Jaime Hartman (00:07):
Welcome to the AIP Summit Podcast, your go-to resource for taking control of your autoimmune health, presented by AIP Certified Coaches. Hi, I'm Jaime Hartman.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (00:18):
And I'm Marie-Noelle Marquis. And we are here to equip you with the tools, knowledge and support you need to effectively use the autoimmune protocol.
Jaime Hartman (00:26):
And today we are sharing five budget friendly and simple steps for improving your gut health and overall wellbeing. In this episode, we're bringing you the audio from a session presented at the sixth annual AIP Summit, which was held live in January, 2025. The speaker is Laurane Chemenda who is an AIP Certified Coach and functional nutritional therapy practitioner specializing in gut health.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (00:57):
You'll hear Laurane share her personal journey of overcoming ankylosing spondylitis through functional medicine and the autoimmune protocol or AIP. Then she presents five budget friendly steps for improving gut health, focusing on digestive function, soothing inflammation, creating a hospitable environment for good bacteria, creating an inhospitable environment for bad bacteria, and managing daily stress.
Jaime Hartman (01:22):
Now, if you want the full experience of Lauren's presentation, including her slides and the question and answer session that followed it, you can find it in our archive, which all members of the AIP Summit community have unlimited access to. And we'll be sure to put a link to the information on how to become a member in the show notes. I also wanted to let everybody know that we're having a free encore rebroadcast of the sixth annual AIP Summit, which will include this presentation as well as all of the others. And that is starting on June 21st and runs through June 25th, and there's no membership or registration even required for that. You just go to our website for the agenda.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (02:05):
Now let's listen to Laurane.
Laurane Chemenda (02:11):
Thank you, and thank you so much for having me on here. I'm very, very honored to be a part of the AIP Summit this year, so thank you. So here we go. We are going to be talking today about my five budget friendly simple steps for gut health. I try to make it as simple as possible because we can get very lost when it comes to gut health. There's so many things that might be going on with yourself, so many different things that you might be told that you should be doing or should not be doing, and so many supplements and so many tests and just a lot of different things. And at the end of the day, gut health can be simple or at least you want to start off with very simple steps first before you dive into something more strategic with a functional doctor, for example, or an FNTP.
(03:09):
So here is a little bit about me. My name is Laurane Chemenda. I'm French, I'm a native French speaker, so I may have a little bit of a hard time sometimes finding my words, but I've been living in the US for the past 10 years and I am a functional nutritional therapy practitioner, a restorative wellness practitioner, specialized in gut health, and of course an AIP coach. And so a few things about me. First of all is that I'm a spon warrior, so I consider myself a spon warrior because I have been in remission of ankylosing spondylitis for over five years now. My journey started when I was 23 and I woke up one morning with a lot of intense pain in my lower back and I was bedridden for over a year after that, I was told that this was a lifelong disease and I was told that I was going to end my life in a wheelchair.
(04:02):
So I started the grieving process of my life until I moved to the us. This was in France originally that I got sick and I moved to the US and I found functional medicine and I found the autoimmune protocol. And both of these combined saved my life. Literally five years later, I am living a full life. It took me 18 months of full on protocol and autoimmune and the AIP. And now I have no medication. I'm as healthy as can be as ever, actually. And I'm a mom of two. So since then, since my remission, I've had two babies. One of them is turning one very soon, actually next week. And so I'm very busy with a thriving practice, a beautiful practice, and a thriving family. So a lot is going on. I'm a health geek, passionate about nutrition and anything health related. I have tried it all so you can go ahead and ask me anything. And within my practice, I help people suffering from autoimmune diseases, chronic inflammation and chronic pain, reverse or condition to live a pain-free and symptom-free life so that they can finally enjoy a vibrant and joyful life. So it really is a passion of mine where I wanted to turn around what I learned and did for myself and go back to school, go back to studying and help others that are in the position that I was five years ago.
(05:29):
So why is gut health essential and why are we focusing on gut health today? First of all, because it's so interesting and there's a lot that we can cover when we're talking about gut health, we refer to the balance and the function of your bacteria. So your microbiome, the gut lining, and the integrity of the gut lining, that's where leaky gut comes into play and digestion. So the function, your digestive function, are you digesting your food properly? Have you absorbing your food properly? Now, we all know when it's a given. 10 years ago it could have been a debate, but now we all know and understand that the gut is the cornerstone of immune and overall health. That being said, we also know that 70% of the immune system is located in the gut and a leaky gut or dysbiosis can trigger or worsen autoimmune conditions.
(06:22):
In the scientific literature, there's a lot of studies that show that leaky gut could be a precursor to autoimmune disease or it also could be contributed by once you have your autoimmune disease, it can contribute to leaky gut. It's actually a little bit of both, and it's a vicious cycle. So we want to be able to stop that cycle at any point and knowing that 70% of the immune system is located in the gut, and if you have a leaky gut and you have things like pathogens or fragments of foods, molecules that are going through your gut lining that is not supposed to go through, it's triggering your immune system constantly, right? And so your immune system is constantly being triggered and is constantly, it becomes very sensitive to a lot of different things. I wanted to put in a quote here by Dr. Sarah Valentine is a leaky gut is present in every autoimmune disease in which it has been tested. So this is something that we know and that we want to focus on, is really understanding how the leaky gut came into place through great gut health practices.
(07:31):
And so people who have an autoimmune disease have three things in common. Environmental and lifestyle triggers, nutrient deficiencies and a compromised gut health or leaky gut. Focusing on gut health will for sure help on two of these nutrient deficiencies and leaky gut, of course, but it can also help on the environmental and lifestyle triggers more so through environmental with bacteria. So if you don't have a good digestive, and I'm going to explain this a little later, but if you don't have a good digestive function and you're not secreting your hydrochloric acid properly, you might not be, or you might be ingesting certain pathogens and you might not be killing them all from the get-go like your hydrochloric acid should do. It's one of its primary functions. And so this leads to proliferation of certain pathogens, right? We know and understand links between certain pathogens, certain bacterias, for example, clips yellow has been known to create molecular mimicry, so has been known to trigger ankylosing spondylitis, and there's certain autoimmune diseases that are linked to certain pathogens or certain bacterias.
(08:45):
So we can also have a good impact on the environmental part. So if you're ignoring your gut health and you're only on what to eat on sleeping well, which is a lot already to focus on, right? And all the five pillars of AIP, but if we're doing all of this and you have a lot of digestive issues and symptoms and you're ignoring your gut health, this can still contribute to chronic inflammation and flareups in your autoimmune symptoms. And so sometimes when you're not seeing progress, when you've applied AIP, particularly the food pillar of AIP, nutrition pillar, and you're not seeing a lot of progress, then you might want to think more about your particular case. What's going on in your gut, what's going on in your digestion, and how can you improve it? It also contributes to nutrient malabsorption, and that leads to fatigue and deficiencies.
(09:46):
And we know that deficiencies is one of the commonalities of autoimmune disease. It contributes to mood imbalances due to the gut brain connection. So a lot of our neurotransmitters are secreted by our bacteria in our gut, and actually, in fact, 90% of serotonin is secreted by our gut bacteria. So a lot of your mood and our mental health is dependent on our gut bacteria. It increases vulnerability to food sensitivities. When we see inflammation in the gut, when we have a leaky gut and we see a lot of immune responses and your immune system being so triggered, it becomes so sensitive to a lot of different foods that actually they shouldn't be sensitive to. And these foods can be completely different to foods that we're avoiding on AIP. You could be sensitive to broccoli to carrots. It's your immune system that is mounting an immune response, sending antibodies to the gut to help fight off these, what he thinks is a pathogen, but it's just a fragment of food. And a lot of times we see a lot of food sensitivities in people who have chronic inflammation. And then of course, we have chronic gut related symptoms, anything that goes from bloating to GERD, to constipation, diarrhea, and all these other symptoms.
(11:13):
So like I said, it's not just about what we eat, it's about what we digest, right, or how we digest it. So AIP is a great starting point as a baseline, but it's important to try to understand your individuality in this and see what could be going on in your gut and what we could be doing to alleviate any kind of symptom that you have, and not just about what foods to eat and what foods not to eat. And this is what we're going to dive into now. So first, let's think about what can go wrong in the gut. This is a summary, right? We could do a full hour on this, a full webinar on this. But this is just a summary, and I put this slide in there because I want you to find yourself within what could be going on, and this could be potentially a start for digging a little deeper for yourself into what could be going on.
(12:19):
So the first thing is poor digestion. When we talk about poor digestion, we talk about hydrochloric acid. So it's the acidity, the acid that's secreted in your stomach. This is most of the digestion that's going to happen with the HCL, with the hydrochloric acid. But we're also thinking about your pancreatic enzymes, which then furthers the digestion. We're thinking about bile secretion. Bile will help with fat absorption and fat digestion. We're thinking about motility. A lot of times slow motility can be seen with constipation, but slow motility will contribute to other issues like pathogens, like dysbiosis, like sibo. So we want to make sure that the function, and actually this is the most important because if you have good digestive function, you are less likely to develop all these other things that could be going wrong. So we have pathogens, right? You might have heard of h pylori, which is a bacteria that can proliferate in the stomach.
(13:28):
It tends to proliferate in an environment that is not acidic enough for the stomach. It's still very acidic. If you put your hand in there, it wouldn't be very comfortable, but it's not acidic enough for the stomach, and it's just as just alkaline enough for h pylori to proliferate. And h pylori is very smart, it's very clever, and that bacteria can secrete certain enzymes to stop and to block hydrochloric acid to keep that environment, that cozy environment for himself. So you want to make sure again, that you're really working on your digestion, your hydrochloric acid, and I'm going to take you through that later. Other types of pathogens, any types of bacterial pathogens. We're looking also at parasites at protozoa. It can be candida, certain fungus, a lot of these different things. Dysbiosis very typical and it just signifies an imbalance in your microbiome. Too many of the bad guys, or I don't like calling them bad guys because you can have too many of good guys that can become problematic.
(14:37):
But to keep it short, too many of the good, too many of the bad guys and too little of the good guys. SIBO is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. This is an imbalance or a dysbiosis in the small intestine where you have certain bacteria that shouldn't be there that are actually coming back up from the colon and going up into the small intestine. And this is very typical of bloating oscillation between constipation and diarrhea and spasms. And this is usually very close to your mealtime GERD and acid reflux when you're feeling that acidity come back up. And there's a lot of misconception around acid reflux in gerd, and it mostly, most commonly is due to low hydrochloric acid. Why? Because when you don't have enough hydrochloric acid in your stomach, you're going to take more time to digest that food. So that food is going to be sitting in your stomach much longer than it should, and it's going to start to ferment and it's going to start to putrefy.
(15:45):
And while that happens, it creates a little too much gas, and that then affects the sphincter that is supposed to keep everything down from the esophagus to the stomach. And that's where we're seeing that there's a little bit of gas that can come up or some reflux that can come up, and it goes actually onto the sphincter and into the esophagus. And that's where it burns. That's where it hurts, because that mucosal lining is not protected and it's not supposed to be in contact with any kind of acidity to that level. So we want to make sure that, again, we're digesting properly. Food sensitivities, like I said, this is very common. When you have a lot of inflammation in the gut and you have a lot of triggers, then you tend to have more food sensitivities. And these can evolve through life. When you're testing your food sensitivities, they only have, the test results only have a true lifetime of about six months because it can evolve, right? Constipation, we want to make sure that we are moving our bowel right, the stool needs to come out because otherwise we are recirculating all the toxins that it's bringing out. We are bringing out all our toxins through stool, through urine, through breathing, through sweat, and all this needs to be moving. So constipation is really something that you want to look into if you are chronically constipated. Diarrhea, very common when there's food sensitivities or allergies. Very common when there's pathogens, and very common when there's inflammation. And of course, the last one is inflammation.
(17:22):
So here's for my five steps. First step is focus on the digestive function, right? I talked about it about a million times as of now, but I really want to focus on that because this is the easiest and cheapest way to help your gut health. And so the first thing, I put some three pointers in here by supporting your digestion, you want to chew, chew, chew, chew, chew, chew each bite thoroughly to age breakdown and absorption of nutrients. But not only that, chewing will secrete, of course, the saliva, but it will also kickstart the hydrochloric acid. If you're not chewing enough, you're not going to be secreting enough hydrochloric acid. This tells your brain to then make more hydrochloric acid. And then once you've made enough hydrochloric acid and the acidity is at the right pH, that's when the pancreatic enzymes kick in. So it's all really a cascade of digestion, and it all starts with chewing.
(18:26):
So we really want to make sure that we're chewing and we want to chew our foods. 20 to 30 times per bite sounds like a lot, but try it and it will become a breeze. If you're eating meat, it can go a little higher. Basically, you want to make sure that you have a smoothie consistency in your mouth. So you want to chew your solids until they're liquid, and you want to chew your liquids as if they are solids, even a smoothie, you want to chew it. The second thing is apple cider vinegar before meals. So we heard a lot about apple cider vinegar lately with all of its benefits for glucose and sugar handling. But I here wanted to put this on there for hydrochloric acid. So the type of acidity or the type of acid that is in apple cider vinegar is particularly great for stimulating the hydrochloric acid in your stomach.
(19:29):
So drinking one teaspoon mixed in water, never drink it raw or undiluted. You want to dilute it in some water. It doesn't have to be a lot. It can be a third of a cup in your glass, and drinking that before your meal can really help stimulate things. Now, if you have acid reflux or if you have gerd, I would advise you to not try that hack straight away and go first to step two. And so we're going to look at step two right after because we want to make sure that we are supporting the mucosal lining of your esophagus two, and that we're not burning things. We don't want to add acidity to something that is already quite raw. And so we want to make sure that we're healing that gut lining first before adding more acidity. So that's a little different for those people.
(20:25):
And then the third thing is enzyme rich foods. So certain fruits like papaya and pineapple, they're great for pancreatic to help with pancreatic enzyme stimulation. Beets have torin that is very useful for digesting fats and some bitter plants like gentian and wormwood. You can find these relatively easily or either in a sort of concoction that you can make at home or I buy the little drops and they're very cheap. So these are the few steps or few things for step one is focusing on digestive function. Step two is we want to soothe inflammation to promote gut healing. And so the first line here is particularly for people who have acid reflux or gerd, like I said, we want to make sure that we're healing that mucosal lining. So the use of slippery elm, which is a bark from the tree marshmallow root. So these two you can find in more of a T form.
(21:38):
I know that slippery elm is in throat coat by healing medicinals, but you can find it just by itself and drink it as a tea or okra. And okra is, if you're not familiar, it's a green little, I think it's from Africa. It's an African vegetable that is green. And when you cook it, the more you cook it, the more it becomes slimy. But that's what we want. We want the slimy because the slimy is great and it's a mage, and that will help coat and soothe your mucosal lining and help to nourish the mucus that is around the mucosal lining. So these are great, and especially for people with any sort of acid reflux or any sort of upper GI symptoms incorporating ginger and turmeric, of course, it has anti-inflammatory properties, but mostly for the digestive properties. So ginger is really great to help with digestion and particularly to help with motility.
(22:40):
So helping everything flow and everything go from north to south and doing its job. So drinking that after a meal or in between meals is really helpful. But then incorporating, so I mean drinking ginger tea, and so I use fresh ginger. You just cut a piece of ginger, peel the skin off, put it in some boiling water. I like to add a little bit of lemon, and I just drink that all the way all day. But you can use ginger to cook with, and I would highly recommend using that with at least one meal a day. Ginger and turmeric, very, very helpful. And then bone broth, again to help soothe, but also help repair the gut lining. We talk a lot about bone broth on AIP, but it really is a magical drink and it's filled with different amino acids, particularly L-glutamine and gelatin, which is really great to help repair things.
(23:35):
I just want to be cautious about some people who may have histamine intolerance, a lot of allergic reactions. They may not do so well with bone broth. So I would either recommend making your own bone broth and making it in a pressure cooker and cooking it for maximum four hours. This limits the histamines or just avoiding it altogether. And I would go down the supplement path in that case. Step three, we want to create a hospitable environment for the good guys. For our good bacteria. This is a given, but I had to put it in here. Fermented foods, they will be very helpful to help diversify your gut microbiome and help kick out the bad guys because the more good guys we have in there, the less bad guys can proliferate. That's the job of the good bacteria. I mean, that's not their only job.
(24:33):
They have a lot of things to do, but one of their job is to limit the amount of pathogens and eradicate the pathogens that are in there. So we want to include some sauerkraut. We want to include some coconut, kefi or yogurt. I love Cocoa June, but I mean, there's a lot of great brands out there, but Cocoa June is just so creamy, it's so delicious. And a few tips here. You want to start small. If you've never taken probiotics or eaten anything fermented before, you really want to take it step by step. You start with one tablespoon for the first week, just one tablespoon a day of sauerkraut or a small, I would even say half a glass of kfire. You can make your own sauerkraut to make it yourself and it be a little better low cost option. And then we want to rotate on different fermented foods for a different diversity.
(25:32):
I didn't include kombucha in here. We can definitely include kombucha. I don't want it to become a staple in your everyday. Let's diversify with kombucha just because in my opinion, there still is sugar. It is fermented from fruit and from sugar, so it's great to have, but I would prefer having sauerkraut or kefi on a daily and then kombucha from time to time. I love to have it as a mocktail when I have friends coming over. So yes, and I have a freebie stick to the end. I have a freebie for you guys with some gut healthy recipes. And I have my sauerkraut recipe in there and my bone broth bone broth recipe too. So hopefully that'll be helpful for you guys.
(26:19):
Step four is we want to create an inhospitable environment for the bad guys. So I didn't include all of the eat less of, because a lot of these are, we're already avoiding on AIP, like alcohol, processed foods, so that's already a given. I do want to caution on sugar. I see this as being a common, I wouldn't say mistake, but a common go-to when we start AIP is that we rush to all these amazing blogs that we have out there, amazing recipes of alternatives for cookies, for cakes and for desserts. And they're delicious and they're really, I think, better than the originals most of the time, but it still is sugar and it's healthier sugar with molasses, which is really interesting in terms of nutrients and fermented too. So it actually is great for your gut with coconut sugar, with honey, with maple syrup. So all more, let's say healthier alternatives, but it still is sugar.
(27:28):
So from a metabolic standpoint, your body recognizes it just the same as white sugar cane sugar, but more so from a bacterial or pathogenic standpoint. They feed off of sugar, particularly yeast like candida and some bacteria, some bacterial overgrowths and pathogens will really thrive on sugar. So we want to make sure that we're limiting. I'm not saying that we can't have any, but eating sugary sweetss snacks between meals and after every meal on a daily is probably not a great idea. And then eating more of certain foods like polyphenol rich foods. So we're thinking about green tea and moderation, but green tea is great and really high in polyphenols. We're thinking about berries, we're thinking about spinach. Anything that has a deep pigment, like different colors of carrots, like beets, like a lot of color, that's what we want. And different, varying your colors. Also focusing on antimicrobial foods.
(28:36):
Now, garlic is the holy grail of the antimicrobial. So raw garlic, you don't have to be chewing on a whole clove of raw garlic, but at least incorporating it in your salads. I like to just smash it and use it in my vinegarette, or I'll just put it straight in a salad or on some meat, but keep it raw. Keeping it raw is best. And then ginger and turmeric also have great antimicrobial properties, prebiotics. So we want to focus on, well, fiber in general really, but mostly asparagus, onions, artichokes, bananas. These are filled with prebiotics that will really help feed your bacteria. So they are in conjunction with the probiotics. Probiotics brings more bacteria. Prebiotics will feed the bacteria. This, again, you have to be cautious if you have sibo, so small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, you may have more symptoms or adverse reactions. The more fiber you eat in particular types of fiber.
(29:46):
So you want to be cautious with that and you want to look into that for yourself. And then step five is manage your daily stress. So again, we talk about this a lot for immune regulation, for a lot of different things when you have an autoimmune disease, but particularly for digestion, you only digest properly and two optimally if you are in a parasympathetic states. So if you're relaxed, some easy quick tips or one easy quick tip is breathing before a meal. You want to make sure that you are taking in, taking your time right before your meal, taking in the oxygen and breathing and resetting. And you can do three deep breaths. I like the 4, 7, 8. So you breathe in for four, hold for seven, exhale for eight. But you can do the box breathing, 4, 4, 4. It really doesn't matter. Whatever breathing technique that you like.
(30:47):
Just take three deep breaths. And this is a great little hack to make your body think that you are relaxed at this moment. And of course, taking the time to eat. I'm from France, so in France, even at work, everyone takes an hour off. And I think that's the most amazing digestive hack that you can take is that you can do is taking a full hour for your meal and you go out with your colleagues and your friends and you're chatting and having a good time. Even during a workday, it should be your priority. So an hour is not always doable, but trying to find the time rather than being stressed and running around and eating in front of your computer while you're still trying to eat to work, taking that time to just sit, take in your food and enjoy it. And then walking after meals is really great for digestion. It will also help with any kind of sugar spikes, but mostly for digestion, five to 10 minutes. The pluses that you're always, you're also outside if you're walking outside and taking in a little bit of sun, some fresh air. If you're lucky enough and have the opportunity to be close to a park or somewhere with some trees, that is even better to help you relax even more. But yes, walking after meals will also be very helpful, and five, 10 minutes can be enough.
(32:18):
So these were my five steps, and it may feel like a lot, so I want to make sure that I'm giving you a little bit more tips. First of all, you can do this. I know that this is probably the beginning of a long journey or what can be a confusing journey. Sometimes when we're trying to find solutions for ourselves and when we're trying to make some changes, it's not always easy to make these changes, and there are a lot of changes to make. So you can do this and just take it step by step. You want to focus on your progress and not on perfection. You don't have to do it all right. Now. You want to start by implementing very slowly for what I gave you, the information that I gave you today. You can start by implementing one or two steps as of today.
(33:12):
I think you'll have access to the slider, the replay, so you can go back and pick out the two, what you feel is the easiest ones to implement today and start as of now. And from there, you build up. You keep it consistent, right? And you can track your progress. I like to use either a journal or a notes in my phone to keep track of your progress and seeing how well you're doing, how you feel after a meal. How are you feeling tonight when you're going to bed? Just tracking your symptoms and tracking how you're feeling throughout the day. And then remember, small consistent efforts lead to meaningful change, so you don't have to do it all right now. You can really take baby steps into then applying everything throughout the time.
Jaime Hartman (34:09):
We hope that Loren's presentation has again made it clear that AIP is not just a diet, but it is a protocol with multiple branches, and that there are multiple ways to approach it. And through this podcast, AIP certified coaches bring you resources so that you don't have to do AIP alone.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (34:25):
If you like what you heard today, we hope you'll check out the summer encore rebroadcast of the entire six annual AIP Summit, starting on June 21st, or if you're listening to this episode later in the year that you'll tune in for our next seasonal encore or consider becoming a member of the AIP Summit community. In the meantime, we'll be back with another podcast episode in two weeks. So make sure you subscribe to the AIP Summit Podcast in your favorite podcast player if you have not already.
Jaime Hartman (34:52):
And if you'd like to leave us a rating and a review, it would help others find this podcast where we are committed to helping you use the power of the Autoimmune protocol to elevate your wellness journey to new heights. The AIP Summit Podcast is a Gutsy By Nature production. Content presented is for informational purposes only, and is not intended to be a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.
