A Typical Patient with Digestive Imbalance
A typical patient would be someone who has had several rounds of sinus infections. The antibiotics she has taken have given her a slight diarrhea, but helped the sinus infection temporarily. She goes through round after round of antibiotics, enduring a yeast infection with each round of antibiotics, never completely resolving the problem. After several years of this, she develops symptoms symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome. Multiple tests reveal no other problem except for some inflammation in her bowels. After several years of struggling with irritable bowel AND sinus infections, she develops fibromyalgia, a seemingly unrelated problem.
A story to explain her all too common health picture:
Antibiotics kill healthy bacteria. (link to healthy bacteria)
Without competition from healthy bacteria, yeast overgrow in the vagina
and the digestive system – causing yeast infections and often skin
rashes, and competing with healthy bacteria for space and nutrients in the
digestive system. With less of the paste normally secreted by the healthy bacteria, the lining
of the intestines is less able to keep out toxins and undigested food
and proteins. Antiinflammatory medicines she takes for her sinus pain
further damage her digestive system. Normal digestion involves absorption of proteins
only after they are completely processed into amino acids.
Some undigested proteins manage to cross from the intestines into the bloodstream where they encounter the immune system. The immune
system, sensing invasion by foreign proteins, captures the foreign
proteins and surrounds them, forming immune complexes to inactivate
them. Immune complexes circulating through out the body create
aches pain, known as fibromyalgia.
While the above is a gross oversimplification, it illustrates two points: