Lipski - Digestive wellness: strengthen the immune system and prevent disease through healthy digestion

Strengthen the Immune System and
Prevent Disease Through Healthy Digestion

Elizabeth Lipski, Ph.D., CCN, CHN

Copyright 2012 by Elizabeth Lipski. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-07-170161-7
MHID: 0-07-170161-3

The material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title: ISBN: 978-0-07-166899-6, MHID: 0-07-166899-3.

All trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners. Rather than put a trademark symbol after every occurrence of a trademarked name, we use names in an editorial fashion only, and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. Where such designations appear in this book, they have been printed with initial caps.

McGraw-Hill eBooks are available at special quantity discounts to use as premiums and sales promotions, or for use in corporate training programs. To contact a representative please e-mail us at bulksales@mcgraw-hill.com.

TERMS OF USE

This is a copyrighted work and The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. (McGraw-Hill) and its licensors reserve all rights in and to the work. Use of this work is subject to these terms. Except as permitted under the Copyright Act of 1976 and the right to store and retrieve one copy of the work, you may not decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer, reproduce, modify, create derivative works based upon, transmit, distribute, disseminate, sell, publish or sublicense the work or any part of it without McGraw-Hills prior consent. You may use the work for your own noncommercial and personal use; any other use of the work is strictly prohibited. Your right to use the work may be terminated if you fail to comply with these terms.

THE WORK IS PROVIDED AS IS. McGRAW-HILL AND ITS LICENSORS MAKE NO GUARANTEES OR WARRANTIES AS TO THE ACCURACY, ADEQUACY OR COMPLETENESS OF OR RESULTS TO BE OBTAINED FROM USING THE WORK, INCLUDING ANY INFORMATION THAT CAN BE ACCESSED THROUGH THE WORK VIA HYPERLINK OR OTHERWISE, AND EXPRESSLY DISCLAIM ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. McGraw-Hill and its licensors do not warrant or guarantee that the functions contained in the work will meet your requirements or that its operation will be uninterrupted or error free. Neither McGraw-Hill nor its licensors shall be liable to you or anyone else for any inaccuracy, error or omission, regardless of cause, in the work or for any damages resulting therefrom. McGraw-Hill has no responsibility for the content of any information accessed through the work. Under no circumstances shall McGraw-Hill and/or its licensors be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, punitive, consequential or similar damages that result from the use of or inability to use the work, even if any of them has been advised of the possibility of such damages. This limitation of liability shall apply to any claim or cause whatsoever whether such claim or cause arises in contract, tort or otherwise.

This book is dedicated to Chris Dennen,
husband, friend, coworker, and playmate. Your unwavering love and support
allow me to spread my creative wings and fly. You are the banks of my river.

Doctors are trained to identify diseases by where they are located. If you have asthma, its considered a lung problem; if you have rheumatoid arthritis, it must be a joint problem; if you have acne, doctors see it as a skin problem; if you are overweight, you must have a metabolism problem; if you have allergies, immune imbalance is blamed. Doctors who understand health this way are both right and wrong. Sometimes the causes of your symptoms do have some relationship to their location, but thats far from the whole story.

As we come to understand disease in the 21st century, our old ways of defining illness based on symptoms and location in the body are not very useful. Instead, by understanding the origins of disease and the way in which the body operates as one whole, integrated ecosystem we now know that symptoms appearing in one area of the body may be caused by imbalances in an entirely different system. Everything is connected. The center of that connection is the gut. Nowhere are those connections made clearer, and nowhere will you find a better owners manual for your gut and how to keep it healthy, than in Dr. Lipskis updated edition of Digestive Wellness, which I have used successfully in my practice for more than a decade.

If your skin is bad or you have allergies, cant seem to lose weight, suffer from an autoimmune disease, struggle with fibromyalgia, or have recurring headaches, the real reason may be that your gut is unhealthy. This may be true even if you have never had any digestive complaints.

There are many other possible imbalances in your bodys operating system that may drive illness as well. These include problems with hormones, immune function, detoxification, energy production, and more. But very often the gut may be at the root of your chronic symptoms.

Many today do have digestive problems, including reflux or heartburn, irritable bowel syndrome, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, and colitis. In fact, belly problems account for more than 100 million doctors visits and billions in health-care costs annually. But gut problems cause disease far beyond the gut. In medical school I learned that patients with colitis could also have inflamed joints and eyes and that patients with liver failure could be cured of delirium by taking antibiotics that killed the toxin-producing bacteria in their gut. Could it be that when things are not quite right down below it affects the health of our entire body, including many diseases we havent linked before to imbalances in the digestive system?

The answer is a resounding yes. Normalizing gut function is one of the most important things I do for patients, and its so simple. The side effects of treating the gut are quite extraordinary. My patients find relief from allergies, acne, arthritis, headaches, autoimmune disease, depression, attention deficit, and moreoften after years or decades of suffering. Here are a few examples of the results I have achieved by addressing imbalances in the function and flora of the gut:

A 58-year-old woman with many years of worsening allergies, asthma, and sinusitis who was on frequent antibiotics and didnt respond to any of the usual therapies was cured by eliminating a worm she harbored in her gut called Strongyloides.

A 52-year-old woman who had suffered with daily headaches and frequent migraines for years found relief by clearing out the overgrowth of bad bugs in her small intestine with a new nonabsorbed antibiotic called Xifaxan.

A six-year-old girl with severe behavioral problems including violence, disruptive behavior in school, and depression was treated for bacterial yeast overgrowth, and in less than 10 days her behavioral issues and depression were resolved.