Episode: 123
The Science Of Your Gut: 3 Easy Steps to Reduce Bloating, Improve Digestion, and Feel Better Today
with Dr. Amy Shah, MD
Get the 3-step plan for a gut reset and practical tips to improve your overall health today.
In this episode, Dr. Amy Shah, a double-board certified expert in hormonal health and nutrition, explains bloating and how to find long-term relief.
Learn 10 foods to avoid, how to tell if it’s bloating or weight gain, and how gut health impacts anxiety and depression.
Listen on:
We know we need sleep, so why don’t we ever talk about giving your gut a rest, which is just as important as giving your brain a rest?
Dr. Amy Shah, MD
Featured Clips
Transcript
Mel Robbins (00:03):
I am so fricking bloated right now. I'm uncomfortable. On Monday, I put the red pants on. They felt great on Tuesday. They felt great. Wednesday, they felt great on Thursday, they felt great Friday. That's so great everybody. I mean, this poor button is hanging on by a thread. I was just about to Google, how do you get rid of a bloat five day reset? And I thought, Mel, what are you doing? Why don't you call Dr. Amy Shah?
Dr. Amy Shah (00:31):
The biggest tip when you're feeling bloated or distended is,
Mel Robbins (00:38):
Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. Today, you and I are going to talk about something that we have all experienced. Maybe you're experiencing it at this very moment. What is a topic? We're talking about bloating. And there's a particular reason why I wanted to talk about bloating today. And the reason is simple. I am so fricking bloated right now. I'm uncomfortable. See, here's what happened. The last couple of weeks, I have been on the road for work and I've been going from one city to the next city, and I've been giving speeches and having business meetings and it's been really great. And I want to tell you a little secret. This is like a travel secret, little travel tip that when I travel for work, I always just travel with a carry-on. And you may be asking yourself, well Mel, if you have been traveling for two weeks, how the heck can you go to multiple cities with a carry-on?
(01:29):
Well, the secret is simple. I wear this fame outfit every speech and every business meeting. I swear to God, I travel with a uniform. And if you ever look at any of the stories on Instagram, you'll notice wow, Mel always has on the same pair of red pants and the black shirt whenever she's giving your speech. It's true. I have this stretchy pair of red pants that I love that are made out of polyester. And I have this great black Oxford shirt that is also made out of polyester. And I wear it on stage and I wear it to business meetings and it looks fantastic. And the other thing that's fantastic about polyester is that when you get to a hotel room, if you hang a polyester pair of pants up in a shower and you run a shower within about 15 minutes, the steam of a shower in a hotel room cleans it like a dry cleaner.
(02:21):
Absolutely fabulous. So here I am, I'm on the road and I've got my red polyester pants. And on Monday I put the red pants on. They felt great. On Tuesday, I'm in Nashville to give a speech, put the red polyester pants, they felt great Wednesday, put the red polyester pants on in Chicago. They felt great. On Thursday, I put the red polyester pants on in Orlando for a speech. They felt great Friday when I put the red polyester pants on. That's so great everybody. I mean, I couldn't button them. And when I looked down, I realized I have the pants here, you can see 'em. If you look at YouTube, this poor button is hanging on by a thread for dear life. I'm talking, it has a singular thread because the tension on the waistband on this poor little button over the course of the last week has basically acted like a saw slowly sawing apart the threads that were attaching the button to the pants.
(03:29):
That button was the hardest working person in my company for the last five days. And I don't know what happened because I take care of myself when I'm on the road. It's not like I'm downing Jim Beam or I'm out late. I get a great night's sleep, I travel with friends. We're having a lot of fun. I love what I'm doing, but I kid you not, I will show you photos of me on that Friday. I look like I'm in the second trimester of a pregnancy. I have a food baby that looks like a basketball right in my stomach. And here's the thing, I know that I didn't gain weight. I mean, because you can't gain seven to 10 pounds in five days, but somehow I gained the equivalent of that in bloating. And so I finally got home here and I'm like, I have to figure out what to do because I am either going to be belching for two weeks or farting this out, and neither one is a great option and I feel terrible, and I don't want to wear sweatpants for the next, I dunno, four weeks while I'm waiting for the bloating to go down.
(04:42):
And so I was just about to Google, how do you get rid of a bloat five day reset? And I thought, Mel, what are you doing? Why don't you call Dr. Amy Shah? I mean Dr. Amy Shah, as you probably know if you're a listener to the Mel Robbins Podcast, she's been on this twice before. She is a double board certified medical doctor in the field of allergies, immunology, and internal medicine. She graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University's world renowned school of Nutrition. She went on to receive her doctorate with distinction. She's trained at Harvard, at Columbia, and she is on the front line of nutritional and medical science. She's been on the show before. She's incredible. And her bestselling book, I'm so effing Hungry, why We Crave What We Crave and what to do about it. It is the manual on trying to balance your hormones and understand the science of nutrition so that you can curve your cravings.
(05:41):
And I'm like, what are you doing? Why are you going to Google when you can get Dr. Shah on? And Dr. Shah can explain what is bloating, why does it happen? And more importantly, what is the protocol? What could you do in let's say five days? Is there a five day reset that you and I could follow so that whenever you feel bloated because of what you ate or because of stress or because of whatever the heck is going on, you know what to do. And so that's what we're doing today. And I also know that this conversation, we're planning on releasing it right during the holidays. And so you're going to be in the thick of it. You're going to be in the thick of all those amazing meals and the stress of the holidays and the drinking and the travel and the this and the that.
Mel Robbins (06:25):
And so wherever it is that you're coming to this conversation, we got a seat at the table for you. And you can have your pants buttoned or not. You can have on your red pants with your food baby, you can have on your soft pants with your sweatpants on. Everybody is welcome here because every single one of us at some point in our lives feels bloated. And for me it's today. And what we're going to do today is we're going to hear from the amazing Dr. Amy Shah, what are we going to do about this? So please help me welcome Dr. Amy Shah back to the Mel Robbins Podcast.
Dr. Amy Shah (07:00):
So grateful to be here with you. Mel.
Mel Robbins (07:03):
Can we just start with what the heck is bloating?
Dr. Amy Shah (07:07):
Bloating is so many things. It's the feeling of distension in your abdomen, but everybody thinks it's just from gas. Yes, it is from gas, but it can also be from your hormones. It can be water retention, it can be from medications causing discomfort. It can be just from being constipated. We all go through that where we're bloated, not because there's gas, but there's actual stool in there. And then menopause. Bloating, right? That's even more so than the regular PMS bloating. There's a whole menopause, bloating we have and there's so many other causes of bloating. So it's not just you ate too much or you ate too many Brussels sprouts or broccoli, which we can talk about. It's also, it can be from so many other things.
Mel Robbins (07:54):
Well, you said a big word just a minute ago, you said distended, that bloating is when your stomach is. What does that word mean?
Dr. Amy Shah (08:04):
So when your belly is pushing out, so from the inside, so you can have, like I said, it can be from stool, it can be from air, it can be from hormones causing water retention. And we all know how, I don't know about you, about when right before my period, I look like I'm pregnant. Okay? So all of that is distension inside. So this could be the wall of the intestines swollen, or it could be there's gas inside or it could be there's stool or food inside and that's why it's distended. There's so many different ways, but it feels kind of the same.
Mel Robbins (08:40):
That makes a lot of sense. Thank you for explaining that because I'm trying to really help myself and anyone listening tease out the difference between, oh, my habits have changed and I'm gaining a lot of weight, versus, oh, I've got something going on where from the inside out, it's almost like I feel like somebody has blown a balloon up inside of me full of something. I know this might sound like an insensitive question, but I have to ask this.
Mel Robbins (09:12):
How do you know if you're bloated versus you've just let your eating slide and you are gaining weight?
Dr. Amy Shah (09:21):
Yeah, it's hard to tell sometimes the difference, right? Because you go on a week long binge, it's say that holidays or you're on vacation and you come back and it's almost like a combination of multiple things. You're retaining water because you traveled a lot, you drank a lot, maybe you ate a lot of salt, and then your gut bacteria are mad at you. Remember, it is this world that lives inside your gut called the microbiome and they're just mad and they're producing all this gas to let you know that they're mad. And then you probably ate a lot of excess calories for that period of time. So it could be a combination of all three and you won't know until you start to reset your gut what is actually happening because a water weight will go away pretty quick if you're constipated, pretty much hopefully can resolve that. And then once you get your diet back on track, you might notice that the scale is starting to go down. So all of these things start to resolve themselves together.
Mel Robbins (10:24):
Why don't I back up a minute because here's what I'm starting to wonder in reaching out to you, Dr. Shah, I had a food baby. I could not button my pants. And it happened so fast over the course of five days that I knew that this was bloating.
Mel Robbins (10:44):
But can you explain what are the symptoms that might surprise someone to hear that you may be bloated and dealing with extra gas or really mad gut bacteria?
Dr. Amy Shah (11:01):
You're burping a lot, obviously farting because farting and bloating go really hand in hand. You're constipated. That's not a good sign, but that's a sign that you are bloated because often when you have a lot of gas in your intestines, you can't push that stool out. And you might not just be bloated in your gut. You might be one of those people who's retaining fluid everywhere. Have you ever had that issue where your rings don't fit anymore or your bracelets get tight or your shoes feel like they're getting tight? That's basically what's happening in your intestines is happening all over your body. So that's another sign that this could be bloating and water retention and not necessarily like you gained a bunch of weight.
Mel Robbins (11:53):
Well, I want to tell you a couple things. Number one, I don't ever sleep with jewelry on because my hands swell so much. And same thing when I exercise. If I'm going to go out for a long walk, I don't wear my rings because my hands swell. And at the end of the day, my feet are typically like a half size larger. I never thought that that could be a sign of bloating or a sign that my body is inflamed. Inflamed. And then the other thing I'll tell you is just a quick story because it might help you listening to start to discern what you may be dealing with. I'd say about six years ago when our daughter, Kendall was in high school, she always was a big burber, just these deep, just loud kind of burps. And she was such a little thing that it was so shocking how loud these burps were. And it was almost like a joke in our family, like Kendall.
(12:55):
And then she started to say, Dr. Shah, she would go, I feel so fat. She was not using the B word she was using. I feel so fat, so fat. And because she was so thin, I thought, oh my God, she's got body dysmorphia. So I took her to a therapist because I thought as she is saying, she feels fat and I'm looking at her and I'm like, you don't look fat to me. You look pretty darn skinny. This therapist said, I think you should get her gut tested. I think she's dealing with disordered eating. I think she's got body dysmorphia. She says, no, no, no, you should get her gut tested. It turns out when they tested her gut that she was missing all of the good bacteria in her gut and that what was happening is the food would go down her mouth and down her esic and down into the stomach and all of a sudden it would hit her stomach. And because she had literally no good gut bacteria, the food sat and rotted.
(13:54):
And so the burping was from rotting food and it's disgusting. Belching the constant. Well, the constant belching was her trying to relieve the pressure and her saying, I feel fat. I feel fat. I feel fat was really her trying to explain, I am bloated. And so we went and did this protocol of resetting her gut microbiome and all the symptoms disappeared. And so this is a very real thing that you may be dealing with and be feeling symptoms other than a food baby and your gut health is really the issue that's causing all this. Because I was explaining earlier that I really wanted to talk to you because I had been traveling for the last couple of weeks and I wear the same pair of pants. That's my little travel secret. I wear the same outfit everywhere I go. And so the pants that I was wearing on Monday fit, they fit on Tuesday, they fit on Wednesday, they fit on Thursday. Although I'll tell you that poor little button holding my red pants together was the hardest working person in the room. I have my little red pants right here.
Dr. Amy Shah (15:03):
Oh, do you have that?
Mel Robbins (15:05):
But by Friday I had a food baby. I literally looked like I was six to seven months pregnant. It was a balloon coming out and I had to do the trick where you shove it, you unbutton your pants and you stick a rubber band through the opening and hook it to extend your pants. And I thought, okay, I can't gain seven pounds in five days because I can't lose seven pounds in five days. Right? This is not just a normal.
Dr. Amy Shah (15:34):
Yeah.
Mel Robbins (15:35):
So maybe what we should talk about, since you're basically saying when you're bloated, your gut bacteria is mad at you, right? I mean that's kind of, is that the basic thing that's going on here?
Dr. Amy Shah (15:45):
It is the basic thing that's going on, that gut hormone immune connection. I mean that is when that's off balance. You get all these symptoms, people think, oh my God, it's hormone bloating, or Oh my God, it's coming from something else. But really it's because your gut bacteria are not happy. It's not only related to food, it can be related to other things, but when they're not happy, they're going to let you know
Mel Robbins (16:13):
What foods actually could bloat you.
Dr. Amy Shah (16:16):
Okay. Well, first of all, I want to give you the biggest tip just to take a step back. The biggest tip when you're feeling bloated or distended is don't wear those red pants with a button on them. I can't tell you how many times I've traveled and you get bloated because of the change in the air pressure. You're not able to go to the bathroom for a couple of days. It's like all of these things. You need stretchy pants for your travel. You need to swap those red pants out for something with a little more give. And I get it. It's nice to wear some tight fitted pants, especially if you want to look cute. But for the travel day, wear the stretch pants.
Mel Robbins (17:01):
Got it. Okay. First of all, ladies and gentlemen, let's give a round of applause for triple bird certified. Dr. Amy Shah, who just told us all soft pants, people, soft pants, you're traveling, you're feeling bloated. Let's get rid of the zippers and the buttons soft pants. So I got it. I'm taking it away. I am following it. You've talked about the intestines and the stomach. Is that where this is happening or are there other parts of your body involved when bloat is happening to you?
Dr. Amy Shah (17:33):
Yeah, from the minute you take food in, you're chewing your food, the bloating can start to happen there. We all know with gum, with sparkling drinks, these are foods that can cause bloating because you're swallowing a lot of
Mel Robbins (17:49):
Wait, what?
Dr. Amy Shah (17:50):
From the time you put it in your mouth,
Mel Robbins (17:51):
Did you notice gum causes bloating?
Dr. Amy Shah (17:53):
Yeah.
Mel Robbins (17:54):
Did you not know this? No. Sparkling beverages causes bloating.
Dr. Amy Shah (17:59):
Yeah. What? So yeah, you need to know this. This is why I'm telling you this is the reset. So sugar-free gum, which is all gum. Now you can't really get gum. I think bazooka used to be our gum when we were younger that had real sugar, but now it's all sugar substitute gum. And those sugar substitutes are very irritating to our gut bacteria. And just the act of swallowing a lot of air chewing gum can kind of push that air down into all the way. It's one tube. So from your mouth to the esophagus, to the stomach, to the small intestine and a large intestine, so it's all one tube, so it can start from up there. Then you have people like us who are always in a rush and always eating too fast. And so it can even be an issue with just eating too fast and it's going through that one system, that one tube from your mouth to your anus too fast, and you're not taking breaks and you're not chewing enough. And so it starts with, it's not just a particular food, it's just that you're eating food too fast. And then you have foods, like the foods that you consider super healthy, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and Mel, you're being a great student. You're like, I want to eat all the fiber in one day.
(19:21):
And that is going to create a havoc in your gut because your gut bacteria are going to be like, we love this fiber, but not all at once. It's giving them too much work in one day, especially when they're not used to it. And so you're going to get a lot of gas production while they're trying to digest this. So it can happen in your mouth, it can happen in your esophagus. You're eating too fast. It can happen in your stomach because you ate too many, really hard to digest fibrous foods. It can happen in your small intestine and then in your large intestine too. So it's like all the way through, you can get bloating from different causes.
Mel Robbins (19:58):
Okay, can we just stop on that? I have so many questions. I am trying not to go all over the place. Now you've sparked my interest because all those things you ticked off, I did not know that sparkling beverages, gum or eating, all these things that I would say are super healthy foods like broccoli and Brussels sprouts and cabbage and that kind of stuff that actually can contribute to bloat. So thank you for explaining that. I want to focus on the foods that you just mentioned, cabbage, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts. Let's just call the trifecta right there, because if I hear you correctly, you're basically saying if you're already bloated and you throw that into your system, you're going to literally inflate balloon even more.
Dr. Amy Shah (20:48):
Yes.
Mel Robbins (20:48):
However, when you de bloat and you get your gut back into balance so that your gut bacteria aren't mad at you anymore, introducing those into your diet, not as a smorgasborg, but as part of what you're eating, as part of keeping the gut bacteria healthy. Is that correct?
Dr. Amy Shah (21:09):
That's right. So if you're at a party and there's this raw cruciferous vegetable plate, I don't know if you've ever seen, I don't know
Mel Robbins (21:16):
Why people, what's cruciferous? What is that?
Dr. Amy Shah (21:18):
Those, that's the family that we're talking about, the cauliflowers, the broccoli, the spr, Cabot. So a lot of times
Mel Robbins (21:26):
Those four are related, so they're like siblings, the
Dr. Amy Shah (21:29):
S cruciferous family, and they have these amazing sulfur compounds that are so good for cancer reduction and inflammation reduction. So they're like powerhouse vegetables, but often at a party, they're on a tray like raw, right?
Mel Robbins (21:44):
Yes.
Dr. Amy Shah (21:44):
And I don't know about you, but I have had a few too many of those at once, and you definitely feel it. So what I would say, someone if you're already bloated, don't go to the raw vegetable tray and pick up the cauliflower and the broccoli because you're just going to really hate yourself later that night because it's going to start to digest and produce all this gas.
Mel Robbins (22:09):
And I'll tell you who else is going to hate you, the person you're sleeping next to, because you're going to be lifting the sheets up as you're farting, so you don't create a hot box in there. But what's great about you telling us that is because if I'm feeling uncomfortable in my pants and if I'm feeling bloated, especially if you're in wedding season or the holiday seasons or you're on a vacation, I would walk up to a raw vegetable plate and I would go, oh, I should clearly have some broccoli and some cauliflower because I feel bloated right now. And I didn't know until you just said it that that would literally stoke the flames and make me feel worse if I'm already feeling bloated and my gut bacteria is mad, so what do I eat instead?
Dr. Amy Shah (22:54):
Okay. And then I want to tell you another one that will do the same thing. So say you're at a party and you wake up the next day and you're like, oh, I feel so bloated. I feel hungover or whatever. I feel bad. And you take a whole bunch of ibuprofen or aspirin that is going to make you more bloated. And a lot of people wake,
Mel Robbins (23:14):
This is my morning routine after a party. What are you talking about?
Dr. Amy Shah (23:17):
So medications are a big cause of bloating, especially NSAIDs. So for what's
Mel Robbins (23:23):
An nsaid? What do you mean an nsaid?
Dr. Amy Shah (23:26):
Ibuprofen and Motrin and naproxen, those are kind of a class, again, cousins in a group of medications called NSAIDs, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medication. So NSAIDs all have kind of the same mechanism of action. So some people like naproxen, some people like ibuprofen, some people like Motrin and all these different versions, but they're all the same parent medication. Same with aspirin, aspirin's very similar to all of them, but their side effect is bloating. And so you ate a bunch of cruciferous vegetables, you took a bunch of ibuprofen, and it's the week before your period, and then you wake up and you're like, oh my God, I look six months pregnant. And that's what is happening. And so I'm going to tell you what you need to do to kind of reset that.
Mel Robbins (24:20):
Thank God I hear a lot about gluten and bloating. So is there a connection? What are the foods other than the cruciferous that you just explained, what are the foods that tend to cause bloating in people?
Dr. Amy Shah (24:39):
Gluten is definitely one of them. I mean, we all know there's so many people out there who feel bloated after pizza and bread and pasta, and sometimes it's not necessarily a gluten. You can have a sourdough bread and be okay, but you have pizza and you're not, so it's not necessarily sometimes the gluten itself, but the way it's prepared. There's also, I think 68% of the world population is lactose intolerant.
Mel Robbins (25:06):
What's that mean?
Dr. Amy Shah (25:07):
That means that when you eat dairy foods, you get bloated because your body can't break down the lactose sugar. Oh, I don't know. Are you one of those people? So everybody's different, right? I have no idea. So 68% of the world population can't digest a glass of milk or a big scoop of ice cream. They get bloated from it.
Mel Robbins (25:28):
What are some other symptoms or things that you've seen in helping people to reset their gut? Dr. Shah,
Dr. Amy Shah (25:37):
Well, I talk about this all the time, but your mood and cravings has a huge connection to your gut. So we talk about this gut brain connection. And so just to bring it back to hormones again is like when you're bloated or it's right before your period, you feel bloated or you're in menopause, you feel bloated, but you also feel really sad and you feel like you're craving certain foods. And so what we're learning now is that this disorder, gut bacteria that's happening, and for that it's hormone-based situational, but is disrupting things in our brain. And we have this gut brain connection. And so if you are feeling kind of down fatigued, having cravings for strange things, that could be your gut bacteria talking to you and saying, I don't feel good. And we're sending signals to your brain that we need to be healed and mount.
Dr. Amy Shah (26:40):
Nobody, even in modern medicine, this is not talked about. Very few people when they go to the doctor and they say, I'm depressed, I'm anxious, I am feeling tired all the time, very few doctors are going to be like, let's look into your gut health. Even it's like, go, here's some medicine, here's some antidepressants. Or go talk to someone. They don't even think that it's related, but it's completely related. I mean, we have study after study after study saying like, okay, take some fiber, and all of a sudden people get improved cravings and mood and eat some fermented food, and all of a sudden they feel better. So there's a huge connection with mood and feelings of anxiety.
Mel Robbins (27:22):
So Dr. Shah, what foods make you bloated?
Dr. Amy Shah (27:26):
So we talked about cruciferous vegetables, including your broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, okay, we talked about artificial sweeteners like in your diet coke and in your gum, et cetera. Those are huge causes of bloating. We talked about sparkling drinks being a cause of bloating. We talked about dairy for so many people, gluten for so many people, high amounts of sugar for so many people. I actually,
Dr. Amy Shah (27:58):
In my plan, in my gut reset plan, I have every single person take out the foods that they think are triggering like gluten, dairy, white sugar, and put themselves on a food elimination diet at least for a week, if not four weeks, to identify which foods are triggering your bloating. So for me, it was gluten and dairy and sugar, and for a lot of people it is all three, but for some people it's just one of the two. So for some people it's all three. So you have to do a food elimination diet. Did you know Mel, that food sensitivity testing is not validated and all those tests that people get for food sensitivity, it's in 2023. We don't have a validated food sensitivity test. We can tell food allergies, like if you're going to have anaphylaxis to peanut, we have a test for that, but there's no test that's better than a food elimination diet for checking for your food sensitivities, the foods that are causing you to bloat.
Mel Robbins (28:58):
Let me see if I'm following you, because I was about to ask you, how would you know if you're lactose intolerant? How would you know if you are sensitive to gluten? Because you asked me, Mel, are you lactose intolerant? I'm like, I have no idea. I have whole milk in my coffee every morning. I eat cottage cheese. I love that SKYR yogurt. So I don't know. I'm ingesting this stuff. I don't burp afterwards. I don't fart afterwards that I know of, but so am I bloated by it? I don't know. So are you saying that the only way to determine whether or not you are getting bloated or triggered by certain foods is to eliminate them from your diet and then to see what happens when you add them back in?
Dr. Amy Shah (29:44):
Yes. The gold standard for food related gut discomfort is to eliminate the foods and to add it back when you add it back. That's really the test. I don't know if you've ever gone a long time without eating, say certain food, and then you add it back to your diet and then you get this huge bloating reaction. That's the sensitive food that you're eating.
Dr. Amy Shah (30:10):
So you're only going to know if you're lactose intolerant or if you're not tolerant to dairy, if you stop eating it and then you add it back and see what happens to you. That's the gold standard for checking which foods that trigger you. So there's certain foods that trigger everyone, but there's certain foods that trigger only few people. The insoluble fiber is a thing that bloats everyone. This is the
Mel Robbins (30:34):
What is insoluble fire fiber.
Dr. Amy Shah (30:36):
So those vegetables that I was talking to you about, the raw vegetables,
Mel Robbins (30:40):
Yes.
Dr. Amy Shah (30:40):
So they're made up of insoluble fiber. They're soluble fiber. So for example, things like baby spinach that's cooked really well, that has a lot of soft fiber is how I would think about it, and it's easier to digest for the body, whereas a raw broccoli or a cauliflower has a lot of insoluble fiber and it's really hard for the body to digest and it takes a lot of work. It's like marathon training. Eventually you'll get there, but you don't want to start with huge amounts in the beginning. And then alcohol. Let's talk about, oh, do we
Mel Robbins (31:21):
Have to come on? This is coming out during the holidays, Dr. Shah. But I mean, no, seriously, no, let's talk about alcohol because the truth is I have this love hate relationship with alcohol where I tend to go for periods where I don't drink at all and I feel a thousand times better and I sleep better and I know it's better for my health. And then particularly around the holidays or in the summer or when we're celebrating something, I'll have a drink and the next thing you know, I'm kind of sliding into drinking a little bit more frequently. And I definitely notice I don't sleep as well. I definitely notice that I'm tired in the morning. I have not really noticed bloating, but maybe I'm not understanding the signs or the symptoms to look for.
Dr. Amy Shah (32:14):
Well, let me tell you the problem with alcohol. The problem with alcohol is that number one, a lot of us are ingesting it later in the evening. And so I told you that our body, just like our brain needs sleep, our gut bacteria need sleep as well. They need rest. If we're eating big meals and lots of drinks late into the night, you are already short-changing your growth hormone.
Dr. Amy Shah (32:42):
You are cleaning all the things that happen during the night in your gut, and so you're just more likely to be bloated in general. It doesn't mean that every single person's going to wake up the next day bloated. It's just contributing to this overall circadian rhythm misalignment that we have in our world. People are going days without seeing natural light and then they're eating really late at night with bright lights. We're in this world where our circadian rhythms are getting thrown off all the time, and one of the biggest causes of bloating is that we're eating late at night and we're drinking alcohol late at night. So not only does alcohol cause bloating, it also is usually consumed later in the evening closer to bedtime for a lot of us. Now, there are people who have it earlier in the day, and I would say if you are going to have alcohol around the holidays and you are trying to manage your bloating and just in general, better health, start earlier in the day, and that way your body has time to kind of metabolize it, it's not going to disturb your sleep as much and it's not going to disturb your gut health as much.
Mel Robbins (33:54):
So what would be your recommendation for how much time you need between your last meal and your last drink with calories or sparkle in it, whether it's alcoholic or not? And when you fall asleep, do you need three hours, two hours, five hours? What is going to help your gut process what you ate and drank and then also get the rest that it needs, which helps your gut bacteria not be so mad at you?
Dr. Amy Shah (34:26):
Yeah, exactly. Our gut bacteria are our biggest allies. We want them to be our friends and we don't want to starve them to death and kill them in all these ways that we're doing fasting, at least circadian style. So something natural, like taking a break from food for 12 hours, which sounds like it's nothing, but most Americans are eating 16 hours a day and just taking a quick break for eight hours or less.
Dr. Amy Shah (34:54):
So we want to extend the time that your gut gets rest. So it might be two to three hours before bed, you stop eating and you're only drinking water or decaffeinated tea, that kind of thing, clear liquids, and then go 12, 13, 14. So it may be 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM 7:00 PM to 7:00 AM That would be ideal timings according to circadian rhythms.
Mel Robbins (35:17):
You just said that the average person is eating for 16 hours a day. I stopped for a second and thought, oh my God, you're right. You start eating the second you wake up and you eat until you go to bed. And I've never heard anybody talk about the fact that we're eating for that long of a period of time. And I've noticed that whenever we talk about intermittent fasting or fasting for a 12 hour window as a health and digestion and a gut bacteria tool, people go crazy about, oh yeah, but when you focus on the fact that it's not healthy to eat for 16 hours a day either, I mean, that was sort of a aha, aha moment for me. Me
Dr. Amy Shah (36:08):
Too, when I read the circadian rhythm data that says basically the Nobel Prize in medicine a few years ago went to the scientists that were looking into how circadian rhythms actually run our bodies, that 80% of our body's functions work on circadian rhythms. This means that our gut needs rest, our bacteria needs rest when it's dark outside. That is a time that our body switches into a different mode. And when I understood that, I was like, wow, why is it that we're eating so late into the night and then we're not giving our gut a break? We know we need sleep, so why don't we ever talk about giving your gut a rest, which is just as important as giving your brain a rest. And that could improve so many things in our body that, and I know you have an early dinner, you have a great night's sleep because now you have your growth hormone that is pumping, it's repairing everything. You wake up and you feel like a different person, like a million bucks. We know that, but we still don't do it in America. At least we don't do it. So I think the circadian rhythm science is just going to get stronger and stronger because people just still are starting to understand what an impact that's going to have. Taking a break, just a break. It's not intermittent fasting per se, it's just being how our bodies were designed. I mean, thousands of years ago, you didn't have Uber Eats to call at midnight.
Mel Robbins (37:40):
I'm just laughing because I'm sitting here going, it's not like we call sleep intermittent wakefulness. It's like it makes a lot of sense that your medical recommendation based on your expertise is that your gut needs 12 hours of not having to digest food in order to have your gut bacteria remain healthy and have your gut. I balance. I mean, it makes sense.
Dr. Amy Shah (38:08):
Yeah, and we know that how much poor sleep we talk about all the time, right? Poor sleep makes you depressed. Poor sleep makes you eat more poor sleep. It's the same thing when you get poor gut rest and you're eating all the time. The studies are very clear. Now, why intermittent fasting got such a bad rap is because the colloquial science, I don't want to say bro science, but the fitness world said, oh, if you want to do intermittent fasting, the way to do it is eat late into the night and then don't eat all day. Don't eat till 12 or one or two. And that's actually, that's not been shown in the science to be helpful in weight loss. It's not been shown to be the way to do it in optimal health because our bodies don't work on that cycle. We are supposed to be eating during the wakeful hours.
(38:58):
Now that can be delayed. We don't need to eat first thing in the morning, but eating an early dinner and having the fasting start in the evening is something that I don't see a lot of fitness and health influencers talk about, which is the way it's supposed to be done. We're supposed to give our body a time to digest so we get better sleep, better growth hormone production, more rest to our gut so that we can wake up less bloated and we can be happier and healthier. I had this morning routine, the three F's, okay, every morning I wake up and I'm like, okay, fasting is number one. Have I fasted for 12 hours? If I have it, I'm not going to have my first meal yet. Okay, because I might've stopped on some days later, 7 38, and I might say, I wake up at six and I'm like, I'm not going to eat yet.
(39:49):
I'm actually going to go exercise. So fitness is the second F. So fasting, fitness, and then when I'm ready to eat, it's fermented and fiber food. So those three F's, fasting, fitness, and the food, those make up my morning routine so that I'm not as bloated. I fix my circadian rhythm so our gut bacteria are happy with us and we start our day with something that is nourishing for that gut microbiome so that over days and weeks time, we can experience less bloating, we can have better body composition. Who doesn't want that? And better hormone health,
Mel Robbins (40:29):
First of all, I love it. It's super simple. Secondly, I love the fact that when you said fasting, you basically wake up when you wake up and you go, okay, wait a minute. I'm just not going to eat until I give my gut a 12 hour rest. And so even if you were at, let's say you were at a wedding or at a party last night and you were out and you stopped on the way home for some pizza, it was 11 o'clock at night, you're sound asleep by midnight. When you wake up at nine o'clock in the morning, ask yourself, okay, first F is fasting. 12 hours would be that I don't have my first meal until 11 o'clock this morning. And then you said fitness, which is how much fitness, how long do you need to exercise? Can it be a 10 minute walk? Can it be anything? What is fitness for you?
Dr. Amy Shah (41:17):
Fitness for me for the morning routine is anything, anything. So total in the day, I want to get about 30 minutes. You want to get 30 minutes of sunlight of movement. So the best way to get this done and over with and checked off is go for a 30 minute walk and you're done. And it makes so much sense because our bodies are designed to see light in the morning. We're seeing now you see all these research coming out about how important it is to get natural light. You just check it all off in one walk because the gut bacteria, did you know that the best probiotic, the best bloating is actually exercise because exercise
Mel Robbins (41:55):
Makes, I did not know that exercise. I didn't know that because I was just about to ask you, how does taking a walk for 30 minutes outside stop bloating and help my gut bacteria be happy? How does that help?
Dr. Amy Shah (42:09):
So just like your gut bacteria need sleep. Like I said, they're like organisms, live organisms, and they need rest. They also love when you get sunlight and when you exercise, it makes them very happy. They do this crazy dance that produces these chemicals in your body called short chain fatty acids. They go all over the body, they calm your inflammation, they make you happy. It's the best probiotic you could ever take.
Mel Robbins (42:42):
That's so cool.
Dr. Amy Shah (42:43):
I know.
Mel Robbins (42:44):
That is so cool.
Dr. Amy Shah (42:45):
We're trying to produce short chain fatty acids through so many different things. Everyone's like, take this pill to produce short chain fatty acids. Do this. All we have to do is exercise in sunlight and look, all of a sudden our body produces it for ourselves.
Mel Robbins (43:01):
Well, the other thing that I like about what you're saying is the second that you said your gut bacteria is mad at you. And if I think in simple terms, which I like to do because if a concept is simple, I can apply it to my life. When you tell me the game here everybody is make your gut bacteria happy. And when you tell me that, okay, there are some things that you can do every single day
Mel Robbins (43:29):
To just make your gut bacteria happy, which is going to help with bloating, which is going to help with how you feel, which is going to help with your mood, Mel, one of which is getting good sleep and getting rest from needing to digest, which you just said is about fasting. The other one is take your gut bacteria for a walk 30 minutes outside and all of a sudden it's like doing its happy dance and it's making you feel better. And we all know this to be true. And then you said the third F is fiber and something else. So what does that mean?
Dr. Amy Shah (44:00):
Fermented and fibrous food. So the first meal of your day is your best chance. Research shows that the first meal of the day is statistically shown to be our best chance at improving our health in general, but definitely our gut and hormone health. And what I want to tell every woman out there is that use this opportunity to improve your hormone and gut health. So a perfect breakfast would be something like yogurt, nuts, berries, and maybe some ginger tea on the side like a chai or because ginger and peppermint are two things that you can really take to really make your gut bacteria happy. We know that a tofu scramble or an egg scramble with veggies, so you want high protein, so 30 grams of protein, you got your fiber in there with your vegetables, and if you're having a yogurt or probiotic cottage cheese or you're going to have a little spoon of sauerkraut or a little glass of water with some raw apple cider vinegar, you're going to get your fermented food. Use your breakfast as your chance to kill it. Like this is my hormones and my gut bacteria are so happy because I started my morning with a high protein, high fiber, high fermented food breakfast.
Mel Robbins (45:22):
It makes sense because if you apply this advice, everybody around making your gut bacteria happy, you just gave it 12 hours of rest of needing to just take a break from the constant eating, you then made it do its happy dance with the walk and the sunlight, and now the first thing that you're putting in your stomach is not something that is going to cause all kind of gases. I don't even know if that's a word, but you know what I mean. It's not going to make the balloon inflate. You're dropping into your stomach the things that it needs to work properly for you and stay happy. And that makes a lot of sense. Isn't that pretty amazing what you and I just learned from Dr. Amy Shah and what you've listened to so far? It isn't the whole conversation. We were only just 40 minutes in with Dr. Amy Shah and there was already so much information that she threw at you and me.
(46:20):
And so here's what I decided to do. While I was in the studio with her, I decided, let's just hit the pause button right here. I want to give you a chance to digest this information about bloating, about how your gut works. I want you to try the three F morning routine because that's a great place to start. And we got a lot more to cover with Dr. Amy Shah. And you and I don't have time to listen to a two hour episode. That's why we're dividing this into two different amazing episodes. And in the next episode, which is dropping right after this one, we are going to cover so many more essential questions about your gut health. We're going to cover, do probiotics work? Should you take one? How can you do the probiotic thing naturally? What are the steps to creating a healthy microbiome naturally in terms of ongoing?
(47:08):
Does stress impact your gut health? Yeah. And what can you do about it? And the burning question, which is why I reached out to Dr. Amy Shah in the first place. Dr. Amy, what is your medical recommendation knowing that this is not medical advice, but you know what I mean as a doctor, how do I do a five day gut reset that I can follow anytime I feel bloated? So guess what? The very next episode of the Mel Robbins podcast is Dr. Amy Shah walking you through that step-by-step, walking you through the five day gut reset. And right now you got what you need. Try the three F morning routine. Follow all the advice you just heard. Stay away from the cru te and the alcohol. Get your sleep. And by God, make sure you forward this to all your friends who are bloated and complaining about it. And be right back here when the next episode drops so we can walk through that five day reset.
(48:05):
And in case nobody else tells you, I'm going to tell you I love you. I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to create a better life. Thank you for investing this time in yourself and in your health. Thank you for spending your time with me. I love you, and I will see you and all that gorgeous gut bacteria inside you with Dr. Amy Shah when this conversation continues in the very next episode. See you there. And thank you for being here on YouTube. One more thing. It really helps a show like ours if you subscribe. So take a second and subscribe. And I also have a recommendation. I'm sure you'd love to hear all the science about hunger and cravings. Dr. Amy Shah is right here, and this is the video you want to watch next.
Guests Appearing in this Episode
Dr. Amy Shah, MD
Dr. Amy Shah is a double board-certified medical doctor, nutrition expert, and bestselling author specializing in hormonal health and wellness.
-
Book: I'm So Effing Tired
Does it feel like your life is too busy and your days are too short? Are you feeling overworked, overstressed, and overtired? Chances are you’ve asked your doctor for help, only to be told that it’s because of your age, or your workload, or, worse, that it’s just “normal.”
If so, you’re not alone. Women of all ages are suffering from an epidemic of fatigue and burnout. But exhaustion doesn’t have to be your new normal. Inspired by her personal wellness journey, integrative medical doctor Amy Shah has created this program so that you can regain your energy and reclaim your life.
Resources
-
- National Library of Medicine: Evaluation and treatment of bloating
- John Hopkins Medicine: Bloating: causes and prevention tips
- American College of Gastroenterology: Belching, bloating, and flatulence
- Time Magazine: What Causes Bloating—and What to Do About It
- Harvard School of Public Health: The gut microbiome
- American Society for Microbiology: Gut microbiome communication
- National Library of Medicine: Alcohol and gut-derived inflammation
- Cleveland Clinic: What are the signs and symptoms of lactose intolerance?
- Harvard Health: The gut-brain connection
- National Library of Medicine: Gut microbiota’s effect on mental health
- Harvard Medical School: Circadian Rhythms and the Brain
- National Library of Medicine: Exercise modifies the gut microbiota
- UCLA Health: Increased exercise benefits gut microbiome
- Washington Post: Don’t feel like exercising? It could be your microbiome.
- Harvard Health: Fermented foods for better gut health
- Stanford Medicine: Fermented-food diet increases microbiome diversity
2 Million Readers.
1 Life-Changing Newsletter
Simple and Straight-to-the-Point...
Just Like Mel.
