You may be thinking, “I go to the bathroom just fine, gut problems aren’t an issue for me.” But the truth is that you don’t need to have gut symptoms to have underlying gut problems. Many are asymptomatic as far as digestive symptoms go but manifest as downstream symptoms somewhere else in the body. In fact, around 22 percent of people with gut problems can have significant damage to their small intestines but not suffer any gastrointestinal symptoms at all. Moreover, only about one-third of people with CD have obvious GI symptoms; others experience seemingly unrelated symptoms like anxiety, depression, or skin problems. This leads to only 5 percent2 of celiacs ever being diagnosed. This means that there are around 3 million Americans with celiac disease who have no idea that they have it and gluten sensitivity in up to 6 percent3 of us. For these people, it can take up to4 six months just to bring down the autoimmune-inflammation antibodies of eating a gluten-containing food just one time. This is not even taking into consideration any other food sensitivity or health problem slowing down the gut-nourishing process. Most of my patients are dealing with one or more of these gut health, inflammation, autoimmune issues. I find clinically that while health improvements are seen monthly, it’s really around the two-year mark that we see sustained and noticeable changes. If you have more complicated gut health issues, I encourage you to get a proper functional medicine work-up and appropriate labs to get an idea of what you’re up against and to make sure you’re addressing everything you need to on your unique gut-supporting journey.
