The Tummy Whisperer

Ep. 6 - The Power of Informed Food Choices: A Journey from Vertigo to Vitality

• Renee Barasch

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Have you ever found yourself sprawled on the floor, gripped by the terrifying clutches of vertigo? That was Janine's reality - a journey marked by chronic inflammation, fatigue, and an unshakeable dizziness that demanded emergency response. Her story, though harrowing, led her to a pivotal discovery - the undeniable impact of our diet on our overall health. Janine's decision to ditch gluten and histamines brought her back to the realm of the living, proving that what we eat isn't just about satiating hunger, but about how we feel and function every single day.

As we chart Janine's transformation, we also zoom into the effects of altering our dietary habits. This isn't just about going gluten-free, but about the wide-ranging implications on our neurotransmitters and digestion. We tackle the nitty-gritty of food labels and the importance of being aware of what we feed our bodies. As we move into the benefits of a gluten-free lifestyle, we discuss the range of delicious alternatives available, with Janine's successful transition painting an encouraging picture of possibility. Mindful eating isn't just a trendy term; it plays a crucial role in tuning into our body's signals. Join us, and discover the power of informed food choices.


Get to the root cause of your Gut Issues!  Watch the Gut Restoration Masterclass at https://learn.digestivehealthsolutions.com/

For a FREE Gut Health consultation, visit us at  https://thetummywhisperer.com/.


Contact Renee:
Email: Nhsolutions@sbcglobal.net
Website:  www.thetummywhisperer.com 



Speaker 1:

Welcome everybody. Welcome to the Tummy Whisperer podcast. We are an episode number six and I think this is going to be my favorite one so far. We are going to be talking about food, of course, friend or foe Food feels like in your system, what you notice, how it can translate into symptoms, problems, disease, dysfunction, emotional stress, everything the whole ball of wax.

Speaker 1:

So I thought this would be a great topic to talk about, because so many people I think, janine, a lot of people may have questions in their head. You know, when you eat something and you're like I don't know, maybe I shouldn't have eaten that, you get this notion that maybe I shouldn't have eaten that. Or you think to yourself I definitely shouldn't have eaten that, or I wonder if that's good for you. So I want to dive into what's going in, what's in food today, how it's labored with preservatives and MSG and what those things do to cause problems in the body that are just sometimes really hard to get back. In fact, I was at a restaurant on time with Mark I'm gluten-free and I ordered a gluten-free dish that was like a chicken finger dish, that was like prepared in a gluten-free flour with all kinds of spices and stuff, and they used MSG and I didn't know that it was in there and MSG is like flavor enhancing and salt, right. Did they use that as a substitute?

Speaker 2:

for gluten. They're like, oh, we'll take gluten now, but we'll put in MSG. There's the kick.

Speaker 1:

I'm not sure what they were doing, but when I have those types of chemicals my brain goes on fire and literally it was within about three hours. I was just at home crying, wishing I was not of this earth anymore, because it was just so painful. So there's just so much shit in food today for flavorings and additives that it's still hard to get around it. But once you have the power and the knowledge, I should say, to understand what's going in, you're in control of what you're putting in your pie hole. So for you guys listening, I will just tell you about a week and a half before Jeanine decided to start working with me, I told her I could see some inflammation. I saw it around her face and her neck and I saw some kind of dark circles and I just saw the inflammation. It was showing me in her body.

Speaker 1:

And I said to my husband I love Jeanine. I don't know if I should tell her or if you love her, tell her. So I did and she said that's it, I'm going to start. I'm going to start working with you, and we didn't actually get started right away because she had a detour into the ER. So, jeanine, I want you to take it from here.

Speaker 2:

Sure, my other half, my hubby, had gone on a work trip into the Florida Keys and I was by myself for a couple of nights and literally I woke up in the middle of the night and the room was absolutely spinning, and I mean spinning, something that I had never experienced before. I fell back on the bed, I tried to get back up again, I fell back down, and I'm thinking of all the nights that this worked to happen. Of course I'm by myself. So I thought maybe sometimes, when people get up too quickly, they can sometimes experience that and that might be normal. So I didn't think anything of it, but I took note of it. The very next day, the same thing happened and I thought this is scary. I'm by myself again. What do I do? And enough was enough. At that point I'm like you know what? I can't do this. Something is wrong.

Speaker 2:

I've been feeling fatigued for months. I've been feeling lack of energy in the morning and notoriously I've been a morning person my whole life. So for me not to be able to just get up and go in the morning was very out of character for me and I thought I need to go. So I went to an ER clinic. It's the closest thing to a full-fledged ER that they have here in South Florida. They have all the main capabilities as an ER but you can walk in so you don't have to be admitted but they can keep you there if need be.

Speaker 2:

So I went in. They said you need blood work and I got my results back and my white blood cell count was like through the roof, which detected inflammation or infection. And then my cholesterol was through the roof. But I have a genetic issue with cholesterol. But I knew I had to take a drastic change because something was definitely wrong. So I heated to your advice and from then, from that day, I mean, I have not had gluten other than maybe a bite or two from a birthday party here and there in the last two weeks, but maybe a bite or two, I would say. And I feel so much clear like the less brain fog and all kinds of things have been happening since then.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's pretty awesome. So we dialed back the gluten. We took out histamines, which can cause vertigo, dizziness, just that feeling like you're going to pass out. And yeah, I just. We haven't even done anything as far as adding any supplements in yet.

Speaker 1:

So to hear you, you look so much better. To hear you got that. You've got some life back in your voice. A lot of the fear is gone.

Speaker 1:

And can you imagine if you didn't look at the diet where you may be and this is not anything against medical doctors, you don't really look at food per se, they're not necessarily training and a GI doc may look at gluten, but they're an allergist, may say, hey, you've got this on a scratch test, take it out. But understanding what the symptoms are from this, from these things, that's what people come to me with, that's what their body is expressed and you were expressing them from your hairline to your toenails. I'm so glad that we were able to make such significant change by changing the diet. And, jeanine, if you don't mind sharing with the audience how you felt about gluten, because it's funny you were saying, oh, gluten, and I thought that was just full of shit, or like trying to do it to get skinnier or whatever, but give me, give us, some feedback on really what you started with and how you feel now about it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I was the person that used to make fun of people. I'd be like, oh my gosh, what is this new craze? This like gluten free, blah, blah, blah. That's only something that these ritzy people do in California and sweeping the nation. And now every trendy place in South Florida has gluten intolerance, this and gluten. And I had heard of people because I worked in a medical facility with food and people would have celiac disease, obviously couldn't have anything gluten related. But I didn't think for a minute. And then I had a doctor I don't know years ago, say you know what you should probably try to like, maybe stay away from gluten and I completely ignored him. Oh, you did have a doctor. Tell you that I did have a doctor who was like more of a holistic type of internist. He's super cool. I completely ignored him.

Speaker 2:

This was years ago, so I thought to myself alright, something's gotta give, but I would make fun of people. I really thought that this was something way out of the norm.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, something that some boutique sort of way of eating. From what I've seen in my 19 years of clinical practice, I've seen symptoms that are just crazy. I had a young gentleman I might have mentioned this on an earlier podcast he came to me he had been to Mayo Clinic in Northwestern. He was having upper body twitching and like involuntary little twitching and shaking and his neighbor referred him to me and I thought, oh man, nothing digestively wrong. So he was eating a lot of gluten he was having for breakfast, lunch and dinner. So I gave him all the swap out items. He went and got them and within three weeks he was 85% better.

Speaker 1:

And this is not an ego thing. Let's look at why somebody's body showing us what it's showing us. It's that simple. What is your body showing? Is it showing inflammation? And in what form? Inflammation can be anything from blood pressure dysregulation to cholesterol, to rashes, to diarrhea, to constipation, to eczema, to joint inflammation, to just everything, feeling just out of whack. Back to how your body expresses inflammation. For a lot of people and not for everybody, but for a lot of people gluten can be at the hell of it. And when you don't know, you don't know, and until you get desperate enough and scared enough, and I'm sorry that you had to go through that. It's OK, I'm going to make some changes here now. So I want to invite everybody to pay attention to your body, pay attention to what you notice, something as simple as feeling exhausted in the morning because you know you're sleeping six to eight hours. And if you're getting eight hours, why would you feel more tired in the morning than when you went to bed? Because your adrenals are off, your cortisol levels off.

Speaker 2:

All from digestion, all from poor digestion 100% and I wasn't even sleeping all my, because normally I'm a sleeper eight hours. I love my sleep, Me too, I wasn't even getting that. I was waking up at 4 or 5 in the morning, wide awake and then sleep, trying to go back to bed on the couch and then waking up and then feeling like I could go back to sleep.

Speaker 1:

And are you sleeping to the night now better.

Speaker 2:

I am actually Like it's been a really good couple of weeks. I had been getting up earlier. My internal clock is literally getting up again around the 6.30 mark, which was my norm for my whole life. Right, so I feel physically better. I have to. I feel like the element of exercise needs to be really incorporated more.

Speaker 1:

but other than that, when you have, there is something that's true called exercise and tolerance. When you don't have enough nutrient on board to give yourself a get up and go, you don't really want to exercise. So I know we've got some testing. Actually, I've got your results back. We're going to go through those and we'll start adding in some balancers to digest your food and give you some more of that energy so that you have some good of a bulk.

Speaker 2:

I've got my results.

Speaker 1:

Renee Got them, I've got them.

Speaker 2:

Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1:

It's good, it's interesting, it's not bad looking, but there's definitely some things out of whack that once we start adding in some things to help you with your digestion, that should really make a world of difference even in your energy signature and how you're able to muster up enough energy to want to do a little bit of walking. But back to noticing. I want to get back to noticing in your body what's not right. We don't feel like we felt like we were in our 20s. Nobody does.

Speaker 1:

But if you're in your 20s and you're listening to this and you feel like, shut, pay attention, because you're heading down that road and this is not a threat. This is me telling you hey, pay attention, because if you don't pay attention, your body's going to pay attention for you and it's going to give you something that it's going to be harder to deal with when you can just get off your ass, make a little bit of dietary change you need. How easy was it to change a diet? And we did a lot. How easy was it?

Speaker 2:

Really, it was a lot easier to be honest with you a lot easier than I thought, and there's so many great gluten-free options that you would suggest to me. Those blueberry muffins are my favorite thing in the world, by the way, like I love them, gluten-free. Target brand love them. There's so many the kind bars. I don't know how great they are for you, but they are gluten-free.

Speaker 1:

OK, it's fine for transitioning. Fine for transitioning and the fact that you're feeling better and you're. What's the dizziness? Is that almost gone?

Speaker 2:

I haven't had it at all oh it's 100% gone. I haven't had it yeah.

Speaker 1:

How loud I'm going to do a victory lap.

Speaker 2:

I know so the actual the urgent care called me and they said are you taking the whatever medicine that they gave me for vertigo? And granted, every one of my family does have vertigo, so it could be, it could be a thing. But they kept asking me if I were taking the medication and I said why would I take something that I don't need? And they got mad at me and I'm like until I find out what's going on, I'm not going to mask the problem with something else, so it could be related.

Speaker 2:

It could be something anything.

Speaker 1:

My sense is that you've taken out some foods that could cause this, the neurotransmitter shit storm in your body right and cause that desolation, and you've been fine. So in my opinion, my professional opinion, I say food is it. And if your family has issues with vertical non-traumatic vertical the first place they need to look at is what they're eating and how they're digesting their fat. So non-traumatic vertical can also be a deficiency in an enzyme called lipase and you have that. So when I get the urine to, when I go over your results with you, we're going to plug in with a digestive enzyme that has enough lipase in it so that you can break down your food properly and keep this vertical.

Speaker 2:

I'm so excited and nervous and scared at the same time.

Speaker 1:

Don't be. Your tests look good. The thing with the urine test is that think of an orchestra. If you have one little violin that's out of tune, what is it going to sound?

Speaker 2:

like.

Speaker 1:

Ah, same thing with the urine test. There's one little thing that's out of balance. You only had a couple, but it's an option to disrupt the full, beautiful balance of your body. So my job is to help people be empowered to restore their health, restore their digestion, so their body can be strong and thrive and not have to be scared by these symptoms. Because symptoms are scary, especially. My God, you're by yourself, your hubby's gone, you've got the dogs and then you're thinking of them tied up in the yarn. Who's gonna have a poor dog? Who's gonna be by themselves? Think about that. Mark's gone for a week right now and I'm like what if? And hopefully nothing, if it's worth it to just really make some effort so that you can have some long-term health. So I want to touch on too.

Speaker 1:

When we went through your diet, I was going through Janine's diet with her and we did that in our consultation just to see what she was eating, so I can help her make those exchanges.

Speaker 1:

Some stuff she got from Amazon, some Target, a few things from Whole Foods there's plenty of places to shop from, to get everything from and one of the dishes she was eating that she liked was like a chicken and rice dish she would have a couple times a week with this flavor packet. So I asked her politely to read me the ingredients, the flavor packet, and as she was reading the ingredients I was like eeks because there was all kinds of crap in there and MSG, and I said the MSG really should come out and it's in so much stuff. So like soy sauce has MSG in it and toxic levels of gluten. If you look at a bottle of Kiko Min, I hope they don't come back for you. But if you look at a bottle of Kiko Min, the second ingredient is wheat textured gluten, which is I'm not telling you to not be like the soy sauce. Is that gonna coats your egg rolls but it boots your food?

Speaker 2:

That's insane.

Speaker 1:

Gluten is a thickener. There's plenty of good thickeners out there. There's arrowroot and cornstarch and all kinds of thickeners out there that are gluten free. That helps the body to not realize that the incoming load is an absolute problem. When you're sending food down, the immune system should be going oh what's that? Your body should be starting to digest it. Your immune system should be working to do what it's supposed to be doing for the big bad stuff, not going and attacking your food.

Speaker 2:

Unbelievable that's. This whole process has just been eye-opening for me, and I didn't realize that MSG was conveniently tucked away in so many foods.

Speaker 1:

I wanna invite everybody listening in your toogeny and you've been great at it. You're like a plus girl. Start looking at the labels of stuff that you're buying. Some clients are like I don't know what's in this. I actually have to look at pretty much everything that goes into my mouth because I have helped challenges that if I'm not cleaning careful, I sometimes could move in the wrong direction, which feels scary, right, so we don't want that. But start looking at what you're eating. People say I don't want to buy this, I don't want to change this, you don't want to. You're again. As far as I know, we get one time on this earth, I think. I don't know. I don't know if something like that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I may be back from another life. I feel like I am a couple times, but my advice and my wish for everybody listening is to really try to just take care of yourself. If you do one small thing, one little baby step and try to make it a habit. Whether it's taking a minute to take a breath after a meal sitting, the dishes will still be there. They're still going to be there in a minute. They'll be there in 10 minutes.

Speaker 1:

Reading a label, maybe trying to look for your favorite muffin in a gluten-free version and taste it and see if you like it and start lessening the load of gluten. I'm not saying everybody has to be gluten-free. That is not 100% true. What I'm saying is for many people it is hard to digest. It's genetically modified, it's sprayed with a lot of brown duck, it's a hybrid now and our bodies look at it as a problem. We're frank in food. You might have heard me say that before. You know this food that's just not from nature and our bodies are smart and our bodies know when you put something in that's natural and our bodies have to process when you put something in that isn't natural. That's why Whole30 became a big craze and I'm looking for something wrong with Whole30. I love it.

Speaker 1:

I actually just had a client that went through it and she really. It was a little hard but she did it. So it's nothing really out of a box. It's all your proteins, vegetables, fruits, seeds. I'm not sure what else is on Whole30. But she did it. She lost about eight pounds. Weight was an issue for her, but her inflammation is just way better. She's off of her protumne pump inhibitor. Eating stuff not out of a box I do eat stuff out of a box. I have gluten-free crackers. I need a cracker. I need a cracker. I need a cracker and some hummus, like we need air.

Speaker 2:

I love the organic corn tortilla chips from Whole Foods. They're gluten-free corn tortilla. They're really good and you know what? The biggest thing I've noticed about being gluten-free is I'm not bloated after I eat anymore, which was. You don't realize that. You just think, oh, I'm eating, I'm so full. That's the way I should feel, but it's really not the way you should feel.

Speaker 1:

A little bit of like gas. Maybe. If you have some pizza or something, that's normal to notice it when you're eating poorly, but as an every meal type of thing, no, that's not normal.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, I've gone down the rabbit hole, renee, when I say that in a good way. On 4th of July I have a dear friend. I went to her house. Her whole family's gluten-free. She made from scratch a gluten-free. It was like a tart, it was like a blueberry tart. It was the best thing I've ever eaten in my life. It was so good. I was like I'm so excited this is gluten-free. And then for MacGyver's birthday party over the weekend I ordered cauliflower crust pizza, veggie pizza. That was delicious and I'm like you know what. I just feel better eating healthier.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I don't even. Your energy is back, your vertical is gone, your sleep is better, you're waking up with a little more energy, you are getting back online. Your body is yes, thank you. Again, I saw it. I could just see the inflammation. I saw the road you were heading down and I just knew I'm like we got to do this. And again, you would never think celiac disease for you, because you're not celiac disease, but do?

Speaker 1:

Most people have a non-celiac gluten sensitivity? The ones that are sensitive to gluten? Hell to the? Yeah, absolutely. And you can name a symptom and I can relate it back to gluten, from that young man who was having that twitching, to diarrhea, to blood pressure dysregulation, to rashing on the body. There's actually something called dermatitis ediformis that causes, well, certain gluten rash and itchy and painful. And so many guys start thinking in terms of what goes in is going to have either a reaction foe or it's going to be friendly and nourish your body and help give you the strength that you need to live your life. Next is clear as I can make it and again, I can just list 100 symptoms related to gluten. And I'm not I'm. I want you guys to hear me, I'm not picking on gluten. I'm not saying it's for everybody. I'm saying if you don't feel well and your blood pressure's out of control and you have dizziness and constipation and diarrhea and skin rashing and bloating and crazy, weird symptoms that you know, you just don't know what to do, start looking at what you're eating and start getting to the store and getting replacing out with other things.

Speaker 1:

My favorite for everybody listening, my favorite gluten free bread is Canyon Bakehouse. They make bread right. They make bread muffins, bagels, hotdog buns, everything. They make a rye. They make so right tortillas, the siap de tortillas. They make a grain free chip. They make those tortillas. I love them. If you're having cereal, there's 10,000 different kinds of cereal, everything from rice checks to Cheerios. I don't really love the Cheerios If you can get something, if everybody's listening near a whole foods. If you shop there, like I do, there's any of the organic gluten free cereals are really good. I think there's a vanilla berry crunch by Cascadian Farms and not too sweet, which I like that one is excellent.

Speaker 2:

I've had that one before. It's very good.

Speaker 1:

Isn't it good? Yeah, a little banana, a little milk or almond milk and it's yeah, it's great. So again, the invitation to everybody is to start to be aware and make a little change and see how you do and, of course, if anybody has any questions, I'm always available. You can. Guys can find me at thetubingwithspercom, you can text to 847-207-2034 and you can send me an email to NHChillitions at sbcglobalnet. Janine, I'm so proud of you.

Speaker 2:

I'm so excited and I'm like anxious. Are we going to go over the results over live?

Speaker 1:

or we can. In fact, I'm going to be on the air, I'll be on WCPT, probably next week, and I'll be going over some test results with Patty Vasquez. So she just we're going to start working with some of her inflammation too, and I know she won't mind me sharing because I'll be on the air talking about it. But she's came to me with some not really digested— issues but a lot of inflammation in her joints and some energy issues, and she's a high energy person already. But she's having to push yourself through. So we just went through our consultation. I've got her all the gluten-free swap outs and she's awesome. I love her. But I'll be going over her results live. We can do yours live too, if you want, but I don't want to make you wait two weeks. So we'll, we can do it and then we can do it again. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

I want to know, like right now, whether it's on or it's live Like I just want to know like I'm like all excited yeah you're, you're good, you're in good shape and we'll definitely get our time together. But thank you just for being open to the help and diving in Some people. For some people they there's an emotional component to. Food is definitely emotional for people and I know what you guys listening to get into a place for a poor Janine God, it was scary for her.

Speaker 2:

It was terrifying. It was really terrifying. I was freaking out.

Speaker 1:

And she and truthfully I didn't know that what I had to offer was going to do anything, but I also knew that it would be stupid to not try that. You have to look at what's affecting the body, so we try that first, while she's waiting to hear from the doctors, which still isn't heard from.

Speaker 2:

I actually heard from them for the first time over the weekend. It finally called me after I called and called four weeks later. Yeah, like calling, I finally got ahold of them. They want to check my hormones, this, that and the other and it's listen, it's always something else. Take this medication for this and do this for this, but let's not address the actual problem and the issue, right?

Speaker 1:

Again to their defense. They're not looking at Buddha's chemistry. The way pharmacology is, medications are strong, buddha's too. Everything has a cellular reaction, Everything and your emotions are really at the helm of all of it. Get into that effect. I'm going to bring on and one of my episodes, a lady that I just started following her and she's just, she's amazing. She's a trauma release coach and she does hair analysis for minerals that are depleted from trauma, and how the body goes into really a permanent off switch or permanent on switch, and how we just can't get ourselves from sympathetic to parasympathetic and have the body do that change. It's really cool and, of course, trauma is at the big helm of that. So, yeah, I'd love to have her on. It's just great, but anyway, yeah. But thank you, janine, for being a willing participant. I'm thrilled that you are got your life back. You're feeling secure, you're feeling safe, you're feeling good, you're excited about your food, you've got joy in what you're eating and it tastes good Really good Makes me feel good too.

Speaker 2:

Makes me feel healthy.

Speaker 1:

There you go.

Speaker 2:

That's the best. Thing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thank you so much.

Speaker 2:

I can't wait to see what the future holds with that.

Speaker 1:

We'll keep you posted my pleasure. Yeah, we will. Everybody posted Me Follow her. Yeah, follow me.

Speaker 2:

Apple, leave her a five star review. She's amazing.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, janine. Thanks everybody, take good care, be well, See you soon.