Morning everyone!
Welcome to another edition of the Doctor’s Note where we talk about what’s on our minds when it comes to your health.
This week we’re going to be talking about DigestShield, which is 1 supplement that covers 5 different things.
For those who have been following me either through being a patient or through the blogs, you know the first thing I’ll ask you is about your gut health. I do this because I think it’s paramount to your overall health in every way.
In my practice I do a lot of things with functional medicine, which in essence is getting to the root cause of disease and illness. It’s all about prevention!
It Starts with the Gut
What I’ve learned over many years of doing this is that it all starts with the gut.
A lot of times people will come to us with various problems and most of them are gut related: constipation, bloating, gas, stomach cramps, diarrhea, or fatigue after eating.
The gut is at the root of many medical problems, especially autoimmune diseases like arthritis, lupus, and psoriasis.
It’s not just IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome), Celiac Disease, Colitis or Crohn’s Disease.
Did you know that 70% of your immune system is located in your stomach, not in your brain? It’s in your GUT where you have more bacterial DNA than you have your own DNA by a long shot!
The truth is, 99% of the DNA in your body is not yours. It’s gut bacteria, so the balancing of your gut is so important.
Simply put, your gut determines your health.
Here’s a great example of this:
We do a lot of weight loss in our clinics. A study found that they can take a stool sample of a thin person and introduce it to the stool of an obese person, and the obese person gets lean. When they do the opposite, the opposite happens.
DigestShield
No one has ever really shown me a good gut product until DigestShield came along, formerly called GlutenShield.
Since I’ve been using this product for over a year on myself, it has become the second most important supplement I take, the first being Vitamin D.
I call DigestShield a co-probiotic because it’s so much more than just a probiotic.
It works by breaking down glutens, dairy, fats, carbs and proteins for your body to use, in addition to restoring proper bacterial balance in your gut. Think of it as providing your body with a way to protect itself from our modern diet.
When something is going on with the gut we used to give patients probiotics and modify their diet. We’d have them go soy free, nightshade free, dairy free, or gluten free. We also would do food allergy testing. But no one ever brought me a product that really worked to address all of these.
We’ve tried antispasmodics, acid reducers, anti-diarrheals, anti-constipation medicines, anti-gas and bloating medicines for IBS over the years. None of these really work.
DigestShield WORKS!
What does DigestShield have in it?
I was skeptical when I was first introduced to DigestShield and thought that this was just another probiotic.
When I first started studying probiotics I didn’t realize that you need a prebiotic to go with your probiotic. A prebiotic is food for the probiotic. I also realized that most people need digestive enzymes to help break their food down.
Thus, the term co-probiotics.
DigestShield is made up of:
Prebiotic and Probiotics – It has a prebiotic and 11 different strains of probiotics that have just the right amount of CFU’s (colony forming units).
What I’ve found is that it’s not the number of CFU’s, it’s the type and how many of them are able to survive the acid in your stomach to get to the intestines and do their work. The delivery system of the probiotic needs to protect it from the low pH of the stomach. DigestShield does that.
Digestive Enzymes – The next thing it has is Digestive Enzymes, which are necessary to break down fats, carbs and proteins in order for your body to utilize them.
Gluten blocker – So many people can’t tolerate glutens. You don’t have to have Celiac Disease to have a gluten problem. In fact glutens are inflammatory for most people; they just don’t know it.
Lactose Blocker – After the age of 2, most humans lose the ability to break down dairy products like milk. I’m very lactose intolerant myself. I recently experimented by drinking a milkshake (which I haven’t done in years) and was able to tolerate it without a problem when I took DigestShield before drinking it. That’s not to imply that I’m going to start drinking milk because (for the most part) I’m not.
This product also has the ability to block lectins, which are proteins that are found in a lot of foods, especially legumes and grains. They can cause increased gut permeability and drive autoimmune diseases.
How I use DigestShield
I always take it about 30 minutes before I eat my two meals of the day.
I don’t have to take a probiotic anymore because DigestShield already has the perfect amount of probiotics in it.
That’s why I’ve termed it a co-probiotic because it has everything you need to help digest your food in one supplement.
DigestShield is really a digestive powerhouse!