Hannah Aylward (00:00.11)

We recommend to most of our clients, of course there’s nuance here, but we recommend sticking to three main meals a day. If you need a snack in there, that’s fine, but you want to try to space your meals three to four hours apart throughout the day. And then you want to give yourself a good 12 hours in the evening to rest and repair and allow that migrating motor complex to really work its job and continue to sweep that debris through the small intestine.

to decrease your risk of SIBO, which will decrease things like bloating and gas and burping and all of that stuff.

Hannah Aylward (00:41.934)

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, my dears, and welcome back to another episode of the Nutrient Dense Podcast.

Today we’re going to be diving into one of the most overlooked systems in gut health, which is something called the migrating motor complex. If you struggle with chronic bloating, gas, recurring SIBO or constipation, this is an episode that you don’t want to miss. Today we’re breaking down what the MMC, that migrating motor complex actually is, why it matters, how it impacts bloating, constipation, SIBO, and what may actually be disrupting it. So,

Let’s dive in to this little mini training. The migrating motor complex is something I’ve been talking about for quite some time now. And it’s really your guts natural cleaning wave or that house internal housekeeping system. So you can think of it as your guts own self-cleaning mechanism. And I love kind of using this language because I think in today’s world,

There are so many interventions that we can utilize to support our overall health and people are talking about all the things, right? Cold plunges and peptides and vibration plates and supplements, supplements, supplements and all of this stuff, right? Which is all great in its own way, but your body is so beautifully and intelligently designed and it has its own internal housekeeping systems. It has its own self-cleaning mechanisms.

Hannah Aylward (02:49.559)

detoxification systems, all of those things, your body is working to keep you feeling good and repairing and feeling healthy day in and day out. And I just think it’s important to kind of remember that, especially if we’ve been dealing with a lot of chronic gut and GI issues or chronic health issues for a long time. Just remember your body is always trying to work with you. We just have to get everything out of the way that’s not letting it kind of do what it knows how to do best. Sometimes we need external interventions, no problem there, no shame attached to that.

but I think it’s also really important to understand and reconnect to our body’s own self-healing and self-cleaning mechanisms. So the migrating motor complex is one of these self-cleaning mechanisms that the gut utilizes to kind of keep things in check. So your migrating motor complex or your MMC creates rhythmic contractions that sweep through the stomach and the small intestine. So it kind of acts as this broom that brushes food debris, excess food particles that are left over

through the stomach, through the small intestine, and it helps it clear these leftover food particles, bacteria, right? Like I mentioned, debris or even mucus. To keep things from overgrowing in the small intestine, this is why it plays a really big role in something like SIBO. People with SIBO or that small intestinal bacterial overgrowth that comes with like lot of bloating and gas and nausea and abdominal distension typically have interruptions in their MMC or that migrating motor complex. what’s really important to understand is

that this is primarily active between your meals during a fasted state. So this mechanism is nerve regulated and it kicks on in a fasted state. So it does a lot of its work overnight while you’re sleeping. This is why resting your GI tract in the evening and making sure you’re spacing out that last meal from the evening before to that next meal the morning before, a good 12 hours is a very supportive way to

encourage your gut’s own self-cleaning mechanism and help your migrating motor complex kind of do its job and do its thing. Now, I’m not a huge fan of longer fasts, especially for menstruating women. It tends to put our bodies in more of a fight or flight state. We’re going to enter that sympathetic dominant state. The body’s going to secrete cortisol. That’s going to then negatively impact our gut motility. It can increase blood sugar. It’s going to decrease digestive function as well. So

Hannah Aylward (05:15.308)

In order to kind of find that sweet spot where we are resting our GI tract and allowing this guts self-cleaning mechanism to actually do its job, allowing the migraine motor complex to work without pushing our body into that fight or flight state. It’s really for most of us that 12 hour mark. Now what’s really important here is we don’t want to wait too, too long after waking up to delay eating. So

we recommend to most of our clients to have their first meal, have that breakfast within an hour or so of waking up. So the best practice for this is really, if you’re gonna do anything, if you need to space things out a little bit more, you wanna push dinner a little earlier, avoid eating really late at night, and then wake up and eat within an hour of waking up. So it’s really quite simple and many of us do it naturally. What really interrupts it is like the late night snacking.

or working too late and then eating too late, or just having a circadian rhythm that’s like super dysregulated. These are the things that can really interrupt this process. But for most of us, if we eat, you know, dinner at seven o’clock at night, we don’t want to eat breakfast until seven a.m. the next morning, which is going to work for most of us, right? This is also my personal theory as to why we actually see a lot of nurses. So we get a lot of registered nurses as our clients.

And these are people with health backgrounds and they’re also people that are working overnights, 12 hour shifts, and they tend to have really disrupted circadian rhythms because of the shift work, right? Especially if they’re working those long overnight shifts as well. And so many of them end up having SIBO. And I think it’s a combination of the chronic high stress that they are exposed to, walking into quite literally emergency situations.

And then also having this real disrupted circadian rhythm that impacts the migraine motor complex. So this little broom, we can kind of call it that, this little broom that’s going to sweep through the excess food particles and debris and mucus and bacteria through the small intestine, keeping things moving, supporting our gut motility isn’t able to actually work efficiently. If we have a seriously dysregulated or disrupted circadian rhythm, and or if we’re not actually resting our digestive tract,

Hannah Aylward (07:33.852)

long enough. So when the migrating motor complex isn’t functioning properly, we will see food sitting for too long in the GI tract. This is going to lead to bacteria eating up this food. This food is going to then it’s going to be fermented by these bacteria. And these bacteria are what give off gases that you feel as bloating, that you feel as abdominal dissension or burping or just gas, right? So we get this food sitting in the GI tract for too long.

bacteria ferment this food, gas then builds up, the bacteria give off these gases, which then causes a lot of the discomfort that you may experience if you have a lot of these digestive issues. And this is also gonna contribute to motility slowing down. And then we get this overgrowth of microbes and bacteria in the small intestine. So if we’re ever looking at a SIBO case, or if we’re ever looking at a chronic dysbiosis case,

or someone that’s dealing with a lot of conservation and or bloating, oftentimes they come together. We always want to work to optimize this MMC function. And if you’ve listened to the podcast for a little while now, or you’ve come to any of my trainings, I tend to use this analogy a lot. you can think of a river when, when you go to the river or like a creek or whatever, whatever it is where there’s moving water, right? So say you go down to the creek and there’s little rocks in the creek and the water is rushing through the creek.

you’ll see that the water is pretty clear, right? It’s, you could drink it. mean, maybe don’t drink it. There might be some bacteria in there or giardia or something like that. Well, you want to filter it. But if you were to look at the water, it’s clear. You don’t have that same film that you would have atop the water as something like a pond. So if you go to a pond where the water is still, you’re going to see that biofilm production take place on top of the pond because it’s a still water. There’s no movement to it.

So you can think of that same thing with your GI tract. Now your gut is really one long tube. Like think of it as a long hose. And if anything is not moving through at a good rate, we don’t want it moving through too quickly or we’re going to have poor nutrient absorption in the case of like diarrhea. And you don’t want it moving through too slowly in the case of constipation, because we’re then going to get that bacterial and biofilm buildup in the GI tract, which is then going to cause a lot of these symptoms. Things like SIBO.

Hannah Aylward (09:51.817)

dysbiosis, this bacterial overgrowth, which then feels and looks like gas and bloating and constipation and rosacea and eczema and this kind of stuff. So we want your digestive function and your gut to be more like a creek or a river and less like a pond or that kind of like still body of water that allows for that bacteria buildup to take place, that fermentation to take place. So when the migraine motor complex isn’t working properly,

and we’re not allowing it to turn on in this fasted state. Once again, that food’s going to sit there. It’s going to overfeed those bacteria and that’s going to then build up and overproduce those gases that you are then going to feel. And you may even be able to see, right? You’re like, I look four to six months pregnant with bloating after I eat a meal. Well, we always want to take a look at migrating motor complex in that case. So things that can be associated with poor function are those things. I’ve already kind of alluded to some of these, but just wanted to run through a list with you guys.

bloating, constipation, trapped gas, upper abdominal distension, reflux, nausea, feeling full very quickly, SIBO, recurring SIBO. So maybe your SIBO gets better and then it comes back, right? And also food sensitivities and intolerances. So you can work to kill off bacteria as much as you want. You can do as many antimicrobial protocols as you want. You can run as many functional stool tests as you want.

But if the environment is not kind of conducive to maintaining homeostasis, if your migrating motor complex isn’t functioning efficiently, you’re missing out on your gut’s own self-cleaning mechanism. So oftentimes in this space, there’s so much noise in this space. If you listen to multiple podcasts, if you…

are on Instagram and you follow health accounts, the noise is unreal and everyone has varying opinions. It’s SIBO, it’s Candida, it’s parasites, it’s mold, it’s nervous system, it’s this, it’s that, it’s metals, it’s lime. I mean, the list goes on and on, right? And it’s exhausting. And the truth is, is that it varies person to person. It’s never, there’s never one clear cut answer for one person, which is why testing and investigation and working with a professional is involved and your best route to really getting better and feeling better.

Hannah Aylward (12:05.29)

When it comes to something like dysbiosis, a lot of people want to dig deeper and I encourage that, right? So when we’re working with a client and we’re running functional stool testing and maybe they are showing patterns of a lot of bacterial overgrowth. So they may have really high levels of commensal bacteria, which are those bacteria that make up a huge portion of your gut microbiome. These are going to be considered more like good gut bacteria. So something like formicides or bacteroidides, these make up a huge portion of your gut microbiome and these are considered good bacteria.

But when we have an overgrowth of these bacteria, we tend to fall into that more sebo-y pattern. We just have an overgrowth of bacteria across the board. This is when you feel super bloated and gassy and sensitive to a lot of those fiber-rich foods, those prebiotic-rich foods, and a lot of those gut-healthy foods as well. So things like, I mentioned the prebiotics or garlic or onions, these things that feed your good gut bacteria, fruits like apples, things like that.

Typically when we’re very reactive to those foods, we’re dealing with a bacterial overgrowth. But we always have to investigate what allowed the overgrowth to take place in the first place, right? So if we are working with a client, we see these patterns of overgrown bacteria. Maybe it’s in the small intestine, maybe it’s in large intestine. It’s likely in both. If you’re dealing with one, you’re probably dealing with both. That’s what I would say. Most frequently, if there’s overgrowth, the whole gut has kind of taken a beating there. And in this case,

A lot of people are like, well, what’s at the bottom of all of this, right? And sometimes, yes, it can be nervous systems regulation. Sometimes it can be an environmental toxin exposure like mold. And sometimes also we can be looking at a disrupted migrating motor complex. So if we really truly want to take a root cause approach to getting you feeling better and getting you stay, stay feeling better, then we have to optimize the migrating motor complex and its function.

because this is kind of how you maintain the results that you get, right? So you can come on in, you can do a more thorough gut protocol with us. We’re gonna talk to you about the MMC for sure. A lot of the practitioners on my team, we do discuss this a lot with our clients, because this is what your gut needs to actually do its job, right? And this is what’s going to prevent the bacterial overgrowth from taking place again. The gut also has other self-cleaning mechanisms as well. So things like stomach acid and things like bile flow. And I’ve…

Hannah Aylward (14:23.597)

talked about these in previous podcast episodes for you guys as well, but maybe I can do another, a separate podcast on this. I Biol needs its own podcast episode. And then I have done one on low stomach acid and we’ll link that in the show notes for you below as well. So go have a listen there. This is like how your gut maintains its ecosystem and maintains homeostasis. These are your guts self-cleaning mechanisms, right?

So the MMC is one of the body’s defenses against this bacterial overgrowth and impaired migrating motor complex function will increase your risk of SIBO. It will increase your risk of that dysbiosis coming back again. And many people relapse after they have SIBO, meaning they get treatment for it. And it comes right back because the underlying motility issue was never addressed. Sometimes it’s that migrating motor complex function. Sometimes we have other infections present. Sometimes we have low stomach acid, poor bile flow.

There are various root causes of something like SIBO, adhesion, structural abnormalities. The list goes on and on. have an entire episode on SIBO for you guys too. We’ll pop that in the show notes. Go have a listen to that one. If you have been told you have SIBO, if you think you have SIBO, if this is resonating with you, I do a deep dive on that topic in another episode. But tons of people relapse or really just like feel better. And then it comes right back because of this interruption in the motility. So we need to optimize that.

migrating motor complex function. Common causes of impaired migrating motor complex function are things like food poisoning. So maybe you ate one meal, you picked up an infection and you never felt the same after that. This can be for a variety of reasons. You could have bacterial infection, you could have a parasitic infection. You also could have gotten food poisoning that then damaged your motility. when sometimes we can get this post-infectious IBS that will take place where you get SIBO,

which is causing that quote unquote IBS, because obviously there’s a lot more to IBS. IBS is just a catchall term that has underlying root causes. And sometimes after you get an infection, you’ll get SIBO as that kind of like post infectious IBS picture. And what’s happening here is it’s damaging your motility. So your body will start to produce vinculin antibodies and that will then damage the nerves controlling your gut motility.

Hannah Aylward (16:38.048)

which can be the result of that food poisoning case. And then that’s going to damage your gut motility and interrupt that self-cleaning mechanism, right? So food poisoning can be an underlying root cause of impaired migrating motor complex. Another thing here is going to be chronic stress. So of course the nervous system plays a huge role in this. And when you are in that chronic fight or flight state, that chronically stressed out state, your gut motility will be impaired in the state and you will

automatically start producing fewer digestive secretions to actually break down your food. So it’s a double whammy, right? Everything starts moving more slowly when you were dealing with chronic stress. And then if you also start under eating, everything starts slowing down from there. So chronic stress, nervous systems, regulation are big underlying root causes here as well. Other things that can contribute are inflammation, hypothyroidism. So sluggish thyroid function will slow down your gut motility.

If you have hypothyroidism, you have Hashimoto’s, please go listen to my other podcast episode I have on that on the gut and thyroid connection. We’ll link that in the show notes below for you as well. That’s a really good episode. talk all about that. If your thyroid is suboptimal, that will cause slow motility, which is why one of the biggest signs of hypothyroidism is chronic constipation. We’ll also see weight loss resistance.

We’ll also see cold hands and feet because it just, everything’s going to slow down because your thyroid is kind of setting that metabolic pace for everything in the body and directly impacting your gut’s motility. Other things could be certain medications, adhesions or scar tissue. So this would be kind of more of like a structural thing in the gut. You can think of it as like a kink in the hose. Things aren’t able to flow through the gut at the rate at which we want them to. So things start to slow down.

Undereating is going to impair this activity as well, as I mentioned. Lack of movement. So if you listen to this podcast, you’ve probably heard me say before, like you cannot expect to not be constipated if you are never moving your body. We are living such sedentary lives, most of us, not all of us, but a lot of us are living incredibly sedentary lives. And if we’re not careful, we can get in like 2000 steps in a day. And I don’t think everyone needs eight or 10,000 steps, but like.

Hannah Aylward (18:51.286)

Let’s go for 7,000 y’all. Let’s try as much as we can. We’ve got to be moving. This directly supports our gut motility because it’s going to help things move through that GI tract. And if we are just sitting all day long, like you’re gonna end up constipated and you’re gonna need stronger intervention. So lack of movement will impair this. And then of course that disrupted circadian rhythm as I spoke about earlier. So one of the best things that you can do to support this is go to bed at the same time every night.

Try to be asleep before definitely midnight. If we can really do it, I would love to see you asleep by like 10 30. If you already go to bed at nine, you’re like, girl, please, I have kids. I’m in bed. That’s wonderful. And I support that. But for those of you guys that are like night owls, scrolling the phone, watching TV, whatever it might be, maybe you don’t have kids yet, whatever it doesn’t matter the situation, try to go to bed earlier and wake up at the same time as well. So we want to

go to sleep at the same time and we want to wake up at the same time. And it’s ideal if we do this on the weekends too, which I know is like a little boring. One day here and there, not a huge deal, don’t sweat it. But the consistency, our gut has its own circadian rhythm and it wants to go to the bathroom at the same time each day. And it wants to know when to expect food throughout the day as well. So it’s good to build in this consistency into your routine.

Hannah Aylward (20:16.41)

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 (22:32.322)

And just to touch on the nervous system and that migrating motor complex again. So the parasympathetic nervous system is that rest and digest nervous system response. And this is what helps to regulate digestion and your gut motility. So you cannot and will not optimally digest your food if you are chronically stressed. And you may not feel chronically stressed. You may, if I, sometimes I ask clients and I’m like, how stressed are you? And they’re like, I’m not that stressed, you know? And then I start.

I start poking and prodding and I’m like, girl, you are doing way too much and you never relax. And that’s not me yelling at you. And I fall victim to this for sure. Sometimes resting feels like more uncomfortable for me than just doing more things, which just leads to burnout. But you have to rest in order to be able to properly digest your food. So sometimes people don’t feel that stress. However, they often feel overwhelmed. So that could be a good question to ask yourself.

Instead of how stressed are you, I would pose the question, how often do you feel overwhelmed? And if you feel overwhelmed all the time, well, that’s stressed. That’s stressed, my dear. You’re feeling the stress. You’ve just normalized it. You’re just used to it, right? So you’re managing a million things at once and you’re doing a million things at once and you’re never quite letting your body settle down and drop into the present moment and actually re-regulate and rest. And we have to get this experience in your body more frequently. So

Chronic stress will suppress digestive signaling. In addition to just slowing down the digestive function, you will produce less stomach acid, you will produce fewer pancreatic enzymes, and once again, of course, that gut motility will be interrupted. The other thing that’s really, really important, you guys, is that the migraine motor complex kicks on in a fasted state. So if you are constantly grazing, if you are constantly snacking on things, if you’re constantly even drinking things,

anything with calories, anything with flavor. And this is not in any way about like counting calories and starving yourself, not at all. But the idea is that we want you eating a healthy enough meal and a healthy enough serving where you stay full for many hours to come. We don’t want you eating a meal and feeling starving an hour or two later and needing to eat again. And there’s this like mindset in the health and wellness space, especially the like diet.

Hannah Aylward (24:54.714)

weight loss space where it’s like rev your metabolism and eat six small meals a day, blah, blah, blah. When you’re in the digestive health space, you’re like, this is just messing up everyone’s migrating motor complex and it’s going to lead to SIBO. So I do not recommend that. We recommend to most of our clients, of course there’s nuance here, but we recommend sticking to three main meals a day. If you need a snack in there, that’s fine. But you want to try to space your meals three to four hours apart throughout the day.

And then you want to give yourself a good 12 hours in the evening to rest and repair and allow that migrating motor complex to really work its job and continue to sweep that debris through the small intestine to decrease your risk of SIBO, which will decrease things like bloating and gas and burping and all of that stuff. And an important distinction here as well. So we get the question a lot. Well, what about electrolytes or what about

If I’m just having a drink or I’m having a cup of tea with honey, anything like this, anything with calories. And one of the practitioners on my team even says anything with a sweetener, like a stevia, even though there’s no calories in this, we want to avoid this. So a plain cup of herbal tea, that’s just like a ginger, bag of ginger and hot water, you’ll be fine. That’s actually really supportive of your gut motility. Ginger kind of acts as that pro-kinetic to support the movement of food through the GI tract.

but you don’t want to say you’re finishing your meal and you’re eating it. And then an hour later, you’re like, I’m going to grab a poppy or an Ollie pop, or I’m going to grab some electrolytes or I’m going to grab a coconut water or whatever it might be. This is interrupting your migraine motor complex. So I’m hesitant to kind of be more militant with this because I think it can very easily become too intense. And then people are like afraid to eat and then they’re skipping meals and then they’re

You know, it’s like, kind of can feel diet culture-y a little quickly. So I don’t love it so much, but this is how your gut functions. So it’s never, never, never about pulling back on calories or eating less or going hungry. That’s not what it’s about at all. It’s more so about just giving your digestive tract ability to rest, an opportunity to rest. And in order to go that good three to four hours in between your meals, you have to eat enough.

Hannah Aylward (27:09.742)

So for anyone listening who’s like, there’s no way I’m gonna last four hours between my meals, I’m starving. You gotta eat more at your main meals. So a protein bar is not enough. A hard-boiled egg is not enough. A Greek yogurt is not enough, right? You have to make sure you’re getting in around 30 grams of protein per meal, maybe 35, maybe it’s 40. You wanna get in about 10 grams of fiber each meal, and you wanna get in a good amount of healthy fat in that meal too.

This formula is going to be slightly different for each and every one of you. There’s not a one size fits all, but if you are struggling at all to make it from one meal to the next, the first thing you want to increase is protein and fat little by little, and that’s going to help support satiety so you can make it to that next meal. once again, I know I’m kind of like reiterating this over and over, but I just want to be mindful because

especially women with chronic digestive issues, can very easily go down the path of like taking up more foods and heavy food restriction. And I’m just going to skip meals because then at least I don’t blow and all of that. And I have lived this experience and it’s just awful. And you become very afraid of food. I don’t want that for you. This is really not about the food and it’s not about going hungry. It’s more so about just allowing this nerve regulated function to turn on, which only happens in a fasted state. It turns on around the 90 minute mark on average. So

You want to at least go 90 minutes in between meals and meals to snacks and meals to other beverages. But I would love for you to go like three to four hours. And then at the very, very, very least, make sure that you’re getting in a good 12 hours overnight, which isn’t hard if you’re just eating a big enough dinner and then you’re just not eating enough till breakfast, or you’re having dinner, you’re having a little dessert afterwards. Totally fine. I’m all good with that. And then just wrap it up, finish it up and don’t eat again until that 12 hour mark.

later. And once again, I want you to wake up and eat within that first hour. So you don’t want to push it too far. It’s better to finish dinner earlier than it is to push breakfast out, which I know I’ve already said, but I just don’t want anyone like starving themselves and blood sugar crashing and all of that kind of stuff. No bueno. That’s not what we want here. It’s just about optimizing function. And unfortunately, when we do kind of pick all day, snack all day, we’re running around, we’re standing up in the kitchen as we’re like popping things into our mouths.

Hannah Aylward (29:25.496)

We don’t have any time because the kids are running around. We got to get the kids to school so we’re not fully eating a breakfast. You’re better off prepping stuff, sitting down, eating breakfast with your kids and then dropping them off at school and giving your digestive tract a moment to rest before you eat that next meal. Prioritize eating enough. Prioritize feeding yourself like you feed your children or your other loved ones. But either way, kids are no kids. You have to nourish yourself. You cannot pour from an empty cup.

And if you are running from thing to thing to thing and you’re forgetting to eat, or you don’t have, you quote unquote, don’t have time to eat. There has to be an adjustment made here. Make a smoothie, prep a smoothie, prep an overnight oats, hard boil a couple eggs, grab a healthier protein bar, do something so you can eat and then be full enough so you can rest your GI tract. So it can kind of do its job to avoid that bacterial overgrowth from taking place. So things that support healthy migrating motor complex function. We’ve already covered some of this meal spacing, right?

Allowing three to four, possibly even five hours. I really don’t like anyone pushing six plus. It’s typically too much for many of us. So I would say that three to four hour mark is kind of the sweet spot. You don’t want to go too long. Don’t go seven hours between lunch and dinner. It’s just too long. You got to eat sooner than that. And if you, if you’re finding that it’s like six to seven hours, eat a snack in between, in between that timeframe to kind of tide you over. You will want to avoid that constant grazing.

always putting little bites of things, one bite of something, the smallest bite of something is going to interrupt this function. So you just don’t want to be picking and snacking all day long because it will lead to that bacterial overgrowth picture. Circadian rhythm support, as I mentioned, going to bed at the same time, waking up at the same time, getting in bed, trying to be asleep by 10.30. If that feels way too early for you, at least before midnight, we’ve got to get you going to bed.

When you wake up in the morning and for the same timeframe, get out first thing in the morning, get sunlight exposure in your eyes. This is all helping to regulate your circadian rhythm and the body loves routine and it loves habits. It loves knowing what’s coming and it loves feeling safe. So we want to help your body feel safe, which means eating enough, resting enough, sunlight exposure, adequate sleep, adequate hydration, that kind of thing. Stress reduction of course is very important here.

Hannah Aylward (31:43.01)

Walking and movement helps to support gut motility, adequate nutrition and minerals and nervous system regulation. This is how we’re going to support this function. Other things that you can do to gently support your gut motility as well would be something like ginger, as I mentioned previously. So ginger is a commonly it’s prokinetic. It kind of acts as a prokinetic. It helps to support your gut motility. It helps move food through the GI tract. There are some good supplements that have combination formulas of like ginger and artichoke.

We’ll use those a lot with our clients that are struggling with motility issues. Another thing that I know I’ve mentioned in previous episodes is like brewing a really strong cup of ginger tea in the evening. So after you your dinner, giving it about an hour and then making a cup of ginger tea or like a batch of ginger tea, sipping on that. This is obviously going to be like super cost effective and an overall effective for your gut function, drinking up for bed and then letting that kind of go to work in the evening for you to support that migrating motor complex function.

Other things here too, like magnesium is very important for this. helps with of course bowel movements, nervous system regulation. It also helps with bile flow as well, which will then support your gut motility. Toning the vagus nerve is very helpful here too, to support that movement of food through the GI tract because the vagus nerve directly impacts your gut motility. So deep breathing, oming, humming, singing, chanting, cold exposure, all of these things support that vagal nerve tone.

Gargling can be a really good option here as well. So when you’re brushing your teeth in the morning, brush your teeth, rinse your mouth out, put water in your mouth and gargle really, like really ferociously, like to the point where your eyes start to water. I know that’s kind of intense, but that’s what’s going to really support you here. Do that in the morning, do that in the evening when you’re brushing your teeth, that is directly tonifying that vagus nerve. There are other kinds of gadgets on the market now too that could be helpful, but I like to start with these basics with a lot of people. And then of course addressing thyroid health, if need be.

We see a lot of women with sluggish thyroid function and when we optimize that function, gut motility will improve. And then of course, of course, of course, taking care of these underlying bacterial overgrowth. So if there is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, if there is large intestinal dysbiosis or fungal overgrowth in the gut or a parasitic infection, all of these things are going to impact your gut motility. oftentimes we won’t see clients. Sometimes clients will respond to kind of these, these initial first interventions, but very often

Hannah Aylward (34:08.898)

we have to get them deeper into their protocols where we’re really starting to make progress on the dysbiosis component. And then they’ll be like, okay, I’m going to the bathroom regularly. I’m having real full bowel movements. I’m not having to wipe a million times. I’m feeling fully complete after my bowel movements. They’re not sticky anymore. They’re not like sludgy anymore. They’re not sticking to the bowl. All of those are signs of fat maldigestion, inflammation, and dysbiosis, if any of that’s resonating with you. oftentimes we have to get these clients kind of deeper into that.

into those protocols to really see a shift there in the constipation. So addressing some of this dysbiosis in the gut will also support your gut motility because you’re just going to end up with less overproduction of gas, which will then positively impact constipation, decreasing your risk of constipation. Because what happens is when you’re constipated, that will cause more bloating and it’s going to cause more gas buildup.

So it’s a vicious cycle, right? It’s like the bloating leads to constipation and the constipation leads to more bloating because the gas gets trapped and that leads to stomach pain and it leads to abdominal distension and you just feeling like crap. And then you have like brain fog and your mood is off and all of that. It’s all connected here. So they kind of feed each other and addressing that dysbiosis component is going to help in both areas. They’re bringing down the bloating and then of course supporting things like constipation as well. So I hope that this episode was helpful for you today.

I think it’s really cool to just support our body’s natural functions. Sometimes, yes, of course, if you listen to this podcast, you know, we run functional labs, we build out very intensive customized protocols for clients. We hit it from all angles. We do a lot of deeper digging with our clientele and work to really optimize that underlying digestive function and rebalance and repair that gut microbiome. And we’ll use a lot of interventions in order to get there, right?

And at the same time, your body knows what to do. We modern day just completely removes us from existing in a way that’s supportive for our health. We sit all day. We’re in front of blue lights all day. We have overhead lights on at night. We’re staying up too late. We’re not going to bed when the sun goes down. Right. And sometimes these things are just not realistic for us, but we’re so disconnected to the way that we’re supposed to be existing or supposed to be living that of course.

Hannah Aylward (36:24.824)

gut issues come to the surface. Of course, hormonal balances come to the surface, right? We are overburdened with toxins and we’re living lives completely detached from nature and our natural rhythms. Optimizing your migrating motor complex through things like meal spacing and optimizing that circadian rhythm function and toning the vagus nerve and spacing out those meals. These are just very simple strategies that you can implement to allow your body to work in the way that it is designed to work that will then prevent more bacterial overgrowth from taking place. So

I think it’s cool to use these techniques. They’re just as important as these more intensive supplement interventions. And as always, if you’re looking for support on your gut repairing journey, you can book a strategy call with me at the link below in the show notes. In this call, we discuss your case, your history, and the best next steps to get you feeling better. So if you’re looking for that more intensive support, if you’re looking for functional labs and more intensive gut repairing protocols,

and someone to guide you throughout this whole process. We would love to help you with all of that. And you can just go ahead and book a strategy call with me at the link in the show notes below. Hope this was so, so helpful for you and I will see you in next week’s episode.