Episode Transcript

Ariel: Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the “Colon Health Podcast.” I’m Ariel Bridges. And on today’s episode, we have the lovely Lindsey Parsons. Hi, Lindsey.

Lindsey: Hi.

Ariel: Thank you so much for being here today. Can you tell the people what it is that you do?

Lindsey: Yes. So I am a health coach. And I focus in particular on Gut Health. So I coach people who have things like IBS or irritable bowel syndrome, SIBO or small intestine bacterial overgrowth, inflammatory bowel disease like Crohn’s and Colitis, gastritis, H. Pylori, constipation, diarrhea, acid reflux or GERD, bloating, and also things like autoimmune disease and other mysterious or chronic health issues like chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia.

Ariel: That is a long list of things. That’s excellent. I always love, at the beginning of the podcast, having our guests share their own personal stories and how they got to doing what it is that they do. Because I think there’s a lot of comfort in that for our readers who may be able to identify with parts of your story. Or maybe they hear you speaking and are like, “Wait, that’s something that I’ve just been brushing off in my own health story, but maybe I’ll look into it a little bit more.” So would you mind sharing your story with us and how you got into health coaching?

Lindsey: Sure, I’ll try and keep it brief. But I think the details of gut health issues for people who are listening to a podcast specifically in colon health are of interest. Let me say, the first thing that ever popped up in my life that something was not going right with my gut health was when I discovered I was lactose intolerant. I think I’d been having stomach pain after eating dairy products, although it was hard to pinpoint, and ultimately discovered I was intolerant to lactose and started taking just lactose digestion tablets when I…or went to lactose-free milk. This was so many years ago that there weren’t as many options out there as there are now.

And probably somewhere around my late 20s, I started having acid reflux in the form of a constant cough. So at first we thought it might be more of an asthma-type situation, and we tried inhalers. But in fact, it was something that I believe now was probably laryngopharyngeal reflex or LPR, which is a form of acid reflux in which cough or more subtle symptoms are the primary, you don’t feel them burning like you do with a typical GERD type of thing. So I went on proton pump inhibitors like omeprazole, and Prilosec, and Prevacid, that kind of thing, starting then for probably about 10 or 15 years.

Then I had, around 1993, incidents of food poisoning when I was living in Costa Rica. And then subsequent to that, another incident of food poisoning in Italy, which is relevant because it was after those times that I think I started having abnormal stool. And, you know, I didn’t think of it as a health problem, per se, at the time. But, you know, when you have loose stool, that’s always a health problem, that is a concern. So it wasn’t like an IBS presentation where I was going to the bathroom five or six times a day or having diarrhea, it was not like that. So it really wasn’t something I thought to consult the doctor about.

And then after that, you know, and I guess I’d always sort of had problems with bloating after I ate, especially if I went out to eat or I ate too much, but it really got bad after that time, so that even if I just was eating at home or it’s a regular meal, I didn’t overeat. And even sometimes when I would wake up in the morning, I was still bloated and it was very sort of painful distension and, you know, always joked about my food baby, but I did look six months pregnant every time I ate. And I still never thought to see a doctor about this.

Then I went through infertility. This was in my early 30s, ultimately had my son but I was diagnosed with endometriosis, which I think is all relevant to gut health issues. And then I ended up adopting my second son. And so, you know, all these years still having issues with my gut, but not really seeing anybody about it. And then somewhere around age 43, I moved to Washington DC and through the blood tests, I ultimately was discovered that I had low platelets and ultimately low B12. And then because of an enlarged thyroid, I was diagnosed with Hashimoto thyroiditis, and then I was diagnosed with ITP, which is idiopathic thrombocytopenia, I think. And that’s an autoimmune disease that attacks your platelets. Ultimately another doctor told me he doesn’t believe I had that, but that was what was going on.

And then I had a severe B12 deficiency that we got to the point where I was even having tingling in my hands. And that can be dangerous because you can have permanent neurological effects if your B12 get that low. And now I know, looking back, that all of that was related to what was going on in my gut, which was small intestine bacterial overgrowth. And that made it…and then I also did, you know, have pernicious anemia at the time, because I ultimately got tested and had positive antibodies. And that, you know, was your intrinsic factor and your parietal cell antibodies that prevent you from digesting B12 in your stomach. So, hence the deficiency.

So anyway, I had been getting into the microbiome, and I was convinced that a fecal transplant would solve all of my problems. And I had been reading about them and just, you know, thinking about the possibilities. But at this point, you know, of course, they were only allowed in doctor’s office for recurrent Bristol stool. And then at some point, I started having stomach pain in the morning when I woke up. And at this point, I started getting serious about trying to do something to fix my gut. So I tried to do an elimination diet. And I did eliminate gluten and dairy after I finished that and just kept them out. I started taking psyllium husk regularly, I had read someone’s book, and this was some of the recommendations.

And once I got up to do gluten and dairy, the pain in my stomach going away, and the bloating, a lot of that went away, although not completely, and my stool got a lot better, and that helped me to some extent. But ultimately, I did end up seeing a functional medicine doctor who was an MD who had specialized in functional medicine, and he diagnosed me with a mild case of SIBO and with some Candida. And so I ended up taking herbal antimicrobials and then did a course of Rifaximin, went on a low FODMAP diet. I think I worked with digestive enzymes, and 13 HCl, and all that kind of stuff, and definitely got a lot better.

But I still did have Hashimoto’s. And I was convinced that I could do something about that, that I didn’t have to just sit around and wait until my TSH became abnormal till I had to start taking thyroid hormones and be on that for the rest of my life or hopefully lose my thyroids. So I ended up doing a protocol for Hashimoto’s in particular and saw that my antibodies dropped after I did that. So it was a combination of, you know, gut healing, and supplementation, and dietary changes. So ultimately, that helped me understand the relationship between a leaky gut and autoimmunity.

And then ultimately, I actually did a fecal transplant using my husband’s stool by myself. Not advisable. Don’t try this at home. But I did that. And it was interesting, I was doing it working with my doctor. He knew I was gonna do it, and so we did an experiment after I had done it because it brought my B12 upcount significantly right after I did it. But that didn’t hold. We tested to see if all of a sudden now I would be able to digest B12 without it being a sublingual dictum that you absorb, you know, under your tongue. And that didn’t hold. So, you know, it improved my stool quality and all that, but the benefits didn’t…it didn’t improve my autoimmune stuff and the benefits regarding the B12 didn’t hold.

So ultimately, I just kept sticking with those diet changes of no gluten and no dairy. And for a while I did no soy, and just trying to keep my gut health in good shape and keep my autoimmune stuff under control. And I still have, to this day, a fully-functioning thyroid, my TSH levels have never become abnormal. And most recently, you know, my doctor told me I don’t have ITP and maybe never did, that they’ve changed the criteria for that.

And then finally, the last piece of the puzzle was that I finally did the ibs-smart test which tests for the autoimmune, you know, for post-infectious IBS, which essentially means that from the food poisoning, I got an autoimmune reaction that is preventing my small intestine from keeping food moving. So that was positive for vinculin antibodies, which means that I will always probably have a problem with stagnation in my small intestine. And so, now I take something called motility activator, which is a prokinetic, it’s over the counter. And it seems to be helping me. And also butyrate is another…I take a couple of different forms of butyrate that are very helpful to me. And now I have gotten my gut in great shape.

Actually, the last piece, this really is the last piece, I have had a return of my acid reflux despite not going back on dairy, although I do, you know, once every couple of months, I will have pizza with some digestive enzymes on the side. But anyway, most recently, my acid reflux has returned, and so I was concerned that maybe I had gotten H. pylori somehow. And I did a stool antigen with my doctor which was negative, but then I had a microbiome, a metagenomic sequencing of my microbiome and it shows that I do have H. Pylori. So I’m gonna try and kill the H. pylori and see what happens. So it’s kind of an evolving story. But long and short of it, I’ve gotten to a place where I’m in really good gut health for the most part.

Ariel: Oh my goodness. Yes, that is quite the story. And I was listening to you, I was wondering, how did you navigate this? It sounds like you saw maybe several different doctors, some doctor said one thing, others said another. What advice do you have for our audience that is also on their own journey and trying to figure out, “Okay, I have no clue what steps to take next. I tried this. Someone said this, but I’m still feeling poorly.”? What advice do you have for them in that situation?

Lindsey: In general, I would say just don’t give up. First of all, you can have completely different doctors. So, for example, recently, I went to see one gastroenterologist. And she was dismissive and condescending, and just in every way did not take me seriously. And didn’t even want to talk to me about my actual symptoms, all she wanted to do was get me into a colonoscopy. And I didn’t think that that was necessary, given what was going on with me and my history, and the fact that I had already done a Cologuard. I went to another doctor as a second opinion saying, “Okay, listen, if I really am at risk of colon cancer, I will get the colonoscopy. So let me talk to someone else.” And he looked at my symptoms and talked to me and listened to me and said, “No, this isn’t called for right now.” So that’s just an example of how two different doctors can be completely different in the way they deal with you.

That being said, I’ve also found as a health coach who deals with gut health that a lot of people will see a gastroenterologist, and they will go through the whole workup, the colonoscopy, the endoscopy, maybe even it’s thorough enough to get tested for celiac, and for H. pylori, and things like that. And at the end of it, they find nothing, and they’re told, “Well, you’ve got IBS and there’s not much we can do, or you can take this pill or whatever.” And so, I find that you really may need to go into the world of functional medicine and alternative-type providers in order to find a solution that’s at the functional level, at the microbiome level.

Ariel: Yeah, that sounds really familiar from, at least, my own personal health journey. I have my own slew of GI problems, I have GERD. And for a long time, growing up as a kid, I just had, like, a lot of nausea and stomach aches constantly. And they took me through exactly what you’re saying, all the testing. I did the endoscopies and all those things, and they were like, “Oh, well, everything seems normal, but we can’t figure it out. So we’ll just say that you have IBS.” And I’m like, “Well, I feel like there’s something a bit more to it than just that.”

Lindsey: Right, right. Yeah, whenever anybody has acid reflux, I immediately think H. pylori. And I find that often they might even have an endoscopy with some sort of biopsy, or they may have a breath test, or even a stool antigen, and they may come out negative. But then we retest them, or we do a PCR, H. pylori test, and sure enough, they actually have it. So whenever I see symptoms like that, or especially it comes along often with insomnia, it comes often with stomach pain or burping, and it sometimes comes in waves, like you have it for a while but then you don’t have it for a while, and then you can also see constipation or diarrhea. So it’s just, you know, if I see any of that stuff, I’m always like, “We need to retest for H. pylori.”

Ariel: Yeah. And that proves, to your point, the importance of going to get multiple opinions. I feel like a lot of people don’t…it’s weird in the health system, but I feel like a lot of people feel like they’re kind of stuck, like they went to one doctor and they’re like, “Well, this is who I saw and this is what they said.” And they don’t realize they can go and actually talk to multiple people, whether that’s other doctors or health coaches like yourself.

Lindsey: Yeah, it is hard. It is hard, I get it, because, you know, it can be expensive, it’s time-consuming, you have to call, you have to get referrals. You know, it took me six months to go through the process of seeing two different gastroenterologist.

Ariel: Sheesh, yeah. I mean, at that point, too, your symptoms are changing and evolving. It can be discouraging at times. But I would love to know, too, so I think I can put together the pieces, but what made you decide to go into health coaching and become a health coach yourself?

Lindsey: Right. Actually, my previous job was I ran a nonprofit that I had started with another mom in Montgomery County, Maryland, advocating for healthier food in the Montgomery County Public Schools. And then ultimately, we worked in the whole state of Maryland. And that was something I started more as a passion project because I was, you know, raising my son and not doing anything terribly important career-wise at the time. So I ended up starting this nonprofit and running it for five years. And in the course of that, got deep into nutrition, and had met many health coaches who were school representatives to individual schools starting wellness committees and such.

And I heard about the career and so once I felt like I’d accomplished what I wanted to in that job, and I felt okay about moving on, and my husband wanted to move, I started looking into what I could do as a new career. And I really didn’t want to work for anybody else or in an office at all. I wanted to be able to work from home and I wanted to be able to run my own schedule and, you know, just be my own boss. And so I did a course on health coaching and then we moved to Tucson, which is where we’ve been for three and a half years, I launched into health coaching. Which originally I focused…you know, you get trained more or less on weight loss, and that was what I started with. But as I got more extra training and started the podcast and felt more and more confident with the gut health issues, I began to specialize in that.

Ariel: Super cool. I love when we’re able to turn kind of our take everything together, our passions, our own personal history, and then everything melts together into this, like, perfect storm of like, “Oh, this is what I should be doing.” So that brings me to this point, too, which is I think a very interesting part of your story, and that’s the autoimmune disease component of your journey. Can you describe just what an autoimmune disease is, talk a little bit more about Hashimoto specifically, and then how do autoimmune diseases affect gut health?

Lindsey: Okay. So an autoimmune disease is a disease where your own body is attacking its own cells. And you can have systemic autoimmune diseases, say, like lupus or MS where you’ve got a whole bunch of bodily systems being attacked, or you can have very specific ones like Hashimoto’s where it’s just your thyroid, for example, that’s being attacked. So the relationship…well, so there’s three factors that are necessary for an autoimmune disease to take place. One is a genetic predisposition, but that might only account for about 30% of whether you will or will not get one. Then you’ve got to have environmental triggers, which could be anything from a nutrient deficiency, to stress, to mitochondrial dysfunction, to toxins like heavy metals or mold, to viral and bacterial infections or hormone imbalances.

And then you need a leaky gut or what’s officially called intestinal hyperpermeability. So what you need to have is these factors that are essentially causing undigested food and bacterial body parts and that type of thing, these proteins to get out of your gut and into your system, at which point your immune system is activated and starts to attack them. And then usually, what they believe is happening is there are some type of molecular mimicry whereby cells that are food or these other things that are escaping out of your intestines resemble proteins in your own body. And when your immune system starts to attack those cells, they also start to attack your own cells or those proteins.

So, for example, with Hashimoto’s, it’s believed that the thyroid cells resemble gluten and Gliadin, which is the protein in gluten. And so, you have this attack on what’s coming through your gut, and then also it impacts your thyroid. And so slowly but surely, your thyroid is destroyed. So in Hashimoto’s, you’re having this slow but constant kind of destruction of your thyroid gland, to the point where ultimately, your function is impaired enough for it to show up in your TSH level. Unfortunately, standard reference ranges for TSH can go up to even 4 or 6. But if you’re above 2, you should be concerned that there’s something going on, especially if you’re consistently over time above 2 with a TSH level. So that’s just a little briefer on Hashimoto’s and autoimmunity.

Ariel: Thank you for explaining that. Because I feel like in the GI world, when people are discovering or trying to figure out what’s going on with them, the terms leaky gut and things are thrown around often. I’m not sure everyone knows exactly what it means, but now they do. So that’s how Hashimoto’s kind of interacts with gut health. Is that similar for other autoimmune diseases? Since your gut is leaking, essentially, there’s other proteins and things that are causing your body to attack itself. So the more unhealthy that your gut is, the more your body is sort of fighting against itself. Is that right?

Lindsey: Right. So if you have this leaky gut going on, you are going to have undigested food particles slipping out. And that’s sort of a necessary precondition for that autoimmune attack. Because really, what we’re talking about is, I think people have to…they hear a lot about inflammation, and maybe they hear about autoimmunity, but they don’t understand we’re talking about the same thing. When you have things slipping out of your intestines, and your body’s attacking them, your immune system getting activated is inflammation. That’s what that is. So that inflammation is the root of autoimmune disease.

Ariel: That makes complete sense. What are some of the signs of a leaky gut that people can recognize? And then what steps do they then need to take once they realize, “Oh, I think I may have a leaky gut.”?

Lindsey: Right. Okay. So let me just say this, a lot of people think the term leaky gut means diarrhea. This is not the case. A leaky gut is not synonymous with diarrhea. We’re talking about typically things leaking out of your small intestine into your bodily cavities, right? Not out of the end of your body. So we’re talking about symptoms you could have, for example, brain fog, you could have, obviously, any kind of autoimmune activation, you could have food sensitivities, in particular, if you see yourself reacting to gluten, or to dairy, or just any foods, really, if you have a reaction to foods, it’s likely that you have a leaky gut. There are, of course, these food sensitivity tests, and I don’t usually recommend them to clients. But I will tell you this, if you get a food sensitivity test, and I’m talking about the IgG-type tests and everything lights up, that’s an indication you have a leaky gut. Because basically what it’s saying is pretty much everything you’re eating is escaping out.

Ariel: Yes. And I was actually going to ask you about those tests. Because I do see them online where they offer, “Oh, you can, you know, take this test, and we’ll tell you all the foods and things you have sensitivities to.” Okay, but that’s a good point. If anything is lighting up, then clearly something is not going right in your digestive system.

Lindsey: Yeah. I mean, if one or two things light up, great. Now, that’s an actually…you can actually work with that result. But usually what happens is every single thing a person eats on a regular basis is what lights up. So that’s an indication that you have a leaky gut. So I took one about…I finally convinced my doctor to order one through LabCorp. It’s a free test in the sense of it’s covered by insurance. So I thought, “What the heck? Let’s see what’s going on.” And sure enough, literally, every single thing I ate…and interestingly, not so much. I mean, gluten came out positive, but just a little bit because I don’t eat much of it. But beef was, like, super high. And I’m thinking, “I’m not sensitive to beef. That’s silly.”

Ariel: Right. Right. And I feel that’s helpful to know, too. When people are searching for answers, I feel like, “Oh, you know, I will take this test, I’ll cut out these different foods,” but it’s not really getting to the root of what the actual problem.

Lindsey: Yeah. And you don’t want to limit your diet extremely over a [inaudible 00:21:16] of time, because you will decrease the variety in your microbiome and ultimately could lead to more problems. So you really want to have the very diet. And, of course, the nutritional deficiencies are also a possibility.

Ariel: Yes, that’s something that I feel like people don’t realize, and people will hear, “Oh, it’s for a while.” You know, I say it’s kind of trendy to be gluten-free, but people weren’t realizing that if you’re not sensitive to gluten, or if it’s not affecting you, by not having gluten, you’re eliminating a lot of other food groups in your diet that you need. And then you’re causing all these other imbalances by just trying to follow something that you read in a magazine, but you didn’t actually do your research and figure out if that was actually something that was pertaining to you and your particular health situation.

Lindsey: Yeah. And the interesting thing, actually, about eliminating wheat, and flour, and that type of thing is that that’s where…especially if you’re somebody who doesn’t have a super healthy diet, and you’re not eating a lot of green leafy vegetables, that’s where we’re getting our B vitamins because of either their natural presence in the grains, or because of the…you know, for white flour, they’re enriched with B vitamins. And pretty much every single client I see is deficient in B vitamins. I have to put everybody, suggest that they take a B complex. Because, you know, when we do tests, we see that deficient.

Ariel: See, the more you know, everybody go out and get a B vitamin.

Lindsey: Yeah, active B vitamin complex, because a lot of people have issues with methylation and mutations in that area. That was another piece I had to learn about myself was that I have an MTHFR mutation such that I need to take methylcobalamin, not cyanocobalamin as B12. And I need to take methylfolate, not hold folic acid.

Ariel: And another reason why you should seek out the support of a health coach or a doctor that can help you navigate those small differences, because I can see how that might be overwhelming if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing.

Lindsey: Yeah.

Ariel: You have a podcast called “The Perfect Stool,” which I love. Is there such a thing as a perfect stool? Like, what should we be looking out for in our bowel movements? I know earlier, you were chatting about how you were just having loose stools regularly and you were like, “Wait, that should have been a red flat.” But what should people be looking out for in their bowel movements?

Lindsey: So they should be regular. And by that, I mean one to three times a day. They should be… So there’s the Bristol stool chart, and that runs from 1 to 7. And so, on the lower end you might be having rabbit pellets, that’s not normal. And on the higher end you might be having diarrhea, and that’s not normal. But also that loose stool or messy stool is not normal, either a healthy stool is a 3 or a 4, which is like a sausage, it may have ridges, or it may be smooth, like, to come out, you know, in relatively few pieces. And it should come out cleanly such that when you wipe there’s nothing on the toilet paper most of the time. And that is what a healthy bowel movement looks like. And it also should be a nice dark color, although there may be some variation based on what you eat, but not black, a nice brown color.

Ariel: These are things that I’m like, you know, everybody, we all poop, obviously, but I feel like people are nervous to ask or talk about poop. This is such important information. I’m wondering how many people know that actually, when you go to the bathroom, you’re not really supposed to see anything when you wipe. And that could be an indication that you need to make some changes in your diet.

Lindsey: Yeah. No, I mean, that really, you know, is one of these things where they started selling these wipes. Right? And I mean, I used to have to use quite a few of them and we clog up, you know, our plumbing and we were in a rental building. You’re paying for this because we found the wipes in the plumbing. We literally sent the bill to the wipe’s company because it was supposed to be flushable and they did pay for it, if you can believe that,

Ariel: Oh, wow.

Lindsey: Yeah. But in any case, yeah, if you have to use wipes or you have to get out a…what do they call it? A bidet, or a handheld bidet, I don’t know if the end is attached with the toilet, then you probably have an issue.

Ariel: See, that’s very, very good to know. Very good to know. So we are just about out of time, but I wanted to ask you, how can guests work with you? Or do you have anything cool in the works, any program, systems, things that you’d like our audience to know about?

Lindsey: To work with me, you can set up a free breakthrough session. So I just offer free 30-minute sessions to talk to people about what’s been going on with them and just see if I think I can be of help to them, or they can just set up an individual appointment as well. But, you know, so I have packages. So they can go to highdeserthealthcoaching.com and find a link there to sign up for a breakthrough session. And then, of course, they can find the podcast, “The Perfect Stool: Understanding and Healing the Gut Microbiome” on any of the podcast players.

And in terms of anything in the works, I would say that I don’t have any special programs. I pretty much just do one-on-one coaching with people because when it comes to gut stuff, everybody is so individual. And if I were to put together some sort of a cut-and-dried, you know, video-based program, I just don’t think that people would get the service that they need to really resolve their problems because everybody’s situation is so unique and different.

And I would say, though, in terms of upcoming guests on the podcast, I have a recording coming soon with Dr. James Adams, who is a researcher at Arizona State University, who uses a form of purified fecal transplants to help people with autism. So he’s been on my show before, Episode 12, and I’m gonna have him on again soon. So that’s gonna be a really interesting one. And yeah, so that’s one of my more exciting developments. But every two weeks, I put out the show. So there’s different people talking about different things, just had one out on Candida, which we didn’t mention at all. But that’s another factor.

Ariel: Amazing. As always, everyone, I am going to link Lindsey’s website, High Desert Health, and then also “The Perfect Stool” podcast in the show notes below. So you can make sure that you go and check them out, especially with those super cool upcoming podcast episodes. Is there any final parting words or thoughts that you would like to leave off with for our audience?

Lindsey: I would just say that there is a solution to your gut health problems. Nobody’s gut health is irretrievably lost. And it’s just a matter of persisting, and following advice, and trying different things, and switching it up, and doing it in a systematic way though. Not just, you know, “I was listening to a podcast and somebody talked about these three supplements, I’m going to try them all at once.” That’s not systematic. If you do that, you’ll never find out what you actually need. You need to go about it slowly, systematically, testing helps. We’ve got, you know, functional tests that can look at your stool, look at your urine and figure out what’s going on in your gut, and systematically go about correcting it. And that is possible, and you don’t have to suffer.

Ariel: Such an encouraging message for people, and I feel like a lot of times you can feel very discouraged and lost in the process because there are so many different components and pieces. And now people know they have the opportunity to work with someone like you, a health coach. You’re giving away free 30-minute sessions to help chat with people, see if they can get on track, get some individualized attention. Definitely take advantage of those, everybody. I think that’s an excellent opportunity to figure out what is working or not working for you. Lindsey, thank you so much for being here today. This was amazing. I learned a lot.

Lindsey: Yeah, it’s been my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on.

Ariel: And everyone, as you know, we all have colons and we all poop. Let’s talk about it. Let’s do research.

Lindsey: Amen.

Ariel: Let’s work together for our health and have healthy guts. I will see you next time on the “Colon Health Podcast.” Bye.