Hannah Aylward (00:00.046)

So for some people, adding bulk to the stool with certain fibers without improving this gut motility can make them feel more backed up, more bloated, more gassy. So if you notice where maybe this is resonating with you and you’re like, I do struggle with constipation. And everyone talks about fiber, fiber, fiber. So I’m trying to like add in more fiber and it’s making things worse. I’m more bloated, I’m more gassy, I’m more constipated. We likely need to peel back the layers here, definitely run some testing and also start to work on your gut motility.

Hannah Aylward (00:35.448)

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 health care. 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.

Hannah Aylward (01:23.16)

Hello, hello, my dears, and welcome back to another episode of the Nutrient Dense podcast. I’m excited to be recording this one today. Last week we took a little bit of a break that wasn’t planned. So we didn’t get an episode out last week. For this has only happened twice since I started this podcast, which feels totally insane. Honestly, I cannot even believe. I think this is gonna be the 89th episode, which is just it’s just bonkers. We’ll do something special. We’ll do like a special giveaway for the hundredth episode. So

Stay tuned, keep listening, and stay tuned for that one because I feel like we’ve got to, right? We’ve got to kick it off and do something. I cannot believe that I somehow have found things to talk about in this many episodes. So thank you for being here. I get messages each and every week from you guys that that listen to the podcast saying how much it’s helped you and kind of opened your eyes and taught you more than you’ve learned from your doctors and all of that great stuff. And I just want to let you know it means it really means so, so, so much to me. So thanks for being here.

And I hope to continue many, many more episodes for many years and continuing to serve you in the best way that I know how, kind of helping you get to the bottom of all of your chronic health issues and especially those chronic gut and digestive issues. So I’m excited to be back with you. Last week we were kind of finishing up our enrollment for my next cohort of HGSB. It’s our final round for the year. So that’s my signature gut repairing program called Healing Guts and Shaking Butts that I’ve been running since

2019, if you can imagine that. So this is like our 23rd round, 23rd cohort that we’ve taken through this program, which feels totally nuts. Honestly, when I look around at a lot of like my colleagues, they have no one’s running a program, but has been running a program for seven years. I don’t know if I’m nuts or we just we see so many women transform in this program and I just keep doing it. But I I am thinking next year we’ll we might do two cohorts instead of the normal three and shift some things around a little bit. So anyway.

Just a lot, a lot going on over here, bringing in new clients and kind of gearing up for this next cohort. And with that, life just got a little crazy. And I was like, I’m back to back on calls. I got six six to seven calls a day. I I can’t do the podcast. So we’re just gonna pick it back up next week. So thanks for being patient with me. Sometimes I don’t know if other people share this share this about their businesses, but like sometimes it just gets so busy and it’s like, okay, here we are. We gotta just kind of pause and regroup and

Hannah Aylward (03:45.516)

I also just feel like the energy lately, and just like the the collective energy has been very chaotic. It’s been, I feel like kind of like issue after issue, like this is happening, then this is happening. As an example, and I don’t know if I said in a previous episode, but I like tried to go to the post office. I think it took me three tries. And each time I went, their internet was out. And so like they couldn’t run credit cards and like accept payments or access like QR codes to ship the packages. It just felt like these things were happening that were totally

Just like what? Like that’s never happened before in my life. Like, why is that happening? And then I came back and like two days later it still wasn’t fixed. And I’m like racing to the post office in between, you know, client calls. And I’m just like, okay, what what is going on? So that’s kind of in the energy. That’s what the energy overall has felt like. Like that’s one example. But it just feels like things that should go easier are not going so easy. Like I should be able to just go run to the post office and drop off a package, but instead their internet is out over and over, and I’m like.

Okay. So I drive the 15 minutes, I go there, I can’t get it sorted. I drive back and I’m like, that was a total waste of my time. Okay. We will try again tomorrow. That’s kind of what the energy set has been feeling like, I I think. So if you’ve been feeling that too, you’re not alone. And hopefully that energy is dissipating, dissipating now. If you need to go listen to my episode on how to really like find the calm and the chaos and and re regulate yourself during times of chaos. I have that podcast episode and I was just speaking with someone last week and they said they had just

Listened to it and found it super helpful. So we’ll link that in the show notes for you below. Go have a listen to that one if you’re feeling like, wow, my it feels like my life has gotten it’s running the show. Like I’m not running the show. Everything that’s happening to me is running the show. Kind of like your life is dragging you down the street and across the floor. That kind of energy, that episode could be helpful. But that’s my kind of intro rant for today. We can kind of jump into the the bulk of the episode.

Now, in today’s episode, we’re going to be discussing why you may be feeling like you started eating healthier and you’re actually more bloated. And this is something that I hear often from women that come to work with us. And I know just how confusing and like straight up annoying this can feel when you’re like, okay, I want to get a hold of my gut issues, my digestive issues, and just like kind of feel better and my energy and my weight and my thyroid and all of that, maybe clearing up my skin. So I’m going to start to make these nutrition adjustments.

Hannah Aylward (06:08.108)

I want to start eating healthier. I want to start eating cleaner. I’m gonna put like take out, you know, gluten and dairy, and I’m gonna increase fruits and veggies and nuts and seeds and good proteins and all of that stuff. And then it feels like you try to do that and you’re actually more bloated and constipated and distended and gassy than you were before. It’s like you can almost feel your stomach can almost feel better eating like for some French fries than if you eat a salad, something like that. This can happen, and there are many reasons why you can feel like.

I started eating healthier and I’m more bloated after this. And I’m gonna break down kind of the main three reasons why that could be. Of course, health is nuanced, it’s multifactorial. A lot goes into underlying chronic digestive issues, which is I why I can even have this entire podcast like dedicated to chronic digestive issues. There’s a lot going on. Testing will help reveal a lot, but there are, I’d say, some consistent patterns that I will see in clients that reflect why they are.

Eating healthier and almost like feeling worse because of it. So today we’re breaking down those three major reasons why healthy foods maybe make you feel worse. And we’re going to begin in getting into like the difficulty tolerating fermentable fibers, histamine issues, and that kind of triggering things. And then this fat maldigestion piece. And before we dive into these like three major underlying root causes and kind of buckets, I do want to clarify that sometimes there we just have a bit of an adjustment period, right? So

If for someone that’s really eating very low fiber and then they jump into eating higher fiber, that can increase bloating in gas temporarily. So a temporary increase in gas can happen anytime we rapidly increase our fiber. So if you if you were like thinking you were eating healthy, then you started tracking some stuff and you’re like, my gosh, I’m only getting in like six grams of fiber a day or 10 grams of fiber a day. Cause fiber can be tricky to get it can be tricky to get in enough fiber in your day unless you’re

really kind of on it and and being really mindful with it and strategically adding things into upper fiber, like chia seeds or beans or whatever it might be. I kind of always use a fiber powder. I would love to get all my fiber from my diet and the food that I’m eating. And I definitely try to do that as well. But I just find like a scoop of sun fiber in my coffee in the morning gets me, I think it’s seven grams or so. And I try to kind of rotate those powders as well. Different prebiotic rich powders and fiber powders I can put in my

Hannah Aylward (08:29.048)

smoothies and my drinks and things like that just to kind of help me increase my fiber intake because things like salads and stuff, they actually will contain very, very little fiber. So you’re gonna find more of fibers in like whole grains and beans and those like seeds, like chia seeds and flaxseed and that kind of thing. But if you’re just eating like a salad with tomato and cucumber, there’s really very little fiber in that. So just kind of a note a note on that, right? But

So to kind of go back to my original point, if you feel like you are eating kind of healthy and then you’re like, I want increase my fiber, and maybe you jump from eight grams a day to 30 grams a day, because I would love to see you get in 30 grams of fiber per day. That is the goal for most of us, is 30 grams of fiber per day. So a general kind of thought would be, or kind of like framework to work with, would be 30 grams of protein per meal and then 10 grams of fiber per meal, giving you that 30 grams at the end of the day. So if we are increasing this rapidly, if we’re jumping into this.

If you haven’t eaten beans in like a decade and you jump into like, you know, a can of black bean soup, you will be bloated and gassy with that. I think a lot of people, a lot of people will would be, right? Because these gut bacteria ferment these fibers and that that’s what produces gas. So our gut bacteria are what give off these gases. And anytime someone’s going from very little fiber to, you know, fiber-rich smoothies and like grain bowls and beans and that kind of thing, we can experience this little adjustment period.

And the portion really matters here, right? Because that’s gonna increase your amount of fiber. So you may be totally fine with like, yeah, a quarter cup of chickpeas on your salad or something. But then if you eat a whole bowl of chickpea pasta, that’s like the main ingredient is chickpeas and it’s loaded up, it’s gonna be way, way more fiber and that might be too too much for you. But I would say more often we’re not seeing that it’s just an adjustment period, of course, because we specialize in chronic gut and digestive issues. So

There’s usually not just this kind of adjustment period that then goes away for the clients that are coming to work with us. We’re more so seeing these underlying root causes that are contributing to this, you know, excess gas and bloating and potentially even constipation and nausea and stomach cramping when they are starting to eat healthier. And and we’re gonna break down the reasons for that. So just FYI, a little bit more gas after increasing fiber can be normal, especially if you’re eating you know, like a like

Hannah Aylward (10:48.952)

Two cups of Brussels sprouts or something, like that, that’s a really gas-producing food. So that’s one thing. But the the client that we often work with is like feeling nine months pregnant or six months pregnant or whatever after eating, you know, a salad and or eating any anything healthy essentially. That is really showing us that there’s a deeper gut issue at play. So

The first main reason that I want to cover here is this fiber component and reactions to fiber-rich foods and this kind of increase in fermentation that’s happening in the gut. So, one of the main reasons why these healthy foods can trigger these gut indigestive issues and these symptoms are because many of these nutritious foods contain fermentable carbohydrates and fibers. So things like onions and garlic, beans and lentils, cruciferous veggies, apples, pears, different stone fruits.

Things like asparagus or artichokes, things like smoothies, where you are adding in, maybe you’re adding in fiber powders, or you’re adding in a bunch of berries, like raspberries are really rich in fiber, or maybe you’re adding in chia seeds and that kind of thing, right? Other things like cashews and pistachios, these foods will contain fermentable carbohydrates or fibers. And these carbohydrates aren’t necessarily fully absorbed in the small intestine. And our gut microbes ferment these, which can then produce gas, right? So

Whenever we’re dealing with excess gas and bloating, it’s oftentimes a microbial issue at its core. So it’s not inherently harmful that this fermentation is happening. But the question is, are we getting this like overproduction of fermentation because we have an overabundance of bacteria in the gut? So that is this is definitely kind of a more simplification of this. People can have excess gas and bloating.

For various different reasons. But I would say it is very, very common. Like when I’d speak to someone who’s interested in working with us and they’re like, I can’t eat onions, I can’t eat garlic, apples really tick me off. If I eat any fiber rich foods, I’m super gassy and bloated and distended. It will wreck the rest of my day. I can’t eat any beans. I can’t eat any lentils. That to me is highly suggestive that we have a bacterial overgrowth.

Hannah Aylward (13:00.44)

Specifically in the small intestine. However, we can also get overlapping kind of presentation there when we have an overgrowth in the large intestine as well. So when it comes to something like SIBO or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, we have these excessive bacteria present in the small intestine where fermentation can occur earlier than it should, which can often look like and feel like in the body, bloating shortly after meals, excessive gas and bloating, belching.

Visible abdominal distension, abdominal pain or pressure, constipation, or diarrhea, or a combination of the two where you swing back and forth. And you may even feel some temporary relief when we decrease this fiber content or decrease things like FODMAP rich foods. Now, FODMAPs are really just fermentable carbohydrates that are actually very good for our gut microbiome, especially the gut microbiome that’s present in the large intestine and the colon, right? So

We never want to exclude FODMAPs for a long period of time because it can actually have detrimental effects on our gut microbial diversity in the long run, right? Like a a couple of weeks is gonna be okay, but sometimes we’ll see clients who have been on the low FODMAP diet for like three years. That is a big no-no in my book because we’re not A, we’re not addressing like why you need the low FODMAP diet in the first place. And B, we are kind of setting your microbiome up.

For the opposite of success long term when we continue to restrict more foods, especially fibers. So when we have someone that is increasing their fiber intake, they are very sensitive to fiber-rich foods. In my mind, that I’m often thinking of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, and I’m often thinking of or andor large intestinal bacterial overgrowth, something like LIBO, where we have.

We just have too much. We’ve our bacteria is overgrown. So we are feeding our gut bacteria these fermentable carbohydrates and fibers, which are in theory good for our gut microbiome. However, when we already have an overgrowth, we have this excess fermentation and gas production happening, which is why for those that do have something like SIBO, it’s like almost unbearable. I remember when I had SIBO, I was so freaking bloated. It didn’t matter what I ate. And I was so gassy. Like I just had to go.

Hannah Aylward (15:23.16)

burp and past gas all the time. It’s awful. It’s like totally horrible and it’s super uncomfortable and it makes you like not want want to not go out and like hang out with people and eat, eat out at a restaurant because you don’t know how your body’s going to respond or what’s going to happen. The point I’m trying to make is if you started eating healthier and you notice that you’ve increased your fiber and maybe you’ve increased your fermentable carbohydrates as well, those fermentable fibers. So things like

Onions and garlic or beans or apples or whatever, you know, different foods like that. And you’ve seen an increase in gas production and bloating, we are likely looking at a microbial overgrowth underneath the surface. So this is where I would bring in functional lab testing to see what’s going on. We may want to run a SIBO breath test. We definitely would want to run a functional stool panel to see what’s going on there because.

When someone is so sensitive to those fibers and that SIBO picture is present, it’s never just SIBO, because even in the case of SIBO, we have to ask what allowed for this bacterial overgrowth to take place in the small intestine in the first place. It SIBO at its core is not a bacterial issue, even though the bacteria are what’s causing the gas and the bloating and the distension and the irregular bowel movements. Yes, the bacteria are causing those. However, we have to dig deeper and understand.

What allowed for this environment to kind of shift in this direction in the first place? And we always have to take a deeper look at things like gut motility and digestive function, digestive output, gut brain connection, you know, mineral deficiencies can play a role in this. Environmental toxin exposures like mold exposure can play a role in this. So there’s a lot more that we need to dig into here when we have these bacterial overgrowth cases because it doesn’t just happen. Chronic antibiotic use can cause it as well, food poisoning that damages our gut motility.

There are deeper kind of layers to all of this, right? And your gut motility plays a huge role here. So, you know, the small intestine relies on this coordinated movement between meals to clear bacteria and food residue forward. And constipation and impaired motility can allow this fermentation and gas to accumulate in the bowels. And that’s what you’re feeling essentially. So adding more fiber to someone that has significant constipation.

Hannah Aylward (17:38.37)

Doesn’t always solve this underlying gut motility or transit problem. It can actually even make it worse, right? So for some people, adding bulk to the stool with certain fibers without improving this gut motility can make them feel more backed up, more bloated, more gassy. So if you notice where, you know, maybe this is resonating with you and you’re like, I do struggle with constipation. And everyone talks about fiber, fiber, fiber. So I’m trying to add in more fiber and it’s making things worse. I’m more bloated, I’m more gassy, I’m more constipated.

We likely need to peel back the layers here, definitely run some testing and also start to work on your gut motility. Now I have a whole podcast episode on the migrating motor complex. I want to say it’s episode 72, but we will make sure that we put the right one in the show notes for you below. If this is resonating with you, please go listen to this episode because I have tons of tips in there and I go into more depth about the science of the MMC and why it’s important and all of that kind of stuff.

And that’s your migrating motor complex. This is what’s kind of helping to influence the movement of food through your GI tract. And it’s one of your guts built-in self-cleaning mechanisms that helps to prevent the spectral overgrowth from taking place. So go listen to that episode next if this is resonating with you. But this pattern of I eat healthier, I’m eating like more, I noticed that I increased my fiber, and I my body didn’t kind of get used to it, going back to what I was.

I was speaking about initially here, like a couple days where you’re like, yeah, I’m a little more bloated and gassy. And then I kind of it kind of evens out and I feel okay. If you’re like, no, I cannot tolerate these fibers. We are very, very likely looking at a microbial imbalance in the gut. Quite often it’s that bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine. However, it can also be a bacterial overgrowth in the large intestine. And it can absolutely also be both at the same time. So

I have gotten that question before where it’s like, can you have dysbiosis in the large intestine and the small intestine simultaneously? And that’s an absolute yes. Like, very, very common, I would say, to have an overgrowth present in both places. So we would run testing, we’d run a SIBO breath test, that would be confirmed overgrowth. We’d run a functional stool panel. We’d have overabundance of opportunistic dysbiotic bacteria on that as well.

Hannah Aylward (19:48.928)

And then when I see that, I’m like, yeah, of course this person is feeling like super bloated and gassy and they can’t tolerate these fibers. It’s almost like you’re overfeeding all of this bacteria that’s already overgrown. We’re getting this fermentation of these carbohydrates, and that is what is giving off the gas that you’re feeling, like as bloating, as burping, belching, as you know, passing gas flatulence, or like sometimes when the bloating in the gas gets so bad, and then it will impact your constipation. And that works both ways too, right? Because when you’re constipated.

And things are stool is sitting in the GI tract longer than we want it to, that will also contribute to this excess fermentation and cause make bloating worse. So they work kind of together. And it’s not sometimes there is some strategy with like what do we hit first? We like to get the bowels moving first before we adjust the bacterial load at all. However, for some people, we really need to bring those bacterial levels down but before the bowels will even start like moving more regularly. So

That is gonna be one of these prominent underlying kind of root causes to I’m eating healthier and I’m feeling worse.

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 taste 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

Hannah Aylward (21:51.434)

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. Equip prime 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.

I’m a big believer that the right supplements can be game changing when it comes to overcoming things like burnout, gut issues, slow thyroid function, low energy, acne, and so much more. But the supplement industry is honestly the wild, wild west. The FDA doesn’t approve supplements before they’re sold, so it’s really important to choose high quality brands whenever purchasing. Many brands aren’t third party tested. Some don’t actually contain what’s even listed on the label. Totally crazy, I know.

And quality can vary a lot from company to company. That’s exactly why we use FullScript with all of our clients. Through my online supplement dispensary with FullScript, you can get access to all of the professional grade third-party tested supplements that I trust and use with clients. Fullscript vets brands before they’re introduced into the supplement catalog, and they hold them accountable to quality standards every year.

Hannah Aylward (24:04.664)

Whether you’re looking for a high quality magnesium or probiotic or digestive enzymes, maybe vitamin D, anything in between, you can shop them all in one place with confidence on Full Script. This is personally where I purchase all of my supplements, and I’m not kidding when I say I have all of my friends and family purchase from there too. If you’re going to invest in supplements, you want to actually get what you think you’re getting and not just a bunch of fillers or random ingredients.

As a listener of the Nutrient Dense podcast, you’ll also receive 15% off of your orders and you’ll get free shipping on orders over $50. You can get exclusive access through my personal FullScript store at us.fullscript.com forward slash welcome forward slash Han. Through this link, you can also access my favorite product catalogs like supplements for nervous system support and my current favorites for gut and digestive health.

Once again, you can go to us.fullscript.com forward slash welcome, forward slash hand, or find that link in the show notes below and get access to practitioner grade third party tested supplements for fifteen percent off.

Hannah Aylward (25:14.178)

Now the next one that we see a lot with this pattern is when we have a histamine issue when we have like histamine overload or histamine intolerance picture. And I see this pop up with our clients that come into my HDSB program or come in to work with us one on one and we make some diet changes, right? And then they start to go, Well, after I eat breakfast, every time I eat this breakfast, I have diarrhea afterwards. So I start to dig in, right?

This is why working with someone is so important. And one one of the many reasons, because they can help you decipher all of this. So this is making me think of a client. Maybe it was like last year at this point. I don’t know why. My my brain like really rooted this one in because she was eating this healthy breakfast. She was eating like two to three eggs, a piece of gluten-free toast and avocado. And she was noticing that after she was eating that for breakfast, which is great, we’ve got healthy fats, we’ve got

Healthy proteins, choline, vitamin D and the eggs. Like that’s all wonderful. We’ve got some healthy carbohydrates. Avocado is also loaded with fiber. It’s an awesome source of fiber. So this is like a pretty well-balanced meal. You know, maybe she wants to add in a little, like half cup of raspberries with that for some more fiber. That’s great. Protein, fiber, fat, carbohydrates. This is like a well-balanced breakfast for anyone. I would say more than two eggs usually, because it’s not enough protein. But maybe, you know, if it was three eggs or some egg whites added in there.

That’s a great option. But she was feeling like I’m eating this breakfast and I’m kind of running to the bathroom after I eat this breakfast. So when I hear that, I start digging in, right? What food is contributing to this? So then I had her do a little experiment and just see how her body responded. So I said, take out the avocado and have just the eggs with the gluten free toast and then come back to me and see how you feel. Do that for three days and let me know. And then it was like three days later, four days later, and she was like, I’m not running to the bathroom anymore.

I’m like, okay, avocado is high in histamine. So what’s very likely happening is we’re having this kind of like histamine dump after we are this histamine response, really, after we’re eating this avocado. Cause she was using like half an avocado at a time. And avocado is a totally healthy food. It’s a great source of healthy, like good fibers and healthy fats, and saluted with potassium as well. So there’s nothing inherently wrong with avocado, right? If you’re not having that response, please, please eat avocado. There’s it’s great for you.

Hannah Aylward (27:29.218)

But this is where it can get tricky. And this is why digging deeper and understanding your underlying root causes and understanding that it’s not a one size fits all for everyone is key here because I was able to offer her some clarity and then she’s like, okay, yes, I’m not feeling that way anymore. And I’m like, okay. So her reacting to the avocado in my head, I’m like, we’re either having a fat absorption issue, fat digestion issue, or a histamine issue. And I think to differentiate between the two, I told her, yeah, I was like, keep the butter. So you have fat and the egg yolks have fat. So keep all of that.

If you still feel like you’re running to the bathroom, there could be something else going on. But with the avocado, that’s the big histamine, the big histamine piece here. And this can often happen when we are making like green smoothies, right? When we’re making smoothies with like raspberries and lemon and spinach and things like that and avocado, maybe we’re loading a smoothie up with all of those things, or maybe we’re trying to support our gut health. So like the fermented foods, the kombucha and kefir and yogurt and

Sauerkraut and that kind of stuff, all of those fermented foods are going to be high in histamine. Things like bone broth and collagen, even can be higher in histamine as well. And then things like leftovers. So if you start to meal prep, because you’re like trying to eat healthy and you want to set yourself up for success success for the week, but these leftovers are sitting in your fridge for a few days, the histamine levels in the food will rise. So you may find that you, you’re like, I feel worse after eating all this healthy food. Like I meal prepped all this stuff.

Or I’m making these, you know, green smoothies with avocado and spinach and lemon and all this stuff and raspberries, and I’m feeling flushed afterwards. I’m running to the bathroom. My bloating is worse. I have like post-nasal drip afterwards, or maybe they’re giving you a headache. This can be a sign of a histamine issue. I’d say it’s it’s more common to see this kind of like headache, flushing of the face or rash and like diarrhea and bloating a response to it. However, we can have more kind of

systemic responses to it after we eat these foods that are higher in histamine. So individually, you know, these all of these foods that I’ve named are they are healthy foods. They’re nutritious foods. But sometimes if we combine them all at once and or if we’re dealing with bigger histamine issues at the core, we can mount a big response to these, right? So when it comes to these foods and if we do have a histamine issue, I have multiple podcast episodes on this. Like histamine is not

Hannah Aylward (29:49.922)

The real problem, we have to dig a bit deeper. And oftentimes when someone has a lot of digestive issues, we’ll have this overabundance of histamine-producing bacteria in the gut that is kind of filling up our histamine bucket, right? Whenever it comes to histamine intolerance or histamine overload, I want you to think of histamine as a bucket. And your body is going to produce histamine internally, naturally, right? It’s an immune, it’s an immune chemical that your body is naturally secreting.

You will get exposure to histamine through the food that you’re eating. You have to be able to metabolize this and clear it effectively. And when you can’t, the bucket starts to overflow. So when the bucket starts to overflow, that’s when we start to get a lot of these like symptoms. It could be bloating, cramping, diarrhea. Sometimes it’s nausea, itching, hives, rashes, nasal congestion. Sometimes we get like heart palpitations from it, headaches, anxiety, poor sleep. We can get that kind of in the middle of the night when we get this more like histamine dump picture.

All of this is pretty consistent with this. However, we have to ask like, why is the bucket overflowing? So that kind of comes down to am I unable to clear histamine effectively? And or is my body overproducing it? So I can’t I’m like producing too much and I I can’t clear it fast enough, or both. It’s likely both going on. And the gut plays a huge role in this, right? So when we have intestinal barrier damage, when we have something like increased intestinal permeability or leaky gut.

This is going to impact our ability to produce adequate levels of DAO or diamine oxidase, which is that mean enzyme that breaks down histamine in the gut. So the gut plays a huge role because it’s essentially helping us to like clear excess histamine in the gut. When we have that dysbiosis picture or that SIBO picture, we can start to overproduce histamine. Our gut bacteria can be producing too much histamine, and they can also be considered like histamine liberators and/or just activating.

Those mast cells to produce more histamine. And then we can also have this with like certain medications. Alcohol can do this as well. This kind of consistent mast cell activation. The mold piece will play a huge role in this. So if we are exposed to environmental toxins like mold, mold gives off off mycotoxins. These directly stimulate mast cells to release immune chemicals, including things like histamine. So it is very, very, very common for someone that has big mold exposure to develop.

Hannah Aylward (32:14.668)

You know, it could be full-blown MCAS. It could be like histamine overload. We have a client right now, and we just got our mold test back. And she is like, I think I have MCAS. My doctors don’t know what to do with this. Like, no one in my area knows how to help me with this. She’s got gut issues. She came to us for the gut issues, and I was like, I would love to run a mold test on you. She ran that. Her levels are like off the charts. Like she has super high levels of mycotoxins, which is contributing to her being so reactive to, you know, tons of things, things in her environment.

Foods higher in histamine and it’s contributing to her gut and digestive issues. Other things that can play a role here: high estrogen and/or poor histamine clearance, poor estrogen clearance. So estrogen will kind of stimulate those mast cells to release more histamine. And then histamine will also contribute to estrogen, kind of your body releasing more estrogen as well. They like to do this dance with each other where they kind of just like continue to go up and we will see estrogen dominance kind of

increase histamine issues. And a a big clue for this that you can kind of look for in your body is if you feel worse around ovulation. So that midpoint of your cycle and then possibly right before your cycle starts, in that midpoint of your cycle, we will see estrogen is its highest right before it starts to drop, right? As you enter the luteal phase, it’s mounting in the first phase of first half of your cycle, estrogen peaks.

That will also raise histamine. So if you start to feel like I’m crampy, my bloating gets a lot worse, I’m getting these headaches, I’m getting skin flares in the midpoint of your cycle around ovulation, you would have to track your cycle to know. It could be anywhere from day like 11 to day like 18, depending on on where on how long your cycle is, on how consistent your ovulation is, all of that. But that’s a big sign for us that we’re likely looking at excess estrogen and we need to support the body in.

Excreting excess estrogen via the gut and the liver. In that case, all of this to say, right, even when we say we start eating healthier, you’re like, I’m eating avocado, I’m eating spinach, I’m eating lemon, I’m eating raspberries, I’m eating bone broth, I’m eating collagen. Like what gives? You’re like, I’m eating all this yogurt and kefir and and fermented foods because they’re all good for my gut. Like, what the heck? I’m feeling way worse. This can signal that there’s a histamine issue. And at its core,

Hannah Aylward (34:30.85)

Histamine is not the root problem. We have to understand why are you overproducing it? What is activating the mast cells consistently to release histamine? And then also are you struggling to clear it and degrade it effectively? And the gut plays a massive role in all of that. So lots more to dig into there. But I would say this is this is one of those reasons why people eat healthier and they feel worse. Histamine can be one of those big underlying reasons. And just keeping in mind here.

We don’t need to start to fear these foods. So I want to be very mindful of that. A lot of these foods are very healthy and they’re great for your gut microbiome. We want to be mindful of fearing these foods long term and really focus on getting to the bottom of why we are reacting to them in the first place. And if this resonates with you, what the simplest thing that you can do is just trial a lower histamine diet for like three to five days and just see if you feel any better. It is not a long-term solution. It is definitely not your only solution.

And it will be hard to maintain more long term, which is why I don’t really see it as a solid solution for people. We need to dig deeper and understand what’s going on, right? But if you feel any better when you do follow a lower histamine diet, that’s kind of like the cheapest and easiest way to figure out if it is a histamine issue, you know, underneath it all. And once you have a clear yes or no on that, then we can dig a bit deeper into that, you know, gut work testing, functional labs to see what’s going on that could be contributing to that histamine being a problem in the first place.

Okay, my third and final kind of underlying like main underlying root cause for today’s episode is this fat maldigestion piece. So this, we have also seen this in clients who have come to work with us and they’re like, okay, I thought I was eating healthy before, and now I’m following these adjustments that you’re telling me to follow. And I started eating XYZ foods, and my diarrhea is worse or my bloating and nausea are worse. What’s going on?

This fat maldigestion piece can be an underlying driver of feeling worse after you’re eating healthier. So when someone starts to kind of eat healthier, we’re typically, and oftentimes with our clients, we’re asking our clients to eat more because a lot of women are undernourishing and they’re very depleted. And we want to make sure that we’re balancing our blood sugar and getting in enough like gut healthy foods. And there’s many things that we want to focus on when it comes to all of this. But oftentimes we want to make sure we’re getting in enough healthy fats, right? So it’s like,

Hannah Aylward (36:50.158)

Cool, are you eating avocado, olive oil, like nut butters, seeds, things like that? Maybe it’s salmon, maybe it’s eggs, maybe it’s full fat yogurt. This fat is nothing to fear. We need it. Like we need adequate fat for hormone health, for blood sugar regulation, and also to support bile flow in more long term. That’s even if someone has had their gallbladder removed, you know, oftentimes the doctor will say, just eat lower fat, but that’s not helpful long term.

It’s not a long-term solution. We have to support fat digestion more long term because you shouldn’t be living a low-fat diet forever because other areas of your health are going to start to get hit with that. So if we start to go from non-fat Greek yogurt to full-fat Greek yogurt, or we go from, you know, no nut butter in the smoothie to adding nut butter, or we add avocado to our breakfast to add more healthy fats, or maybe we’re using olive oil, we’re cooking more at home and we’re increasing these fats.

These foods can be incredibly nutrient dense. Shout out to the Nutrient Dense podcast. I had to add that in there. But dietary fat, you know, requires optimal digestion to actually break it down. So we have the liver that produces bile and the gallbladder that stores and releases bile and really pushes it out at mealtimes. And bile helps to emulsify the fats into smaller droplets. So I always use the example of like, think of like when you’re cleaning your pan after you’ve cooked something for dinner.

And you put your soap in there and the soap helps to like get the grease off, right? Like it helps to get the butter off or the oil that you use or maybe you cooked meat or whatever and there’s like natural kind of oils and residue in the pan. Think of bile as like you’re you’re squirting that soap and then you’re moving the sponge around and you’re kind of like sudsing up that soap. I’m giving you a good visual here. and it’s helping to break down the the residue in the pan. So then you can have you rinse rinse it off and have a nice clean plant pan, right?

So this is kind of what bile is doing in the small intestine. Think of it as like the soap that’s helping to keep things relatively sterile. Now the pancreas releases light paste and other digestive enzymes as well to help us to break down fats and other macronutrients too. And the small intestine absorbs the resulting fatty acids and these fat-soluble nutrients. So it’s like the bile is produced, it’s pushed out, and then we’re hoping to absorb these fat-soluble nutrients in the small intestine.

Hannah Aylward (39:08.246)

And when we have issues with our small intestine, in the case of bacterial overgrowth, we can start to have issues absorbing nutrients. It’s very common for those with microbial overgrowth in the small intestine to have like low B12, low ferritin, or low iron, to have low vitamin D, because we’re getting in we’re running into problems absorbing the nutrients. If you you can do like a quick Google search and they’ll it’ll give you some images for like where do I actually absorb my nutrients?

And you’ll see a huge majority of these nutrients get absorbed in the small intestine, which is why when someone has something like SIBO, I mean, you can easily be exhausted. It will start to impact your thyroid. It’ll start to impact your skin. It’ll start to impact your energy and your sleep, not just your digestion, because we’ll likely run into issues absorbing the nutrients from the food that we’re eating. But kind of going back to this bio piece, right? We need our digestive

our digestive function to be really working optimally in order to break down these fats. So if bile release or pancreatic enzyme output is compromised, higher fat meals can feel particularly difficult for us to break down. So if you started increasing your even healthy fats, like it doesn’t have to be, you know, French fries and like fried foods or whatever, it can absolutely be these healthy fats too, if we are dealing with a bile

Issue. It’s basically like a deeper liver gallbladder issue and a bile issue. We need to help support your body there. What this would kind of look like is bloating or nausea after higher fat meals. We can have upper abdominal fullness, burping or reflux. If you burp a lot after taking something like fish oil, that’s a big sign too, because that’s like straight, essentially straight fat. It’s like an oil. So if you’re if you find yourself taking that supplement and then you’re like, whoa, I’m nauseous or I’m super burpee after this.

We are likely looking at we see that very, very commonly in clients with deeper bile issues. Pain beneath the right rib cage, urgency or diarrhea after eating fat can also happen. We’ll see oil in the toilet or pale, greasy, floating, difficult to flush stools could be a big sign that there’s a deeper bile issue as well, particularly foul-smelling stool, and then also deficiencies in these fat-soluble nutrients like.

Hannah Aylward (41:17.922)

vitamins A, D, E, and K. So if you’re someone and you’re like, I’ve been trying to get my vitamin A up and I’ve been trying to get my vitamin D up and I’m taking the supplements and it’s not going up. I keep retesting and there’s like no change, we need to dig deeper. It could be like a cofactor issue. It could be an absorption issue. It could be a bile issue because it helps your body break down and absorb these fat-soluble nutrients. So if someone is feeling worse after eating healthy, notice if you’ve increased your healthy fats. Like a lot of times we’ll swap bread for like

Almond flour crackers or whatever. And these things are typically going to be higher in fat because they’re nut based. If you swap maybe like a non-fat dairy milk for like a full fat coconut milk, for example, that’s also going to be much higher in fat. These are totally healthy swaps for the majority of people. It’s just it, it’s just like what do you have going on in your body? And if you feel worse after making those swaps, or if you’ve noticed that you’ve increased your

your healthy fat intake and you’re seeing an increase in digestive issues. Well, this could be why, right? So we could be looking at impaired bioflow, gallbladder dysfunction. If your gallbladder was was removed, we will need to support your bile flow forever going forward. The doctor never tells you this, but you will need bile support forever going forward. So if your gallbladder has been removed, you need this even more than others because a gallbladder removal

was a prior liver issue. It’s you don’t just need your gallbladder removed out of nowhere, right? The liver has been struggling for a while. We have this like these stones and sludge forming. This is like a deeper bile issue. And then it gets to the point where you need the gallbladder removed. So we need to support bile flow there. We can have enzyme insufficiency that can be contributing to this as well. We could also have something like lower stomach acid. So we have this kind of poor upstream digestive signaling. So

Stomach acid kind of signals the release of your other digestive juices like bile and enzymes. So when we have very low stomach acid, that will impair bile flow and enzyme secretion. Something like SIBO can interfere with bile acid function as well. Of course, we can have more severe stuff like liver disease. And then celiac disease or intestinal inflammation can also play a role here. So a higher fat diet.

Hannah Aylward (43:32.928)

Isn’t automatically the problem, right? The question is really: does your body have adequate bile and enzymes and digestive signaling and absorbative capacity required to actually break down and process these fats well? So these are, I’d say, the three main reasons why we see people eating healthier and feeling worse. There are some others I could have thrown in here, like oxalates or salicillates or something like that.

Whenever I see it people with issues with oxalates and salicillates, there’s almost always an environmental toxin exposure component to this. Like we’ve had clients where they cannot tolerate salicillates, they cannot tolerate oxalates, they feel worse after that. Where I’m almost always looking at mold exposure. So just something to take note of there. But just to kind of a brief recap for you, so you can kind of understand these three buckets well. If you react very strongly to increasing fibers.

Prebiotic rich foods, which you’re like, you’ve been told to eat because they’re good for your gut, right? Maybe even one of my posts. You’re like, girl, you told me to eat these prebiotic fibers. They are good for your gut. However, if you feel worse after eating them, maybe cruciferous veggies, garlic, beans, that kind of thing, we’re likely looking at this excess fermentation in the gut due to a bacterial overgrowth. We’ll also likely looking at some slow motility here as well. If you feel like you mount a bigger response, your digestive issues get worse.

Maybe your skin rashes or your headaches, your bowel movements get worse after you eat fermented foods, leftovers, avocados, spinach, tomatoes, wine, raspberries, lemon juice, right? This can signal that there is a histamine overload problem or impaired histamine clearance. And then if you have, you know, greater issues after eating like avocados, olive oils, you know, healthy oils, avocado oil, olive oil, coconut milk, coconut butter, eggs, fatty meat, fatty fish, nuts and seeds, that kind of thing.

We’re likely looking at deeper bile issues, so gallbladder function, enzyme release, fat malabsorption, liver stuff going on. The good news is that when we repair all of this at these like deeper layers, I don’t like to give guarantees for people because health is very complex. However, you know, I feel very strongly, I’ll say that. I feel very strongly that once we deal with these underlying issues, you will tolerate these foods a lot better going forward. My goal for all of our clients is get them to the place where they can eat more foods with less pain.

Hannah Aylward (45:51.874)

But in order to do that, we have to figure out what’s going on underneath the surface, right? So these are the kind of the most common patterns. How do we understand what’s going on? Just kind of taking track of your own pattern. Some things may have clicked even by listening to this episode, which is really great. You’re like, that sounds like me. Maybe I have this going on. So keep note of that. And then also, of course, let’s do some deeper digging. So we may want to run some functional labs. I would say, you know, 9.5 times out of 10, we want to run some functional labs.

See what’s going on underneath the surface. See, are we looking at hydrogen-dominant bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine? Are we looking at methanogen overgrowth in the small intestine? Are we looking at large intestinal bacterial overgrowth? Are we do we have an overabundance of these histamine-producing bacteria like klebsiella or morganella as an example? What’s kind of going on underneath the surface? Sometimes it, you know, if you feel like you’re really responding to fats, it could warrant like a an abdominal ultrasound to check in on your liver and gallbladder.

That could be a good next step there. But we really start with the functional, functional stool testing. And then a breath test can be a nice complement to some if needed. It’s not always needed, but sometimes it is helpful for people. So just know if eating healthier makes you feel worse, the takeaway is not that, you know, don’t eat your vegetables, don’t eat your fermented foods, don’t eat your healthy fats or anything like that. All of these reactions are really giving you great insight into actually what your body’s struggling with and where kind of the breakdown in the chain is.

And once we repair that, we can get you feeling a lot better and tolerating many more foods. And this is what we do in all of our programs, in my HGSB program and in our one-on-one programs, is we just kind of like peel back the layers and dig a bit deeper, see what you’re presenting with, how can we connect the dots of your health puzzle by just looking at how you’re feeling on a day-to-day base? What are you reacting to? And then layering that in with a lot of, of course, like expertise and years of experience, and then functional lab testing as well and putting that all together to develop a good.

solid plan for you that doesn’t feel overwhelming, that feels very straightforward and gets you those answers that you’ve been looking for for likely many years. So if you’re interested in working with us, we are enrolling new clients into our one-on-one program currently. You can apply for our one-on-one program via the link in the show notes below. We would love to help you if it feels like a good fit. Basically you would fill out that application and then you’d book a call if we feel like you’re a good fit. We would talk through your case, make sure it’s the right, we’re the best people to help you.

Hannah Aylward (48:12.802)

I will be honest and tell you if I think we are or I think we aren’t. And then we’d kind of get you set up from there. We’re on a little bit of a wait list, but I’m hoping we’ll be off that soon. So if you wanted to dig deeper into any of this, feel free to apply, book a call with us, and we can kind of take it from there. And until next time, I hope this was super helpful. And I will see you in next week’s episode. Take good care of yourself. Until then. All right, tatsoon. Bye. Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Nutrient Dense Podcast.

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