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Day: September 2, 2026

Best Cortisol Reducing Supplements: A Dietitian’s Guide and How it Relates to Your Gut

Cortisol Lowering Supplements

Cortisol is a major buzz word nowadays and many times the discussion of high cortisol is followed up with what cortisol reducing supplements should be taken. But before you reach for the next supplement, it is important that you are looking at the full picture. Chronic stress and elevated cortisol are frequently part of what […]

After 15 years of working with SIBO, these are the After 15 years of working with SIBO, these are the five things I’ll defend in every consult, every DM, and every conversation in the bleachers. 

Most women who come to me have done at least one round of antimicrobials, often two or three, plus months of restrictive eating, and they’re still bloated by mid-afternoon. 

When I trace back what was missing, it’s almost always one of these:

🔄 Antimicrobials without motility support = relapse. Antimicrobials lower the bacterial load. The migrating motor complex is what sweeps the small intestine clean between meals, so if it stays sluggish, bacteria repopulate within weeks to months.

🍽️ Diet alone will not kill SIBO. Low-FODMAP and similar approaches reduce the fermentable carbohydrates bacteria feed on. That calms symptoms, but it doesn’t clear the overgrowth or correct why it formed.

🔍 The root cause matters more than the bacteria count. A breath test shows gas levels on one day. It doesn’t show whether low stomach acid, poor bile flow, low enzyme output, or slowed motility let bacteria settle in the small intestine in the first place.

⚙️ Every root cause stems back to gut motility and digestion. Stomach acid, bile, and pancreatic enzymes are the small intestine’s defenses against overgrowth, and motility clears whatever gets past them. When any of those falter, bacteria gain ground.

🧠 No protocol is going to work if you don’t manage your nervous system. Vagal signaling drives stomach acid secretion, enzyme release, and the MMC. A body stuck in a stress response digests poorly and clears poorly, no matter which supplements are on the counter.

I see this pattern all the time. The protocol targets the bacteria, and nobody addresses the environment that allowed them to overgrow. Lasting results come from treating both.

If your SIBO keeps coming back and you’re ready for someone to look at the motility, digestion, and nervous system pieces nobody has addressed yet, comment ROADMAP and I’ll send you the next steps.

#SIBO #SIBOdietitian #IBSdietitian #bloated
Think your cortisol is “too high” and you need to Think your cortisol is “too high” and you need to lower it? 👀

There’s more to cortisol than simply getting the number down.

Cortisol is supposed to follow a daily rhythm, higher in the morning to help you wake up and get going, then gradually declining throughout the day so your body can transition into rest and sleep. ☀️➡️🌙

If the Cortisol Curve is off, you could be experiencing symptoms like :

😴 waking up exhausted
☕️ needing caffeine to function
🍪 afternoon energy crashes or cravings
⚡️ feeling wired but tired
🌙 getting a second wind at night
💤 waking during the night

And if you're dealing with gut symptoms, this could also be connected. Your stress response, sleep, blood sugar regulation, and digestive function are all interconnected.

I just published a new blog post breaking down what your cortisol pattern should actually look like throughout the day + what can disrupt it.

Comment CORTISOL to read the full blog post!

#cortisol #highcortisol #loweringcortisol #stress
Erika’s goal was to conceive her first child, but Erika’s goal was to conceive her first child, but she wanted to take care of her SIBO first. 🤰

She was struggling with constipation and bloating, and before joining the Bloating Breakthrough, she’d reached out to a couple of other nutritionists. The advice was full of red flags: cut all carbs, keep killing bacteria round after round, and eat an absurd amount of protein.

Here’s what we focused on instead:

🍽️ Diet tweaks based on her symptoms — keeping carbs and fiber in her diet, since restricting them too much tends to make constipation worse, not better.
💊 Targeted supplements — chosen for her specific symptoms rather than a one-size-fits-all protocol.
🦋 Her thyroid, and not just her TSH — a full thyroid panel (TSH, free T4, free T3, reverse T3, and thyroid antibodies) showed several suboptimal markers and that she had been dealing with hypothyroidism.

That thyroid piece changed everything. Thyroid hormone helps drive the migrating motor complex, the cleansing wave that sweeps your small intestine between meals. When your thyroid is off, your gut slows down, constipation sets in, and bacteria have more of a chance to grow. As her numbers improved, her gut started moving again, and she began having normal bowel movements every day.

She was able to bring back every food she’d been told to cut out, and anytime a new symptom came up, she had an explanation and a plan. In her words, she was getting more answers than she ever had from her doctor.

“One of my goals while under Katrina’s care was to conceive our first child, but I wanted to make sure I took care of my SIBO first. Five months into the program, I was able to conceive successfully with minimal issues.”

She’s now just a few weeks away from welcoming her baby into the world. ❤️

If you’re dealing with SIBO and your plan is just removing more and more foods and adding more and more treatments, instead of looking into why it happened in the first place, comment MASTERCLASS and I’ll send you my free training that walks through the missing links in most SIBO protocols that keep you stuck. 👇

#sibo #ibsdietitian #guthealing #thyroid
🎃 Pumpkin spice season is officially here… but you 🎃 Pumpkin spice season is officially here… but your gut doesn’t have to pay the price.

If you’re someone who loves all things fall but feel that seasonal foods are off limits, I rounded up 5 grocery finds I’d reach for as a SIBO + IBS dietitian. 🍂

✨ King Arthur Pumpkin Bread Mix
✨ Seven Sundays Pumpkin Spice Oatcakes Mix
✨ Pumpkin Spice Creamers
✨ Lesser Evil Pumpkin Spice Popcorn
✨ Sweet Lorens Pumpkin Spice Cookies 

What I like about these options is that they can help you enjoy those cozy fall flavors while still being gut friendly.

As always though gut-friendly isn’t one-size-fits-all. These foods are lower in FODMAPS and gluten so easier on the gut for most but not all.

The goal isn’t to avoid every fun food, it’s to find swaps that allow you to enjoy food without constantly worrying about your gut. 🤎

Save this for your next grocery run! 🍁

Which one are you trying first? 👇

#pumpkinseason #fallfinds #lowfodmap #guthealth
If your hair is falling out in clumps, you’re hitt If your hair is falling out in clumps, you’re hitting a wall by 2pm, and you were told your iron labs are normal, it’s worth pulling those results back up. 🩸

For years, most labs didn’t flag ferritin (your iron storage marker) as low until it dropped below roughly 12–15 ng/mL. I’ve seen so many women with ferritin in the teens and twenties told they were fine while dealing with hair shedding, exhaustion, brain fog, and feeling winded on the stairs.

This month, the American Society of Hematology released its 2026 guidelines for diagnosing iron deficiency, and the cutoffs are finally higher across the board:

🔹 Adults, including during pregnancy: ferritin of 30 or below 
🔹 Heavy menstrual bleeding, or pregnant with anemia: 50 or below 
🔹 Inflammatory conditions like IBD, cancer, or infection: below 100, or transferrin saturation under 20%, since ferritin rises with inflammation and can mask a true deficiency

Before you go straight to an iron supplement, a few things are worth looking into:

🔍 Why you’re low — heavy periods are a common cause, and so are absorption issues like celiac disease, H. pylori, low stomach acid, and long-term PPI use, all of which reduce how much iron actually gets into your body. 
🧪 A full iron panel — ferritin alone can mislead, so ask for serum iron, transferrin saturation, a CBC, and CRP to see whether inflammation is inflating your ferritin. 
📅 How you take it — iron raises hepcidin, a hormone that blocks absorption for about a day afterward, which is why alternate-day dosing has been shown to improve absorption compared to daily dosing.

Supplementing without finding the cause can mean years of iron pills that never fully correct the problem, especially when the gut is the reason it’s low.

If your ferritin came back “normal” and you still feel depleted, comment FERRITIN and I’ll send you my free iron guide. 👇

#IronDeficiency #Ferritin #LowFerritin #HairLoss #Fatigue
Your gut has a direct line to your brain, and it’s Your gut has a direct line to your brain, and it’s called the vagus nerve. 🧠

Here’s what it actually does: it triggers your stomach acid production, tells your stomach when to churn and empty, and keeps the migrating motor complex moving — the wave that sweeps bacteria through your small intestine between meals. It also signals your gallbladder and pancreas to release bile and enzymes.

If you have IBS or SIBO, this system is often underperforming. Chronic stress, poor sleep, and ongoing gut inflammation all blunt vagal signaling over time. Less signaling means less stomach acid, slower motility, and a harder time clearing bacteria — which drives more symptoms, more stress, and weaker signaling. A loop.

This isn’t the only piece of the puzzle, and stimulating it isn’t a stand-alone fix. But it’s one of the few things you can influence today, for free:
→ Cold exposure — splash cold water on your face, or end your shower cold
→ Humming or singing — the vagus nerve runs right past your vocal cords
→ Gargling water for 30 seconds
→ Belly breathing — slow inhales into your stomach, not your chest

Try one before your next meal and notice how your digestion responds.

Comment BASICS and I’ll send you more ways to get starting in your SIBO healing journey.

#VagusNerve #GutBrainConnection #SIBO #IBS

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