Start Pooping Better with Melissa Hall Klepacki [Ep. 117]

0:00 This is theEat Well, Think Well, Live Well podcast. I'm Lisa Solsbury and this is episode 117. Start pooping better with Melissa Hall, Klepacki. Melissa is a functional gut health expert, and really breaks down for us. The root causes of constipation. We discuss why you should even care about this because sometimes. You might consider constipation as just a normal human issue. Like it's not a big deal, but it really is. Honestly, if you're not pooping, you're probably not losing weight. It's not just the weight of the impacted poop in the system. It's all the detox not happening when you aren't pooping. In addition, this can really affect our live well pillar, if you are uncomfortable because you aren't pooping properly, it can make exercise.

0:42 And even sometimes your social life difficult. Whether this is a chronic problem for you, or just an every once in awhile issue, you'll really learn a lot about how to remedy this uncomfortable situation. Welcome to Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well; the podcast for women who want to lose weight, but are tired of counting and calculating all the food. I'm your host, Lisa Salsbury. I'm a certified health and weight loss coach and life coach, and most importantly a recovered chronic dieter. I'll teach you to figure out why you are eating when you aren't hungry, instead of worrying so much about what you are eating Welcome back to the eat well, think well, live well podcast.

1:25 I am so excited to be interviewing Melissa Hall Klopacki. She is a functional gut health expert, and we are going to be talking all about the gut and. How to poop better. Yay! Hi. Sure. so welcome. Tell us a little bit about you what you do and then we'll jump in. Thanks, Lisa. My name is Melissa Hawkelpacke, and I am a functional gut health specialist. I work with women and men around the country, taking them from constipation to liberation by understanding the root cause of their constipation, because I once was super constipated as a result of having Lyme disease. I was sick. I got sick in 2009.

2:07 I didn't get diagnosed until 2014. and when I was diagnosed, I was started on tons of antibiotics because I had a few different infections at the time. and while I did improve my overall health and respect to Lyme, my gut health tanked. and. Almost as much as my life was affected by Lyme disease, it was affected by being constipated, by never knowing when I would have to go to the bathroom. I, I tell people all the time, it really affected my social life in terms of the activities that I like to do. I love to hike. you can't hike when you're constipated and not knowing when you're going to have to poop. Right. And I had also developed because my gut was so damaged a bunch of food sensitivities and going out to dinner with friends was almost impossible because I would look at the menu and I knew that 90 percent of that stuff was going to make me feel rotten.

2:55 So by healing my gut, by working with a functional med specialist and healing my gut, I changed. my life, right? I changed my social life. I was, I had no more illness isolation because I was able to get back involved in the things that I loved about life. and so now the, the patient population that I work with is generally chronically ill. And I got into gut health because that was the one common denominator, regardless of whether you had an autoimmune disease, you were fighting cancer, you had Lyme disease. People's guts are in desperate need of repair. and mostly it's in, you know, from our environment, from the foods that we're eating, from the lifestyle practices that we have that's ruining our gut health.

3:41 And when you change that for people, you really can change their overall health. And so I developed a program. It's called Gut Reset 123, and it includes some gut health testing, some foundational health education, a community, which is really important for support, to get you pooping better. And that's gonna launch this fall. Fall of 2024. awesome. that's really exciting. I think that's something that we Kind of shy away from as far as talking about pooping and we don't really want to discuss it with our doctors and when we do, I know from my experience, I was chronically constipated for years, for years. And the first time I went to the doctor where, when we moved, we moved to Roseville about 12 years ago, ish, 13, and I got set up with a new doctor and I'm like, you know what?

4:31 I'm going to ask her, I'm going to ask her what I should do. And. I live in California. And so any, anybody that is familiar, we, I use the HMO here, which is called Kaiser and, she handed me. A photocopied handout that had been photocopied so many times from not the original, right? It was like, it looked like a third grade worksheet, first of all. And I kid you not, it said to drink water and eat some vegetables. I mean, I was like, no, you do understand this has been going on for years. And I'm a competent, smart individual. I have Googled it.

5:13 This is literally the first result of a Google search. I was like, this could not be more unhelpful. I threw it in the trash on the way out. I was so, I was mad, but also just disheartened. I'm like, okay, well, I guess the doctors don't know any better than Google because It was ridiculous. So I'm sure that this is what your, your clients and patients have gone through as well. They're like, here's what I've been told. Why doesn't that work? 100%. Yes. Every, I call it the trifecta. You go to the doctor for constipation and they say, drink more water, eat more fiber, take some Miralax, and you'll be fine.

5:55 And when my doctor said that to me, I said, When? And for how long? Like, I need to fix this. That's a band aid. he just looked at me and kind of I think he actually kind of shrugged his shoulders and walked out the door. I, mean, it was shocking. It is shocking. I know another gut health specialist that says constipation is not a MiraLAX deficiency in your diet. I love that. I love that. Right. that is not the problem that you are lacking MiraLAX. Like, no. I know you have some root causes of constipation that you teach. So how do you help your clients identify and address those underlying factors?

6:40 Or so, right. So the so the tried and trusted, advice of drink more water, eat more fiber actually does work for some people because those are two root causes of constipation, not having enough water. Right? Which is dehydration leads to not enough water bulking up the stool. A lot of those people will have dry, hard stools that look like little goat pellets. That's generally a dehydration kind of poop. and then eating more fiber, you know, take a look at the standard American diet. I'm going to, I'm going to break it down for you, right? It's a cup of coffee and a bagel with cream cheese for breakfast. It's two slices of pizza and a Coke for lunch and a cheeseburger and fries and maybe a Sprite if you're watching your caffeine for dinner, right?

7:25 Where's the fiber? Right? Where's the fiber? How do you expect your bowels to move without fiber? We need that fiber to create bulk in the stool so that this basically the edges of your intestine have sensors that say, Oh, here comes a bolus. We got to move it. And your intestines contract both this way and this to move food through, Okay, so we don't use the video, so show me what, tell me what that is. So Right, so it moves, basically it squeezes. It squeezes and contracts. To move food through, but it needs to have the edges of the bolus touching the edges of the intestine to say, Hey, there's food here, we need to move through.

8:13 If you've got a sludgy mess with no fiber, the cue is not there. Right. So if you're, if you do have a very fiber deficient diet, yeah, sometimes just starting to incorporate fruits and vegetables, working towards a Mediterranean diet will really change your bowels. Not only because you've got the fiber, but also, and this is something that people don't talk a lot about is because that fiber, those vegetable fibers are actually what feed the good protein. Probiotics that are currently living in your gut so we can do all of this work to work on our microbiomes and have healthy guts But if we aren't feeding the probiotics that we're putting in there They die, right?

8:59 It's almost like, and I like to talk to people who don't have a lot of experience in gut health, Lisa, about your microbiome like your garden. It's your internal garden. The very first thing that needs to happen is the soil needs to be prepared. Right? If you try to plant a seed in a rocky, dried out, Garden bed. Good luck, right? So the first thing we need to do is make sure that the gut lining is intact, that there's enough mucus in there. One of the, one of the good bacteria called Acromansia Muciniphila is responsible for that nice, hearty mucus lining that's protective. and so, that's sort of where we start with the garden, making sure that the soil, and then we plant the seeds.

9:45 And that is the taking of the probiotic, right? And we make sure that we're taking, we're planting different seeds in our garden because we want a garden of wildflowers. The microbiome we know from research is best when varied. We want a lot of different bacteria and steady levels. We don't want anything too high, right? We don't want anybody taking over, which can happen in the gut. So we like to see, Adequate levels of many probiotics. So we plant all of those seeds and then we need the water and we need the sun, right? The nutrients, and so for us, that means vegetable fibers, polyphenols, which come from the dark, the orange from the carrot and the red from the beet and the green from the spinach.

10:30 All are polyphenols that help to feed the probiotics that you've planted. So if you're spending 50 to 100 a month on a probiotic and then your soil isn't prepared and then you're not feeding it and you're not getting results That could be why, right? So, the two reasons, the two reasons that we're all really familiar with for constipation, lack of water and lack of fiber. But then there's lots of other things that people don't take into consideration. One really easy one to look at is what medications are you taking? Medications impact what happens in the bowels. Birth control slows it down. Antidepressants slows it down. Some medications for diabetes can slow it down.

11:13 so your transit time, if it's slowed down, Results in constipation. If things aren't moving through your intestines as fast as they should be, other problems can happen. You get buildup of bad bugs when the transit time slows down. and so we really consider, and that's part of an initial evaluation, is what medications could you be taking? Because sometimes it's as simple as a medication change, people's bells resolve. So that's number three. That's an easy one to look at. liver health is a big one, especially in the U. S. a lot of fatty liver disease, whether you've been diagnosed or not, non alcoholic fatty liver disease, really is coming from our diet.

11:54 It's really coming from highly processed foods, and so if liver health needs to be addressed, sometimes, Just again, working on diet, removing alcohol, using some herbs that help to stimulate and regenerate the liver can be all you need. Because once bile production has been optimized, sometimes that's what it is. That's slowing the bowels down, right? So we look at liver function as another potential root cause. Are there any tests for that? How can you know if you're, if you, obviously if you've been diagnosed with, non alcoholic fatty liver disease, then you would know, but if you haven't been diagnosed, how, how would you Thank you.

12:37 I think it's one of those things, right? It's one of those intuitive things, first of all. If you have a terrible diet, if you're overweight, if you drink a lot of alcohol, your liver's not performing. That's Yeah. Okay. So, nobody's immune to it, right? No one has, like, a super liver. Like, you're hurting your liver with those things. So stop doing those things, right? And let's see if your liver bounces back and if you're not constipated. Right? You know, I mean, eat well, think well, live well. Diet is so important for all of those things. And gut health, especially Lisa, when I heard you say that, like, eat well, yes, directly affects the gut. Think well, your neurotransmitters are made in your gut. There's no possibility of getting through life without anxiety and panic and depression if you don't have the right neurotransmitters.

13:21 They're not made in your gut if you have an unhealthy gut, right? And live well. I told you, like, I couldn't hike. I couldn't go out with my friends when I, when my gut was a mess, right? We can't do any of those things. If our guts aren't on point. Yeah. Also too. I think that people don't, really associate the liver with the gut. Most people think about gut health being their stomach or, you know, I think most, most adults probably know that it's like stomach and then intestines and then you poop. That's probably what they're thinking of as gut. But when you're saying gut I feel like most people are thinking of gut. Their stomach, right? They're not really thinking of the whole system, the gallbladder, the, the liver, and all of the, you know, the contributing factors to digestion.

14:08 right. Exactly. And liver and gallbladder and bile production is a very big one. Mm hmm. I was going to say also in this country, stress and anxiety is a huge reason for constipation. Being in that state of fight or flight does not allow you to poop. If you were being chased by a lion, you wouldn't think to yourself, Oh, it's a good time to You're not in rest and digest. No. And so and a lot of my clients will come and I will go over morning routines. That's a big part of what we do is really evaluating lifestyle and habits. And they'll say, Well, I wake up at six. My alarm goes off at six and then I'll hit snooze till like 605. And then I'll jump out of bed.

14:49 I jump in the shower. I brush my teeth while my hair is wet. I feed and let the dogs out. Make sure my kids are awake, dry my hair, put my makeup on and I'm out the door. At 635. Mm No mention of pooping in there, right? No mention of any time to even go to the bathroom. And so that becomes a priority. and I always say a good morning poop is priceless. That's, that's the gold standard for the work that I do with the people that I do. And that sometimes we need to wake up a little bit earlier, as painful as that is, wake up a little bit earlier and get ourselves into a relaxed state. And start instead of starting that morning off. Like a gun went off, gotta go, right?

15:30 There's no chance to have a morning relaxed elimination. And so there are techniques, there are things you can do. I have a meditation that I love to take people through. I co wrote with one of my meditation teachers that helps to take you into a relaxed state that you can do in the morning. but again, all of these things, right? It takes. Lifestyle changes. It takes being the girl or the guy that carries that water bottle all the time. It takes being that person at the restaurant to say, are there seed oils? Is that farm raised? Is it organic or whatever? You know, you're trying to do with your diet. Does it contain dairy? that's one of the big ones to when it comes to diet. I talked a lot about avoiding dairy.

16:12 You know, dairy can slow people's bowels down almost as much as an opioid. If you've ever taken a drug like broken an arm and they give you that medicine and they say, and here's your stool softener, because we know it's going to affect your bowels. Some people that's what's happening with dairy, the daily dairy intake. They're actually slowing the motility of their bowels down unaware. and when we take dairy out of the diet. Amazing things happen. It's the very first thing people should think about. If you're constipated and you're listening to this and you've never really tried 21 days, no dairy and no dairy means no cow milk. Anything made from cow milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, butter, anything made from anything made with those products, right?

16:53 Like a pastry or bread or cream sauce. You have to be really discerning and careful because the milk protein is pretty tricky and really needs to be completely If you want eliminated from the diet, but I've seen a lot of people walk away and be like, thank you for the help. Bye. I'm constipated. It's awesome, right? If that's the root cause of your constipation, there's a milk protein allergy, and you take the milk out, you fix your own problem. Yeah, obviously like it's uncomfortable to be constipated like I'm not gonna argue with that But I think a lot of people just deal with it and they are just like us just you know Like part of life sometimes aside from the discomfort or aside from the like Oh, I don't want to you know, go hiking because who knows what what's gonna you know?

17:46 It's aside from that sort of thing just strictly from a health standpoint. Why do we care like If you're like, oh, I'm managing you know, am constipated, whatever. Like, if you're thinking it's whatever, why actually should we really care yeah, it's not whatever, right? It's the way we, it's the number one way we detox our bodies. So how do we get toxins out of our bodies? Our poop, our pee, respiration with our breath and through our skin through sweating. That's pretty much it. Now you can't, there's a lot of stuff you can't pass through your breath or through your sweat that you've got to get out in your poop. A lot of those heavy metals, if you're trying to work on parasites, If you've got some toxic mold, a lot of people that's, you know, talking about the root causes, that's another big root cause of constipation for people is both parasites and mold.

18:33 Mold will slow everything right down. For some people, mold is not an issue. Some people will come in contact. They'll go on vacation and sleep in a bedroom that has a moldy air conditioner. They may wake up in the morning with a scratchy throat or a little stuffy nose and go about, they leave that vacation property and they're fine. Then there are the canary in the coal mine people that will do have that same experience and be sick for one, two, three months because they have a genetic inability. To get rid of that mold. And that mold is actually inside them and colonizing. So that has to be detoxed out. If that happens, it can 1 of the side effects of mold is constipation for sure.

19:15 And same thing with parasites. If you have intestinal parasites, they're going to also cause constipation. Some backup. So that's another thing that we always look into and we say, if you have a, if you have a pulse, you have a parasite. We've always had parasites. We live with them symbiotically. The Native Americans used to do parasite cleanses regularly. Right. and we don't we don't anymore and we should be. Mm All my clients do. I just want to clarify for everybody the root causes, right? So it's lack of water poor nutrition, meaning no fiber or too much dairy. You need to look at those 2, the stress and anxiety component, the medications they could be on parasites and mold.

20:00 and the last two, minerals lack of minerals. So we need minerals in our body to carry out so many of the processes that give, give ourselves energy to do things. And we are so demineralized in this country. We've been worried about multivitamins for a long time, but no one's really been talking about minerals and we're not getting minerals like we used to in our food. We're And specifically, those are multi just multi minerals, all the big ones, right? The zinc, the copper, the magnesium, the manganese, the calcium, the potassium, right? The big guys. We need those desperately. I'm happy to see more and more people drinking electrolytes because at least they're getting some of those, right?

20:40 That's kind of become a big thing. They're getting some of those, but I really like to see people on a multi mineral supplement. A lot of things can change. And we know specifically that magnesium and even more specifically magnesium citrate can really help people to move bowels. So that's another big one that we like to look at. And then the last one is this piece that I call gut dysbiosis, which means something's wrong. Something bad is in there. If we've really scoured the other root causes and we're scratching our head, we'll do the gut testing because that'll tell us. 100 percent what's going on. Is there H pylori? Is there enough stomach acid?

21:20 how are, how's our liver doing and processing hormones? We can tell. We can tell on this test if there's gluten sensitivity. are there bad bugs? Do we have there's the full 1st page of this test is a whole litany of, bacteria and pathogens that you'll often pick up from water in other countries. A lot of people who travel that will wind up with the traveler's diarrhea. the whole first sheet is about that. and then it looks at all the good probiotics, right? We know there's probably about 10 right now they've really studied and they know that we need to have for an abundant and healthy microbiome. and it will tell you those 10 and the levels that you have. and so by looking at that information, you'll know, here's the probiotic I'm interested in taking.

22:05 Here's what I'm missing. Do they line up? Because if you're just taking what's like, we talked about the garden, if you continue to just put in the tulip seeds and not all the other wildflowers, but you don't know that unless you test. do you start with the lifestyle things and then if it's not getting better, you do the testing. So basically like people listening, you can start with the lifestyle things. If those things aren't making a difference, then you would consider testing or do you do testing first? so you're both of those things are completely true. So if you're listening to this, please think about the root causes and try to fix it on your own, right?

22:47 Like take the milk out, try to change your diet, get some movement and exercise, make sure everything else is on point, make sure your mineral levels are high. And then you work with a professional when you can't. When you can't figure it out yourself. The first part of when I work with someone is, of course, I will go over all of those and make sure that we've checked all the boxes. if someone joins the Gut Reset 1 2 3 program, off the very bat, we do the testing. So those people, if you're coming to a professional, you've, I think a lot of people, you've said, you know, you tried probably everything when you were constipated. We try everything and then we're like, I did prunes for three days and I pooped well and then it stopped working. So then I tried kiwi and then I went to magnesium and then I tried vitamin C and, right, it's like, oh, people are on this roller coaster of, it worked for a little bit and then it stopped working.

23:37 Yeah. Magnesium does, did work for me and I've never stopped taking it. Yeah, and I like magnesium for every body, but if you're not citrate because that will weaken your bowels. You don't want, we call disaster pants, you don't want that to happen. yeah, I mean, I don't there's so many forms of magnesium, which I don't think people realize. So if you're just grabbing like the calm it, which is the really popular citrate brand in grocery stores. It's like a powder that you take at night. That's going to be citrate. I take glycinate, glycinate malate. There's lots of different forms. Yep, So I think that you mentioned that there is some promising emerging trends in the field of gut health.

24:22 I'd love to hear about some of those. Well, I think a couple of things we're learning, you know, more and more about what belongs there. What are the hallmark, species that we need to have these strong, resilient guts. One of them, like I talked about, acromanthia, muciniphila is responsible for the mucus lining. You need that mucus lining before the edge of the intestinal wall, because you don't want anything rubbing up against that wall. But If that acromantia is gone, and over time, with age, we see levels drop dramatically, generally, that's when we tend to get leaky gut, when we have things rubbing up against that intestinal lining and the junctions loosen. so I think there's a lot of interesting work coming out about that.

25:05 specific. and then, you know, interesting things with what's happening with GLP 1s and weight loss, Wigovies and Ozempics, and, talking about looking at what's in the gut that's important for weight loss. there are specific probiotics that we know, there's one called lactobacillus gasseri, for instance, that we know people who are optimal, who have optimal weight and metabolism generally tend to have more of that lactobacillus strain than people who are overweight. One of the really cool things that they're doing is they're starting to look at the microbiome of bacteria. specific patient populations.

25:45 So, for instance, people with heart disease and they'll take stool samples from a subset of people with heart disease and they're finding similarities in their gut microbiome. And then if they're, and they're doing with animals, they're taking some of that heart unhealthy gut microbiome and transplanting it into a healthy animal and watching their heart health. So it's showing us that gut health is paramount to all other parts of health. You want healthy skin starts in the gut, right? You want to think clearly starts in the gut. You want your emotions to be stable starts in the gut. Right? And and I think that's that is the very exciting part because It's not terribly difficult if you just eat the right foods, right?

26:34 Eat the right foods, take care of yourself, nourish yourself. That's what, when we nourish ourselves, we're nourishing our microbiomes. We're getting sunshine. We're getting movement. We're drinking clean water. I have a website called start pooping better. com because it's easy to remember. But in the, on that website is an ebook that I wrote with some tips for people to poop better. And in that is a recipe I developed called good poop vegetable soup. And it's the easiest recipe, and I say to people who are just starting out, changing their diets, trying to lose weight, trying to improve their microbiome, you can make this soup if you live in a food desert, and you can only get canned.

27:15 vegetables. You can make it if you live on a farm and you have farm fresh stuff. If you're vegan, it gets made with vegetable stock. If you are really working on your gut lining, you might want to make it with a bone broth. You can add beans, you can add meat, but the point is it's just a tomato y, broth based, lots of vegetables, super nourishing food for your microbiome, right? We need to think in terms of that, in terms of how are we nourishing ourselves. I love vegetable soup for lunch instead of a salad in the winters, I often have a salad in the summer, but then in the winter, I'm like, well, my tomatoes are gone. And then I just want to have a soup and it's so easy to just make a batch and have for the, for the week.

28:00 one benefit you haven't mentioned about pooping better that we always like to talk about on this podcast is how does this affect our weight? Hmm. Drastically. Well, I mean, you know, anybody who's listening who's been constipated, you can carry three or four pounds of stool when you aren't pooping. Like if I, and I'm a small person, but when I'm not pooping, well, my clothes aren't fitting, right? I'm not feeling well, I'm sort of feeling slow and lethargic. Like, but when I'm pooping, well, I feel like my. My stomach is much flatter. My energy level is much higher. I'm more motivated, I feel like, to do active things when I have a cleaned out bowel.

28:45 I'm an exerciser in the morning, and so if I don't poop well in the morning and I go out and try to play tennis, it's just not the same, right? But when I've had a great poop and I'm feeling hydrated and well and healthy, I play great tennis with much more energy. So, I think energy levels are definitely impacted, with bowels. I think consistently pooping well every day. Is a weight loss tool if you are eating the right foods that are driving that bowel movement every morning, you're doing yourself a huge favor if your liver is not fatty and sluggish, right? And you're producing the bile and you're eating the right foods.

29:27 You're going to move your bowels. You're going to be more motivated to work out. It's 1 of those things like a little step begets another step begets another step, right? When we feel good and it really starts with that elimination. Yeah, perfect. I think it's just kind of such an overlooked thing with, with weight loss it's more than just the three or four pounds of impacted poop. Cause I always tell my clients like, we can cut your arm off and make you lighter on the scale. That's, that's not the point. It's not really the point that like, well, Oh, look, you lost three pounds because you're about to poop. It's that. You're able to poop every single day and the detox that's happening. And then you're able to actually rid yourself of the fat that you're burning.

30:08 And, you know, because when you are using fat for fuel, we have to get rid of some tissues, right? And so. It has to go somewhere. Yeah, it's you know, it's just it was life changing for me. did I lose weight? Yeah a little it wasn't my goal When I was constipated, but I think when we do the right things by our gut It's gonna change your body. If you stop eating processed foods and seed oils, and you start to melt that fat off your body, and combined with eating the right probiotic foods, right, the kimchi and the yogurt, if you're not watching dairy, and drinking a ton of water, that weight starts to come off. Without even really having to think about it, if you could shift your focus to the gut health and Microbiome, right, nutrition.

30:56 I'm doing this to make myself healthier Instead of I want to lose 20 pounds and your focus was just daily, right? I'm building a strong microbiome looking really looking at the foods that you're eating. You're gonna lose weight. There's no doubt in my mind There's no doubt. I totally agree. I agree. All right. Thank you so much. This has been really, really informative. Why don't you let people know? I know you already mentioned the website. We'll put links for that in the show notes. anywhere else that you want to be found in the online space? I'm everywhere. I'm, I'm on YouTube. I'm on TikTok. I'm not dancing, just talking. I'm on Instagram. my website is my name, MelissaHallKlepacki.Com and StartPoopingBetter.

31:40 com is the website if you're interested in learning how to start pooping better. All right. Great. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Thanks, Lisa. Thanks for joining us today. If this episode has helped you in any way, could you just do me a favor and share it? Take a screenshot of this episode and post it to your stories. And for sure, tag me and Melissa on Instagram, you can also just send it to a friend. I know, you're probably unlikely to share a pooping episode on your Instagram. So I'd also be happy with just a five star review. If you are looking for that extra bit of personalized help with your weight loss or figuring out why you are eating when you aren't hungry, be sure to schedule your free coaching call with me and see how much you can benefit link for that is in the show notes.

32:21 Have a great week and as always, thanks for listening to the eat. Well think. Well live well podcast.