Today I’ll be speaking with Neda Smith, the founder of Gut Harmony here in Charleston, South Carolina on wellness. Neda is a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner as well as a colon hydrotherapist. Gut Harmony is a holistic digestive health center because we believe that all disease begins in the gut.
On this podcast, we typically talk about wealth and the growth of wealth. But today I want to pivot and talk more about wellness. You can have all the money in the world, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t feel good. That said, the thought for the day is to keep an open mind. We’re going to be talking about holistic medicine, including things you may have never heard of or considered in your life. I will say that from personal experience, I have implemented some of these things and found out I was operating on a 60% level. After implementing some of these things, that went up to 100%, so keep an open mind. If you hear something that you find interesting or want to learn more about, consider putting it to use. I think some of the things you are going to hear may have a dramatically positive impact on your life. That’s the reason I wanted to have Neda come on and talk about it because I want you to enjoy all the wealth that you’re accumulating as healthy as possible.
Health Before Wealth
You can have all the money in the world, but if your health is not in a good place, you’re not going to enjoy life. If you’re going to be stuck at home near a bathroom or going to the doctor’s office all the time, then you’re not enjoying life. That said, one of the outputs we’re looking for at Gut Harmony is increased energy. Additionally, we look for sleep patterns, so you can think clearly because if you’re not sleeping well, you’re going to have difficulty putting thoughts together. Together, energy and sleep make for a better digestive system, that way you can absorb all the nutrients and benefits from food that you consume.
A New Solution
Originally, I was a health coach working at another doctor’s office. The main task I was doing was assisting everyone with their diet. People were making changes and things were happening slowly, but not at the pace that we were hoping for. Consequently, we did some testing with them, including blood work and stool examination. It was just taking too much time to get these people to the desired result. I ended up coming across a group of extremely constipated people. Unfortunately, the constipated group struggles the most. Simply because if you’re not able to get that out of your system, you’re just reabsorbing. This backtracks all the good work that you’re trying to achieve because the toxicity remains in your body. So I started to send that group over to get colon hydrotherapy. I started to notice that this group was accelerating faster to their end goal than groups that were eliminating daily. All of the sudden, they’re losing weight, they feel energized, and they’re excited about life again. From there I decided to send the group that was having daily bowel movements to get hydrotherapy. As soon as the second group started, we saw the same results happening there. I didn’t originally specify that weight loss was an output, but once the body is in a healthy place, it can start to lose weight. According to our testing, colon hydrotherapy seems to help people and the weight comes off more easily as well.
Holistic Practices
At Gut Harmony we help the gut microbiome have more diversity by cleansing the body out, eating nutritious foods, and taking good supplementation. From these practices, we can get diversity in the gut to increase. Some studies show that people doing colon hydrotherapy have a higher amount of diversity versus the people who are not doing it. This is important because your diversity is your immune system. If you have this entire diversity that needs to be in place, the three biggest things to know about your gut bacteria is you want the quantity, quality, as well as diversity. Daily, you’re going to be bombarded with pathogens and toxins. That said, think of diversity as an army that can fight things at a better rate. If those harmful things get into your body, having diversity doesn’t mean you will never get sick. However, it does weaken the strength of the illness and shortens the timeframe of when you’re sick.
The other part that people tend to complain about is bloating. In my experience, ladies have been more affected than men. The expression women often explain is that they wake up with a flat stomach and throughout the day start to look pregnant. Some people can’t even drink water without getting bloated. In this case, we want to do colon hydrotherapy to cleanse the body, as well as investigate and identify what is causing this to happen. I have nothing against medicine and doctors, they are great at what they do. Sometimes I will even tell our clients to go to a gastroenterologist because we want to see if there’s a diagnosis in place. But then it becomes, well I have this diagnosis, what do I do about it? And that’s where I tend to differ a little bit with some of what the medical facilities recommend. A lot of times it is taking medication because that’s what they’ve been educated under. It’s great for some relief care which I am a big fan of. But it isn’t a solution for long-term care.
Colon Hydrotherapy
Colonics is the infusion of water into the colon. If you have ever used an enema bag, that’s sending water into the colon, then you sit on the toilet, and you eliminate it. Think of doing an enema at least 20 times in one session without you having to get up and constantly go to the bathroom. That all gets done in one process while you’re on the table. As far as the process goes, we always start with a health history for everyone. The reason why health history is so important is that we want to know your current diet, your symptoms, and what you’re experiencing. Overall, we want to know what your lifestyle consists of. Once we have gathered that information, we can decide about proceeding forward or not. But we also want to create a protocol for you including a healthier diet with whole foods. There are a lot of diets out there like paleo, keto, vegan or vegetarian. I tend to be more plant-based but I do think of bio-individuality. Some people do need animal protein in their diet and some people need carbs. I am against a no-carb diet because they are necessary for thyroid health. It is just a matter of how many cards a person should have.
That’s where bio-individuality comes in. Our practitioners will help guide you with the diet piece along with any supplements we think would benefit you on this journey. Our biggest thing is that anybody who’s never done colon hydrotherapy before or anybody who has less than one bowel movement per day should start with our initial three-day colon cleanses. That consists of coming in for three sessions within a period. The reason we like to do this is that even though we’ll get some fecal matter out on the first session, we also want to soak the lining of the intestinal wall so we can loosen up anything that has hardened over time. Finally, that’s where the whole acceleration, detox, and cleansing of the body comes in during the second and third sessions.
There are two versions of colon hydrotherapy, there’s the open system and the closed system. I tend to be a bigger fan of the closed system versus the open because I think it’s more natural. The closed system allows water to either go in or it allows elimination to happen. It’s not happening simultaneously. I love the fact that there is a therapist with you at all times and you are fully covered. There’s no embarrassment and the fecal matter is going through a tube. If you get this treatment it’s important to find out if your therapist is certified. Believe it or not, you can be a colon hydrotherapist in the United States without any certifications except Florida. Overall those are the biggest things to check for, making sure your therapist is certified and using the closed system.
What To Look For
When it comes to the health of a baby, people know to look at their poop. So one of the biggest things we do is check the health of the baby through their poop. Are they eliminating as often as they should be? What is the color of it? What’s the smell of it? Is it hard? Is it soft? If there is something wrong, the parents have to decide if they need to contact a doctor or if they should make some changes to get the baby back to feeling better. So we used to do that when our kids were young. But for some reason, as they age, we stop talking about it and we stop looking in the toilet. However, you really should still be looking. That is a key thing to do along with checking the toilet paper after you wipe because it holds some information. These methods can tell us about the health of our bodies. And yes, we all release gas daily. Therefore we need to pay attention to how much is being released along with the smell. Another clue is halitosis or more informally known as bad breath. Most people don’t recognize that there is one big track from the mouth to the anus. That said if you’re not eliminating any food that is fermenting it is going to come back up in the form of bad breath.
Three Day Cleanse
One of the things you can do that is great is juicing along with treatments. If you can do the juicing during the three days of the colonics, the benefits will be even greater. I know it sounds scary to not eat for three days and just juice. I’ve had people who have headaches, feel miserable, and think they have the flu. But trust me it will pass after that 24 hours to 30 hour period. Ultimately you will come out feeling so much better. You may even question eating again so reintroduce food back slowly. Before the three-day cleanse I was running at about 60% energy level and then afterward I was up to 90% or 100%!
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