Charis Q&A
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Charis: That is one of the worst things you can do from a digestive standpoint and also from a, potentially from an insulin standpoint.
Charis: Welcome back to the Harness Your Health podcast. I am Charis Sederberg, and we are back for a solo episode today. I just wanna say briefly thank you to everyone who sent me messages in the last several weeks about the passing of my mom. [00:00:30] I greatly appreciate it and appreciate your patience in me getting more content out to you.
So one thing in the last two or three weeks since we released the gut series episode and my nervous system episode, I have had a lot of questions. I've had a lot of people texting me, messaging me emailing me and asking some great questions about content that I've put out, some things that they're struggling with.
And so I thought that this might be a good time today [00:01:00] to go through that so that people can see how they can use the information that they're listening to or watching on YouTube and trying to make sense of it and especially apply it to their personal situation.
So I'm gonna do a Q&A episode today, and this is gonna be not super long, but I'm gonna go through some of these questions that I've been receiving. Some of these questions are from students also, so I think there's just a great blend of questions and really helping people to [00:01:30] disseminate this information.
So I tried to organize these questions and really combine them together so that we could get through them efficiently, but remember that everything in the body is connected.
So you're gonna hear connections, you're gonna hear me make connections, and that is not to complicate it. I think a lot of times people wanna separate everything out and make it separate and individual so that they can make sense of it, and I completely understand that. I have the same [00:02:00] situation when I'm trying to understand something too.
But it's also really important to think about the connection of everything. And so if you try to step back and think about everything as being connected first, and then pulling the information into your personal situation, it might be a good way to start looking at it. It's gonna feel a little strange, but that's okay.
We're on a learning path, right? We're gonna start with digestion, and the digestive questions really a lot of them are [00:02:30] about bloating. And bloating is probably one of the symptoms that I get asked the most about. It's something that feels very obscure. Students often get really confused about bloating, and the truth of the matter is that bloating can be caused by many different things, and even in one person with an one episode of bloating, that can be caused by different things.
And so rather than trying to slap a label on something all the time [00:03:00] or looking for a diagnosis, which obviously I don't do, I'm not a doctor we need to kinda get out of that mentality and think about why is the bloating happening. So one of the first questions is, why do I feel bloated after almost everything I eat?
So the first thing that jumps to my mind with this is the nervous system. So in the last full episode that I released, it was all about the nervous system and how your digestive tract needs your body in a [00:03:30] parasympathetic state to digest your food. It literally doesn't get digested properly if you're not in a parasympathetic state.
And I was thinking through on my response to this, and I have talked to so many people over the last seven years prospective clients, I've done a lot of consulting, a lot of teaching in different ways through students, through my own clients, and I have really only met one person that the way they describe the way that they eat [00:04:00] is what I would consider in a parasympathetic state.
So this is just a societal problem, and that doesn't mean we can't fix it. That doesn't mean you can't personally fix it. But I think that this is something that everyone needs to double down on if they want to get improvement in this area. So step one is to eat in a parasympathetic state. Now, if you are eating on the go all the time, you're really gonna have to Take this [00:04:30] process and break it into steps.
You're not gonna be able to do a 180. Most people can't. It's really hard to make those lifestyle kind of changes. But I really want you to think about, what is something actionable that I can do? Which meal can I focus on? Pick a meal where you're eating with other people and tell them what you're doing.
Use it as a competition or do something fun with it. I did this with my kids when they were younger, and sometimes we do still talk about it, [00:05:00] but it's a great way to have some accountability and have some other people supporting you. And so I think that is really step one, and there really is a whole process you could go through to institute this as a practice, and it could take several months to really become part of the way that you live, but it is possible.
I absolutely believe that because I have definitely changed my digestion drastically by focusing on this, and I [00:05:30] am not perfect. I have mentioned this in previous episodes. I still have a tendency, especially in the morning, and especially when my kids are around, who are teenagers. They make a lot of their own meals.
Not dinner usually, but their other meals. I'm not cooking for them and serving them, but there's something about being in the kitchen in the morning that makes me wanna get up, makes me want to do dishes while I'm eating, makes me want to look into something, check my [00:06:00] phone, check my computer.
I don't know what it is. It's probably just longstanding habits, so it's really something that I really have to focus on. But that's what I talked about a lot in the nervous system episode, is understanding and having awareness for what's going on, and then taking small action steps. That is the best way to go about anything So remember with bloating, I like to think about bloating as high bloating or low bloating, okay?
So are you having [00:06:30] bloating right after you eat? Do you feel like your food is not being digested very well? It's not moving through your stomach. That's what I would consider high bloating. It's happening in your stomach, in the early part of your small intestine. That could be from lots of things, but I want you to focus on the nervous system piece, and I want you to also focus on how much you're eating.
When people eat all throughout the day, snacks, meals, there's very little room [00:07:00] in between the times that they eat. This is incredibly disruptive to the migrating motor complex, and this is the internal system that you have that keeps food moving, but also cleaning your digestive tract, getting toxins out, getting particles out, making sure there's a rest period for your body and your digestion, a break in between.
It absolutely needs this, and we are so conditioned, both with accessibility, but also with what we've been [00:07:30] taught. When I did my exercise science degree, we were taught to eat six times a day. I see sometimes online people talk about eating eight times a day. That is one of the worst things you can do from a digestive standpoint and also from a, potentially from an insulin standpoint if you're eating any carbohydrate in those meals.
You are constantly spiking your insulin, and we are gonna talk about this in future episodes. But if you only focused on those two things, parasympathetic state [00:08:00] and eating with breaks in between your eating periods. Now, I understand that if you are eating six times a day, it's gonna be really hard to start eating three times a day.
This is a process. This is another part of what I teach, is that things do not need to happen overnight. You can baby step your way, inch your way into Transitioning from six times a day to three times a day, okay? It might take months. That's okay. The most [00:08:30] important thing is that you actually do it, and that you can follow through, and you can maintain that without white-knuckling, okay?
But again, it is possible. So the other question about bloating was, is bloating always about food? Absolutely not. Just like what I just said, if you are eating a meal and sometimes it sits well with you and sometimes it doesn't, that is a huge indication that it is likely due to your [00:09:00] nervous system and eating in a sympathetic state versus parasympathetic or other things.
When's the last time you ate? What other things are going on? Are you just stressed in general? Are you eating on the go, right? We have to be thinking that we're not always gonna blame the food. I got into a huge rabbit hole with this for several years after I finished my nutrition certification.
It's always about the food sensitivity tests, all these different tests, and I finally just [00:09:30] stopped doing that because what I realized is that it didn't matter. If someone is super stressed and eating in a sympathetic state, and they remove all those foods that are on their sensitivity test, they didn't always get better.
They didn't always have relief. That has to tell us something, okay? So that's the one thing I would think about with food, too, and that's why you start with the parasympathetic state. Start with breaks between your meals and snacks Okay, so let's move [00:10:00] on. I had a quite a few questions about leaky gut.
Is leaky gut real or just a wellness buzzword? And, as soon as you search for this or you have it pop up in your social media, it's literally everywhere, a lot of times with products to sell you to repair your leaky gut, which I would say there are some that definitely help and contribute, but again, we shouldn't be thinking about it that way, right?
We're not just Band-Aiding something. We wanna know why we have leaky gut. The term leaky gut [00:10:30] is definitely more of a layman's term. Remember from my gut series that term really means intestinal permeability. So intestinal permeability is when those tight junctions that hold your cells together and make them tight break apart and you get leaky cells basically.
The particles and things in your GI tract are leaking through those junctions. Now, one question I get often is this just 100% or [00:11:00] 0% in my gut? No, definitely not. There's definitely sections of your intestines that may have this or not. If you were literally leaking between all of your cells, you would probably be dead.
The bacterial and other toxins that come in through your food and different things, like that's, that would not be really conducive in getting all of that into your bloodstream. It would put your immune system on a super high alert. And so don't think of [00:11:30] it like that. Think of it as like you have places in your intestines, which remember are super, super long, that you have these disruptions, and this does not happen from one thing.
That is probably one of the most important things to know about leaky gut. It is I would say, probably almost always contributing factors, multiple contributing factors that lead to that. Dr. Alessio Fasano is a world-renowned pediatric gastroenterologist who's done a ton [00:12:00] of studies looking at the gut. He's really considered the person who found leaky gut and that whole condition. And he discovered zonulin. So zonulin is a protein that we have in our intestines that controls those tight spaces, keeps the cells locked together.
And he was the one that really saw how zonulin can break apart from many different insults. If you are hearing about this for the first time, I would have you go back and listen to my [00:12:30] episode in the Gut Series. It's the second episode in that series that is about leaky gut. You can really understand a lot more about that and what we're talking about.
So the take-home message here is that leaky gut is absolutely a real thing, and it is something that you can repair in your body. So your intestinal cells are turning over every three to five to seven days. They turn over very quickly, and so they require a lot [00:13:00] of nutrition 'cause remember that the nutrients are what run biochemistry.
And so to build, repair, recycle cells, we need that nutrition. Also if you think about what they're up against with the digestive process and food and things going through, and that's a lot. That's likely the reason, I don't know that I've ever read this anywhere, but that they turn over so quickly.
They need to. That's part of the whole makeup of the digestive tract. So leaky gut is a [00:13:30] really, It is a very real thing, and it is something that we should all be cognizant about. Anytime you have systemic symptoms, you need to be thinking about leaky gut. So another question is what actually causes the gut lining to become more permeable.
We talk about this a lot in the leaky gut episode, but I'm gonna re- just review it quickly here. Chronic stress, again, the nervous system connection. If you're asking your body to digest in a sympathetic state, it literally cannot do that. It doesn't have the hormone response, [00:14:00] it doesn't have the enzyme and stomach acid response that you want.
It doesn't have the movement through the GI tract that we want, and so those processes are all greatly affected. That is probably number one. Gluten in some individuals there's a protein called gliadin in gluten that can definitely increase zonulin and break apart tight junctions. Dysbiosis, inflammatory patterns in your microbiome.
If you're wondering about that, I would go back and listen to that gut [00:14:30] series and specifically the third episode in that series, it talks a lot about the microbiome. I am gonna have a microbiome expert on the podcast very soon, and so that would be another great episode to listen to coming up to understand that premise a little bit more.
So just think of it, too, as remember that the mucosal layer is like a thick jelly-like layer that lines these cells, and it traps toxins. It has a bunch of immune cells in it. It has a bunch of functions. But if [00:15:00] that layer is broken down, it's really easy to have intestinal permeability or leaky gut. Can you heal a damaged lining?
I already mentioned this. As I said, it heals, those Cells are turning over very frequently, and so you absolutely can. How do you do that if you think you have leaky gut or if someone's told you that you have, probably have leaky gut? I would go back to the sympathetic or parasympathetic state.
That is taking a huge stressor off of your body, and then pay attention. Are you able to [00:15:30] eat foods that you didn't think that you could eat if you're trying to improve that? Awareness is one of the most important things that we can all have. So if you are really not aware and just running through life, I would slow down a little bit and just start to pay attention to one thing at a time . The next question is about the microbiome.
Do I need a probiotic or is it oversold? I would say pretty much any supplement at this point is oversold, but when it comes to probiotics, I use them with my [00:16:00] clients. I take them myself for periods of time. Definitely a probiotic from a highly reputable company that focuses on probiotics is much better than something you're gonna buy at the grocery store, at Walmart, something like that.
I would caution you against just spending money. Probiotics can be expensive, and really, there's so many different nuances to using probiotics. Like, when do you start them? How long do you take them? When do [00:16:30] you switch to a different type? What strains do you take? It's really helpful to have someone that's knowledgeable about probiotics so that you can take something that is gonna make sense for you if you're gonna spend the money.
I would also say that probably the first thing you should do if you're thinking about probiotics is feeding your microbiome with fibers, whatever fibers you can tolerate. Remember, a variety of fibers in plants that's where most fibers come from and then fermented foods. Fermented foods are [00:17:00] really what are like the fuel for those cells and help create a very robust and diverse microbiome.
That's what we want. So another question related to the microbiome, how many different plants do I actually need to eat? I'm not gonna give you a number on this. There is a study that's fairly recent that has a huge number, and people always panic, and that's the reason I'm not gonna tell you a number is because what are you eating right now?
I would literally just get out a piece of paper [00:17:30] and write down the different vegetables or plant fibers that you're eating over the course of a week. How many are you eating? What would it be? Most people have no idea. I would say I probably eat around 20, but I had to really work hard to get to that number, and that number isn't even the number that this study wants you to eat.
So I think you see my point. Figure out where you're at. Gradually work to increase that. That's gonna be the easiest thing for your body to handle [00:18:00] anyway. If you try and dump a bunch of fiber in your digestive tract, it's not gonna sit very well. Please don't do that. That's gonna make you think that you can't tolerate fiber.
It's often not the case. Baby steps and just slow progression is the way to go Okay. Let's see. Why does stress hit my stomach so hard? So again, this is back to the gut-brain connection, the parasympathetic state. If you are in a super stressed state, [00:18:30] and you try and put a burger or something that's takes a little more work to digest, it's gonna sit in your stomach like a giant rock, right?
And so it's not the burger. It's ... It could be the burger. It could be that maybe you don't tolerate eating meat like that for some reason. Maybe you don't have the digestive enzymes and acid to break down the meat. That doesn't mean you shouldn't eat it. I see people self-select away from things all the time because they don't have the digestive [00:19:00] capacity to eat something, and that is really not a good reason to do it.
Your body needs very diverse foods to give you the substrates for the biochemistry in your body. So I would say you have to be thinking about your nervous system. You have to be thinking about the state that you're in. How can you fix that? How can you start to make gentle, little changes over time that help you get to a place?
And give yourself time. Give [00:19:30] yourself a month. If you are at work eating lunch and have a busy, stressful job, you're gonna have to figure out how to carve out some time for yourself to do this and make it happen. Let's see
Okay, so these are a little bit more practical, over like big bird's-eye questions. But I thought they were great, so I'm gonna make sure and include them in here. Where do I even start if my gut health feels like a mess? And I get this question a lot. I see it a lot online. [00:20:00] Back to the parasympathetic state, back to how often are you eating.
If you literally started with those two things and then try to go through and assess your diet and see what foods or things that you're eating that you could potentially could be adding fuel to the fire, like seed oils, especially if you're cooking them or heating them. Sugar, obviously refined sugar, refined flour.
Those are like kind of big groups of things to pay attention to, [00:20:30] but don't focus on that first. I would focus at the parasympathetic state, the awareness, how often you're eating. That is a great first place to really look at. It's not the question of what supplement do I add. I hope you can see and have heard me say this over and over again.
You can certainly spend your money on supplements. It's not gonna be the magic trick that you want it to be. Supplements can be amazing. I use supplements. I recommend supplements to people, but it's in a very [00:21:00] targeted way, and also for a period of time Take something for one or two bottles. One or two months is usually what that equals to be.
And then assess, how are you? Are you better? Did that help you? I get a lot of questions about digestive enzymes as a supplement, and this is something really good to think about in this regard. I took digestive enzymes for years, literally, without stopping. And then one day I wondered, "Do I really even need these [00:21:30] anymore?"
So I stopped taking them. I noticed a little bit of a difference, like my body could have been supported by some of the things I was taking, but it also made me double down on eating in a parasympathetic state, because a digestive enzyme does not fix that for you.
There is literally no supplement that can control your nervous system and allow you to digest your food better. So this is the hard truth that a lot of people don't wanna hear, and practitioners too. [00:22:00] They don't always wanna hear that. And the reality is, is that it's just not gonna do that much for you.
I keep digestive enzymes and the supplements that I have taken over the years, I keep them in my home always, because the last two to three weeks have been very stressful for me. And so there's times where I've taken some digestive supports to help me so that I know that it's gonna help my digestive state a little bit better.
My stress isn't something that I can [00:22:30] completely manage. Now, am I trying to eat in a parasympathetic state? Of course. But there's nothing I can do about the loss of my mom and emotions and things happen, and, that's just the way that it is. So If you're not sure if you wanna take something, I would pick one thing, try one thing at a time, give it a month or two, and see what you notice.
Again, back to the awareness. But don't do it without eating in a parasympathetic state Okay. What's one thing I [00:23:00] could change this week that would actually move the needle? I think I've already covered this. If you don't wanna focus on the stress piece, then focus on separating your meals out a little bit more.
That is a huge stressor to the body to be eating all the time. So if you wanna down regulate your stress, I would really make sure that you're getting three to four hours in between meals. Now, if you're more of a one to two-hour person right now, just gradually inch that back. Do it [00:23:30] by a half an hour.
Take notes. Pay attention. This is how you're gonna get the most traction, okay? You don't have to spend any money to do something like this. It is really the most boring answer but the truth, you just literally cannot sidestep the truth with these things, okay? And so if you're not the kind of person that if you're just constantly looking for Band-Aids, you just want a supplement recommendation, you just wanna be told what to do, then this information is probably not for you, and [00:24:00] that's okay.
But if you really do wanna understand how your body works and to have a tremendous influence on it without spending gobs of money and with truly affecting your life for the rest of your life, then this is for you. Okay. So a couple questions about circadian rhythm.
You preach morning light so much, but I'm not really sure how that correlates with my gut health. So a few weeks ago I promised to you that I would do a hormones [00:24:30] episode, and I have this episode in the works, and I'm going to release it fairly soon. I just am not at a place where I feel like I could really give that episode justice, and it is a very important episode.
So basically what happens is morning light triggers all kinds of things in your body. It's your brain telling your body to wake up, to digest your food. You have all kinds of hormones and neurotransmitters, [00:25:00] digestive juices, enzymes that are stimulated from that hormonal profile that happens when you're go outside and see morning light.
And so that cascade of things that happen are really influential on your digestive system. You have much better digestive capability in the morning. You're much more insulin sensitive in the morning. And so this is why I talked about during the nervous system episode why fasting through the morning can be very stressful for [00:25:30] certain people.
So this is the reason that I preach the bookends, the beginning of your day, the end of your day, and that hormonal influence that happens from sun, and it is related to everything in your biochemistry, in your physiology.
And so don't take my word for it. Just start doing it. If you start doing it, you are gonna notice a difference, and if you don't normally eat in the morning and you start going outside, getting sunlight, [00:26:00] doing the things I recommend, and you start feeling more hungry, that is a really good sign.
That means your body is creating the profile that you need to be able to digest your food. So go with that. That is the rhythms that I'm constantly talking about. So I think those are really the main questions that I've been receiving, and I just appreciate everyone reaching out to me so much. You can do this through my website, primedtonourish.com.
There is a page on there [00:26:30] called Contact, and you can send me an email. This is how a lot of messages have been coming in. Also, a few through social media, a lot of people that I know texting me, writing me emails, calling me . It's been fun to talk about this a little bit more and really help people see the connection, 'cause that is the most important part, is the interconnectedness of your body, and we need to stop thinking of that as a bad thing as something that's too complex, too stressful.
[00:27:00] We need to honor that, honor the complexity of our body, and also understand that it starts very simply with rhythms. So thank you for being here. I can't wait to see you in our next episode. Please feel free to write me a review. Subscribe to the podcast so that you're always in the know. We have some great episodes coming up in the future.
The information shared on this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. I am [00:27:30] not a medical doctor, and this content is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Please consult with a qualified healthcare professional before making any decisions related to your health, especially if you have a medical condition or are taking medications
