Ep 170: The Synbiotic Dance Between Eating Rhythm and Digestion - Eating Rhythm Series

Bienvenidos todos! Have you ever noticed how stress or anxiety affects your eating rhythm? Have you ever noticed how your eating rhythm affects your digestion? Well my friends, I’m going to connect the dots. I’m going to culminate the Eating Rhythm series with a deep dive into the symbiotic dance between the eating rhythm and digestion system. 

Here’s a overview of what I’m going to cover:

1. Review the eating rhythm and its effects on health
2. Describe my client’s digestive and eating rhythm journey
3. IBS, the Low FODMAP why the eating rhythm helps
4. Chrono-nutrition and Gut microbiome connection
5. One small bite eating rhythm approach that helps the digestion

Where do I go from here?
For all the details and more about this episode, feel free to visit my website. 

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Chop the diet mentality; Fuel Your Body; and Nourish Your Soul!

Transcript

David: 0:05

Hola y beinvenido to the one small bites show where we chopped diet mentality, fuel your body and nourish your soul. In every episode, you'll get a one small bite approach you can implement to live a more nourished life. This show is for educational and informational purposes only. So please make sure to connect with the professional support. You need at your own discretion. Oh, and we don't bleep out curse words. So just a heads up in case you're with little ones. Okay. Let's do this.

0:41

Well, welcome to the one small by podcast. I'm your host, David Orozco registered dietitian, nutritionist, and certified, intuitive eating counselor. And in today's show. I am going to talk to you about the symbiotic dance between your eating rhythm and the digestive system. And boy, I've got a great episode for you today. I'm really excited to bring this information to you. So one of the things that you might've noticed in these episodes is that I'm obviously talking about the eating rhythm. If you start with episode 1 65, 1 66, 1 67, you'll get a good understanding of the connection to mental and physical health. And our eating rhythms. And I've talked about how the eating rhythm affects the circadian rhythm or your sleep. I've talked about how your eating rhythm is affecting your health, as well as your mental health in these episodes. And today I'm going to talk to you about how the eating rhythm or the eating patterns that you have are also affecting your digestive system. And the wonderful little microbes that we have in our guts that are also creating the gut brain connection. Or what we also know as the second brain or the second nervous system. Okay, let me give you a quick overview of what I'm going to discuss in today's show. First, I'm going to start with the circadian rhythm of digestion and then. I want to talk to you about the gut microbiome and eating patterns and rhythms. I'm going to also talk to you about the mental and physical health. Of the digestive harmony and of course of your consistent eating rhythm. Now, what I want to do is I want to first talk to you about the story of a client that I worked with not so long ago. She was dealing with a lot of GI issues and she also wanted to try to lose weight at the same time. So after talking to her about her body and her shape and size and how that isn't nearly as important. As getting a good rhythm of eating and getting an adequate diet to help her with her sleep and to help her with an anxiety issue that she was dealing with. We started getting into the nitty gritty of her IBS issues. IBS stands for irritable bowel syndrome. And there are four different subtypes of IBS. The first one is IBS D, which is mostly diarrhea and abdominal discomfort. The next one is IBS. C, which is constipation. And abdominal discomfort. There is IBS mixed, which is alternating loose stools with constipation and abdominal discomfort. And remember pain is a big issue in all of this. And then IBS-U, which is meaning undefined. And again, remember what's common with IBS is abdominal pain with all the four subtypes. She had a little bit of diarrhea from time to time, but she was dealing with a considerable amount of constipation. And one of the other things that was also happening was that. She couldn't lose weight. And again, if you listened to the show, you know, that. The weight of a person has some correlation to their health, but it isn't the only thing that's going on. So while I was working with this client, we were getting into specific foods that she could eat that can be helpful for her digestion. We talked about the low FODMAP diet. And you guys might have heard of this. You might've seen this in a blog. On social media, your doctor, your gastroenterologist, might've told you about this. But generally speaking, a low FODMAP diet is an approach of eliminating certain carbohydrates. Now, these carbohydrates are FODMAPs and they stand for fructans oligosaccharides disaccharides, monosaccharides, the, a stands for, and, and polyols. All these are short chain carbohydrates that are affecting the gut microbes in one way or another in the colon. And I've had special guests on that specialize in gut health. I had my friend Kate Scarlata. It's probably one of the best known GI and IBS experts in nutrition. She's a registered dietician nutritionist. She's in episode 18. If you get a chance to listen to that episode and episode 150 with Beth Rosen. And Beth is just great at describing some of the problems that are going on in the gut. So listen to that episode, when you get a chance. And in both of those episodes, we actually talk a lot about IBS. We talk about the low FODMAP diet and different approaches that a person can take. And what's really, really important about this is that. We have to understand that with IBS, the only GI condition that actually has a well studied evidence-based. And reviewed. Dietary approach that actually is very beneficial for a person with IBS. however, the approach. Sometimes has to be personalized for the individual. Because a low FODMAP diet does come with a lot of bad side effects that can occur down the road, especially if a person's dieted and tried to lose weight in the past. Okay. So we started working with a couple of low FODMAPs. Now I don't take a low FODMAP diet elimination process directly with everyone. And the reason for this is. I have a concern, a major concern that as soon as you put someone on a diet, It creates the very same problems and challenges of weight cycling. Which then in the future, the benefit of the diet gets lost with a subsequent weight gain. And then that becomes more problematic in the future. Not to mention, we actually don't have good research on the metabolic effect. Of these diets. We know that weight cycling. Leads to a greater likelihood of weight gain. But we also don't know to what extent that this has on our bodies. I know that our metabolism gets messed up. So I could imagine that a lot of. Digestive problems also can be created. Now I don't want to project that her problems were because of weight cycling. I'm just trying to say that I didn't want to do a diet, especially not something where I eliminate because she had a history of weight cycling of doing diets in the past. So, what we did is we did what's called a low FODMAP light approach. So we started looking at specific FODMAPs that she was consuming on a regular basis. And we started taking some out, eliminating in abbreviated methods and we started looking at whether there was an effect on that. And we discovered a couple we've discovered two or three that were creating most of the problems. And in eliminating them, it became a little bit better. Her IBS symptoms were much better. She didn't have as much constipation. So working through all of this was great. Well, one of the problems is that after few months of working with her, We started seeing the same constipation problems coming back. And we started realizing that, okay, there was something more than just the specific foods. When we look back, we realize that her eating rhythm was quite off. We started seeing that. she would go to bed at 10 o'clock? And then she would be on her phone or maybe on her computer. And the reason she would do that is because she couldn't fall asleep very easily. So we discovered that she was having problems falling asleep some nights she would go to bed at 12, 12 30 1:00 AM and she would still get up at around the same time between six 30 and seven. But it was a struggle to get up in the morning and it was all she can do is just get out of bed. I got a cup of coffee and then get to work. Sometimes she'd grab something. Maybe she'd grab something on the way to work. Maybe she would grab something at work, but it was hit or miss. And then by 11 o'clock she's starving, she might grab another snack. And that might help a little bit. But then sometimes she had meetings at lunchtime 12 o'clock 1130 and they bled into her afternoon time. If she was lucky, she might be able to grab something real quick. Either at the cafeteria at work, or if she worked from home, she might be able to grab something from the refrigerator, but she was finding that later in the afternoon, she was snacking quite a bit. And again, these snacks would help, but one of the problems was it wasn't helping enough. It wasn't providing her with an actual meal. And the process, we discovered that her metabolism had slowed down quite a bit because she was starting to get a lot of fatigue, and she was getting challenges with focusing and concentrating at work. She was very easily irritated. There were a lot of concerns that were creeping up little by little and she would get home and the process would continue. She would get home. And she might end up eating late or she might end up eating out. She was a single parent and taking care of two kids. Her mother lived at home with her, but her mother had her own issues that she was dealing with. So there was just a whole complex amount of issues. One of them was also high level of stress. And she also dealt with a considerable amount of anxiety. She also dealt with something that we call the human giver syndrome. Now, if you haven't heard of the human giver syndrome, this is very common with women. But the human giver syndrome is essentially. Women who typically give of themselves, give up their humanity. They are giving to the human beings, people who be or present with their humanity. Oh, and I wish I had came up with this idea, but actually it comes to me. from the book burnout, the secrets. And unlocking the stress cycle by Dr. Emily Nagorski. and her sister Amelia Gosky. If you get a chance, I highly recommend reading that book. You'll totally understand. But the human giver syndrome was this giving, giving, giving of yourself and they. The individual wouldn't have time. This was what's going on with this client. She realized that she didn't have a good eating rhythm. Now, this is where it gets really, really interesting. I started thinking to myself, okay, could her IBS issues. Be a problem of the eating rhythm. So I looked into the research a little bit and I was surprised to find that there was a lot of connection there. So let me digress a little bit here and tell you about the digestive system. And the connections to our eating rhythm. We can actually say that there is a circadian rhythm of digestion. And when I looked into the research, I found the few great articles. One article was this review that came from the journal of clinical gastroenterology. And I thought this was very interesting. This was published in June of 2022. And it was titled disruption of the circadian rhythms and gut motility. An overview of underlying mechanisms and associated pathologies. And one of the things that I like about this article is that they go out to explain that there is a physiological control of the circadian rhythms in the gastrointestinal track. They talk about how the physiology of the circadian rhythms in the gastrointestinal track. Are controlled and synchronized by two complimentary systems. One is the central mechanism in the brain. And the Oregon specific peripheral mechanisms. Now, what do these mean? Well, they talk about the suprachiasmatic nucleus. This is a cluster of neurons cells in the hypothalamus, and it acts as the central circadian pacemaker, which signals the various light from your eyes, that it is either daytime or nighttime. And this sets the 24 hour circadian rhythm of day and night wake and sleep right?

David: 13:51

Now, the suprachrasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus is essentially the brain's, if you will, apple watch. It, plays a central role in the daily programming of organismic functions by regulating day to day oscillations of internal bodies systems, synchronizing them to the changing cycles of day and night and the body's state.

14:15

The other thing that does that are these peripheral clocks, what we call gene clocks in certain cells, especially the cells that line the gastrointestinal system in particular, the colon. These peripheral clocks. play an integral and unique role in each of their respective tissues. They're driving the circadian expression of specific genes involved in variety of physiological functions. In this case, the digestive system. What you do is you get this nice dance. You get this rhythm. And so it operates to fluctuate, certain hormones that are released by certain functions. So the digestive system, especially in the colon has muscles that are both longitudinal and circular along the digestive system. Now they also come in different shapes depending on what part of the system like the esophagus or the stomach, the small intestines, but generally speaking there have mostly of these two types, circular and longitudinal. And so what happens is, is that you get this timing. And the timing happens in the morning where it's, stimulating our colon to start moving at night. The colon doesn't move move much. In fact, we don't get bowel movements mostly at night. We get most of our bowel moments during the day when we're awake. And that happens because we're trying to push food along. And we're also trying to get our system set up. So I've talked about the HBA access. I've talked about cortisol in the past. You've heard me talk about that. In the previous episode with Laney Jones, cortisol peaks in the morning, cortisol is a hormone that's released. As the stress hormone, but it's also part of the clock system, part of the circadian system. And so working with this client and knew that her. Disruption of her rhythm was affecting the rhythm of her digestion. That clock was off Her stress hormone was overactive. And she wasn't getting fed at regular times. The stress caused more anxiety. So I was thinking, could this be what would help. So I started looking more into the research. The other research that I've found that connected, this was in the journal nutrition reviews. This was published in 2017 and the title of the article was complex interactions of security and rhythms, eating behaviors, and the gastrointestinal microbiota and their potential impact on health. And it was really interesting because they talk about the known connection between the gut microbiome and the health of the individual. And so now we have this understanding of the connection with the rhythm. A host symbiotic bi-directional communication. That works along the gut microbiome. Um, and the brain access or what's known as the gut microbiota brain access again, that second brain. And these are the variety of bacteria, metabolites that are also created by those microbiomes in the digestive process. And again, we have to understand that it is an important function of the body to be able to break down food and then how they are affecting our digestion as well. Okay. One of the things that I found that was really, really interesting was this essential connection that was going on with this client. Now what's the connection of the rhythm and the gut microflora. So remember IBS. Is a problem with the gut micro flora, because these FODMAPs, these short chain carbohydrates. Are creating some of these micro flora to overexpress certain gases. Methane hydrogen, which is why we get higher amounts of flatulence. And we get more burping. This is also what creates the pain in the abdominal cavity or in the colon area. And so this is a classic symptom of IBS. Is that pain? And so we know that. If the digestive system is being manipulated, or if it's being taxed by the stress, which in this client situation, She wasn't eating when regular rhythm. In addition to getting some of these high FODMAP foods. I think the combination was really challenging. So I thought to myself, okay, so this is a really good connection. And what we ended up doing was we started working on. One small thing that she can do to improve the digestion. By getting a rhythm of eating those. That was a little tricky. It wasn't just a matter of saying, okay, I have three meals a day and make sure you add more fiber. You know what? Anybody can do that. You can go online and find a high fiber meal plan. The challenge was how to do that with the complex issues that were going on in her life. Now, what I'd like to get to is essentially what we ended up doing, because this is the exciting part, right? So I said to her, okay, let me look at the research, but why don't we do this? Why don't we try setting up, getting to a place where we're having a regular rhythm of eating and you can see in her eyes, it was like, oh my God, David, that's so overwhelming. Yeah, I'd love to have three square meals a day, but how the heck am I going to do that? And that's very, very common. That's why I said a little while ago, anybody can go on the internet and find a high fiber. Meal plan that has three meals and one or two snacks, but how do we do this in light of all of the situation that's going on in her life? So I said to her, okay. At night. When you pick up your phone and you can't fall asleep. Where is your phone? What are you doing? And she, she described a couple of things that was going on and she said, well, it's, you know, right by my bedside, I plug it in. And I said, okay. So by having it near you, you have the desire to want to pick it up. And want to look at it because you've been in a habit of not being able to fall asleep. She said exactly. That's right. And so when I said to her, why, w w she said, why just David, I can't turn off my brain. And when I try to go to sleep at night, I mean, just a thousand things are going through my brain and I've learned that by hopping on my phone or getting to work, I get distracted and I start getting tired and I fall asleep. And then I say, well, what happens later on? She said, well, I usually will get up once, twice, maybe three times once to go to the bathroom, at least. And then a few other times to do something else. And then I'm just up in the middle of the night as well, or can't fall asleep that easily. And I'm tossing and turning. I said, okay. So I said, well, when you're at home, when you are gone before you're going to bed, do you have anybody that you talked to do you. Talk to your mother and kind of just unwind for the day instead of just sitting and jumping on the computer. And she's like, well, we've tried talking, but it leads to a lot of arguments with my mother. And I said, okay, that's not a solution. And I said, okay, well, have you taught, tried doing meditation or deep breathing exercises? And she goes, you know what, David. Meditation has worked for me in the past, but sometimes I just don't have the energy to do meditation. And I said, well, have you done. Just breathing exercises. She goes, well, that's how I learned how to do meditation is by doing these deep breathing exercises. So I went through this deep breathing exercise that I learned. In Aikido of all places. We called it. Ibuky No-ho. It's the way of breath. And it was a way of taking deep breaths into your nose and exhaling out of your mouth. Very, very, very slowly. And there was a motion with our hands and what we did would we would concentrate on the breath in the center of our belly. And as we breathe in, our bellies would expand and then as we're exhaling, they would collapse. And so I talked to her about all this and she was very interested. I said the other thing too is, you know, journaling getting some of your thoughts out on paper and thinking about what we can do. And she said, you know, David, this all sounds great, but sometimes I just, again, I don't have the energy and I said, Hmm, okay. Well, it sounds like what we need is maybe a little disruption in some of the habits that occur. At night before you go to bed. So she started thinking, okay, well, I don't have to have my phone by my side at night. I can put my phone. In the bathroom, or I can put the phone on top of my dresser, which is further away from my bedside. And I said, well, that's perfect. This way, you don't have to look at it and it's right there yet. You literally have to get out of bed. That could actually be enough of disruption. I said, maybe there's something else that you can do too. And she said, well, I mean, I have my journal and I said, well, maybe you could put your journal on top of your pillow. Now look, folks. What I was trying to get at with her was of course creating a rhythm of eating. I know that's what we're getting to. But we have to break it down into very bite sized pieces. So that we can start somewhere. What we're trying to do is create a domino effect. And folks, let me tell you, this really works like a charm. What ended up happening with this client is that she ended up. Putting her phone further away putting her journal on top of the pillow. And every night when she would go to bed, she'd have to move the journal out of the way. And that was enough to remind her subtle cue to break the habit of jumping on her phone or jumping on the computer. And therefore she would either start a meditative process or she would start journaling. And now of course, I know many of you have journaled before, and it's not like rocket science, but one of the things that happened was it allowed her to get a lot of her thoughts out of her mind and onto a journal. A lot of times she would do. Just to do lists. And it was enough that allowed her to go to sleep a little bit earlier. Now she wasn't going to bed at 1230 or at one, she was going to bed at maybe 10 30, 11 o'clock. So it was a big shift, almost two hours. That gave her enough sleep time without waking up in the middle of the night, because that blue light from the computer and her from her phone and the stimulus from not being able to unwind from the day, so to speak because of the distractions of the T the, excuse me, the computer. And then in the morning she had more time. She'd get up refreshed. She wasn't fighting the wake-up. She had a little more time to get breakfast. And so then we were able to create the same interruptions. That we did at night with meals in the day, I told her, go to the grocery store, make sure you have the foods that you like at eye level in the refrigerator. So it's a grab and go kind of situation. And so in the morning she had a little more time to make breakfast. She started having breakfast. Then she was also able to prepare at least one lunch or think about what she was going to do for lunch. And then she started getting into the habit of blocking out her calendar at noon, at least three or four days a week. So that people wouldn't make appointments at that time. And what ended up happening was she slowly over time started building a rhythm of eating. That really helped her get her digestion back and track. And she was able to add. More fibrous foods. Because the fiber that we can get in food also was helping improve the microbes in her gut. Yes. She also tried a few probiotic type foods. And I'm more about the prebiotic foods. Now, this is where it gets a little complicated with FODMAPs and specific carbohydrates and fibers and stuff. So we had to play with it a little bit. It took a while, but. Her IBS was almost non-existent. After about eight, nine months of working together, she started getting into a good rhythm of eating, and she was surprised. I mean, she started realizing that our clothes was fitting a little better. Her mood was better. Her energy levels were better. It was a cascade. It was a domino effect. There was one thing that she did that started this whole process. And it led to more changes, little by little. Look folks again, I keep emphasizing the importance of one small bite. And sticking to that, being consistent with that. And so it becomes automatic to the point where you don't even realize that you're doing it anymore. And it is helping so much. That now you can add something else to it. Like this client did. So folks. There's a very strong connection with that eating rhythm of the day and our digestive system. There's a good little dance that's going on that I think is very, very important. Okay folks, this is what I really love about the show. It's about that one small bite. You can do this. You can take one small thing like my client did and help you make the changes without trying to force yourself to make a change. That journal on her pillow, moving the phone away from her bedside. Simple little things that just create enough of a little interruption does enough of a, friction in your day that breaks the habits. And therefore that can then lead into the changes that you want to do. So you don't have to force that willpower to do it. If you want more on this, I would recommend the listen to episode 167. I talk about the recipe for making habits. Stick, listen to that. I think it's going to give you a good foundation of what I mean in relationship to this episode today. And it'll probably be a game changer for you. Remember the key here is to be. Consistent so that you build that automaticity and that it gets in the way of those old habits and those old habits start to disappear. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I want to say that for the next few weeks, I am going to take a break for the holidays. It is the beginning of December right now, and I just want to prepare a whole bunch of great episodes. Starting the first quarter of next year. So stay tuned. My next. Podcast episode is going to come out in January and I'm really excited about what I'm going to bring to you. I'm also excited about the services that I'm going to bring to you as well. So please remember to sign up for my newsletter. If you go to my website, Orozco nutrition.com. Scroll down to the bottom of the homepage, right on the bottom, on the footnote. You'll see a little section that says newsletter, sign up, go ahead and sign up for those newsletters. So you can get the information first before anything, even before this podcast. And listen, if you have a moment, please I really love it. If you could rate and review this show because it really helps. More listeners get this information that really needed. And if you really enjoyed the show share it with two or three people. Okay folks. Just, of course, as always remember chop that diet mentality fuel your body and nourish your soul. Until next time.