The Gut Paradox - Could Digestive Health be the Root Cause of Most Health Problems Ranging from Hormone Issues, Autoimmune Disorders and Even Cancer?

Introduction

If you’re reading this book, it means you’re looking for answers. I want to assure you that you are on the right path. You still might have a long journey ahead of you, but you’ve taken the first step from a passive to an active approach that will ultimately show you everything you need to know about how to live a long and healthy life not too dependent on medication and symptom-suppressing drugs.

Now, I had been a healthcare practitioner specializing in functional health for more than ten years and after seeing thousands of patients I had never seen anything like it, ever. This particular condition started out as a small rash, tiny red spots on the legs and arms. It was itchy, but he felt it would surely go away without giving it much thought and dismissing it as an allergic reaction.

Now, most of us don’t pay attention to minor changes in our bodies even though we should. We are too busy with our lives to notice until we’re symptomatic and paying the price of living life the way we want. Till the point, we can no longer take the discomfort and the way it is ruining our life. Then what do most people do? They go to the doctor and get some pharmaceutical product to ease or eliminate the discomfort and the symptoms. The problem with this philosophy is that this provides only a short-lived relief, at best. It does not address the underlying cause.

As time passed this particular condition of burning, inflamed skin with chronic itching did not go away, in fact, it got worse, much worse and began spreading all over his body. He was in constant pain and discomfort, with red, inflamed skin that looked like second-degree burns all over his body. The burning, swelling, and itchiness were excruciating. The unbearable symptom started to affect his life significantly. Sleep became all but impossible. The days were filled with debilitating pain at every movement and skin flaking off everywhere. At night, most of the time he was restless and if lucky, was able to get a few hours of sleep. In the morning he would wake up in a pool of blood from a night of scratching his skin till it bled. He was in hell!

He couldn’t bear to look at himself covering his body in loose, long-sleeved clothes, even in the summer to keep people from staring. But as much as he tried his clothes could not hide everything. This still left his hands and face exposed. People could not help but stare, and this caused him great embarrassment. He became more self-conscious and ashamed. He started dreading going out, a trip to the supermarket became an ordeal.

He was a very proud family man with a very loving and supporting wife and newborn baby girl. He loved rocking his little girl in his arms and reading to her. But as his condition deteriorated, he could no longer read to his daughter at bedtime because any movement would be too painful. When he tried to sit and rock with her, the pain would shoot through his body, leaving him wincing in pain. His severe condition along with sleeplessness led to very low energy levels, which affected his focus, attention, and cognition. Soon, he was unable to work, and the spiral into stress and desperation continued to get worse.

It is hard to truly empathize and understand what a patient going through such turmoil thinks and feels. The impact and burden on his lifestyle and his family only added to his stress. His roles as father, husband, employer, not to mention the impact on his self-esteem as a man and provider hit a painful low. Looking back throughout it all, I remember feeling an emotional turmoil of great sadness and frustration.

You see, that guy was me.

Yes, after leading what I considered a full, healthy and vigorous life, this skin condition, or whatever it was, had spread throughout my entire body and had completely taken over my being. Me, Dr. Steve Burlison, functional health practitioner, was struck with a life-halting health condition that no one had answers for. I reached a point where I could not hide this anymore. I remember when I finally told my wife the severity of what was happening and had to admit I was falling apart. This was no surprise to her as she had witnessed this condition progressing and I knew how worried she was. I remember my wife holding me in her arms, looking into my eyes with tears rolling down both of our faces telling me that we were going to figure this out. Here I was - broken, weak, depressed and no longer feeling like a man. At that moment my wife gave me the best gift she could, Hope.

This condition was affecting everybody in my life, my family, my friends, my colleagues and my business. The immediate environment resonates the effects of any disorder and is changed by it. But here’s the thing - it also has the power to influence it positively.

Once I had come clean to terms with my condition and became committed to getting well, I stopped being desperate, and started searching for every conceivable avenue of treatment -- both conventional and alternative -- to find a solution. The best allopathic doctors shrugged their shoulders and told me that all they could offer were steroids to manage the inflammation, but I knew that this condition was not skin deep. I knew that this was not a skin problem at all. In my years of practicing a holistic approach to healing the body, I understood that a symptom could manifest in one part of the body, like the skin, but that the underlying cause may lay elsewhere. My intuition and training told me this was a systemic problem and that I had to dig deeper to find the cause behind it.

Then, the problem became much worse if that were at all possible. I had severe pain shooting through my body to the point that I had difficulty walking. This was especially hard for me as being physically active had been a big part of my life till then. I liked playing sports, loved CrossFit, golf, and hockey. I especially enjoyed being outside and taking walks with my family. All of which I could no longer do. The progression of this condition had hit a point where basic movements cost a massive effort on my part. The pain became constant and unbearable. I lathered myself with coconut oil and Shea butter. While this helped a little and kept my skin from flaking everywhere, it did nothing for the burning, itching, swelling, and redness. I knew external factors did not cause this, and there was something inside my body that was severely dysfunctional.

I consulted with colleagues and some of the best minds in functional medicine across the country. Eventually, we came up with a game plan.

One thing I know for sure is that most physical problems don’t develop overnight. Often, they have been brewing for years, lurking beneath the surface and hidden from view. So, I thought about my previous habits and whether they could have in any way contributed to my current problem.

It was difficult to admit it but my eating habits growing up and into my young adult years hadn’t been the best. In fact, they were downright horrible at times, in part because of the misleading nutritional theories and in part, that as an energetic and continually exercising athlete, I thought I could get away with eating anything I want. But the problem with food is that, for the most part, we see it through the lens of calories eaten and calories burned. As an avid athlete, I would burn off all those extra calories, right? However, food is way more than calories. It can contain toxins that can wreak havoc on our bodies not just at the time of digestion but over decades as we continue to put poisons into our digestive system, three times a day, every day of our lives. Could my eating habits have damaged my gut somehow?

Two critical parts of our amazing bodies are the brain and nervous system along with the gut or let just say the digestive system as a whole. The brain and spinal cord are the control center of the body with an estimated 200 billion neurons between the two and coordinates every aspect of our physical body. The gut is called the ‘second brain’ because it too has neurons that communicate with the brain. In fact, the gut has 500 million neurons and plays a massive part in the transfer of energy from food into the fuel and chemicals that drive the entire body.

The gut environment, or gut biome, is an incredibly delicate balance of trillions of micro-organisms and about a thousand different species of bacteria. What’s more, many of these organisms are unique to each person and have 3000 specific genes. Also factoring into my thinking was my conviction that clearly, I had an auto-immune response and the gut was heavily involved in. In fact, 80% of the immune system is located within or associated with, our digestive function. So, if you have a health issue, hormone imbalances or auto-immune response, the gut is an excellent place to start to look for answers.

I devised a healing protocol to get my life back and improve my gut health. This involved a number of actions, like multiple 7-10 day juice fasts, a lot of bone broth, a list of supplements for nutritional deficits, pre and probiotics, coconut oil and, wait for it -- even daily coffee enemas. This daily protocol took up my whole morning so that I couldn’t even get to anything productive until the afternoon. I also eliminated all sugar. I also realized that I had neglected my intake of healthy fats that are a huge part of the immune response, hormone balancing, and reducing inflammation. One of the reasons was the misleading nutritional...