 If you're someone like me who has struggled with digestion for most of your life and you've been given a diagnosis of maybe IBS or SIBO or Candida or maybe you're just always prone to having a sensitive stomach or diarrhea or no matter how healthy you eat you're always getting bloated or you're always getting constipated and missing a day of bowel movements maybe you've tried a detox or a cleanse actually for most of us you probably have tried at least one now one of the most common scenarios I run into and have run into being a GI patient for most of my life is that maybe you try a detox or a cleanse or a trending diet for your digestion and things are better for a while but then they just go back to how they always were now in this video I want to share one Chinese medicine perspective on why that's the case and what you can do to actually get to the root cause of it hey I'm Dr. Alex Hein author of the health book master the day herbalist and internal medicine specialist now I've included two very important links below this video the first link is if you want to become a patient of mine either locally at my private practice or online via telemedicine there's a link beneath this video the other one is for a free download which is four daily rituals that can help you add 10 years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine so you can check those out both below this video now let's talk about this idea of software versus hardware this was one of the first analogies that a Chinese medicine doctor that helped me named Jacques one of the first things that he taught me and it was I was in his office one day and I was complaining that here I am with all these gut problems and yet I eat healthier than anyone I know I work out more religiously than anyone I know I have low stress easy fulfilling life unlike most people I know why am I having these problems still after all these diets all these cleanses I've tried everything there is why am I having this problem I have friends they can go out and eat Taco Bell every day and they poop like a champ why not me when I'm eating the Mediterranean diet supposedly the healthiest diet there is and Jacques gave me this great piece of advice and he said that for you it's basically a hardware issue it doesn't mean that it's not something that can be fixed or remedied it just means that for you your body has this constitutional genetic tendency towards a certain problem so for you even though you eat healthy your body has these kinks that have to get worked out before it can even digest regular healthy food whereas your friend who has no problem that was just the luck of the draw they have good digestion the hardware is good they can eat Taco Bell poop it out no problem they don't have any they don't feel it in their body they're not uncomfortable they don't get constipated or diarrhea they're good so ironically the mark of healthy digestion is that you can eat everything pretty much no problem not the mark of your dietitian and nutritionist who can only eat three foods to have functioning GI that's not a sign of a good healthy digestion it's similar to how asthma works some people have that family genetic lineage of asthma also unfortunately like my family there is even though I work out four or five days a week I don't have to do anything to manage asthma I'm not worried about dying of an asthma attack you know there's there's no lifestyle practice that's going to really make my asthma permanently go away whereas someone else who may smoke cigarettes every day and have a very sedentary life they may not right now have any kind of asthma or any breathing difficulties they may have a better lung capacity in the short run than even I do with the health conscious life full of exercise so there are these certain constitutional tendencies that are very important in Chinese medicine because for almost everyone what we're doing if you're not in a cute case is retreating your constitution which is your combination of your genetic and your lifestyle factors that are all fused into one and give a sort of pre-existing template that has certain strengths and has certain weaknesses I've talked about this in the videos where we've gone into understanding the g-dynamic the energy dynamic as well as figuring out what the chinks are in your armor now one of the things very important is that for many of these patients Chinese herbs I found are absolutely essential and the good news is that when some of the healing process is done for example we work on healing and decreasing the permeability of the small intestine once that ends up happening people can often reintroduce foods they never could eat in a long time like gluten or dairy or other foods so what happens when you're going on a cleanse for example is that you are changing the software which is the food going into your body you're installing the manual software okay we're going to install you know green juice diet today we're going to install the carnivore diet tomorrow but the hardware is still the same they're all incompatible with a mac right you're trying to install this new program and it's so irritating because it just never was designed to work in a mac now again the problem is not necessarily the food the problem is not necessarily those things even though an elimination diet can be really really helpful or a elemental diet that specific carbohydrate diet strict paleo those are often helpful and essential in a lot of cases but they're often not the long-term fix so you change this diet you change the cleanse things are happening and you feel pretty good but then you go like 30 days without carbs is not easy for anybody you go you reintroduce carbs you may be good for a while you may not be good for a while and then things explode and happen again so the problem is really fixing the underlying hardware for a lot of people they just end up eating a more restrictive diet essentially for the rest of their life and you can do that if you have the willpower to do that that's fantastic but if you don't then what so i want to leave you with this final thing which is that the root cause may be deeper than a dietary issue now if you're working with a great integrative health practitioner or someone who's really familiar with this stuff they'll be giving you other things to work on what's now trendily called leaky gut but in general the underlying cause may be deeper than diet and i find that frequently it is i found that even on my own process of trying to heal my digestive problems i would follow for me the specific carbohydrate diet for over 10 years that was the main thing that got me clinical success but it was difficult it's difficult to not eat carbs and as a guy who's already so skinny who lifts weights to lose more weight and being already an underweight guy historically was not easy mentally and emotionally for me so i found that the ability of chinese herbs to allow me to not only eat not eat a specialized diet but to eat everything again was pretty miraculous the fact that i didn't have to make neurotic food choices the fact that i did not have to make just basically these choices out of exclusion like i can't eat that i can't eat that i can't eat that so i have one restaurant i can eat that and it's the same thing i found that not having to do that anymore was one of the most freeing things i'd ever experienced so this is what i found clinically as well if you're finding that you are on these cleanses over and over and over and you're not getting results or you're getting results you feel good but then it's unsustainable then i would highly recommend seeking out someone who specializes in chinese herbs because based on my own experience that's been one of the most effective ways by far more effective than supplements alglutamine the probiotics anything like that i was completely unimpressed by personally i found it to be the most effective thing in terms of long term and short term being able to just live like a normal person eat like a normal person so i hope that helps i know how frustrating it is when you you genuinely do take good care of yourself but you just cannot get something under control it's one of the most frustrating things i've certainly experienced and now a lot of my patients have and i hope that gives you another option so again if you'd like to become a patient of mine there's a link below this video i'm accepting patients locally as well as online chinese herb consultations telemedicine throughout the continental us there's also a free guide below this video on four daily rituals that can help you add 10 years to your life with traditional chinese medicine now before you go check out these last two final related videos