79: Stop Doing GI Maps If You Have Crohn's or Colitis

GI Maps are a great tool, but most people are using them wrong; which means you're not only looking for your root causes in the wrong place, but you're also wasting your money - to the tune of $400-$500 per test!

TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• Why GI maps are a waste of money
• Why they won't identify your root cause
• When a GI map is a good idea vs a bad idea (waste of money)
• When to get a GI map to get the most out of it
• How to identify root causes of your IBD

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Transcript

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GI maps are becoming extremely popular over the last few years because they can read your microbiome, which is super cool. And this can tell you what is or in or out of balance. So we're going to spend $500 on a GI map, hoping it's going to tell you what's wrong with your gut and how you can fix it. But I'm telling you right now, it's a huge waste of money. So stop spending your money on GI maps. In this episode, I'm going to be showing you why you're wasting your money and what you should be doing instead. Now, there is a time and a place, I'll get there. Contrary to what your doctors told you, Crohn's and Colitis are reversible. Now I've helped hundreds of people reverse their bowel disease and I'm here to help you do it too. Because inflammation always has a root cause. We just have to find it. This is the Reversing Crohn's and Colitis Naturally podcast. Now I do these live trainings in my Facebook group every single week and put the audios here for you to listen to. If you want to watch the video versions of these episodes, just click the link in the show notes to get access to our Facebook group and YouTube channel. And for weekly updates, information, tips and tricks, you can sign up for our email list by clicking the link in the show notes below. If we haven't met yet, my name is Josh Dech. I'm an IBD specialist, physician's consultant and a researcher for bowel disease. And I'm here to help you heal yourself naturally as best you can. So if you have any questions at all, drop them down at the end, put them in the comments now. We'll get to them in about 10-15 minutes toward the end of this thing. First things first. What is a GI map? Well, if you're not familiar with what they are, a GI map is a really cool stool sample. You basically give a sample, ship it to the lab, they measure different things within your poop. Typically, you're going to measure a couple of different things even because not all GI maps are equal. Right? So you're going to get some good ones, some bad ones, etc. But I'm going to show you the typical things you'll get in the GI map. So first, you're going to get your standard microbiome. Now, again, this is a spectrum. Some measure a really comprehensive microbiome. Some measure a very basic microbiome. What they'll do is they'll give you something like your lactobacillus species, and they'll call it SPP. This is non-species specific umbrella. Say we took all your lactobacillus and said, here's the measurement under this umbrella what we got. High, low. Other ones that are more comprehensive on the spectrum will give you individual lactobacillus. Whatever dozens and dozens of different strains you can get for each one, rather than one large marker averaging them out. So not all GI maps are equal. So they'll give you some of your good guys. We call these commensals. The other ones they're going to give you are going to be your opportunistic. We call these the, quote, bad guys, but really what they are, it's like candida. Candida is a healthy microbe in your gut. Typically resides in the small intestine, mostly. And it's opportunistic, which means when the good guys aren't there to keep it at bay, it will overgrow and become more dominant. So it's opportunistic. With Clostridia, Candida, Fusobacterium, Klebsiella, Citrobacter, all these, quote, bad guys that have a role to play in your ecosystem when they're in lower amounts. But when they have, the good guys are crushed, destroyed, there's high stress, inflamed environment. These opportunistic ones take that chance, the opportunity to overgrow. So it measures a lot of that. Your typical GI map is going to measure some other markers as well. They might check for things like H. pylori, which again, not having it. This is a stool sample. This is poop. Just because you have H. pylori negative in your stool sample doesn't mean it's not in your stomach causing issues, it just shows how proliferated it is. Same thing with things like Candida, other opportunistic microbes. If you get out, you get your GI map and go, oh, no, no, no Candida, doesn't mean you don't have it. It just means it hasn't gotten all the way down to your bowel. It's more likely coming from the small intestine. I typically see it coming up, white film on the tongue, colonizing elsewhere before I see it on a stool sample. If you do get Candida on a stool sample, it means there's so much of it in your body, it colonized up and down. So these are the typical things you'll see. Other GI maps might measure a couple of different markers. We'll see things like elastase. We see this a fair bit. That's going to be pancreatic enzyme and digestive function. You might see different types of lipids, different types of lipid panels, steatocrit. It's just measuring the fat in your stool, blood in your stool. They can measure for gluten intolerances, you name it. But a standard GI map, the cheaper, like $400, $450 ones, get you these big umbrellas. The other ones, which I don't really quite like, like Diagnostic Solutions is a common company. They're okay, in my opinion anyways. Looking at other ones like Viome, I think it's okay. It's more like yes, no. It's qualitative, not quantitative. I want to know exact measurements as much as I can. This is where I'll go to a gut zoomer from someone like Vibrant Wellness instead. Or there's a really cool one from Tiny Health. They do what's called shotgun sequencing, so it's a much more accurate version. But here's the idea. I'm getting a five-page report on a typical GI map versus a 30-page report and a comprehensive one. But I'm still telling you right now, if you're going to get one of these on your own, it's cool to know what they are and how they work and what they measure. But the reality is, you're probably wasting your money getting one. I'm going to tell you why. A couple of reasons. Now, arguments will say, well, getting a GI map, your microbiome is so much in flux, it's not really accurate. And that's true, but it's a really good snapshot. Your blood work changes from morning to afternoon to evening, so why bother getting that? Because it helps us get information. Now here's the thing though. You're wasting your money on a GI map if you are not yet at the stage of which you need to be to fix that GI map. I talked about this last week on our episode. We talked about why natural solutions don't work, because a lot of people come in with magnesium and vitamin D and curcumin and all these great supplements to manage the symptoms of bowel disease, but they're not fixing the reason why they're inflamed. So you're using plant-based medication, using herbs to manage your symptoms rather than finding the root cause. It's like you're taking all these things to rebuild your house while it's on fire. In the case of a microbiome, consider this. If you go to your doctor, you go, oh yeah, you've got SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Okay, here's some antibiotics. See if you're a faxomin, zafaxomin, whatever faxomin they want to give you, they kill the bacteria. Yay. Huge percentage of those people, I'm guessing 70 to 90% will relapse. Why? Because your gut microbiome, this is going to be your intestines, your gut microbiome in here is self-regulating, which means this is an ecosystem that if you're eating well, you're sleeping well, you're in a good environment, it balances itself. So you're telling me that this thing suddenly overgrew and you're going to kill all the bacteria. Cool. But why did it overgrow? Same thing as taking plant-based medication. You're not addressing the root cause. So what's happening now is you give this little stool sample. That's a little poops. Okay. You give a stool sample. You ship to the lab. They go, yep. Look how inflamed you are. Look how many overgrowths you have. You go, oh shit, I'm going to take all these herbs and all these probiotics. Why did the self-regulating ecosystem become dysregulated in the first place? If you don't answer this question, you're not actually going to get the results. At the very best, you're going to have temporary results. At the very worst, you're getting nothing. Somewhere in the middle is a shit ton of money spent getting you nowhere because you're trying to manage the symptom. Your dysbiosis, this imbalance of bacteria, you're measuring on your gut zoomer or your GI map or whatever test you're doing. Your dysbiosis is a symptom of something else. Dysbiosis is not a root cause. Dysbiosis is a symptom. The self-regulating ecosystem became dysregulated. That's a symptom because of the stress, the food, the medications, the antibiotics, the crystal meth use. I see it a fair bit in my practice, you'd be surprised. Alcohol consumption, dietary choices, lifestyle, mold, environmental toxins. Those are the things. Those are the root drivers that create the dysbiosis, which imbalances your bacteria, which leads to the symptoms you then experience. So what's happening, we have all these root cause drivers up here. We're going to just simplify it to toxins, microbes, and deficiencies, right? That's my umbrella. You have these drivers. Down here, you start getting your symptoms. And then down here, you measure your gut microbiome. And then down here, you get your report. Then you take that report and you go and pick up a bunch of supplements. Good for you, right? You're down here. You go, oh, I got my report. Here are my supplements to fix it. You have missed this entire stretch all the way up to the top. The toxins and microbes, deficiencies that created the symptoms, that led to the dysbiosis, that led to you getting the report, that led to you buying all these supplements to try to treat it. So by getting the GI map right now, without doing proper investigation, you are wasting your money, you're wasting your time, and you're chasing your tail. You're throwing all this good money after bad trying to fix something you'll never fix because you don't understand the root cause. And this is why GI maps are a waste of time. So a GI map is telling you what is wrong, how severe the problem is, and where the problem is, not why. Same thing when clients come to me and say, Josh, should I get a colonoscopy? I'm like, well, I can't tell you not to, legally speaking, right? I'm not a doctor. I'm not a doctor, right? I'm not going to tell you not to get a GI map. But I will say this. If it was my colon, why would I get a colonoscopy rather? Why? What's the point? I'm going to go into my doctor, they shove a camera up my butt and go, yep, here's how bad you're inflamed, here's where you're inflamed, and here's the drugs we're giving you for the inflammation. At no point does that colonoscopy or that medical report address the reason why I'm inflamed. And very rarely, not impossibly, but rarely does a GI map address the reason why you are inflamed. So we have to figure out why you're inflamed first, because this is not a root cause you're measuring symptoms. So if we're going to use a GI map, it's about time and place. So you have to get your history. So how do we get down here, right? Let's build this timeline again. We know you get sick through toxins, microbes, deficiencies, right? That's the only three ways people get sick. This ends up leading to some kind of GI symptom. And then you go in, you go find some help, you go online, you're researching, maybe you're listening to my podcast, you're watching on my YouTube channel, you hear me mention a GI map, right? So you go, oh, yeah, it's definitely going to be this thing that we call dysbiosis. So let me go get my GI map printout. I'm going to get all this data, and then I know all these things, I'm going to go find all these probiotics, all these supplements, all these things, got it. So how do we use this to your advantage? Time and place. The GI map comes later. So let's start back at the top. Let's start with the history. Now, I spoke to a woman just a couple of days ago, and I asked her, I said, how did you end up getting colitis? She says, well, I used Wigovi, and my mom's got it, so my family, like there's a genetic history here. I use Wigovi. It's a GLP-1 weight loss medication. She says, I was overweight, and I took the medication, and within a couple of months, bam, I was inflamed. And that's how I got colitis. And I was like, nah, millions, millions of people are using GLPs, Ozempic, Wigovi, whatever one you got. So I said, I mean, yes, we do see gastroparesis, and gastritis, and other negative effects from large doses. Her doctor gave her the drug. She felt okay. Increased the dose. She got some nausea. The doctor increased it again. She started getting bleeding, and she ended up stopping on her own because her doctor didn't address the problem. Go figure. So it sounds like Wigovi caught it or caused it, but on top of genetic history, that's a susceptibility. Can we get that? But what were the toxins, microbes, deficiencies? Because genes still don't cause her disease, right? Genes make you susceptible or they're a weak link that is simply pulled by toxins, microbes, deficiencies. So we talked about hers. We figured out what they were. Turns out, born in Los Angeles and had a very rough upbringing. Parents went around. There was a lot of alcoholism in the home, and there was a lot of stress, and her parents were fighting a lot. And there was all these things going on. So she ended up in the streets, doing drugs, there was gang involvement, et cetera. So here she is as a teenager, smoking meth, and doing drugs, and drinking alcohol at a young age, and eating microwave foods and whatever's available. Can't blame her. But here's the thing. That is the early first onset of toxins coming into the body, leading to deficiencies into the body. So what ends up happening now is this poor diet leads to some gut issues, and there's some other toxicants into her system, which congests her liver and her gallbladder, created gallstones. So she ended up having her gallbladder removed. Well, now she's deficient in an organ because she's full of toxins, and these invite microbes into the system. So now she's got this gallbladder removed, so she's not digesting fats, and from that stage forward, she started having more gut issues, and there was more trauma throughout her life, and all these things. So here she is now, by the time she finally took the Wegovy, guess what happens? It pushes her over the edge. So it was the tipping point, or if you will, the straw that broke the camel's back, was the Wegovy. And so for her, if she went in and said, oh, I've got all this dysbiosis, I'm gonna go do a GI map. What are all the things that screwed it up? We have to look at that first. Then we can actually get an assessment of what the damage was, and then we can understand because we know what damaged it, we know how bad the damage is, what systems in your body have been compromised, then we can start working back against those things. Once the obvious stuff is fixed, we now fix the digestion, we've taken the toxins out of the system, we've repaired the body as best we can, now let's see what's remaining. Now we've taken care of all of this, now we do the GI map. This is one of the last stages, this is like stage four. And many of us are getting it right out of the gate, spending $550, throwing it down the drain, spending a ton of money on nothing. The GI map is simply a step down the road. So start with the history, understand your toxins, microbes, deficiencies, understand where it came from. There are instances, I will caveat this, often clients are mad, like you had me do it right away, yep. There are instances we do it right away. If you're somebody whose life is very, let's say, a lot of Indian clients actually come in with traditional Indian diets, very carbohydrate heavy, potatoes and rice and chickpeas and rotis and there's wheats and a lot of carbs. Well a common thing we see is dysbiosis, candida, overgrowth, fungal infections, parasitic infections because of that lifestyle and that dietary involvement. So I might be more inclined if you're somebody who's got a more carb or sugar heavy diet. If you're somebody who's got a history of antibiotics and infections and maybe you were bottle fed instead of breast fed, you always had gut issues growing up, that might be your big reason. You just didn't get seeded properly, you had early dysbiosis which led to all your problems. I still want to know them, but in that case, I might check your microbiome right away because I need to know what I'm dealing with, the extent of the damage, because that is the root of your problem. But most of us, the dysbiosis is simply a symptom in our adulthood of a lifetime of issues. But if you started with dysbiosis, then your symptoms and everything came because of that. Most of us have a root cause, toxin microbe deficiency, that leads to symptoms. We get the GI map, we take the pills. In other cases, it truly is your dysbiosis was the thing that invited more toxins, microbes, deficiencies into your system due to this lifestyle, et cetera, which led to the symptoms so then we measure, then we treat. So there are instances for that, but your microbiome doesn't dysregulate itself. Either way, if we're doing it down the line, which is 9 out of 10 people or more, we sometimes do them up top, but most people are down here. We have to understand your toxins, microbes, deficiencies, your history and how you got there. At that stage, then the gut microbiome sample of whatever kind you do is worth the money. My preference is I like to go to the GutZoomer from Vibrant Wellness or Tiny Health because they have this shotgun sequencing, which is a different accuracy and a broader read and gets you more data. So there are aspects of each one that I really like. However, to each their own. This is why I want to tell you that your GI map is a waste of money because most of you are down here dealing with the symptoms. You'd never address the root of why your self-regulating system became dysregulated in the first place. Now here's what we're going to do, we're going to turn over the questions. So I know you might have a lot, depending on how many people are on today. It's a big topic, right? GI maps are popular. I run them a lot, but it's all about timing, placement and sequencing. So before we get you over to the questions, I'm going to show you how you can get some help. You're like, man, this is way too complex. I've been dealing with this for years. You can work with me and my team. We have that availability. There's ways to do that and I'm going to show you exactly how it is you can do that. If you're here on YouTube watching or you're on the podcast, all you got to do is check the links down below inside the notes under the video or in the show notes of the podcast and you can send me an email, book a call directly, go to the website, it's all available to you there. So let's pop over to our first question on Instagram. So this person asks, have you had anybody that gets shaking followed by nausea or vomiting or a foul smelling bowel movement late in the evening? Trying to figure out if this is a gut issue, histamine or something circulatory. So the question was, have I ever had anybody with nausea, shaking and foul smelling bowel movements all the above, all the time, potentially vomiting. Here's the thing, nausea and vomiting, there's many different ways or reasons it's going to happen. It's vagal nerve dysfunction. Your body's trying to get rid of something. It can be toxification of your system. It can be liver congestion. It can be blood sugar issues. I've seen all the above. So when you're getting nausea, there's a reason for it. It's not random. And taking a nausea suppressant like a Zofran or something isn't the solution. It's a Band-Aid and hell, I'd rather break a bone than have nausea. I had vertigo a couple of weeks back, a couple of weeks ago from an ear infection. And I told my wife, I was like, I'd rather have a broken ankle. I broke that and had surgery on it about two years prior. I was a bit more dramatic than that. I was literally crawling around the house trying not to vomit. I get it. So take the drugs, do what you got to do. It didn't help me at all. So God bless you all. But here's the thing, it's happening for a reason. Now the foul smelling stool, that typically comes for a few reasons. Number one, your motility is screwed up. So if you're having over fermentation, that produces excess gas. If your food is going rancid in your bowel rather than actually being digested and absorbed, that's going to produce excess gas or toxins. If it smells like putrid, like rotting flesh, it can be a protein absorption issue or maybe again rotting proteins. If it smells like rotten eggs, we look at liver and sulfur. If it smells like really deep, deep sewage, it might be another dysbiosis issue. If you're getting bloaty and gassy really quickly, like an hour to three hours or less after eating, it might be an upper GI, like a SIBO issue. So there's different things we have to look at in timing and place for your bowel movements, what they look like, what they smell like. If you have yellow oily greasy bowels, it's probably fat not digestion. So if your fat's not digesting, is it liver and bile? So there's different cues from your food, from your stool, from the color, from the smell that point us back to what we're typically looking for. You know, if it smells like ammonia, again, that might be proteins. There's different things we have to look at in combination with other data. Just looking at your stool, it's like a crystal ball, but it's not all the information. We need other tools in our tool chest, if you will. So to answer the question, yes, I've seen it. It might be histamine-related because some bowel disease, especially Crohn's, tends to be histamine-sensitive or histamine-dominant, and removing histamines can often reduce the symptoms greatly, but it's not going to fix the problem because you became histamine-sensitive for a reason. Oh, so they followed up, it smells almost sweet. Smells almost sweet. Okay. If you have almost sweet-smelling stool, a couple of things. Yes, it can be sugars and fermentation, but I'd also be looking, if you have almost like a sweet-smelling stool, especially if it's on the yellowy side, prone to diarrhea, get screened for C. diff. C. diff has this very foul, sweet-smelling, almost like honey mixed with vomit and poo. It's very distinct when it's overgrown, and it's actually highly infectious. C. diff, if you flush the toilet with the lid off, those spores go everywhere. Take that towel, put it on your face, you re-inoculate yourself. It's highly contagious as well. So you don't want to be re-inoculating yourself or risking the health of somebody else in your household. So if you have an overgrowth of C. diff, and that's what it is, then definitely get it checked out. Antibiotics might be in order. There are some probiotics and other things, other natural methods that I've utilized to help control C. diff. Certain lactobacillus and bifidostrains, Saccharomyces boulardii, specifically I believe, don't quote me on this one, but look into something called LP-2997, I believe is another one. Jero Formulas makes that supplement, it's really great. There's different things, neem and clove and berberine, these things can help keep C. diff under control. But again, C. diff is an opportunistic microbe. So something in your environment is leaving the chance and it takes the opportunity to overgrow and become abundant. It doesn't happen on its own. So C. diff is a breakthrough microbe from an imbalanced environment. So we're going to be here every single week, mostly, until something horrible happens. Hopefully not. Anyway, thanks so much for being here guys, that's all we got for you. If you have any questions, you know how to reach us, you can always get help. And if you're on YouTube or on the podcast, just reach out through the links down below or send us an email, we'll get you the help that you need. Thanks so much for being here. See you next time. One of my favorite things to hear as an IBD specialist is something along the lines of I learned more from you in 15 minutes than from my doctor in 15 years. And if this, for the first time, is really starting to click and it's starting to make sense and you're going, wait a minute, this might be reversible. I think there's more that I can do. This condition came out of nowhere, it happened to me out of the blue. I was healthy for 10, 20, 30, 40 years, and suddenly I wasn't, and you're telling me there's no cause. If you're understanding finally that there is a cause, that something is driving this, I want to invite you to check the link in the show notes below. Send me an email. Ask a question. See if a program is the right fit for you, because I promise you, this doesn't have to be a lifelong sentence. You're not doomed to this, and IBD can be reversed.