Last week, SIM welcomed Dr. Rajsree Nambudripad to speak about functional gastroenterology! Dr. Nambudripad is board-certified in internal medicine and has received training in both conventional and functional gastroenterology. Dr. Nambudripad is an integrative physician, meaning she focuses on finding and addressing the root causes of symptoms. These root causes can be anything from genetics, hormonal imbalance, and a poor diet. In fact, while many physicians work with nutritionists, Dr. Nambudripad works as both a physician and a nutritionist for her patients. She says that diet is the most powerful intervention for treating her patients.
Conventional gastroenterology heavily utilizes procedures to diagnose conditions. For instance, an abdominal ultrasound is great for detecting gallstones. However, some patients have chronic abdominal symptoms, but all their tests come back negative. Additionally, the main treatment of conventional gastroenterology is prescription medication. While this can be life-changing for some people, it doesn’t always work great for others. These shortcomings are addressed by functional gastroenterology.
Functional gastroenterology’s philosophy is that all disease begins in the gut. The gut influences many aspects of health, such as your hormones, your immune system, your skin, and even your mood. For instance, the gut brain axis explains how the gut can influence mood. Neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine, and melatonin are all made in the lining of the gut. These neurotransmitters are responsible for regulating mood and sleep. Therefore, patients suffering from gut conditions can experience mood symptoms like anxiety and sleep symptoms like insomnia. Additionally, improving gut microbiome health may improve such symptoms.
When patients visit Dr. Nambudripad for gut symptoms, she always starts by reviewing their diet because that often gives telling information for diagnosing conditions. She then conducts a food allergy test called the IgE. This is a blood test that reveals the severity of allergies to certain foods and is accepted in conventional medicine. Next, she performs a gut microbiome test to evaluate how healthy the gut is. A functional GI stool test can reveal how well the patient digests foods, whether there’s inflammation, bacterial imbalance, overgrowths of parasites, candida, or yeast, and how healthy the bacteria in the gut is. If bloating is an issue, she will also conduct a breath test for a condition called small intestine bacterial overgrowth (SIBO). Finally, she’ll come up with a treatment plan that often utilizes natural supplements. Dr. Nambudripad likes to use natural supplements because they are gentle yet effective, and they cause few side effects.
Given how much attention is put on food in functional gastroenterology, it is not surprising to learn that food greatly influences the microbiome. Your microbiome is made up of trillions of bacteria, good and bad, and whatever you eat may feed the good bacteria or the bad bacteria. Certain types of bacteria trying to survive actually explains some of your cravings. For instance, bad bacteria can cause you to crave sugar, and that bacteria releases metabolites that influence your weight, metabolism, hormones, skin, and mood.
The good bacteria in your gut includes pre-biotics, pro-biotics, and post-biotics. Pre-biotics are the food for pro-biotics, and you get them from fiber. Pro-biotics are good bacteria that you can get from supplements or fermented foods. Post-biotics refers to waste after digestion, and healthy post-biotics include short-chain fatty acids. The health of post-biotics is a great indicator of someone’s overall health.
To see all of Dr. Nambudripad’s presentation, check out her YouTube channel where the video is posted. You can follow Dr. Nambudripad on Instagram and Facebook, and her website is https://oc-integrative-medicine.com/.
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