We underestimate the importance of gut health, but a healthy gut can make all the difference in our overall well-being. What does a healthy gut look and feel like? What are the symptoms of an unhealthy gut? Is gut health linked to depression and anxiety?

I am joined by Amanda Meri, aka The Gut Nurse, as we break down what a healthy gut is. We’ll also get into some of the common misconceptions regarding nutrition and how to start working toward healthier mindsets.

Amanda Meri  00:57

I like to start with the basics. People think that it’s so hard. I mean, there’s so much information out there of how to get well naturally. But just go back to basics right like nutrition, or do you eating I help people incorporate more healthy foods and helping teaching people how to sleep better, creating sleep routines, and making sure you’re getting good quality sleep so that you’re rested and your body’s able to function optimally.

Dimitrius  01:24

We definitely underestimate the importance of a healthy gut, I was most definitely advise to improve my eating habits in my late teens, early 20s. But like many people, I didn’t take it seriously. I was like, I don’t think that’s a big deal. And honestly, I didn’t want to talk about that anyway, because it just kind of grossed me out when I thought about it just being honest.

Dimitrius  01:46

But for anyone listening in your early 20s, you may not think it’s a big deal now. But wait until you get closer to 30 your body is going to rebel, it’s going to get revenge. If you don’t take the time now to look into your gut health. In fact, an unhealthy gut can send signals to the brain and vice versa, which can lead to anxiety, stress and depression.

Dimitrius  02:10

Yet many of us don’t know what it takes to keep our gut healthy, or what an unhealthy gut even looks like and feels like. today. My guest is known as the gut nurse. And we’re going to demystify what gut health is and how it’s linked to your mental health. So let’s get started.

Dimitrius  02:29

Welcome to the Dimitrius show, where I learned how to walk through my shadows, picking the flowers I’ve grown through sheer resilience. And I may not know enough yet to start teaching, but I’m going to keep convincing you to keep pushing. I’m Dimitrius and this is my life after speaking.

Dimitrius  02:58

According to Franciscan health, a healthy gut means that there is more good bacteria than harmful bacteria. And that harmful bacteria don’t overtake the good. The balance of bacteria in the gut flora can lead to many health benefits, including reducing inflammation that can lead to heart disease and lowering the chance of obesity.

Dimitrius  03:20

And as someone who struggles with figuring out what works for them in terms of a healthy diet, I can speak firsthand that you do notice the difference. When I’m taking proper care of my gut health, I have more energy, I’m in a better mood. And I want to be as active as possible per Health Line.

Dimitrius  03:39

Some unhealthy gutcauses include not eating a diverse range of whole foods such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, drinking too much alcohol, lack of physical activity, not getting enough sleep and external stress, like work, financial troubles, things like that, and many more other factors.

Dimitrius  03:58

However, the ones I just listed are pretty much all the ones that I personally struggle with this year. In particular, my goal was to eat more vegetables, for instance, it’s not that I don’t like vegetables, I love vegetables. In fact, for me, the problem that I have is that I’m always so busy.

Dimitrius  04:16

So when it’s time to eat, I want something convenient. The problem with convenience when it comes to meal options, though, is that they usually aren’t all that healthy, meaning that I don’t eat nearly as many fruits and vegetables as I should. There are many ways to improve your gut health and your overall health. But I wanted to bring in an expert who could really shine light on what gut health is, why it’s important, and how we can do better. So without further ado, let’s bring on the gut nurse.

Amanda Meri  04:48

So I’m a registered nurse and I have been in and out of doctors offices pretty much my whole life with all these big mysterious symptoms that doctors could never really pinpoint. With the cause behind any of them were, as I got older, my symptoms piled on and progressively gotten worse to the point where I ended up being disabled and was in a wheelchair and was luckily able to reverse that chronic illness that I was having. And now I’m able to help other people heal naturally and feel good again.

Dimitrius  05:20

That’s, that’s amazing. I’m glad that was able to happen for you. So where can we find you on social media?

Amanda Meri  05:28

I am on Instagram and Tiktok: @thegutnurse.

Dimitrius  05:31

So I notice you advocate for a natural approach to health. So what are some ways that you do that?

Amanda Meri  05:38

I like to start with the basics. People think that it’s so hard. I mean, there’s so much information out there of how to get well naturally. But just go back to basics right? Like nutrition, or do you eating I help people incorporate more healthy foods and helping teaching people how to sleep better, creating sleep routines, and making sure you’re getting good quality sleep so that you’re rested, and your body’s able to function optimally focused on movements, figuring out what type of exercise is best for your body, people tend to think that cardio is is the way to go like high intensity cardio, and it’s not right for everyone.

Amanda Meri  06:18

And then also reducing stress. Stress is a huge, huge issue for pretty much everyone in America. So teaching people how to reduce stressors, internally, externally, externally is things around you the things that you’re putting on your skin, and internally is more of some of the emotional pieces, and also the the nutrition component of what you’re putting inside of your body.

Dimitrius  06:42

What are some things when it comes to dieting that you’re noticing, like some trends?

Amanda Meri  06:47

I noticed that people are stressed out, they don’t have time to prepare healthy meals, or they think they don’t have time to prepare healthy meals. So they’re going for a lot of fast foods, they’re going for a lot of the TV dinners, just because they need something quick and convenient. And people are consuming a lot of sugar, a lot of sugar and not realizing how much sugar they’re really taking in and how detrimental it is to their body.

Dimitrius  07:17

Right. I can attest to that. Because I didn’t realize till probably last year that a lot of what I was consuming. I thought I wasn’t a sweet eater, then I came to find out when I really broke everything down that yeah, you are. And it’s kind of hard to get away from as well, the sugar. And so you really have to be deliberate about what it is you’re ingesting, and you’re reading the labels, and you’re going okay, this actually does have a lot going on. And maybe it’s not the best thing for me.

Amanda Meri  07:46

Yeah, like I’ve had a client of mine who came to me and said, I don’t have an issue with sugar. And then we’re we explored his diet. He was drinking these really extra large milkshakes, every weekend. And I was like, Do you know how much sugar is in that, but you need it every, every weekend like this is your your snack or go to, which is fine.

Amanda Meri  08:09

It’s we all need a little bit of you know, something sweet and every now and then. But it’s a lot of sugar in a super large milkshake. And then you’re eating, you know, he was eating all of these other carbs that he didn’t know that your body breaks down and sees it as sugar and it’s just elevating your blood sugar and causing a cascading negative effect on the body.

Dimitrius  08:29

So regarding gut health, what are some of the most myths common misconceptions people have about it?

Amanda Meri  08:35

A lot of people think that gut health is basically just, it affects bloating, digestion, diarrhea, like basically just your stomach. And it’s actually a lot more complicated than that it affects pretty much everything, it all starts in the gut. So it can affect your mental health, your mood, your energy levels, fertility, hormone balance, it just essentially everything. The way that we are is a lot of is attributed to the gut.

Dimitrius  09:09

What are some quick or maybe not quick, easy, but some in general, that you notice some ways that we can improve? Like if I wanted to do something today to improve my gut health? What’s something that you think we could do in that regard?

Amanda Meri  09:24

It’s a really good question. So it takes about three days for the gut microbiome to reset in the gut microbiome is essentially an ecosystem of balances of bacteria, fungi, viruses, and we all need those healthy good strains of bacteria.

Amanda Meri  09:42

And we also need more of the opportunistic bacteria which is labeled as like the the bad bacteria, those are needed whenever we are exposed to an infection or just a foreign substance in the body uses that per se like so to say is our army to come out and fight for that. So we don’t want too many of those bad guys, right?

Amanda Meri  10:02

Only whenever there’s a threat to the body, so to have the the good and the bad, and balance is whenever you essentially will be free of symptoms and be healthy. So making sure that that is in balance is key. And some simple ways to do that is what I said earlier is eating healthier foods.

Amanda Meri  10:22

So bringing in what can you bring in to your diet that’s healthier? And don’t think about, what do I need to eliminate, right? Because then you’re going to be so fixated on Oh, I can’t have sugar, I can’t have sugar, and then eventually you’re going to binge or consume too much sugar and then get out get on that perpetual cycle of guilt and shame, right and beating yourself up.

Amanda Meri  10:45

So have some of the sugar to bring in a little bit more healthier foods, can you can you eat a couple more servings of fruit a day, right, which means there’s less space for the sugar, the alcohol, all the other bad things, exercise, getting some movement in even 15 minutes of walking can help lower blood sugars after a meal and also help with detoxification and improving your your mental health,

Dimitrius  11:14

I can definitely attest to the you mentioned the binge, where you’re trying to eliminate so many things, which is what I did, I think it was last year or during the pandemic. And I did succeed and you know losing a few pounds or whatever. And force the holidays come around, and you get to where you do eat a few things you should probably shouldn’t.

Dimitrius  11:38

And it just becomes this thing, you haven’t had it in a while and you just go off the deep end. And then it does it becomes that cycle where you are kind of back and forth, where you try to just cut things off. And like you mentioned, you’re focused on just cutting it off, cutting off cutting it off, instead of just thinking it of just slowly massaging those more healthier options into your existing diet and incorporating movement.

Dimitrius  12:04

A lot of us we are now ever since the pandemic, we shifted to working from home. And we spend a lot of the day in a chair, for instance. And so we’re very sedentary. And we don’t get up as much as we used to people underestimate the fact that even though you’re sitting all day, when you get home, you’re still exhausted, you still don’t want to do anything, you still are just mentally ready to check out for the day and just veg out and sit in front of the TV and just eat miss you know.

Dimitrius  12:33

And that that a lot of that is how where you have to break that behavior pattern cycle where you have to try to at least slowly incorporate some of those things at first. So that way, you’re not just like most people just do they just cut everything out.

Dimitrius  12:50

And then they wonder why it’s so difficult to follow through on all of that because well, I mean, it’s, of course, it’s going to be stressful, you’re adding stress to an already kind of stressful situation to me. So of course, putting all that pressure on yourself. So absolutely, I do agree on that. For sure. Like,

Amanda Meri  13:08

it’s like trying to run a marathon without doing the prep work. You just want to get to the end goal, right? You’re like, oh, I want to eat healthier, and I want to lose weight. And you go on this extreme diet, and then you like stop, and then expect to have those results at the end. It’s a slow game health is a journey.

Amanda Meri  13:27

And you got to be mindful of that and give yourself grace and say, You know what, maybe it’s gonna take me a year or two or even three years to to look how I want to look and feel how I want to look by being healthy, right and eating healthy and still having that balance of you know, maybe I’m gonna go out and stay up, stay up late a couple of nights, here and there. And maybe I’m gonna have a few drinks, but I’m still going to feel good because overall, incorporating a lot of healthy things into my lifestyle.

Dimitrius  13:56

So how we talked about mental health, and its relation to gut health. How would you what did you notice about the correlation there between the two?

Amanda Meri  14:06

Every person that I’ve worked with has experienced either depression or depressed mood or lack of interest, a lot of people aren’t able to identify that they themselves are experiencing depression. There’s actually a study that came out recently that said that black women are not exhibiting the classic signs of depression.

Amanda Meri  14:32

And so it’s harder to diagnose and identify depression in in the in specific populations like with black women, so people aren’t identifying that they have it and I’m noticing that pretty much everyone is experiencing some kind of suppressed level of mood and yeah, depression anxiety,

Dimitrius  14:50

I can understand that I can see that I definitely correlate for me personally. Whenever I do over indulge, it is usually during a period where Where I’m very stressed out, or a period where I just maybe the meds aren’t that I take art meting that day. And it you just want something that brings comfort, and especially in the black community, that’s what food has always been for us. It’s been a source of comfort and a source of love.

Dimitrius  15:21

I hear all the time from my elders about you cook with love and intention, those sorts of things. And when we get into that, and how historically go back way back into to, even during the slave period, where, you know, we didn’t have access to the quote, unquote, normal meals and food sources and everything like that we had to make do and how that’s kind of still translated to the present day where we are just now having these conversations.

Dimitrius  15:53

I have seen them on Twitter and social media and everything, we’re kind of just now having these conversations of were more traditional meals that we eat at Thanksgiving, Christmas, what have you, and how we’re digesting so many, so many seasonings, and so many portion sizes, that maybe aren’t the best for us.

Dimitrius  16:15

But it’s kind of hard to break away from some of that, because it’s so ingrained in our culture, and our history. And so we’re now trying to find ways to navigate that entire space of Yes, as a community, we do need to first and foremost prioritize our mental health.

Dimitrius  16:36

And part of that is reevaluating what it is that we put in our bodies, and how that doesn’t have to mean that we are losing those traditions, maybe we just need to kind of revamped them a little bit. That’s Those are, those are difficult discussions to have. And as well as they should be. We’re talking about things that are historically tied to a group of people whose history has constantly faced the threat of erasure.

Dimitrius  17:03

So that makes perfect sense in that regard. But I’m glad to know that that is something that you’ve seen, that is something that you are identifying, because I believe I believe that I believe that gut health and mental health are very intertwined. And that you if you’re not taking care of your your gut, no, I mean, pretty much everything else is going to follow. Absolutely.

Dimitrius  17:25

Do you know of any of the people that you’ve worked with? Do you have anyone that’s had a success story and came to you and said, Oh, my gosh, I did this? And look what happened for me?

Amanda Meri  17:35

Oh, yeah, I’m out here saving lives. Dimitrius. Wonderful. So I’ve had, I’ve had people, including myself, I experienced depression and anxiety. And not knowing I didn’t know that I had depression until I was in my early 30s.

Amanda Meri  17:56

And I’m a nurse, right, I thought that I could identify whether or not someone had depression. So myself, they’re just getting to the root cause. And a lot of times, there’s more to it to depression than just a lot of people think, Oh, well, maybe there’s a genetic component. And that can be true.

Amanda Meri  18:13

But there’s other deeper root causes. And it’s not just the trauma, the childhood experiences. It’s also the three the three big players with that are the common root causes to chronic illness depression, are Lyme disease, mold, and the Epstein Barr Virus, which a lot of people know as mononucleosis.

Amanda Meri  18:36

So identifying those, and people and then helping to rebalance the body. So if someone has high levels of mold, so I’m someone that was affected by mold, and it caused me to have depression, pretty much my whole life, and I didn’t know it until I was older. So detoxing my body and just restoring balance and peeling back those layers of mental health, I had to work with a mindset coach who was able to really help me get to the root of things.

Amanda Meri  19:06

So we worked on just my thoughts and beliefs from traumatic experiences. And she helped me get to the unconscious layer, the subconscious layer and my consciously layer, that my mindset to really just shift my beliefs. And that played a huge role in my overall health and in mental well being.

Amanda Meri  19:28

So I look at Western medicine as kind of like a band aid and it’s no shade to the therapist out. There’s really great therapists that help people, but it’s just peeling back one layer of the onion in a hand and getting if you really want to get to the root, you’ve got to do some deep inner work and I really like people that like insane Gamora who does that?

Amanda Meri  19:51

Who gets to the subconscious and unconscious layer and getting to those, those thoughts and beliefs that really affect our reactions or thoughts or beliefs, right, which then can manifest as depression and poor ways of thinking and poor ways of looking at ourselves negatively?

Dimitrius  20:11

Absolutely. I, of course, wrote a book about low self esteem. And that was, in my research, of course, and for me personally, just looking at how a negative self worth and how you, when you think about the negative self worth, you think about someone who just walks around all day, and they just talk about how awful they are like they verbalize it.

Dimitrius  20:34

You don’t think about like you mentioned, those negative thought patterns, those beliefs, those that are deeply ingrained, that you maybe have never ever voiced before, or vocalize. But when you peel back so much of what you do currently, and you peel back things that happened in your past, and it doesn’t have to be something traumatic, it could do with your attachment style, that was kind of solidified in your youth.

Dimitrius  21:03

And that can be very subtle. And so you’re now an adult, like you mentioned in your 30s. And you begin to peel all that back and your self worth and you realize that you kind of don’t have a great self image. And if you don’t have that self image, that leads into a lot of other things.

Dimitrius  21:23

For me, of course, it was over indulging and not caring about what I put in my body, because subconsciously, I didn’t care about myself. And that goes for so many people where they, because they have that negative self image, that of course, they’re not going to even think about their good health, because that’s going to be one of the last things they think about, if they ever think about their health, because they’re just focused on getting to the next just, you know, surviving just existing at that point, whether they realize it or not.

Dimitrius  21:54

And you’re absolutely right, you know, you do have to dig deeper, and figure out where all of that originates. And from there, you can become self aware, and you can recognize what your stressors are, and what your triggers are, what triggers like, for me, what triggers me to start eating way too much way more than I need to, if I know a day is particularly stressful, or if I can even project that, okay, you’ve got like eight things due on Friday, and blah, blah, blah, maybe we need to take the bag of celery to work that day.

Dimitrius  22:29

So that we could ensure that if we need something to snack on, it’s going to be something that maybe will not do a thing for you or to you. So that’s kind of how that’s kind of how I do that, instead of a bag of chips, you know, or something from the vending machine. And so just doing that it just peeling back all that and becoming more self aware, has definitely, for me been a game changer. And I’m glad to know that it was pretty much the same for you. Yeah.

Amanda Meri  22:57

And there’s, I feel like I have to mention this. There’s a writer out there. His name is Michael Ellsberg. And so hearing his story a few years ago really inspired me to look more into into the mental health piece.

Amanda Meri  23:10

So he was a writer, and he would stay up like these late crazy hours working on, you know, writing and being creative. And he suffered from bipolar two. And he was placed on some medications, he started getting acne, he started just not feeling well like losing his hair.

Amanda Meri  23:30

And then he was just like, this ain’t it for me, like I don’t want to live like this. And he started doing some research. And then like worked with some kind of, I believe a functional wellness practitioner. And I think they did some testing on him. But he found that sugar, his body, genetically just doesn’t tolerate sugar, well, alcohol and carbohydrates, a lot of like the, like pastries, and you know, the junk food.

Amanda Meri  23:56

And so whenever he tweaked his diet, eliminate alcohol and sugar and just started eating healthier, started sleeping better. He did not even medications, he was able to overcome bipolar two disorder. So that was like, whoa, okay, there’s really something out there other than just taking medications, which is fine for some people, right?

Amanda Meri  24:17

And then so that just led me down that trail of mental health and healing and I and I’ve have had clients who have improved their mood and just improve our levels of confidence through working together and figure out, Okay, what’s the best way to eat for you? And how can we all fit this in your lifestyle so that it’s manageable for you to sustain whenever we stop working together? It’s definitely possible.

Dimitrius  24:41

Well, that’s good. Absolutely. Fantastic. And I love that you focus on the just how we can change the eating habits instead of like you mentioned, well, we’re just over medicating people and just kind of referring to that as step number one, in some instances, so definitely definite Lee. So what’s next for you?

Amanda Meri  25:02

I’m still trying to figure that out. Myself, a big part of me wants to give back to our black community. So I’m trying to figure out a way where I can have services, you know, that are more accessible.

Amanda Meri  25:18

Because I do work in the functional wellness world, and I do offer lab screenings. And these screenings are not always affordable by people. So I’m trying to figure out, you know, what kind of program can I develop for that down the road to increase accessibility.

Amanda Meri  25:33 But I would love to become an author like you and write some books and share my healing journey and, you know, just other bits of knowledge to help people in their healing journey and just continue to expand my business and reach more people.