know a lot of medical doctors will go to and they’ll just kind of have a symptom management approach, which, for me, I don’t want to just manage my symptoms. I want to figure out what’s wrong and how we get rid of these symptoms permanently. And I’m sure a lot of the listeners out there are in the same boat, but that just may not be possible, or you may not be able to do the labs that you need, because either the doctor doesn’t offer them or they’re not covered by insurance.
Dr. Izabella Wentz
Right, and not everybody is really well-versed in some of these newer, innovative diagnostics. I love utilizing the GI map test or the consumer test, which is like a comprehensive stool analysis test. And this can tell me if you have inflammation in your gut. And then I would know to put you on an anti-inflammatory protocol of things like high-dose fish oil, potentially some turmeric, maybe some frankincense to bring down that inflammation, and that can resolve your diarrhea or constipation, as well as a whole host of other symptoms.
This could tell me if you have low fecal elastics, which means that you have pancreatic enzyme-active insufficiencies. And that would tell me to put you on pancreatic enzymes. So then you’d be able to digest your fats. They can tell me if you have dysbiosis and actually like which specific microbes you’re missing. I can give you those microbes in supplement form, or potentially, what kind of overgrowth you have. And then we can figure out what kind of herbs to put you on.
They can tell me what infection a person might have. They can tell me if somebody is sensitive to gluten, if they have intestinal permeability, and you can just get a lot of the different information from functional stool tests versus not testing it. The conventional medical doctors usually don’t have access to these kinds of tests.
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Dr. Wendy Myers
I know they’re doing what insurance covers typically in the hospital setting or in their practice. A lot of people are going to have to spend some money over and above what’s offered on their insurance in order to get answers, unfortunately. Can you tell us another story? Your husband was dealing with IBS at one point. I’m sure he’s thrilled to have you sharing and sharing his story. I like that you shout it in the book. Can you talk about that and its impact that had on your work?
Dr. Izabella Wentz
I had a diagnosis of IBS when I was younger, and I overcame that. I have helped a lot of my clients with IBS. I learned from them that not every cause was the same. And so then we had a baby. We had a son about eight years ago, and my husband had been having some bloating. I just had symptoms for a while, and we were like, here’s some probiotics, here’s some fish oils, just take some vitamins. We’re eliminating different foods. We were already eating pretty clean and exercising, and living a much healthier lifestyle than we live now. The day that I went to labor, I started saying, Hey, I’m having some blood with my bowel movements. I was like, that’s very convenient. I’m about to have a baby. I’m like, can you hold on a second?
I was like, do you have maybe a hemorrhoid or something like that? It wasn’t like the most pressing, urgent issue, as I’m heading to the hospital to give birth, but we were like, okay, it’s probably stress or whatever. That unfortunately continued. And so for two weeks he had this bleeding. We got in touch with our physician, who then recommended that we see a gastroenterologist. He had a colonoscopy, and he was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, which is a form of inflammatory bowel disease. He lost a lot of weight. He was exhausted. He used to wake up at 5 a.m. and run marathons. He was sleeping until 12 noon and telling me how tired he was while I was taking care of a newborn. I was like, really? You’re tired, right? He really wasn’t himself.
He lost so much vitality. His mood was off. I was just like, what happened and what? Since we got that diagnosis, we were fortunate to have a few friends in Boulder, Colorado, who specialize in inflammatory bowel disease, and they were able to help me put together a protocol for him that got him into remission within 6 to 8 weeks for some inflammatory bowel disease. He’s been in remission for almost eight years now. So our son just turned eight a few weeks ago, and he can eat any kind of food he wants these days. We live in Texas, so he loves breakfast tacos and doesn’t have any more digestive symptoms. But the thing we were told is that he had this condition and he was going to have it forever, and he was going to have to be on heavy-duty medications to manage it.
Now, he doesn’t have any symptoms, and he doesn’t have any markers of inflammatory bowel disease. Labs. So we are in the process of getting him into remission. We’ve been in touch with a lot of people with inflammatory bowel disease who also have been relapsing and having symptoms for 10, 15, 20 years and still not better. We were able to share the protocol we developed for him with those individuals, and they were able to get into remission after such a long time of struggling within again, just a month, two months, sometimes three months.
I have a whole chapter in the book on inflammatory bowel disease, what causes it and how to get it resolved, and how to get yourself into remission very, very quickly so you could go on with your life, because I know how much that condition can take from a person.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Tell us a lot about the title of your book and where people can get it
Dr. Izabella Wentz
It is Finding And Treating The Root Cause Of Irritable Bowel Syndrome. People can get it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever fine books are sold. This goes through all the different root causes, and then each root cause has its own like chapter, so that you have a specific protocol, because what you’re going to do need to do for inflammatory bowel disease is going to be different than for celiac disease or for parasites and so on and so forth, or hormonal causes of IBS, which we didn’t even talk about.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, let’s touch on that since you brought it up because hormones are fluctuating all the time from puberty to andropause for men, and menopause and perimenopause for women.
Dr. Izabella Wentz
Thyroid hormones, for example, if you have an underactive thyroid, you’re going to be constipated. More likely, if you have an overactive thyroid, you’re going to be more likely to have diarrhea. So adjusting your thyroid hormones can be a really, really helpful thing. If you haven’t been tested for Hashimoto’s or for Graves’ disease, I highly recommend you do so. And then there are times in a woman’s life, for example, if she is in perimenopause or menopause or estrogen dominant or pregnant, she’s not going to be more likely to be constipated. And so having that excess estrogen can make us more constipated. The tough thing that happens then is that estrogen and all of its semi-toxic metabolites can start getting recycled into our system.
And then it just becomes this vicious cycle where you can actually have more symptoms in menopause and perimenopause because you’re constipated. To solve the estrogen issue, you need to move your bowels. And in order to move your bowels, you do need to address those estrogen toxic byproducts. And then there are, of course, menstrual cycle irregularities. Women will say that they tend to have more diarrhea when around their menstrual cycles, and this is potentially due to the glands that help to move things along from our menses. So some of the solutions for that would be actually taking magnesium and fish oils, which can be very helpful for that kind of stomach cramping and diarrhea that women tend to get around their period.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Can you talk about laxative use? Because I know there are a lot of people with chronic constipation who have been taking laxatives for a really long time. Do you have any thoughts on those with the over-the-counter or the herbal ones, and how to kind of maybe get off that vicious cycle?
Dr. Izabella Wentz
Laxatives are a red flag if you need them. Some people can actually become addicted to laxatives, where basically your body starts to depend on them. And you can’t poop on your own without them. So this would be an important consideration. I would look at, again, the underlying causes. If you’re not getting enough movement, for example, there’s a chance that you’re not going to be pooping properly. There are inner reasons why your intestines might not be moving along quickly enough. So this could be looking at thyroid hormone deficiency. You could also have some mitochondrial dysfunction or mitochondrial deficiencies. Alpha lipoic acid, carnitine, thiamin, these are all mitochondrial support nutrients that can help us with motility.
I would recommend looking into that. And then of course, stool softeners. You can actually eat more fat in your diet, which can help with softening your stool naturally. Using some magnesium citrate can also be helpful as more of a less habit-forming way to move your bowels. So I would consider adding these things in first before you start trying to wean off of the suppositories or whatever herbal laxatives that you’re using, and then see how that moves things along and then gradually get yourself off of them.
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Dr. Wendy Myers
Heavy Metals quiz.com. Okay, fantastic. I’m very pro-prunes. So, tell us the name of your book again, and your website as well.
Dr. Izabella Wentz
Finding And Treating The Root Causes Of Irritable Bowel Syndrome. My website is thyroidpharmacist.com. If they go to thyroidpharmacist.com/ibs they can get some bonuses. My mom also loves prunes. So every time she comes to visit, we have to buy a specific prune juice for her.
Dr. Wendy Myers
That sounds like me. I just love my prunes. Izabella, thank you so much for coming on the show and talking about this subject. I’ve never done a podcast on this topic before, and it’s so important. Millions of people are suffering from not only IBS, but a multitude of digestive issues at some point in their lives and need tips. So thanks so much for coming on the show.
Dr. Izabella Wentz
Thank you so much for having me, Wendy. What a pleasure to be here with you.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Everyone, thanks so much for tuning into the Myers Detox Podcast. I’m Dr Wendy Myers, and I just love doing this show to give you those pieces of the puzzle so that you can upgrade your health and give you those answers that you’re searching for on here. So thanks for taking the time and staying tuned into the podcast every week.
Disclaimer
The Myers Detox Podcast is created and hosted by Wendy Myers. This podcast is for information purposes only. Statements and views expressed on this podcast are not medical advice. This podcast, including Wendy Myers and the producers, disclaims responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. The opinions of guests are their own, and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. If you think you have a medical problem, consult a licensed physician.
