Digestive Health
Gut health is central to good health and has been given much attention in social media and the news. Optimising your gut health is an excellent way to promote improved health. All practitioners at Evolving.Health are well qualified to assist you in building better gut health, from generalised advice and suggestions to addressing symptoms of heartburn, bloating, sluggish digestion, pain, constipation, diarrhoea.​
If gut symptoms are reported as part of your case history, then we can focus on gut function as part of your overall intervention if you are interested to pursue this. Further detailed investigation would include:
​
-
Predisposing factors such as your parents’ gut health, your early life feeding, particularly how your microbiome was seeded.
-
Precipitating factors, such as antibiotic use, infections, surgery, periods of dietary change or consumption of high levels of refined sugars or trans fats which will have left their imprint on your gut ecology.
-
Perpetuating factors, regular habits that may be feeding into the symptom picture that you are presenting with.
Types of support we offer as an initial approach would be:​
-
Education around food and gut relationship when it is not working well.
-
Improving gut function with appropriate foods and possible temporary support with supplements and probiotics if indicated.
-
Mapping a way forward that helps foster improved food, eating and lifestyle habits.
-
Stress management for improved gut function.
-
Osteopathic intervention targeting the intestines, their blood supply, drainage and neural control according to our philosophical approach of integrating function.
​
Most of this can be part of discussion when you attend for your osteopathic treatment and is appropriate for milder symptoms and presentations.
For more complex histories, then working with Online Health Coaching in addition to osteopathic treatment is advised.
Additional stool or blood tests might be indicated to ascertain how well your digestive function is working e.g. whether you are producing sufficient digestive enzymes and bile, what the profile of your microbiome is, the health status of your gut lining, and whether you have reactive immune responses to certain foods. The need for additional tests can be decided if you remain unresponsive to the more basic intervention and have seen your GP for any necessary screening.
Client Story​
D. came to see me as a referral from a Functional Medicine Doctor. He had significant health issues which the Doctor was managing, and so came to see me for treatment of chronic back pain and digestive symptoms. I saw him intermittently over the course of a year for clusters of treatment and reversed his symptoms of heartburn and chronic back pain. He began to observe and recognise the lifestyle habits that set things off and improved his self-discipline with food to keep his previously intense symptoms at bay.