about it. If you killed the pain in your hand when it was on the stove, it would become severely burned. If you killed the ability to smell, you could get sick or even worse from eating spoiled food. So why try to kill the pain and discomfort in your gut? It doesn't make the problem go away. It only allows you to forget about it. Your body is trying to tell you something, and the best thing to do is to listen to it.
Think of all the pills and remedies you have taken over the years. They haven't brought lasting relief. They may have even created other health problems. It's time to quit fighting and start listening. Your gut is not your enemy. Your gut is part of you. You don't need pills, you need skills to help you observe and respond effectively.
It may feel like your gut is holding you hostage and is trying to sabotage your life. Yet no matter how hard you fight, you don't seem to win. It's like those old Chinese handcuffs you might have played with as a child. The woven bamboo tube slips over both of your index fingers, and the harder you try to pull them out, the tighter the cuff gets. The solution is to quit struggling and relax. Then it slips off very easily. That's very similar to our strategy. We propose to teach you a nonviolent approach to centering your body/mind system.
Your symptoms are messages from the body to rely on, rather than to ignore or medicate.
Trust Your Gut is the first book to address intestinal distress from this perspective—a viewpoint that sees the gut as a vital messenger to heed and trust, rather than as an enemy to fear. Your symptoms are messages from the body to rely on, rather than to ignore or medicate. We focus on those functional relationships between the brain and the gut—including the neural and hormonal interactions—as well as the interactions with each patient's inner and outer environments. Because we know that everything is connected, we must pay attention to all aspects of a person's life to pinpoint possible areas where the system isn't functioning properly.
Two Powerful New Tools for Gut Healing
This book introduces two powerful new approaches to reducing chronic gut distress: Neurohormonal Retraining and Ecological Rebalancing. These techniques calm the hypersensitivity of the digestive tract and the nervous system, a key factor that prolongs gut distress into a chronic ailment. Pills may temporarily block the symptoms, but they mask hypersensitivity instead of addressing it. Ecological Rebalancing restores the body's natural harmony by subduing external causes of stress and their internal consequences. Neurohormonal Retraining uses your power of concentration to short-circuit the hypersensitive feedback loop between the digestive system and the nervous system, which reduces both pain and gut dysfunction.
These techniques are effective because they are based on the holistic understanding that everything is connected and your gut goes haywire when these connections are imbalanced. These two approaches are the foundation of our systematic approach to gut distress that we call the CORE program.
The main components of our program are summed up in our acronym: CORE.
Center
Observe
Restore
Ensure
The CORE self-help program provides a new set of tools beyond the pharmaceutical shelves, beyond tests and conventional wisdom—tools under your control. True primary care is not what a physician does for you but rather what you do for yourself, and this book will enable you to do that. CORE will teach you new ways to deal with your gut and to break the vicious cycle of symptoms, fear, and pain.
Are You Ready to Use This Book?
If you have not yet seen your primary care physician and/or a GI specialist to have your intestinal pains and discomforts evaluated, you are not ready for this book. Some potential problems are extremely serious and even life threatening, and the health care system is excellent at recognizing and treating them. Your doctors or specialists can run tests to find out what is wrong, and then they can work with you on the problem. That is why you should first go to your physician and be thoroughly examined. (Please see our website www.trustyourgutbook.com for a list of conditions that require other treatments before beginning the CORE program.)
After you have been comprehensively tested and all organic, structural physiological problems have been ruled out, then you are ready to use this book. When your doctors tell you that they find nothing wrong on your diagnostic tests—yet your symptoms, pain, and discomfort continue—that's when we can help you. Clearly, you know something is wrong after you've been suffering for five, ten, or twenty years. The good news is that these chronic maladies are not life threatening. The great news is that there is something you can do to diminish your distress or make it go away altogether. You are ready to start trusting your gut!
This book is for you if you have been diagnosed with:
IBS—Irritable bowel syndrome
GERD—Gastroesophageal reflux disease (the type caused by functional disorder)
Dysfunctional bowel
Or have any of these chronic symptoms:
Bad breath despite good dental hygiene
Burping, belching, hiccuping
Esophagitis, reflux, heartburn
Stomach upset, gastritis
Nausea, with or without food
Food intolerances
Appetite concerns (too much, too little, hungry but can't eat, full too quickly)
Bloating
Abdominal cramping, spasms
Diarrhea: urgent, frequent, even incontinence
Constipation
Alternating diarrhea and constipation
Undigested food in stools
Mucus in stools
Gas: frequent, bothersome, noticeable
Food avoidance
Food craving
How to Use This Book
Trust Your Gut is organized according to the guiding CORE principles.
Part I: Center
Chapter 1 addresses the foundational concept of centering, a notion closely tied to the ancient idea that your gut is the center of your emotions, energy, and intuition. As you learn to trust your gut, you begin to realize that it is the source of healing power and can help your body/mind system to regain its balance. Proper function replaces dysfunction, and symptoms begin to go away—sometimes very quickly. You will also learn specific strategies for centering practice as well as ways to identify your own strengths and inner resources. Centering is the prerequisite for the skills
