Hi, let’s talk about gut health!
I’ve always had digestive issues. If it weren’t for my terrible digestion or hormones I wouldn’t be in a career that I love so much. But, I didn’t always love these health problems, ooobviously. So here’s a little story.
For as long as I can remember I had a sensitive stomach. I was the kid who had to leave birthday parties because their stomach hurt or missed school. Then into my teens a popular spot for a first date was getting pizza which was not cool for my stomach.
Putting a little damper into my social life I decided I wanted to do something about this problem. It was around this time that my mom took me to see a naturopath in St. Catharines that her friends had had success with. I gradually and I mean super gradually started identifying food triggers. My favourite foods and (still kind of are) bread and cheese. If you have digestive issues then you know those can usually cause some problems. I was 17 when I went to university and had very little skills cooking on my own. My sister likes to tell the story of me attempting to make pasta when I was 15 and she could hear the raw noodles hitting the pot, I had missed the water step… So I went away to school and I ate a lot of cheese sandwhiches, in my defense I ate a lot of veges, but a lot of cheese. It was fast and easy and I met some nutrition goals with the veges? I was really interested in nutrition, plant medicine all the alternative stuff so veges I didn’t miss, but the rest of the diet hadn’t quite fallen into place.
It wasn’t until I got to naturopath college that my diet really began to change and I saw all my digestive issues go away. Naturopathic school was kind of like Hogworts. We had Botanical Medicine courses, a Medicinal Herb garden, Yoga and Meditation groups. It was half magical and half extremely exhausting from the intense workload of jamming in A LOT of science and research and everything ever to exist in the alternative medicine world into 4 years. But the school was literally full of people with the same digestive tracts. We bonded in the cafeteria (which completely catered to all of our food sensitivities) over spelt muffins, anything gluten free and vegan. Often going into depth over digestion topics that when I went out into the real world again left me relearning what appropriate meal time talks were supposed to be.