Hannah Aylward (00:00.088)

So whenever you’re dealing with hypothyroidism or Hashimoto’s, most hypothyroidism cases are due to Hashimoto’s and Hashimoto’s is a deeper gut issue. It’s more of an immune system issue than it is actually a thyroid issue at its core. So certain gut infections can contribute to issues there, right? Maldigestion patterns, increased inflammation that’s stemming from the gut. This is going to lead to those elevated antibodies.

Hannah Aylward (00:31.247)

Welcome to the Nutrient Dense Podcast. I’m your host, Hannah Aylward, holistic health coach, functional gut health practitioner, and the founder of HAN. So many people are continuously failed by conventional and alternative healthcare. We are here to do it differently. Alongside my team of functional registered dietitians, I’ve helped hundreds of women around the world overcome their chronic digestive issues when nothing else worked.

I’ve learned a thing or two about what it really takes to transform your health from the inside out, and I’m here to share it all with you. Please keep in mind that this podcast is for educational purposes only and should never be used as medical advice. Now let’s dive in. Your transformation is waiting.

Hello, hello and welcome. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we’re gonna be diving into a client case study. So I’m gonna be breaking down a client that came to us and she worked with us after struggling with chronic digestive issues for about 10 years. She had elevated thyroid antibodies. She was struggling with constipation, diarrhea, chronic bloating, really low energy. And I’m gonna walk you through exactly what we did.

to help her get to the other side of all of that. Cause by the time she left working with us, she was feeling a million times better. So we’re going to be breaking all of that down today. I’ll be sharing like what we found in her labs, what labs we ran, made the biggest difference in her case and all of that good stuff. So this client came to work with us after 10 years of gut issues. She had been dealing with constipation for days and then diarrhea, reacting to almost every food that she ate, constant bloating and was being told,

It was just IBS, right? So she had been diagnosed by her doctor with IBS within months of working with us. We’d put in a good like four months of work with her. Symptoms were gone. Her thyroid antibodies had dropped by about 500 points, which is pretty incredible for anyone out there that has Hashimoto’s. So today I’m going to walk you through exactly kind of what was going on in her case, what we found as her underlying deeper root causes and how we worked with her to get her feeling a lot better. So

Hannah Aylward (02:41.997)

When she came to us, she had been dealing with, like I said, diagnosed with IBS. It looked for her like a lot of bloating, a lot of different food reactions. And then she also had constipation, that kind of like constipation to overflow diarrhea cycle. So this is quite common where people will be pretty chronically constipated. They’ll have a hard time going to the bathroom for a few days and then it’ll kind of swing to diarrhea because there’ll be such a buildup of stool in the GI tract.

that then it starts to kind of like overflow and then they can’t step away from the bathroom. Not fun, right? Cause you’re kind of like navigating your day around it and wondering when it’s going to happen and how long it’s going to happen. And maybe you’re sitting on the toilet for a while. That happens to a lot of our clients. So we get this constipation for days at a time, possibly even weeks. And then we get this overflow diarrhea kind of as a result of that, which is all a result of these deeper underlying gut issues. So she was presenting with that cycle.

She also had pretty immediate bloating after eating anything and everything. She had a couple of foods that ticked her off a little bit more than others, but she was feeling overall reactive and sensitive to everything that she ate, even healthy foods, vegetables, proteins, things like that. She was also having some inconsistent reactions to food, which is very common when there’s a deeper gut issue present. So maybe you’re like, I can eat a food on one day and I feel fine. I eat the same food the next day and I don’t feel fine. Then I’m bloated and I’m burping and I’m gassy and…

I’m running to the bathroom, but I ate the same food yesterday and I felt totally fine. I don’t understand what’s going on. This is a big sign that we have deeper gut issues at play and it’s not really that you’re reacting to the food because you’re eating the same food and you’re reacting differently, right? So she had a lot of food sensitivities and kind of inconsistent reactions as well. She also had mucus, undigested food particles in her stool and floating stool. So when we see that mucus in the stool and we see undigested food particles and when that stool is a different.

It’s not a dark brown color. It’s floating. Those are big signs of deeper liver gallbladder issues. so we worked a lot with her on bile flow as well. And I’m going to, I’m going to break all of that down for you. She also was dealing with gas and that gas that kind of smells like rotten eggs. You know, if you have the gut issues, then you understand that. and we’re going to kind of get into why that was as well. Really, really bad fatigue. She had gained weight. She had very elevated thyroid antibodies. were in the five hundreds, which is quite high.

Hannah Aylward (05:01.535)

And she also had been told that she had low iron and low vitamin D. So this was kind of her whole picture. All of these things are connected, right? Because the gut impacts the thyroid, the thyroid impacts the gut, your gut impacts your nutrient absorption capabilities. So you’ll be low iron, you’ll be low vitamin D. It all makes sense when we look at her picture holistically and kind of with a root cause lens versus just slapping Band-Aids on the symptoms. So she felt like…

She was kind of experiencing these full body issues, right? Bowel movement issues, food reactions, bloating. She was having some skin issues as well. If I, if I remember correctly, weight gain, really chronic fatigue, didn’t have the energy to do much after work and nothing was really making sense. Right? So she had been dealing with this for about 10 years. So if you’re someone that feels like you react to everything, your symptoms don’t make any sense. And you’ve tried supplements and protocols and diet changes and elimination diets and all of that.

This is really the case that we see all the time. So let’s kind of break down what we found in her case. And I’m going to walk you guys through her lab findings. So when we work with our clients, I’ve been doing this for over nine years now, which is like crazy to even say. It feels like the time has just flown by. between everyone on my team, we have like 30 years of experience because we’ve all been kind of practicing for like six or seven years, 15 years, one of my practitioners. I’ve been almost 10 years. Another practitioner is six years, right?

So we have quite a bit of experience working with clients and specifically women that have chronic digestive issues that don’t respond to a lot of the typical first line interventions that may be recommended at like your doctor’s office. So we always dig deeper. Instead of going, okay, cool, you have constipation, let’s give you a laxative, we wanna dig deeper and ask why. Why do you have the constipation? What’s causing that and how do we repair this?

more at a root cause level to get you feeling better versus just slapping a bandaid on top of the symptom that you are experiencing. So we really kind of look under the hood to see what’s going on at the deeper roots of a client’s case. Now, we run functional stool testing with all of our clients in both my Healin’ Guts + Shakin’ Butts program and in our one-on-one programs as well. And this is because this helps us give us lot of insight into what’s actually going on in the gut.

Hannah Aylward (07:18.019)

So what does the gut microbiome look like? What does gut inflammation look like? How’s digestive capacity doing as well? Can you actually break down and digest the food that you’re eating? These more functional labs help us get more data and information and some answers to why people are having chronic gut and digestive issues despite eating healthy and doing everything right. So.

Food sensitivities and reactions chronic bloating conservation diarrhea. These are all the result of deeper gut issues These are not the problem themselves These are the result of deeper gut issues at play and we work to repair that so the first thing that we found in her case was that she had a gut infection that was impacting her body’s ability to produce stomach acid so

It causes a lot of inflammation in the stomach lining. It damages the parietal cells. These cells are what help produce stomach acid in the body. And she was dealing with low stomach acid. This was leading to poor protein digestion. It was also contributing to low pancreatic enzymes or low elastases, that marker that we look for on the functional labs. So that was leading to nutrient deficiencies. It was leading to chronic bloating and constipation. It was leading to some histamine responses as well.

It was also impacting her bile flow because stomach acid kind of acts as that conductor in the orchestra. at the top of the chain. It is going to signal for the release of the other digestive juices. So if we have a gut infection that is negatively impacting our body’s ability to produce adequate stomach acid, everything down the chain is going to be negatively impacted by that. So that was one of the first big findings that we found in her case. We also will see a lot of cases.

with these elevated antibodies that have this gut infection. So when we are looking at someone with elevated thyroid antibodies or someone that’s been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s, we always want to dig deeper into the health of the gut microbiome because whenever there’s an autoimmune condition present, there are going to be deeper gut issues because it’s really less of a thyroid issue and it’s more of an immune system issue. And the majority of the immune system resides in the gut, just outside of that gut lining, right?

Hannah Aylward (09:28.311)

So whenever we have this chronic activation of the immune system in any autoimmunity, it could be rheumatoid arthritis, it could be Hashimoto’s, right? We always want to dig deeper and look at the health of the gut because if that gut barrier is broken down and if we have a lot of inflammation stemming from the gut, that’s going to increase the likelihood of autoimmunity. So there’s a big overlap here. So whenever you’re dealing with hypothyroidism or Hashimoto’s, most hypothyroidism cases are due to Hashimoto’s.

And Hashimoto’s is a deeper gut issue. It’s more of an immune system issue than it is actually a thyroid issue at its core. So certain gut infections can contribute to issues there, right? Maldigestion patterns, increased inflammation that’s stemming from the gut. This is going to lead to those elevated antibodies. So as soon as we ran her lab work, I’m like, this makes perfect sense. This is also why she could have been supplementing with iron and selenium and vitamin D and B vitamins and all of these good important

nutrients that the thyroid needs to function, but A, she’s not able to break down these supplements that she’s taking and absorb them efficiently, and B, we’re just kind of like throwing, you’re like pouring a bucket of water on like a roaring fire. It’s not enough to actually put it out because that inflammation is stemming from deeper inside of the gut microbiome and then contributing to that systemic inflammation causing that immune system reaction. So there is never a thyroid case where I would not look

at the gut microbiome much deeper, like with a magnifying glass because of how the gut is going to impact the thyroid. to kind of go back to what we found in her lab, she had a gut infection that was damaging her body’s ability to produce stomach acid. It was contributing to inflammation and it was causing bloating. It was leading to things like constipation and then that overflow diarrhea that she was experiencing.

It was also contributing to her low vitamin D and her low iron levels that she was reporting because without adequate digestive juices, you cannot absorb the nutrients from the food that you’re eating or the supplements that you’re taking efficiently. So it was very clear right out of the gate why her 10 years of digestive issues had gone just not unsupported. No one had ever done the work to dig deeper in this case with her.

Hannah Aylward (11:43.811)

So all of these things were connected, right? So we found the low stomach acid, which then contributed to the low pancreatic enzyme secretion that she was experiencing as well, and also contributed to the gallbladder and bile issues, because she was having those signs of fat malabsorption. So she was having the floating stools. She was having the hormonal breakouts. She was having the thyroid issues. Any time that the thyroid is involved, we also have to look at the liver. So the gut and the liver are at the core of most

thyroid issues because the majority of thyroid hormone is converted in the liver and then the rest of it is in the gut microbiome. So your certain gut bacteria convert inactive thyroid hormone into active thyroid hormone for the body to actually use and then the majority of that takes place in the liver. So we had to do deeper liver work with her to support her body in converting that thyroid hormone efficiently which would then increase.

her energy, right? So we did a lot of gut and liver work with her. just to go back here as well, due to the low stomach acid and the low elastase, these things are connected. She was reacting to everything that she ate. Didn’t matter. You could eat grilled chicken. You could eat brown rice and broccoli. Doesn’t really matter. If you can’t, if you’re not producing adequate digestive juices to break down the food that you’re eating, you’re going to be bloated.

distended, you’re going to have chunks of mal-digested foods sitting in the GI tract longer than we want them to be. That’s going to overfeed gut bacteria. It’s going to ferment. And that is what gases, that is what bloating is, right? These bacteria are what give off these gases that look like burping and bloating and abdominal distension in your body. So she was a classic case of like, she was eating healthy. She was trying to do a lot. She was also so exhausted. couldn’t really even, she was having a hard time to even support herself, right? Because of the

Hashimoto’s and the nutrient deficiencies were leaving her so exhausted that she was like, I don’t really have the energy to do much more. And by the end of working with us, she was like, I have more energy than I even know what to do with, which was like an amazing, amazing, amazing, huge win after 10 years, right? So low stomach acid, low pancreatic enzyme secretion, gallbladder and bile issues. This is what was causing food sensitivities, that rotten egg gassy smell.

Hannah Aylward (14:00.283)

that sulfur fermentation, bloating immediately after eating, and the undigested food particles in her stool. So this was never a food problem at its core. This was the digestive function issue due to an infection that she had picked up that was contributing to a breakdown in her digestive function. Okay, so the number one root cause that we found with her is going to be that broken digestive function, right? Low digestive capacity.

In very simple terms, she’s just not digesting her food well. So she’s going to be bloated and gassy and burping and whatever after everything that she eats. Could be the healthiest food. She could drink a green smoothie and feel that way. Then the next thing, as I kind of mentioned previously, that bacterial infection. So she had an infection that was damaging her body’s ability to produce stomach acid, and it was contributing to a lot of inflammation in the gut as well. So.

We found that infection and then she also had, she did have a little E. coli pop up too, which was interesting. That doesn’t play a role in every case. Sometimes it’s like actively contributing to the dysfunction, sometimes it’s not. So working with someone is helpful in this case. And then she also had overgrowth of staphylococcus and streptococcus, which

very commonly comes alongside low stomach acid, right? Because if you don’t have, if your body’s not producing adequate stomach acid, then it can’t protect itself from other infections. You’re gonna be at higher risk for gut infections, things like parasites or bacterial infections. In her case, she had some E. coli, right? Her system’s gonna be weaker.

to fighting these things off because that stomach acid acts as that chemical barrier to kill things off from the outside world, like bacteria and microbes that you’re putting into your body through the food that you’re eating or licking your fingers or sticking your hands in your mouth or whatever it might be, because there’s microbes on all this stuff, right? So your stomach acid should be strong enough to kill this off. Now in her case, she was under producing stomach acid due to chronic stress and also a gut infection.

Hannah Aylward (15:55.662)

So she was at higher risk for all this other stuff. So it doesn’t surprise me at all that she had a little bit of that E. coli bacteria infection present in her case as well. And then she also had this overgrowth of staphylococcus and streptococcus. And once again, this goes hand in hand with some of these other infections that we see and with this low stomach acid picture. And this is because when we have that low stomach acid, that’s gonna lead to overgrowth of other bacteria in the gut.

So it’s going to increase your risk for something like small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or SIBO. It’s going to increase your risk of large intestinal gut dysbiosis or an overgrowth of those unsupportive gut bacteria. And that was leading to gas, bloating, diarrhea, immune activation, right?

So if we have this infection at the top of the chain that’s leading to low stomach acid, well then everything down the chain of the GI tract is going to be negatively impacted by that because you’re not breaking down your food efficiently. So other bacteria are gonna start to overgrow. So in her case, that was very present, right? We also, when we work with clients, we do a little bit of deeper digging when it comes to potentially fungal overgrowth in the gut because…

stool testing often misses this, which this is one of many, many, many reasons why working with a professional is essential if you actually wanna get better. So even though her stool test did not report that she had high levels of fungal overgrowth, we took care of that with her anyway because a lot of these other pieces of her health puzzle, her history, her answers on her questionnaire, her intake forms led us to believe that there was also some fungal overgrowth in the gut. This is very difficult to pick up.

via stool testing and other lab tests. For SIBO, for example, you can get a breath test to check for SIBO. There is not one to check for fungal overgrowth in this case. You can get a stool test to check for large intestinal bacterial overgrowth. There is not, yes, the stool test does check for fungal overgrowth, but it often misses it. These test results are not as black and white as they may seem, which is why I never, ever, ever recommend just ordering one online.

Hannah Aylward (18:01.73)

and seeing what happens, it’s just gonna be a waste of money because you’re not gonna know what to do with it or how to put it into context, right? So in her case, even though her labs didn’t show that, a lot of the other pieces of her puzzle were like, yeah, she very likely has this. So we did some of that antifungal work with her as well. So.

When the gut is dealing with, when you have these infections and these overgrowths in the gut microbiome and these maldigestion patterns, right, these are driving that inflammation. Your gut cannot heal if these things are contributing to that more chronic inflammation. The other thing that we found in her test results was lower secretory IGA. So her gut immune function was really wiped out, right? Your secretory IGA is your gut’s first line of defense. It helps to maintain the ecosystem of your gut microbiome.

because there’s trillions of bacteria and microorganisms in that gut microbiome. So your gut immune function helps to kind of balance out that ecosystem. When we see lower levels of secretory IGA, your gut immune’s function is lower. You’re going to have more food reactions and sensitivities, and you’re going to be at higher risk of infections, and you’re going to, if you have these infections, they’ll just stick with you, right? Your body doesn’t have enough

kind of strength and power and immune function to actually get rid of these infections. So she had really low levels of secretory IGA. This is often a result of chronic stress. Gut infections can contribute to these lower levels as well. We will often see it with that kind of like burnout picture in our clients, but this was contributing to the food reactions that she was experiencing and why she was not able to get better, right? So we’ll see these recurring issues and these chronic symptoms.

with these lower levels despite you doing all of the right things. The next thing that we found in her case was that she did have these low iron levels and she had low vitamin D levels. These are a result of low stomach acid and poor bile flow that she was also experiencing. When we asked her questions about her energy and how she was feeling, she checked all of the boxes for cortisol dysregulation. So if we look at that more specifically, because I have her notes kind of in front of me to share with you guys.

Hannah Aylward (20:15.421)

chronic fatigue, trouble falling and staying asleep, salt and sugar cravings, exercise intolerance, always stressed and anxious, trouble losing weight, lack of motivation, low libido, blood sugar swings, afternoon energy crashes, dizzy when standing up. These are all signs of low cortisol. She also checked a lot of the boxes for higher cortisol levels, always stressed and anxious, poor wound healing and recovery, chronic pain, lowered pain threshold, trouble sleeping, that wired and tired feeling.

brain fog or poor cognition, increased abdominal fat, inability to concentrate, easily agitated and angered, waking up in the middle of the night, second wind at night after that midday crash. These are all signs of high cortisol levels. Now you can test for cortisol. We recommend a four point salivary cortisol test. I would not recommend testing it in your blood, especially if they’re gonna just check it once in the morning. Really is kind of a waste. It doesn’t tell you the whole picture. We don’t really wanna check it blood serum. We wanna check it urine or saliva.

so we can see more of your cortisol pattern because you can go and have your cortisol levels checked and you may go in for blood work at 9 a.m. and they look fine and then the rest of the day they’re totally a mess. But if you’re only checking blood work at one point during the day, you will not know that. So we sometimes will run cortisol testing with our clients but not too frequently because in my opinion, it’s just another cost to the client and it doesn’t really make a huge difference for us.

We’re gonna support adrenal function regardless, and we’re gonna support healthy HPA axis regulation regardless, right? So it’s very common for people to have both a lot of the signs of both high and low cortisol because you’re kind of in that like resistant state. And I have a whole podcast episode on this.

where I break down the three states of HPA access dysregulation, like the chronic stress state, and then you’re staying stressed, and then eventually you’re just like so depleted that you can’t even run on the stress hormones anymore, and you’ve reached that like complete fatigue state.

Hannah Aylward (22:13.758)

We are big fans of eating enough protein over here on Team Han. Protein is essential for muscle repair, a strong gut lining, balanced blood sugar levels, and so much more. For most of our clients, we like recommending around 100 grams of protein per day to start, and adding in a good quality protein powder can be super helpful for hitting those numbers. It’s an easy add-in. You can throw it into a smoothie or even add it to oatmeal. Choosing the right protein powder can feel so overwhelming.

Half of them are full of fillers and crap ingredients and the other half honestly just tastes bad. Equip Protein is one of my go-to recommendations for our clients and one of my personal favorites. We love it because it only has a small handful of ingredients. It’s 100 % carefully sourced, real foods, no additives, allergens, chemicals, fillers or other junk. It’s gluten-free and it contains 21 grams of protein per serving. Equip’s Prime Protein also offers

a complete amino acid profile. It’s also independently tested to make sure that the protein powder is free of harmful amounts of heavy metals and toxins like glyphosate, which is honestly super hard to find. EquipPrime protein is a grass-fed beef protein. So it is animal-based, but it’s dairy-free, unlike whey or casein protein powders. Grass-fed beef protein is packed with collagen, gelatin, and micronutrients that your body needs.

We also see that it’s typically much better tolerated in our clients with chronic gut and digestive issues over something like a plant-based protein powder. In addition, some of their flavors do contain natural flavors, but they’re distilled vapors from natural and organic compounds or fruits like vanilla, coconut, and strawberry, and are processed without any chemicals, fillers, binders, or artificial ingredients, which once again is incredibly hard to find. Personally, I buy both the chocolate and the vanilla.

flavors of the Equip Prime Protein, but honestly, they have like so many other incredible flavors out now. If you’re interested in trying out Equip Prime Protein, you can use the code HANNAHAYLWARDHHC at checkout for 15 % off, and we’ll pop that code in the show notes of this episode for you as well. So once again, you can go to equipfoods.com, choose the flavor of protein powder that you want, and then use code HANNAHAYLWARDHHC for 15 % off.

Hannah Aylward (24:28.928)

There are different stages and phases of this that your body goes through. In her case, her body was like hanging in there with her, but she was also feeling absolutely exhausted, right? So she had this HPA access dysregulation due to working a job that was very stressful. She works long hours. She was working 50 hours a week. She also was dealing with all these nutrient deficiencies because she couldn’t absorb any of the good stuff that she was taking in through food, a healthy diet or supplements, right?

Also, these gut infections are big stressors. Anytime you have big inflammation in the gut, that’s a source of stress on your body, right? So when we think of stress, we often just think of emotional and mental stressors. But if you’re dealing with chronic infections, if you can’t absorb the nutrients from anything that you’re eating, this is a stressor. This is a more physical stressor, and she was also totally exhausted, and her antibodies were through the roof. They were over 500. This is all

stress causing massive stress on her body. she was dealing with these nutrient deficiencies, low iron and low vitamin D. Once again, we see these all of the time with gut issues. This is not a surprise to me at all. The answer to this is not to just throw supplements on top of it. She was dealing with a little iron because of the gut infection impacting her stomach acid production. So she couldn’t actually absorb the nutrients that she’s taking in, right? Because it’s actually quite easy to get in enough iron from the food that you’re eating if you’re eating a healthy whole foods diet.

It’s usually not a deficiency issue. It’s more so a sign of dysregulation and malabsorption. So she had that and she had the low vitamin D. And this comes back to the bile issue, right? So she was having a lot of issues with fat maldigestion and she was dealing with more sludgy bile. Now this will lead to low vitamin D despite supplementation because bile actually helps the body to break down fats and absorb fat soluble nutrients.

So vitamin D is one of those fat soluble nutrients. So she couldn’t actually absorb the vitamin D that she was taking in through supplementation or the food that she was eating because she had a deeper bile issue present, right? So she couldn’t actually break it down and utilize it efficiently. So once again, throwing supplements on this is a waste. It’s not what she needs. We need to optimize function at that deeper level. systemic dys…

Hannah Aylward (26:42.6)

Depletion and stress was a big pattern for her right adrenal dysfunction. She had dysregulated HPA axis function low iron low vitamin D and this chronic stress that over time suppresses digestion and suppresses intestinal immunity so and we’re looking at someone who is running on stress hormones that’s going to Suppress digestive function over time your body can handle some stress. It’s not all bad Not all cortisol is bad, but we know that cortisol

pokes holes in the gut barrier. It is going to, when you’re in that fight or flight state, it’s going to suppress digestive function. It’s going to negatively impact your gut motility and it’s going to decrease that secretory IgA and that gut immune function as well. So she was also showing a big picture of just like serious depletion.

And I think that this is a big piece that so many practitioners and people miss as well, because if we just throw a bunch of supplements at you, and we just throw a bunch of stuff to eradicate infections and overgrowth and all that stuff, but you don’t have the resources, your body doesn’t have the resources that it needs to actually get better, you’re not going to. So we did a lot of prep work with her to support her body, which I’ll talk about, before we jumped into any of that kind of more like gut microbiome rebalancing work with her.

Most approaches, many approaches fail because you’ll just strip out a bunch of foods. You’ll slap on a bunch of random supplements without understanding if your body actually needs them. Like why are we taking a probiotic? Why are we taking digestive enzymes? Why are we taking collagen? Is it something that your body actually needs or HCL? Is it what your body is showing that it needs right now? Cause you can buy, you can spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on random gut healing supplements. But if you don’t know what you’re actually addressing, it’s just a total waste, right? So.

Most people will just slap random supplements on it or they’ll just start pulling out tons and tons of foods thinking that that will heal the gut and it won’t when there are deeper layers of dysfunction, digestive capacity, immune function, heavy inflammation, your gut microbiome imbalances. We have to address this kind of stuff, right? Another thing that will happen is people will just jump head first into intensive protocols. They’ll jump head first into parasite cleanses or whatever without even knowing if they need them.

Hannah Aylward (28:53.005)

They’ll just jump into a bunch of antimicrobials. We get a lot of these clients who are like, my functional medicine doctor just put me on XYZ and I can’t even tolerate it. I can’t even take these supplements, right? Because your body is too depleted to even tolerate the interventions that are being recommended to you. So we have to support gut immune function, adrenal function, blood sugar regulation, gut immune support before we move you forward into that next phase. So what doesn’t work?

just eliminating a ton of foods, jumping into eradication of antimicrobials too early, ignoring digestive function and the nervous system regulation and treating and the kind of slapping band-aids on symptoms as opposed to repairing systems. Once again, we don’t want to go, okay, you have constipation, here’s a laxative.

We want to ask, why do you have the constipation? What is causing the constipation? That is the work that we do here. Same thing, you could even apply this like HCL. Like if someone has low stomach acid and then they take HCL, well, why do you have low stomach acid? There are many different underlying reasons why you could have low stomach acid. So we have to dig deeper and understand the deeper why to get you feeling better. So.

how we actually got this client feeling better. just before I jump into that, just to recap kind of what we found, right? So she had been dealing with loads and loads of stuff and she had IBS, constipation, diarrhea, tons of bloating, food reactions, insensitivities, mucus, floating stools, undigested food in her stools, rotten egg smelling, gas, fatigue, weight gain, like chronic fatigue, low iron, low vitamin D, been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s and had really high antibodies. And then in her actual test results we found,

low stomach acid, low enzyme secretion, fat malabsorption issues, gut infections, bacterial overgrowth and fungal overgrowth in her gut. So step one in our process is really to stabilize and rebuild the foundation. have to make sure that your body is strong enough.

Hannah Aylward (30:53.058)

before we move it forward. So we did a lot of adrenal work with her. We added in things like magnesium. We added in things like mineral repletion. We worked on balancing blood sugar levels with her. We worked on opening up drainage pathways with her so these toxins could actually be excreted out of the body. We had to make sure that her body actually felt safe and supported before we moved into anything more aggressive here. We also supported her iron recycling system right off the bat because of those low iron levels. So we worked on repleting.

key nutrients for healthy cortisol levels and healthy adrenal function, things like B vitamins, magnesium, vitamin C, salt, sodium, potassium, right? Then we also worked on her iron recycling system. Things like bioavailable copper and retinol or that form of vitamin A are really important so your body can actually use the iron that it has, that it’s consuming, right? So we need to be able to recycle the iron that the body has in it.

We also worked on supporting her digestive function so she could actually break down her food more efficiently. So that was kind of that next stage, next phase, right? Phase number one, adrenal support, blood sugar regulation, drainage work, mineral repletion, and iron recycling support. Phase number two for her was going to be working on restoring that digestive function. So we supported her stomach acid levels. We supported her enzyme secretion as well because she was not.

She was not producing like barely any pancreatic enzymes. Her pancreas wasn’t creating adequate enzymes. So she was just constantly bloated and undigested food was in her stool, right? We also work to support healthy bile flow with her in a few different ways. Supplements, foods can be brought in in here. Nervous system support can be brought in here. And that is to help her body actually break down the fats that she’s eating more efficiently. And we also put in some targeted liver work with her too.

keeping in mind that the majority of that thyroid hormone is converted in the liver, right? So we have to support the liver in essentially any thyroid case and basically any gut case as well. Then we also worked on supporting her gut immune function, the targeted immunoglobulins to support her gut immune function and its ability to kind of rebalance the gut microbiome. So that was kind of phase number two. Then our next phase, so these were the first two phases and we had to do that before we jumped into any eradication with her.

Hannah Aylward (33:10.53)

Our next phase was we went in and we targeted these infections and overgrowth that she had. So we worked on eradicating a bacterial infection that she had that was damaging the parietal cells, that was damaging her body’s ability to produce stomach acid and causing a lot of inflammation. So we go in with targeted work to eradicate that. And then we worked on bringing down levels of other overgrown bacteria and also the fungal overgrowth that she was presenting with too. There is an order to all of this. So you don’t wanna just slap

random things in here and hope that you get better. We have to go phase one, phase two, phase three. Like I said, I’ve been doing this for like over nine years. This is by far what we see work the best for people. It’s not just like throw random things at it and see what sticks, right? So we wanted to eradicate that bacterial infection. And then we wanted to eradicate some bacterial overgrowth and the fungal overgrowth that she was experiencing too. This resulted in bloating, no more bloating, it’s gone.

Her thyroid antibodies dropped drastically. But before I jump into that, because there’s one last phase here that I want to talk about with you, we then came in with targeted support to repair her gut lining and restore the gut microbiome. So after we bring down levels of pathogenic bacteria, we want to support the growth of her good gut bacteria, because she came in and she had some low levels.

of some of her good gut bacteria like acrimansia mucinophila, which is one of those keystone strands of gut bacteria, very supportive of metabolic function, gut barrier function, et cetera. So she had undetectable levels of that. So we wanted to restore these levels of her good gut bacteria, because these are just as important as getting rid of the quote unquote bad gut bacteria, right? So this was kind of our whole process that we put her through. And she worked with us inside of my Healin’ Guts + Shakin’ Butts program.

This is what we walk all of our clients through inside of this program. Now, after this work, right, she had daily regular bowel movements, no more bloating. She literally had no more bloating, which is crazy. That’s amazing, right? More energy than she knew what to do with. Food freedom. She was feeling way less afraid to eat different foods. She went from a two, she came into my program as a two. We always ask like on a scale of one to 10, how do you feel now?

Hannah Aylward (35:21.957)

She was a two, that’s pretty low, and by the end, she was an eight, and she wasn’t even fully finished with her protocol, which is also amazing. Her thyroid antibodies dropped 500 points. This is because we took down the stressors that were contributing to that systemic inflammation, and then the thyroid antibodies were able to normalize. That’s a huge, huge win, as I’m sure you understand if you have.

if you’ve been dealing with something like Hashimoto’s. So we saw her thyroid antibodies drop over 500 points. So not only did her digestion get significantly better, she was having daily regular bowel movements, her bloating was gone, her food fear was drastically decreasing, and also her thyroid antibodies plummeted as well. So this is really what can happen when we look at things a bit…

deeper, right? We want to peel back the layers and understand what are the deeper root causes to someone’s chronic gut and digestive issues. Not everyone’s process is exactly the same. We add in customized protocols and test results with every single client that we work with. We have our systems and structures and frameworks. I have my process to get someone from point A to point B, but every individual is going to be a little different because what’s happening in your body.

is different than what’s happening in my body or this other person’s body, right? Health is very bio individual. Everyone’s body’s at a slightly different point. So we don’t just say, hey, go take these four supplements and come back in six months. Doesn’t work. If it did, you’d probably already be feeling better, right? So we come in and we add in targeted functional labs to help us understand what’s going on.

underneath the surface, peel back the layers of all of these different things that you’re experiencing and ask why are these things happening at once. I think I forgot to also mention that she was dealing with high cholesterol as well, which is often just a sign of inflammation and thyroid and liver issues. So all of these things are connected, right?

Hannah Aylward (37:19.085)

So this is really the work that we do when we work with our clients inside of my program. She worked with us inside of my healing guts and shaking butts program. It’s a four month program in the program. We bring in functional stool testing. We will layer in some additional lab work if needed. Sometimes some blood work is helpful. Sometimes an HTML is helpful. Sometimes an environmental toxin panel is helpful. It really depends on your case and what we see that you need. And then from there, we build out customized protocols using targeted nutrition.

Customized supplements and supplement protocols, lifestyle strategies and tweaks to get our clients from these chronic gut and digestive issues to feeling like they can eat way more foods, they’re not dealing with the bloating and they’re having regular bowel movements. And her energy, right? She was like, I have so much energy, I don’t even know what to do with myself. Like now I have all this energy after work. I’m gonna like pick up a new hobby. And which was just amazing to see. Like seeing her from the beginning of the program to the end of the program, she was a different person.

And that was like four months of targeted work, which is actually crazy. Like that’s pretty amazing after 10 years of struggling. So some people will really start to turn the corner in like two, three months. But our pro, I would say minimum four months is needed. Some people need like six, eight months. It really depends on your case and everything that you have going on in your health case. It’s not the exact same for everyone, right?

but we want to use functional labs, nutrition and customized supplement protocols and nervous system work and lifestyle strategies to basically help calm all the noise down in your body, help your body feel safe, repair your gut at the root cause level. And then we see these kinds of transformations and results, which is really obviously very fulfilling for me and really amazing, amazing to see, especially with someone who’s been struggling for about 10 years. So.

We don’t want to just guess at what you have going on. always want to test, right? You, you never want to use a one-piece one size fits all protocol because clearly that doesn’t work. It just doesn’t. And we always want to work, use a more structured and root cause approach to helping our clients get better. So, that’s what I really have to share with you guys. And, I will be teaching, I haven’t publicly announced this yet, but I will be teaching a live masterclass where I’ll walk you through my step-by-step gut repairing.

Hannah Aylward (39:31.383)

Method we’re going to discuss more case studies. We’re going to discuss more stuff about like ibs and leaky gut and food sensitivities You’ll learn a ton about gut health in this class You’ll learn about how to work with us if that’s of interest to you We’ll walk through different client case studies as well Like I said, like i’ll pull up their lab results and kind of walk you guys through all of that And I will be teaching this class on I think it’s april 29th. So stay tuned for this announcement

and we’ll get you signed up for class. And I always do like a live Q and A at the end of class too. It’s really interactive and we go for like an hour to an hour and a half. I love teaching. If you didn’t know, I love teaching. So it’s really fun. you know, if you’re interested, if you’re ready to like let 2026 be the year that you overcome your chronic digestive issues, highly, highly recommend coming to class. It’s totally free and it’ll be super, super informative and I’ll walk you through our whole process in even more detail. So.

Stay tuned for that and answer questions and all that good stuff. we usually have like over thousand people signed up for class. So it’s a time. So stay tuned for that. I’ll be announcing that soon. And then if any of their questions come up, if you guys have any questions, if you’re interested in working with us, if you wanna dive into functional lab work and testing and customized protocols and interventions to finally address the root causes of your chronic and digestive issues.

We’d love to help you. So you can just send me a message and we can chat and make sure we’re the right fit to help you. I’ll be very honest and let you know if I think we can help you, if I feel confident in that. And we can kind of go from there. Okay, you guys, hugs to each and every one of you. Hope this was so, helpful and I’ll see you soon. Okay, bye everyone.