28. Gut Feelings: Unraveling the Connection Between Gut Health and Mental Well-Being

In this episode of the 'Heal with Grace' podcast, I welcome Dr. Heather Finley, a registered dietitian with a doctorate in clinical nutrition, to discuss the intricate connections between gut health, mental health, and chronic illnesses. Dr. Finley shares her personal journey through years of GI issues and how she discovered the benefits of functional nutrition. The conversation covers the impact of stress, lifestyle, and food variety on gut health, and offers insights into overcoming disordered eating and the importance of a holistic approach to wellness. Key topics also include the significance of microbiome diversity, the role of stress management, and practical tips for establishing a healthier relationship with food and body. Tune in to learn how to achieve long-term gut health and improve overall well-being.

About Dr. Heather Finley:
Dr. Heather Finley is a registered dietitian with a doctorate in clinical nutrition. She and her team help people struggling with bloating, brain fog, hormone imbalances, and GI issues find relief from their symptoms and feel excited about food again.

Heather struggled with her own hormone & digestive issues for nearly 20 years and understands first hand the impact that nutrition, lifestyle, and mindset have on digestive health. Gut health shouldn’t be restrictive, stressful, and all-consuming. She developed a simple way that individuals can reduce digestive symptoms and add foods back into their diet.

Dr. Heather has a doctorate in clinical nutrition from Maryland University of Integrative Health.

Her work has been featured on Good Morning Texas and in Mind Body Green, Yahoo! Life, and Very Well Health. Dr. Heather is the founder of the gutTogether® program for individuals and the gutPractitioner program for clinicians. 

Take the "Why Am I Bloated" Quiz: https://www.guttogetherprogram.com/healwithgrace

Resources & Links:

• FREE Top 3 tips to regulate your nervous system Training
• Work with us in therapy or coaching
• Curable: https://getcurable.com/healwithgrace

Connect with Grace:

• Connect on Instagram
• Check out my website

Transcript

[00:00:00] Grace: Hello and welcome back to the Heal with Grace podcast. I have a special guest with us, Dr. Heather Finley, who is a registered dietitian with a doctorate in clinical nutrition. She and her team help people struggling with bloating, brain fog, hormone imbalances, and GI issues, find a relief from their symptoms and feel excited about food again.

I'm excited to have her on because We're going to talk a lot about how food and, and our gut impacts mental health, impact our chronic health, understanding a little bit more about disordered eating and eating disorders, all the things that our listeners are very much. So here to learn about. So, without further ado, thanks for being here and I'll actually just let you introduce yourself.

[00:00:45] Dr Heather Finley: Awesome. Well, thanks for having me. I'm excited to spend some time with you this afternoon. but like you said, my name is Dr. Heather Finley, and I struggled with GI issues my whole life. So if anyone here is listening and you experience any kind of GI issue, hormone issue, et cetera, I definitely understand.

I've been there before, which is why I do what I do now. But. Spent years and years and years with GI issues, wondering why I felt so bad and wondering how I could actually fix my symptoms. So went on this journey to figure it out. And that left me restricting tons and tons of foods, being scared to eat, having horrible relationship with food and body image, and ultimately not feeling any better.

even went to college really to study nutrition, to try to figure out my GI issues and honestly graduated with worse GI symptoms thinking, did I just make a horrible mistake studying this for four years? Like I can't even help myself. How am I supposed to help other people with other symptoms? Health issues if I don't even know how to fix myself.

And so, you know, started my first job as a clinical dietician in the hospital and was seeing really, really sick patients, you know, people with cancer and kidney disease and cardiovascular disease, and honestly, just felt kind of like an imposter because I thought.here I am and I'm telling these people to do these specific things and, you know, I don't even think they're going to work because I can't fix my own self.

And so that sent me down this journey to really learn more about the body and why what I was doing wasn't working. And that's when I found functional nutrition and really started to understand more about how the whole body works together. And it was a really stressful time in my life. It's when my dad was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer and eventually ended up losing his battle to cancer and started really digging into the connection between grief and stress and trauma and, GI health and why, you know, potentially.

The elimination diets that I was doing were actually making things worse. And so that's when, like I said, I found functional nutrition. And for the first time, I felt hopeful that, okay, maybe I can feel better. And I also don't have to feel so scared to eat all the time. So I started studying as much as I could ultimately ended up enrolling in a doctorate program that was more specialized and focused on integrative and functional nutrition.

And that's when all the light bulbs started to go off in my head as far as why I felt the way that I did and why nothing had worked in the past. I was trying to isolate my GI issues to just what I was eating and not understand how the whole body really was working together. How my stress, my lack of sleep, my thyroid, all the other things going on with my health were actually.

making everything worse and how even the restrictive diets were shrinking my microbiome. That was kind of when the microbiome science was really in its infancy. And I would say we're still kind of in the infancy, but it was even newer than where we were just starting to learn about the gut, about the gut brain connection.

And it was so hopeful for me because for once I felt like maybe I can feel good again. And so I spent years in school Transcribed Fixing myself and eventually, you know, started adding foods back into my diet, felt better than I ever had, was eating more variety than I ever had, and yet wasn't having the symptoms and that's what really triggered me to start a practice focused on that because I thought there's no reason that someone should have to go get a doctorate to figure out their own health issues.

so I want to help other people do this too. And so, That's where we are today. like you said, my team and I help people with GI hormone and other health issues really get to the root cause and find relief without restricting tons and tons of foods. So maybe that's more than you asked for, but here we are.

It's exactly 

[00:04:56] Grace: what I asked for. I love to get the history and the story, especially because when you do something like this and you have a history of it personally, And, you know, this is the reason why I mean, you feel you've worked with yourself. So this is the reason why you do it. There's a lot of passion behind it and a lot of empathy and understanding for others.

Right? Because it is just when you're in the middle of something like that, that's unknown that you can't figure out that's gone on for years. It's so debilitating and frustrating and isolating and oftentimes, you're Yes. Someone can't fully understand it unless they've gone through in some way, shape, or form, something similar in those ways.

So for you to understand that probably means you're able to really help people, in a way for them to feel seen to. 

[00:05:40] Dr Heather Finley: Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where I have discovery calls with people all the time and I'm like. I get it. You know, I've been there. I know this is not the club that you ever wanted to be a part of, but like, I've been a part of that club and I know how isolating it is because when you have GI issues or you have hormone issues or really any health issue and you're cutting out foods and you don't feel like yourself and you don't have energy and you're, Wondering why you're so tired and your skin's breaking out.

Like we could list a million different symptoms. You know, insert symptom here. It's not just the symptoms, it's how it affects how you live your life. You're, you know, maybe not making plans or you're canceling plans last minute, or your mood is all over the place, or you're feel like you're fuse is short and you're snapping at people for no reason and you just don't feel like yourself.

So. It affects more than just how you actually feel. It's how you're actually executing your life and it really can be debilitating. 

[00:06:38] Grace: Yeah. Cause it kind of takes over your life and sometimes can become your identity, right? That's just what, you know, cause it's over consuming, takes over everything. And so, yeah, as you're saying that, it sounds like there was probably a point in time that you recognized how much.

You know, lifestyle stress management really impacted your gut and it wasn't just about the food. So can you tell us more about how all that works together? 

[00:07:03] Dr Heather Finley: Yeah. I think I, you know, you said identity. I think I always had this identity of I'm the girl that can't eat this food, this food, this food, and friends would start making plans around me.

hated that. I hated being like, well, what can you eat Heather? Where can we go? And I'm like, well, I just want to be able to go with the flow. Like I'm a pretty easygoing person. I don't want to have to control the plans, you know? so that can be super hard, but it was such a relief to me when I realized, Oh, wow.

Like the stress that I'm having about food is actually making my worse. So when I'm sitting down and I'm immediately thinking, This is going to make me bloated or this is going to impact me this way. Your body doesn't know the difference between that or being actually chased by a tiger. And so it immediately goes into protective mode and your body's just doing what it was designed to do.

It's not wrong. It's just how it was designed. And so it thinks it's being chased by a tiger, but really you're just trying to eat a sandwich. And so it makes everything harder. it makes everything more complicated and really digestion starts with. How you're thinking about food and then also how you're living your life, you know, are you sleeping and resting enough?

It's called rest and digest for a reason. Are you getting that rest and digest in between meals and at night? Are you? Working on your stress throughout the day because same thing if you're every time you get an email It feels like a threat to your system and you're being chased by a tiger and you're constantly just in this stressed out state.

And it's not really about the food anymore because stress turns off your digestion when you're getting prepared to run away from a tiger, your body's really smart. And it's saying, we don't have time to digest a sandwich right now. We need, we need blood in the muscles to run as fast as possible away from this tiger.

So, let's move blood flow away from the gut, let's turn down salivation, let's turn off gut motility, let's use our resources elsewhere, and if that's how you're living all day long, of course you're having GI symptoms and you don't feel good. 

[00:09:16] Grace: Yeah, it's a great example of how we've talked a lot on here around how lifestyle, how trauma, how stress impacts the nervous system impacts our health.

But having those little examples, especially and maybe you can answer this. you know, I have some people come to me who are like, well, I don't I can't identify some huge trauma in my life. So why am I stressed out? What's my nervous system? Like, why, why am I in fight or flight mode? I don't have trauma, right?

But I mean, I think you were saying this, okay, well, there's a million little things that can add up, right? So how do you see that working with the gut or stressing out the gut? 

[00:09:53] Dr Heather Finley: I mean, even things like not getting enough sleep is a stress to your system or your blood sugar being imbalanced. That's a stress to your system.

And so I think we often, I think that's a common thought of, well, I don't have a big T trauma, you know, why is my body so stressed, but yet our lifestyle is super stressful and that we don't rest. We're constantly on the go. We're constantly scrolling on our phones. We are going too long without meals.

We're. You know, not eating blood sugar balanced meals. Like, honestly, the list could kind of go on there, but you know, it's everything we're doing is just adding more stress to our body. And I think a lot of times people think, well, I don't have time for stress management. You know, I, I don't have time to sit in a fancy yoga outfit on the beach and meditate for three hours a day.

So we think, well, nice for them. I can't do that. But the reality is we can reduce stress even by taking a couple deep breaths or, you know, going on a two minute walk down the block without headphones and listening to the birds. Like there's little things that we can do to reduce stress throughout the day and especially reduce stress before we eat that can make a huge difference.

I was on a call with some of our clients earlier today, and one of the women actually told me, she said, I am shocked. Honestly, I kind of rolled my eyes when you told me this, but she's like, I am shocked at how much breathing before eating helps me to not feel bloated. And I was like, thank you so much for saying this in front of another, like a whole group of women, because it's really easy to skip past that stuff and think like, Good for them.

That's not going to work for me because my issues are chronic and there's no way and she definitely has chronic GI issues and, you know, has had them for 30 plus years and she's like, I feel better, you know, than I have in 20 years. After just a couple of small changes, we haven't even gotten to the good stuff yet.

She's like, I feel better than I have in 20 years. And the breathing I think makes the biggest difference. I'm like, wow, that's amazing. Thank you for sharing. You know, it really does work. So, yeah. 

[00:12:01] Grace: Yeah, if you're listening to this and you can't see me, I have a huge smile on my face becauseif you've ever been a client, a student, you've listened to this podcast, you know that I talk so much about breath because it is the quickest way to regulate, to soothe our nervous system.

Breath is so underrated and it's so powerful. It's that exhale that like provides that safe space to your, to your body. So yeah, directly affects the gut for sure. Yeah, so I love that. yeah. Okay. So I'll ask this in terms of your personal history or how you work with clients. Like, what do you think has.

What's helped you the most and what's been missing from maybe traditional gut health treatment? 

[00:12:48] Dr Heather Finley: Oh, that's a good question. So many things, but I think the biggest thing is probably that we're trying to isolate the gut from the rest of the body. you know, we think. The only thing that affects our gut is food and kind of the conventional dialogue that happens, I guess you could say, is you go to the GI doctor.

They have, you know, 10 minutes with you because that's just all, honestly, it's not the doctor's fault. That's just how it is. you tell them I'm constipated, I'm bloated, I'm having acid reflux, you know, I have diarrhea, whatever it is, I have insert symptom here. They say, Well, here's the low FODMAP diet.

Try this. If it doesn't work, then let's do a colonoscopy and that's it. And the reality is like, they're not taught. They're not asking you how's your stress. They're not looking at things like, are you chewing your food? They're not looking at. What's actually going on in your gut. Not that colonoscopies are a bad thing.

Colonoscopies save lives. Like, I'm a huge fan of colonoscopies, but on, you know, oftentimes we're jumping to that and saying, well, everything's normal. And then this patient has this narrative of, well, everything's normal, but why do I feel so bad? You know, I'm cutting out all these foods, but my lab work was normal, but then no one's looking at what's actually going on in the gut.

And also. The rest of the body and how it's all working together, which is where kind of that functional piece comes in when you can take a look at what's, you know, thought processes and stress and then even dive into things like actual digestion. How is someone actually breaking down food? Stomach acid, the makeup of bacteria in the gut, infections, inflammation, things that you're not going to see on standard blood work, you can make a huge difference, not only in the function and the health of the gut, but also the brain too, because the gut and the brain are connected and that.

You know, that pathways bidirectional, there's more signals going from the gut to the brain than there are from the brain to the gut. And if anybody here has ever had a gut brain reaction, you know, like. The type where you get an email and all of a sudden your stomach is in knots, you're about to give a speech and you're so nervous and you're running to the bathroom.

We've all had a moment like that. You think about how strong that reaction is. That's about 10 to 20%. Of the communication from the gut and the brain, so 10 to 20 percent goes from the brain to the gut. The rest of it, 80 to 90 percent is going the other way. So, your gut health, of course, affects your brain health, which is why it can be such a vicious cycle.

You can feel more stressed if there's chaos in your gut, but if there's chaos in your brain and you're super stressed and there, you know, it's so you have to address it both ways. 

[00:15:41] Grace: Yeah, it's called the 2nd brain for a reason. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, exactly. I mean, we talked so much about retraining your brain and helping your, your nervous system and your gut settle.

but yeah, it has to go both ways. Everything works together. Right. And yeah, as you're saying, we can't just cut it off, which. Unfortunately is how a lot of people talk about the gut. Just, just learn how to eat certain foods, right? 

[00:16:05] Dr Heather Finley: but 

[00:16:06] Grace: what I'm hearing you say, it's not just about the food. 

[00:16:08] Dr Heather Finley: No. And, and really it doesn't have to be about the food.

And I think that's the most hopeful thing. Hopefully that people can hear is I'm not going to sit around here and tell you that food doesn't affect your gut because it does, but I think we need to shift it to how food positively affects your gut. When you eat a variety of fiber that improves your gut health, when you cut out a bunch of foods that negatively impacts your gut health.

So are there foods that are better for your gut than others? Of course, I'm not going to sit here and argue that that's obvious, but we put so much focus on what people shouldn't eat for gut health instead of talking about what we should. Eat to help improve the diversity of our microbiome and the health of our gut, that it's where people get into this spiral of just constantly cutting things out until they're eating three different foods and wondering why they still feel so bad when we know from research the largest study that's been done on the gut shows the wider variety of foods someone can eat, the healthier and happier their gut is.

You know, it might take some work to get there. If you've got a lot of chaos in your gut, it might take work to get you tolerating a wide variety of foods, but it really is possible when you address it holistically. Yeah. 

[00:17:27] Grace: That brings me to recognizing, you know, Especially when someone's been down the route of being told what to eat, what not to eat, having gut issues, they're going to often be at least from what I see from my lens of mental health and nervous system, we can end up being too much very obsessed.

With food right and can cause that disordered eating, eventually can lead to eating disorders. And so I see a lot of overlap with chronic illness, chronic health and eating disorders. So can you speak to maybe how you would start working with that? If you see that in someone or actually, you know what?

I'm sorry. I'm going to ask this 1st question to clarify. how do you see disordered eating? 

[00:18:07] Dr Heather Finley: What is 

[00:18:07] Grace: that exactly for people that need to understand? 

[00:18:10] Dr Heather Finley: I can't remember what the study is off the top of my head, like what the percentage is, but I think it's like 70 percent of individuals with GI issues have disordered eating, and it may not be 70%, but it's a pretty big Percentage.

and I bet it's probably about that, you know, because even in our population of clients that we see, I don't know. There's, it's very rare that we don't see someone that doesn't have some level of fear around food or disordered eating, partially just because of the culture that we live in, but also because it is a direct effect, right?

You eat something, you get bloated. So it's really easy to blame the food. But the reality is it's a gut issue, not a food issue. So if you can fix the gut, then your reaction to food improves. which is, it does take a little bit of work to go a step further, but this is maybe kind of a blunt question or statement.

you know, oftentimes I'll have calls with people and they'll say, well, you know, what elimination diet am I going to have to do? And I'll tell them we don't do elimination diets and explain why all the reasons that I've just listed. And they'll say, well, I'm so scared because, you know, I have, I haven't eaten, you know, all these foods and it's like, well, how's that working for you?

You know, you're still, you're, you're still having all these symptoms. So like, is that actually helping you? You know, you're eating less food than you ever have. Maybe the reason you feel the worst you ever have is because of the lack of variety of foods that you're eating. So let's take a different approach.

Let's look at all the pieces of the puzzle. And so you don't have to hyper focus on food and what you're eating and you can have a much more balanced approach. We can focus on variety and enjoyment and pleasure and blood sugar balance and all the things that go into like proper nutrition, which isn't really about.

This kind of black and white approach with food. Yeah. I mean, 

[00:20:10] Grace: yeah, to, to not go down the route route of elimination diet, mostly because like you said, most people have probably gone down that route and they're trying. but even just the idea or knowing that more variety actually equals a healthier gut.

Just that statement is actually really powerful. It makes you question and think, right? Really? Because that is so not what we're told. So, 

[00:20:32] Dr Heather Finley: but it's like, it's so clear in the research, you know, and you're, I guess the, the way to like dig deeper in that and explain that is you have trillions of bacteria in your gut.

You actually have more bacteria than you do human cells. So a lot of scientists will say you're more bacteria than you are human, which is kind of funny to think about, but. you know, you have all these bacteria in your gut and the way to keep them alive is to feed them. And so if you're not feeding them the foods that they like a la fiber and plant variety, then your microbiome is slowly shrinking.

there's even studies showing that Americans in general have a less diverse microbiome than squirrels, which is kind of shocking and crazy, but honestly, I believe it just because of how. restricted and how much diet culture has messed with what people will and won't eat and all the trends and this, that, and the other.

It, it's confusing to live in the world that we live in and try to feed yourself because there's always conflicting opinions. And, you know, but all that to say, you know, Your gut bacteria are picky eaters. They all like different foods. So one type of bacteria might like Kiwi and the other type of bacteria might like green beans and the other bacteria likes a specific type of grain.

So, you know, when we're talking about plant variety, we're really talking about fruits and vegetables. vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans, legumes, herbs, spices. So not just fruits and vegetables, like all the different plants that we can get. 

[00:22:07] Grace: That's fascinating. I didn't know that. And I love that understanding and knowing that, can be really helpful because it gives you a gives people a concrete reason to expand instead of just acknowledging and recognizing that need to get through the fear or get over the fear of different foods, but actually knowing that why and how, right?

So like a lot of times I'll talk with people around how for a while we've got to drop the labels of like good and bad food, which is the best thing you can do for your, their, your body, right. It's just accept. And yeah, through that, that's really hard, right? 

[00:22:42] Dr Heather Finley: Super hard because it's everywhere. It's on social media.

It's in the news. It's in books. It's yeah, all everywhere you go eat this. Not that. Yeah. 

[00:22:52] Grace: Yeah. Okay. Okay. So then really, what would be some of the first steps you start with people on in terms of, it sounds like overall establishing a better relationship with their body and their food. 

[00:23:05] Dr Heather Finley: So I think the first step is really understanding the full picture. So it's pretty rare that got issues happen overnight. It's usually a progression over time. And I think it can be a really powerful thing for people to look back at. Okay, here's my entire medical history.

And here's kind of how things have dominoed over time. And then they can see. Oh, wow. When I was experiencing really significant stress when I was in college and my GI issues were their worst, and then I had another period of stress at this point, that's so interesting that my symptoms were so bad during both of those times, you know, so that can be really powerful, just kind of as a visual representation of here's kind of how we got where we are.

We can also look at patterns in the day to day. So, okay. Are your symptoms better or worse on the weekends? Are they better or worse in the morning, in the evening? All of that can tell us a lot about what's going on. We like to bring in testing because it helps give clarity to the situation as well. So we're huge fans of like stool testing and digging into what's actually going on in the gut, you know, from a bacteria standpoint and a digestion standpoint and an inflammation standpoint, but all that really comes secondary to understanding the full picture.

and then we can kind of bring in that data. so really, I think that step one is giving clarity to the whole picture. Then we can work on, okay, what small changes can we make to the lifestyle? Do we need to focus on getting more rest? Do we need to focus on five minutes of stress management during the day?

Do we need to focus on chewing your food and, you know, taking 10 to 20 minutes to eat a meal, depending on what it is, or taking deep breaths before eating and trying to find some easy tools that are sustainable because we never want it to be something where. Someone starts something and they're like, Oh, I can't wait to be done with this in 30 days, which is so much how our culture is like, what's the quick fad detox diet, whatever.

And I'll just white knuckle my way through the 30 days and I can't wait for it to be over. But then it's like, But then what, you know, how do we actually maintain these things over time, then we can kind of bring in treatments and stuff, obviously based on the testing. But a lot of it starts with like the foundations, you know, the breathing, the stress management, the lifestyle pieces, the blood sugar balance, all that kind of stuff.

[00:25:26] Grace: Yeah. So it sounds like that really whole picture because we need both. We need to understand how to help people. Our mental and emotional health with it breathing nervous system. And at the same time, yeah, obviously, like we said, there's nutritional value to food. There's obviously physical manifestations of all this that we need to address.

So it sounds like there's a really holistic approach there. 

[00:25:46] Dr Heather Finley: Yeah, totally. And you know, some people, we definitely get clients that are like, I've been doing nervous system work for a year, and I still have symptoms. I'm like, great, that's awesome. I don't want you to stop doing the nervous system work , you know?

Mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm. like, you're set up so well to respond to the interventions that we can use based on, you know, your test results, et cetera. 'cause there are a lot of clients where it's like. The stress and the lifestyle piece will get them super far. And then, like you said, there are physical manifestations, which is why the two work so well together.

you know, then we'll also have clients that come to us in the opposite end. I've done every treatment protocol. I've done every test. I'm like. Okay, well, what did you do on your stress side lifestyle side? They're like, oh, I don't have time for that. Oh, okay. Well, perhaps that's why we're still stuck, you know, so we can get both both sides of the spectrum.

[00:26:41] Grace: Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. because again, everything's connected. okay. So then. And maybe you just answered this, but is there is there something specific that you find people go years and years searching without really finding what that root causes? Like, is there a reason behind that? 

[00:27:04] Dr Heather Finley: I think. Well, I think there's a couple answers to this.

Some of it is what I just said, like they're so focused on the treatment and the protocol and the supplement thing that I'm doing, and they're not focused on the lifestyle and the breathwork and, you know, the nervous system piece of it. but I also think there's kind of a lot of. Jibber Jabber. I don't know what the term would be.

Kind of in the functional space where it's like, it's so focused on root cause, but still when we're, when we are addressing a root cause, we forget about like the whole picture too. And so someone leaves like a functional medicine doctor's office with a list of all the foods they can't eat and the. 13 supplements that they have to take and it's like, is that actually helping either?

Like there has to be a healthy balance of like, how do we actually get you to a point where you're eating and enjoying food and not having the symptoms, but also not having to take like a million things to help maintain your body at where it's at, if that makes sense. So I think. It's it's the extremes, right?

Like, where's kind of the healthy balance in between. 

[00:28:14] Grace: I'm so glad you said that because that, is I see personally went through that and see a lot and a lot of my clients were. They're like, well, I've gone down the holistic functional medicine route, right? but they're still left with these lists of diagnoses and problems in their gut and lists of things they should or should not eat and this up, like all the things you just said, which leads to more stress because, and actually, I guess you tell me if you agree with the statement, I think that there's always something that we can find quote unquote wrong in our bodies because we are imperfect.

Right, so there's always going to be something we can find the more testing we do, but I'm wondering how much. It's too much and like how much is needed, right? Yeah. 

[00:28:57] Dr Heather Finley: Where's kind of the paranoia versus like, you know, getting things to an optimal level where you feel good and you have energy and you're checking in occasionally, but you're not being overly paranoid.

Yeah. 

[00:29:09] Grace: Yeah. 

[00:29:10] Dr Heather Finley: A good example I have actually of kind of what we were just talking about of like, I did the testing and I did this treatment protocol is something I see a ton is people that have been tested and are positive for Candida are told they have Candida. And what happens is they go on all these antifungals and they go on a Candida diet and they feel amazing and then they start eating sugars and.

Like carbohydrates really again, and they're like, my symptoms are back and that is like the anti root cause. Even though that's kind of touted as a root cause approach, the better question, and this would apply to anything is, well, why do you have the candida? Do you have candida? Because. You have low stomach acid and there's nothing actually killing things off, you know, as you actually digest your food, do you have candida because you're super stressed and your blood sugar's imbalanced, you know?

so we think we're kind of addressing this with like a root cause approach when really we're just doing another restrictive thing that's not actually addressing the reason. So that's something I see a ton. Of clients come to us, they're like, well, I did a treatment for Candida. I don't understand why I still have it.

I'm like, well, what'd you do? You know, 

[00:30:20] Grace: I feel so seen. That was my exact experience. I didn't I 

[00:30:25] Dr Heather Finley: did not know that PSA for. Yeah. Yeah. We did not know that. That 

[00:30:28] Grace: was just your example. And that was totally my experience for probably like a couple of years going in and out of that and being so frustrated and then also being triggered by the, Yeah.

Candida diet because I had previously healed an eating disorder and that was hard to do such hard restriction. Right. But then it made sense because I felt better. Like it was just this horrible cycle. 

[00:30:48] Dr Heather Finley: It's such a vicious cycle. So what eventually helped you heal? Well, 

[00:30:55] Grace: I essentially kind of just recognized, okay, especially going through a lot of like brain training, nervous system regulation and recognizing that the physical is not the answer for me.

Right. Thank you. I started to just realize, you know what, I'm going to see Candida as kind of how I see mold in my body. I'm going to have some there. It's just part of it, like it's part of my body, but it doesn't mean I always have to react to it. So I started really focusing on the brain training, nervous system regulation, just my lifestyle, kind of what we're talking about, really leaned into all of that and haven't really looked back since I haven't gone back to test because I don't think it's necessary.

Yeah, and if 

[00:31:32] Dr Heather Finley: you're not having symptoms. You know, we're always going to have some level of bacteria or yeast or whatever it might be in our body. It becomes at what point is it causing a problem versus not, you know, which is why like me and you could have the same exact looking stool test, which would be very unlikely.

But if we did. Yeah. Yeah. Your symptoms could be completely different than mine because it's so much more than just that. It's the whole body and how it's all working together. 

[00:32:00] Grace: Exactly. That's the same way we talk about. so chronic pain is the same way. So, like, 2 people can have the same type of x rays in their spine.

They can both have a really big district generation. For example, 1 person could have pain and 1 person doesn't. Exactly. So yeah, it's, speaks a lot more to like what's really underneath our, yeah, how's our, like we've been saying, how our lifestyle, what's our brain, how's our nervous system. If it's stuck in that fight or flight, yeah, we're going to have symptoms.

We need the symptoms to protect us from whatever else we're afraid of feeling or doing. Totally. Okay. this has been really awesome so far. Is there anything else we haven't touched on that you feel like is really important for people to understand about gut health? what you do specifically? 

[00:32:46] Dr Heather Finley: I think like, I don't know, maybe not something to understand or, but just something to know is like, Your gut health is kind of always a moving target, kind of like we've always said, like we can change our microbiome really quickly, by, you know, introducing variety in our diet or taking a random probiotic.

Like, there's always something we can do to shift our microbiome, but. Like our microbiome also is going to affect so many other things in our, in our life. But it's not something that we have to be paranoid about. Like if in general, like one meal isn't going to like make or break your gut health. And like, although yeah, it might influence it like slightly.

the next meal, it's going to change again. And so, you know, there's, there's no need to constantly be feeling like you have to nitpick every single morsel of food that you eat. It's all about like, what are we doing kind of at the sum of the parts or whatever the better saying is like the average of kind of all the days, like we don't need to nitpick one day of horrible symptoms when the reality is like the rest of the week was pretty good.

Like. Sometimes our bodies just have responses to things and it doesn't always have to mean something's like super wrong or negative or whatever. Like it's normal to kind of have these ebbs and flows. that being said, obviously if you're having chronic symptoms, like get help, you know, and seek help, but you know, we don't have to be paranoid about it either.

[00:34:14] Grace: Yeah, I think that's such an important point to keep driving home that like, yeah, like we said, you can always be looking for more. There's always more, but the more that we look, the more rigid we become around treatment, around protocols, around food, around our health, the more it actually just stresses us out, which creates more symptoms.

So it's a cycle. 

[00:34:34] Dr Heather Finley: Yeah. It's like, what's sustainable for you? You know, what can we do long term? you know, if your goal, like kind of going off that research study, the goal is 30 plants a week, which may sound really overwhelming, but honestly it's not when you think about how many foods are plants. Like I said, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans, legumes.

If you make spaghetti, you can easily put 10 plants in one pot of spaghetti and that's just one meal. So, you know, if that's kind of the goal and you're like reaching for that and you're getting 20 to 30 a week and you feel like that's achievable and doable for you and you're focused on your sleep, like what's the.

sustainable for you versus like going to these extremes where like one week you're on this crazy extreme, then the next week you're doing nothing. Like what can you actually maintain, you know, on an, on a weekly average kind of basis? Yeah. 

[00:35:26] Grace: Yeah. when usually when we're healing disordered eating, eating disorders, body image, there becomes a point where the day to day obsessiveness and like just.

feeling like crap physically and mentally every day becomes something that you're not willing to do anymore. And so the op, the, the, the way to move through that is recognize, okay, well, actually I think even if my fear is to gain weight, or if my fear is to not look a certain way, or if my fear is to, I'm not going to be the, fit person anymore, or I'm not going to be the person that eats really well anymore.

That's better than how I'm suffering so much. Right. So like, we're so hyper focused on all the things. That becomes, there becomes a point where you're like, well, you know what? I'm willing to do anything actually other than being so hyper, other than being so hyper focused because it's debilitating. It's horrible.

[00:36:18] Dr Heather Finley: And like, what do you get to add to your life by not spending so much time hyper focused? You know, like what kind of enjoyment do you get to add when you release control of some of this? 

[00:36:30] Grace: Exactly. And when we can have that joy, those places where we feel like connected and grounded and laughing and present.

that helps us heal so much more than trying to get rid of all the negative. Just talked about that actually on our group call this week. Like, yes, let's, you know, talk about how to decrease some of these things, but where are you, how are you spending your energy, your life? Like, how are you finding this joy and happiness?

[00:36:56] Dr Heather Finley: And I think the same principles apply to food, you know, from like a nutrition point, like you can hyper focus on the one thing, or you can look at like, Wow. That was super enjoyable. I just enjoyed a meal with like my best friend or my husband or whoever. And like the conversation was so engaging and I feel nourished not only physically, but also emotionally.

Like there's so much more to nutrition than just like the one morsel of thing, you know, or food or whatever it is. So, yeah, exactly. Oh, 

[00:37:29] Grace: I love it. It's the best, the best message. okay. So. Let's see, where can people find you? 

[00:37:38] Dr Heather Finley: The best place probably to find me is on Instagram. It's just my name, Dr. Heather Finley.

I have tons of free resources on there, downloads, whatever. So, you're welcome to come along and follow me or send me a message. If you heard anything interesting, I'd love to connect. 

[00:37:54] Grace: Amazing. Thank you. And I like to ask this one question of every guest. 

[00:37:59] Dr Heather Finley: What 

[00:37:59] Grace: are you loving right now in your health wellness journey?

It could be anything from like a new book or a recipe to, I don't know, some huge insight you had. 

[00:38:10] Dr Heather Finley: What I'm loving is this Sleepy tea that I've been drinking that I feel like it's such a nighttime ritual for me where I watch my husband and I have been really into this show called white collar. I don't know if you've ever heard of it.

I've seen it, 

[00:38:24] Grace: but I haven't watched it. Yeah. 

[00:38:25] Dr Heather Finley: It's like kind of cheesy, but it's good. And it's not like scary. So I don't feel like I can't go to bed after, you know, so we'll like to make our little cup of sleepy tea, watch an episode. And then I feel like I'm ready to go relax and go to bed. So that's something that I've enjoyed recently.

[00:38:41] Grace: Awesome. Cool. Okay. Thank you. Well, thank you so much for being here. Yeah, this was a really great episode and very much so needed. I don't think I've talked to one student or client or person listening to this that that might not be their primary concern, gut issues, but it's always there. Of course. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, thanks for 

[00:39:02] Dr Heather Finley: having me. This was so 

[00:39:04] Grace: fun.