Erin O'Hara: naturopath and wellness expert on how to heal your gut long-term

Healing the gut rather than relying on long-term restrictive diets is considered a better approach to manage IBS and bloating than restrictive dieting.

Irritable bowel syndrome is very common in New Zealand, affecting an estimated 15–20 percent of the population, or roughly 1 in 7 adults.

Naturopath and wellness expert Erin O'Hara reveals how to work through long-term gut issues.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talks THAT'DB.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
It is time to talk wellness now, and I'm joined
by Erin O'Hara.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
Good morning, Erin, good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Okay, So today we're going to talk about how to
hell the gut if you have IBS or chronic bloating.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Yeah. So, IBS is actually really really common in New
Zealand and about fifteen to twenty percent of our population,
or roughly one in seven adults will get a irritable
bow syndrome and something that generally when I see people
in the clinic, the first thing they do is they've
usually pulled a whole lot of food out of their diet.

(00:49):
They've made their diet really really restrictive to try and
help with some of their symptoms. And the common symptoms
with IBS is abdominal pain, cramping, bloating, changes in bow
habits of things like diarrhea or constipation or sometimes both.
And so their way of managing that is generally pull

(01:10):
as much food out of their diet as they can,
trying to figure out what is triggering the symptoms, and
generally it's not actually all the food that they're eating.
It's actually the gut itself that's actually triggering a lot
of those symptoms.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Okay, it's interesting. I thought that was a pretty common
way of responding though, was doing the elimination and working
out kind of you know what worked for you, And
we hear about diets like the low pod map diet
can be useful as well.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah, low phobat diet is helpful and for some people
does work really well. I think for short term can
be a really good elimination phase to get symptoms under control.
So thinking about doing it for maybe four or six
weeks while you're trying to figure out what is going
on with your gut. However, when you're doing these restrictive

(01:59):
diets long term, you end up restricting also the nutrients
that are going in and you actually create long term
actually worse gut function because the gut microbian really relies
on diversity, So if you're restricting your diet, you're actually
restricting the diversity within your gut as well. So it
means that you're actually not solving the problem. You're just

(02:19):
actually symptom managing, which is actually not going to get
to the root cause of what is going on with
your guts.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Okay, so how do you heal and rebalancey gut?

Speaker 3 (02:28):
Yes, it's looking at that overall picture, and I think
starting to get some of the symptoms actually just to
get calmer, so things starting like herbal support, so you
might start with even just some teas are really helpful,
so things like ginger, peppermint, camma or phenyl and if
you find tea not helpful, maybe looking at tablet version
of those sorts of herbs or even a tincture. As

(02:50):
well as repairing some of the lining of the guts,
you might add in a glutamine powder which is great
for calming the lining of the gut so it's less reactive,
as well as things like sliperown, which is a herb
that you have that helps to soothe the lining of
the gut, so you can get the gut functioning properly.
And then when it comes to fiber, because quite often
with ibs, motility or the bowel movements is actually part

(03:14):
of the problem that's actually creating a lot of the
cramping and bloating. And it might be adding in some fiber,
but going really slowly. If you start adding lots of
fiber added guts that's not functioning very well. Actually, you'll
cause more problems. So going nice and slowly adding in
maybe some extra fruit. You might start with things like plums, pears, apples,

(03:34):
berries like raspberries are greape for fiber Kiwi fruit and
putting a little bit more in your diet and not
adding everything all at once, but instead just adding a
little bit more fruit, a little bit more seeds getting
in the fiber so you can allow the gut microbuiing
bugs to adjust to those foods as you put them in,
and then if you get improved motility as well as
keeping the gut calm, that can be really helpful to

(03:56):
get a better gut.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
Function erin Thank you so much for that, appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
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