The Truth About Food Sensitivities: Heal Your Body with Root Cause Nutrition

When Symptoms Are Your Body’s Early Love Notes
We often think of food sensitivities as simply a reaction to what we eat. A rash, bloating, brain fog, or digestive discomfort can feel random, frustrating, and even scary. But what if these symptoms weren’t just random – they were your body’s early signals, guiding you back toward balance?

In Part One of the ANEW Insight Podcast, award-winning dietician and root cause nutritionist Christa Biegler shares her insights on how stress, digestion, and immune system function play a crucial role in how we process food. Christa emphasizes a philosophy many nutrition experts overlook: true health isn’t about restriction or fear – it’s about understanding what’s happening under the surface.

Why Root Cause Nutrition Matters

Christa’s approach, called root cause nutrition, isn’t about following trendy elimination diets or cutting out entire food groups indefinitely. Instead, it’s about understanding why the body reacts, addressing the underlying systems, and creating lasting wellness.

Christa shares her own journey: despite being a health-conscious dietician, she experienced a severe rash triggered by foods she loved, combined with stress from life and work. What she realized was eye-opening: the issue wasn’t the food itself – it was digestion, immune response, and stress.

“Food sensitivities are superficial,” Christa explains. “They’re like the tip of the iceberg. The deeper work is supporting digestion, reducing stress, and calming the immune system.”

What Causes Food Sensitivities?

Many people blame food chemicals, ultra-processed foods, or pesticides – and while these can contribute, the root causes are often more complex:

1. Digestive Issues – When food isn’t properly broken down in the stomach and intestines, partially digested particles can cross the gut lining and trigger the immune system.
2. Gut Permeability (Leaky Gut) – A compromised gut lining allows larger food particles to enter the bloodstream, causing inflammation and sensitivity.
3. Immune System Miscommunication – Food sensitivities often involve immune mediators firing at foods incorrectly, creating reactions that are uncomfortable but not life-threatening.
4. Dysbiosis – Imbalances in gut bacteria can further impair digestion, steal nutrients, and increase inflammatory responses.
5. Toxic Burden – Environmental toxins, mold, or excessive waste in the body can overload detox pathways, making foods more likely to trigger symptoms.
6. Stress – Perhaps the most overlooked factor, chronic stress suppresses digestion, lowers stomach acid, and reduces nutrient absorption, while also compromising the immune system. 

Stress and Digestion: The Hidden Connection

Christa explains that stress isn’t just a mental or emotional experience – it has direct physiological effects on digestion:

• Stomach Acid Suppression – Low stomach acid prevents proper protein digestion and nutrient absorption, especially B12.
• Slowed Enzyme Activity – Pancreatic and digestive enzyme function declines under stress, reducing nutrient breakdown.
• Immune Suppression – Secretory IgA, an immune marker in the gut, decreases with stress, making the body more vulnerable to illness and inflammation.
• Nutrient Depletion – Stress chemistry can dump potassium, magnesium, and other minerals, leading to muscle cramps, restless legs, tension headaches, and even blood sugar imbalances. 

“When your system is supported, symptoms start to fall away,” Christa says. “Most issues arise when the system is depleted or imbalanced, not because the food is inherently ‘bad.’”

Food Sensitivities Are Only the Tip

Christa uses a simple analogy: food sensitivities are like a superficial rash. Restricting foods may reduce symptoms temporarily, but unless you address the underlying causes – stress, digestion, immune health – the sensitivities persist.

For example, eliminating carbs may temporarily ease bloating, but if the gut isn’t digesting properly or the immune system is misfiring, the issue remains. The goal isn’t fear-driven restriction – it’s systemic restoration.

Practical Steps to Support Your Gut and Immune System

Christa recommends focusing on supporting your body’s natural systems rather than just removing foods:

1. Slow Down at Meals – Take time to smell, chew, and enjoy food to activate digestion.
2. Address Stress – Mindful breathing, nervous system regulation, and reducing chronic stressors help restore digestive function.
3. Support Digestion – Digestive enzymes, stomach acid support, and probiotics can help your body process food more efficiently.
4. Balance the Immune System – Nutrients like vitamin A, immunoglobulins, and colostrum support gut immunity.
5. Nourish Mineral Stores – Magnesium and potassium are essential for muscle function, nerve signaling, and blood sugar regulation.
6. Look at Root Causes – Consider dysbiosis, toxic burden, and nutrient absorption issues rather than simply eliminating foods. 

The Human Touch in Nutrition

Christa’s approach reminds us that health is more than lab results or restrictive diets. It’s about understanding your body, listening to symptoms as signals, and rebuilding resilience without fear.

“Symptoms are the body’s love notes,” she says. “They’re guiding us back to balance – not punishing us.”

By addressing stress, digestion, and immune function together, you can create lasting health and enjoy a wide variety of foods without restriction.

Takeaway

Food sensitivities are common, but they are rarely just about food. Root cause nutrition helps you identify and treat underlying issues like gut health, immune miscommunication, and stress, rather than chasing symptoms with temporary restrictions.

When we approach nutrition with curiosity, compassion, and science-backed strategies, we can move from fear and restriction to empowerment and lasting wellness.

 

FAQs

1. What are food sensitivities?
   Food sensitivities are non-life-threatening reactions to certain foods that can cause symptoms like bloating, rashes, digestive discomfort, or brain fog. Unlike allergies, they usually involve the immune system reacting to partially digested food or other underlying issues.
2. How is root cause nutrition different from an elimination diet?
   Root cause nutrition focuses on understanding why your body reacts to certain foods rather than just removing them. It addresses underlying issues like digestion, stress, immune function, gut health, and nutrient imbalances to create long-term wellness.
3. Can stress really affect food sensitivities?
   Yes. Chronic stress impacts digestion, lowers stomach acid, reduces nutrient absorption, and can trigger immune miscommunication, making food sensitivities worse or more frequent.

 

Want to Learn More from Christa Biegler?

For more insights on root cause nutrition, managing food sensitivities, and practical tips for lasting health, follow Christa Biegler on her social media channels and stay updated with her latest content:

Links:- https://www.christabiegler.com , https://www.christabiegler.com/podcast   https://www.facebook.com/christabieglerrd , https://www.instagram.com/anti.inflammatory.nutritionist/ https://open.spotify.com/show/4cVkVGhrAyPO6mHeVWVH90 

 Continue Your Journey

• 🌿 Rebuild body trust and nervous-system regulation inside my step-by-step program: Deprogram Diet Culture course
• 📘 Go deeper on mindset, cravings, and sustainable health: Deprogram Diet Culture book (paperback, Kindle, and audio) — find it via the book page on my site
• 🎧 Listen to the full ANEW Insight episode featuring these practices and Dr. Lavretsky’s research

View  here the full podcast Transcript:

dr–supatra-tovar_2_12-03-2025_110820:[00:00:00]Later. Yeah. Hello and welcome to the ANEW Insight podcast. I am very excited to have award-winning dietician, root cause nutritionist, and host of the very popular Less Less Stressed Life podcast. Christa Biegler with us today. Christa, welcome.

christa-biegler_1_12-03-2025_120820: Thank you so much for having me, Supatra.

dr–supatra-tovar_2_12-03-2025_110820: Yay. I’m so excited to have you. I, I was honored to be on her podcast and I am doubly honored to have her on mine, and I am going to pick her brain on everything root cause nutrition today.

Uh, before we do that, I’m gonna read a little bit about Christa, and then we’ll get into our questions. Christa Biegler is an award-winning dietician, root cause nutritionist, and as I said, host of the very popular, Less Stressed Life podcast where she breaks down complex health issues into simple, [00:01:00] actionable steps.

As the founder of Less Stressed Life Nutrition, she specializes in helping people overcome food sensitivities. Endless supplementation or costly testing that often leaves people more confused than supported. Christa is known for her generous teaching style, her ability to translate science into practical tools and her belief that symptoms are the body’s early love notes guiding people back toward balance.

Her work focuses on rebuilding resilience through stress repair, calming the immune system, and restoring gut integrity so people can return to eating a wide variety of foods. She also brings a grounded evidence-based lens to conversations around weight loss, medications, highlighting the often ignored risks of malnutrition, muscle loss, and nutrient depletion for individuals using these drugs. We’re gonna tap into that just briefly. It’s not [00:02:00] necessarily her area of expertise, but it’s something I’m interested in. Chris’s mission is to help people heal at the root, feel safe in their bodies again, and create lasting health without restriction or fear.

Christa welcome.

christa-biegler_1_12-03-2025_120820: Thank you so much for having me and quite an intro, so I’ll do my best to live up to everything.

dr–supatra-tovar_2_12-03-2025_110820: Yes, I really do love your mission, especially lasting health without restriction or fear, especially, uh, when it comes to creating safety within the body. This is something that is a huge focus of mine as well. I would love to hear your inspiration on what brought you to focus on roofs, root cause healing, rather than I think a lot of nutritionist, uh, restriction based nutrition.

christa-biegler_1_12-03-2025_120820: You know, I think you just as a, I’m a questioner by, just by programming and so for me, when you realize that something isn’t as root cause as you thought, which [00:03:00] there’s people get pretty hot button around food. But if I go back, you know, a little over a decade. I’m a dietician, so I thought adjusting your diet is pretty cool and there are some incredible benefits to going, doing intentional experiments around changing your diet, removing the unnecessary things like the ultra-high process stuff, the artificial colors and preservatives that is all lovely and wonderful. But the result that I was seeing, and I have a lot of my own story as well, and I’ll, I’ll just tell a little snippet of it because I think it’s important. I dealt with an, uh, a, what I would call the first of a few health crises around 10 years ago, and there was a lot of stress going on at the same time.

I had a couple of toddlers, I was navigating a career change, et cetera, so, you know, all of the, the perfect storm of things. And I woke up one morning, I’m sure it wasn’t really just waking up one morning. I’m sure there was many messages and whispers before that, but I woke up one morning with a rash all over my face and my neck and it [00:04:00] was painful and it was different than anything I’d really experienced before.

I’d had some dry skin that I thought was genetic in the winter, and my experience was I had trouble finding anyone to help me with it. I was just getting really. I was getting pretty superficial information. I kind of like cruised past dermatologists or doctors at that point, but I saw a lot of different integrative and alternative health practitioners.

I saw a famous gut health practitioner online who told me I could do nothing. Um, after a couple of stool tests. Which was interesting because we’re just a product of our experiences and so I kind of vowed to never do that to somebody, right. To, to really invalidate their experience overall.

dr–supatra-tovar_2_12-03-2025_110820: Right.

christa-biegler_1_12-03-2025_120820: but around that same time, I had gotten some additional training.

There’s so much to say about food sensitivities and I think breaking it open as best as possible and telling people maybe the right or wrong way to approach this entire concept and what’s really going on under the hood. ’cause food sensitivities are superficial and so, you know. You can adjust your diet and you can get great changes.

You can get great results, but there’s other [00:05:00] pieces that need to be in place in order for that to be lasting or or to change. So part of my story was. I got the results and much like an average human, I was a little disappointed that many of my favorite foods, like basil and red peppers were on this food sensitivity report.

And, uh, that can be pretty consistent with gut permeability because it’s crossing, these foods are crossing the gut lining more often, and so they’re. They’re essentially triggering an immune response more frequently. That’s a pretty common thing. Food sensitivities in generally general, are pretty malleable.

So I did the wrong thing, which was to put that on the shelf and be like, I’ll get back to that later. So we’ll shift, you know, every few days or a week or whatnot. So at some point, I implemented that maybe a month or two after I got those results. Not best practice, by the way. And, uh, when you don’t have a plan around changing your diet or doing something ultra restrictive. It can go kind of badly. You can hungry. And so I remember rummaging through the pantry like a raccoon one day because I didn’t have enough food and I was like, had not fed myself [00:06:00] well enough. I reached in and grabbed a handful of pecans I put them in my mouth. And like within moments, my eye was swelling and I’d never had anything like it.

And the reason that this story is important

dr–supatra-tovar_2_12-03-2025_110820: Wow.

christa-biegler_1_12-03-2025_120820: is because when you’re dealing with an already compromised state and already stressed state and already. Um, malnourished state, which by the way, believe me, I thought I was the picture of health, right. I was a very health conscious person who taught health. I mean, I wasn’t doing crazy, unhealthy things.

I was drinking kombucha like it was going out of style because I thought it was the healthiest thing I could do. Right? Which is a little dicey of a conversation.

dr–supatra-tovar_2_12-03-2025_110820: Hmm.

christa-biegler_1_12-03-2025_120820: The point is, is that I had created a reaction from that restriction. It was actually an additional stressor on my body. Now that didn’t, there’s a lot more to the, the story.

Essentially. I really struggled to find people to help me clear my own stuff. I had to dig into the research and kind of crawl out of a hole of food reactions. It was not fun. And like most humans, I just wanted to slam the door shut on that chapter. Right? We wanna get better and like not deal with it again.

Right? That’s our

dr–supatra-tovar_2_12-03-2025_110820: Hmm.

christa-biegler_1_12-03-2025_120820:[00:07:00] normal experience. And, uh, I was presenting to a group of moms on, in a, from a Facebook group about different types of food reactions. ’cause sensitivities are quite different than allergies. And generally people don’t always know that. And so I was, I was discussing that and I had a couple moms approach me about skin stuff and blah, blah, blah.

So it was all, it’s all kind of like history from there. But what I was seeing later as a practitioner, even though my story had that little part too, was that maybe. There’s a large percentage of people that were feeling a lot better when they changed their diet, and there’s many reasons that can be right, or were they actually just getting rid of the crap? There’s

dr–supatra-tovar_2_12-03-2025_110820: Hmm.

christa-biegler_1_12-03-2025_120820: there’s a lot of right and wrong way to adjust the diet, and so I’m happy to share that, uh, because unfortunately what I see is people restrict and then they see a reduction of symptoms and we actually go into fear. And so in fear we don’t actually broaden or they try to bring things back and they’re reacting. It’s because it’s masking the problem, right? If you restrict all your carbs [00:08:00] and you’re improving symptoms, but you add back carbs and you start having symptoms, it’s not because you’re just healing yourself from restricting carbs. I really don’t align with that. It’s because you’ve got something where you’re not processing and digesting it, and there’s.

Many other categories of food, natural food, chemical, naturally occurring food, chemicals that will cause similar types of reactions, different types of reactions, and it kind of drives people crazy, understandably because they see a difference. They may or may not see a difference, but many see a difference when they change their diet.

And so what worried me? Were really concerned me as people started restricting their diets and they would become more and more restrictive and they ended up in a place where I was at one point in my story, which was they were actually creating more reactions and more sensitivities. And so when you realize what’s under the hood of food sensitivities, you realize that food sensitivities are sort of the top level.

It’s sort of how it’s manifesting in the body, but it’s not how you correct. Restricting the food is not how you correct the food sensitivity. It’s just, it’s. It’s honestly as superficial as a [00:09:00] steroid for a skin. It’s really just taking the

dr–supatra-tovar_2_12-03-2025_110820: Yes. I wanna get into that more. And just a note that we’re gonna edit out. If you are looking at your camera, it’s gonna come across better in the video. You probably are seeing me in another monitor or something like that. I just wanted to point that out. So if you wanted to speak a little bit more to camera, that would be really helpful.

So you’re saying that food sensitivities are, you know, the kind of the top layer of what’s going on. Let’s then go deeper. What do you, what are the main causes of food sensitivities. We have ultra processed foods, we have kind of, uh, you know, chemical, uh, laden environment, pesticides. But what’s the deeper levels of food sensitivities?

What causes this?

christa-biegler_1_12-03-2025_120820: well, and I would put a couple more layers on the top as well. So different types of food sensitivities people will find. I think something that was really popular in the last decade was autoimmu`ne paleo, and that was eliminating all carbs, uh, dairy top eight allergens, but also nightshades. I would honestly argue how many of these people had mold exposure because all of those things are gonna feed. There was oxalates and histamines, et cetera. So underneath the hood of what’s going on with food sensitivities is if we go back to understanding [00:10:00] gut permeability. And so if you eat a healthy food like an apple. And you are not digesting it well.

What’s supposed to happen in the body is you’re supposed to break that down super duper tiny, right? You’re not supposed to have like particles of apple. You’re supposed to have different nutrients that your body can actually do something with and send off to the factories of the body, right? The overall, the organ systems, the different processes. But when the apple is not being broken down fully and completely.

It’s crossing the gut membrane or the gut lining prematurely. So the gut lining can be like semi-permeable, like nylons, or it can be, it can have some bigger gaps, uh, like fishnet tights. And so when you have larger particles getting across that lining, and this is kind of like the 1 0 1 of food sensitivities in general of why it’s a digestion issue and it’s a gut issue in other ways, it’s like leaky gut doesn’t just come out of nowhere. Right? So we’ll talk about that too, but when that apple is crossing, these larger particles across the cell, the across the intestinal lining prematurely, you have [00:11:00] these large particles in the immune system, which mostly resides in the gut, right? 70% of it says. Hey, this thing, this particle, like this looks like an invader. This doesn’t belong here. I’m gonna go ahead and shoot inflammatory mediators at this. Okay. So I use the analogy of a Nerf gun because there’s actually multiple types of mediators or colors of Nerf gun bullets. And so there’s

dr–supatra-tovar_2_12-03-2025_110820: Hmm.

christa-biegler_1_12-03-2025_120820: the green ones, the, the colors have nothing to do with, with, with anything.

It’s really just like the picture of it, right? So there’s IgG as one kind of, uh, inflammatory mediator that’s being fired. IGM is another different types of T cells, et cetera. So there’s many. And if we think about the difference, this is a great place to you and insert, what’s the difference between allergies and sensitivities? So there is another immune mediator called IgE E for elephant, right? And IgE reactions are allergies. Usually we consider these static, consistent, ongoing. Usually you go to the allergist [00:12:00] and they do either a skin or a blood test to diagnose this. Hopefully both. Uh, depends. There’s some nuance there. And that’s their area really. And that’s meant to be reproducible, right? That’s what we’re looking for in medicine as a reproducible, standardized black and white test. Right? Not, not something that’s gonna shift all the time necessarily. Right. Um. And so that’s IgE. It’s a different type of Nerf bullet overall. And so, and that’s gonna cause maybe some slightly different reaction since its sensitivities.

We do see a little overlap to be perfectly honest. Uh, but usually with allergies we think of those significant ones. That doesn’t mean they’re always like that, it can be rashes, but a lot of times we’re thinking of anaphylaxis. And so what’s happening was your question, what’s happening under the hood of food sensitivities? So one, we are potentially not breaking something down, we’re not digesting well. and I always love to tell my clients like, go ahead and write that on my tombstone. No one was digesting and there’s many reasons why we can talk about it. So no one was digesting and then [00:13:00] something was going on where there was kind of a, a immune system miscommunication at some point, right?

So was it immune system mediators firing at that food? That’s usually if, if it’s a true sensitivity, that’s typically what’s happening. And so I use an apple, but I could have used broccoli. It could be literally anything you consume. So if you ever got a food sensitivity test and it was foods you ate all the time, it’s classical like what was crossing the membrane often is what the immune system is firing at. Sometimes it’s obscure and it’s a little different. There can be some variables there. So there’s a digestion issue. And then there is what is the immune system doing with the information issue? And that might be gut permeability or leaky gut. Right? And we have thousands of research papers that say leaky gut is factual.

It’s a real thing. But I personally don’t think leaky gut is quite root cause enough. I don’t. I really don’t. I think we have to go to what was causing the leaky gut. Now the cool part is we’re gonna circle around the same topics. We’re gonna talk about stress a lot, suppressing digestion, and we’re gonna talk about

dr–supatra-tovar_2_12-03-2025_110820:[00:14:00] Yes.

christa-biegler_1_12-03-2025_120820:stress honestly, with the poor digestion, it sort of feeds the dysbiosis. And the dysbiosis the analogy for that is sort of like we’ve all got this lawn or we’ve all seen a lawn and in a perfect lawn is not actually realistic. A per, like most lawns are gonna have some weeds, and that’s the case with our gut microbiome that’s gonna have some weeds and with those weeds, you know this from the lawn, they steal nutrients and they give off their own waste, right? And so they actually impair digestion further. So there’s a chicken and an egg scenario happening. What was causing the digestion? You actually need to address both things overall, like what’s going on with the weeds and the dysbiosis as well as. Um, digestion from the top to the bottom, right? It’s not just a, why aren’t we digesting? It’s, well, there’s reasons all the way from the top to the bottom. We may not be digesting, and I think that’s such an important thing. But my, my thing is, is like you, the food sensitivities are superficial to everything else going on.

dr–supatra-tovar_2_12-03-2025_110820: Yes.

christa-biegler_1_12-03-2025_120820: there’s [00:15:00] more. There’s more as well with the toxic burden. If your, detoxification bucket is full and overflowing. You are going to consume foods that aren’t necessarily toxic, but it’s how your body is metabolizing them. Remember that the weeds give off waste, so when the bucket’s already full and those weeds are giving off more waste, it’s adding more stress to the trash can, right?

It’s adding more trash, and so it will overflow also as well, and you’ll get more symptoms from there. So you’re gonna see issues from the top to the bottom. Gut wise, digestion wise, what’s going on in the immune system. That’s all sort of gut bucket and then you’re gonna have issues with the drainage and detoxification bucket if the toxic burden bucket is full.

And this is hard to test. Uh, I think symptoms are more helpful to help us identify it personally as a starting point. There’s lots of different types of tests, but it’s, it’s a little all over the place. Um, unfortunately it’s not super succinct. And so, but having a high to the burden load is gonna make you have, it’s gonna make you wake up with things like joint pain.

dr–supatra-tovar_2_12-03-2025_110820: Oh yes.

christa-biegler_1_12-03-2025_120820: joint pain that kind of migrates or gets better [00:16:00] as you get up or seems triggered by foods or things like that. Um, it’s gonna look like potentially sensitive to smells. Um,

dr–supatra-tovar_2_12-03-2025_110820: Hmm.

christa-biegler_1_12-03-2025_120820: it might be brain fog. Brain fog could be multiple systems are involved, but things like that, right? It’s like I have symptoms and I think maybe sort of it.

It’s associated with food. It’s like, okay, well what’s actually the food triggering in the body? And that’s the other thing. A lot of foods, as we talked about before, have natural food chemicals. And so if you’re consuming a lot of foods with histamines, it’s not that the histamines the enemy, it’s also pretty superficial.

But this is, I mean, people know this now. They’re well aware from Google that they’re like, I have histamine intolerance. I’m like, yeah, well, what’s causing that? Right? Here’s the

dr–supatra-tovar_2_12-03-2025_110820: Exactly.

christa-biegler_1_12-03-2025_120820: increase the histamine, and then how is it metabolized through the body? It’s the same stuff. What’s going on with the overall digestion of that neurotransmitter or that natural food chemical, and how is it being cleared from the body overall?

dr–supatra-tovar_2_12-03-2025_110820: Exactly, and I would say going even further into root cause. Yes, we can talk about everything that we’re ingesting and the different chemical makeup of what we’re [00:17:00] ingesting, but let’s talk about the system itself and what does stress do to the system. This is my area because I combine psychology and nutrition and.

We can see that when we’re in a sympathetic nervous system state, which most people are most of the time in this kind of toxic, uh, news cycle society we live in, we’re constantly stressed and I don’t think people fully understand exactly what constant stress does to us physiologically. If you can explain how that affects our digestion and, you know.

Creates the leaky gut and, and these nutrients getting through and being targeted by our immune system. That would help people a lot.

christa-biegler_1_12-03-2025_120820: Yeah, and the goal of course is, is not no stress, but I, to just speak to the front end of that for a moment, something I’m really passionate about that you I’m sure do a ton about is this unrealized stress is that

dr–supatra-tovar_2_12-03-2025_110820: Yeah.

christa-biegler_1_12-03-2025_120820: of [00:18:00] times with high achievers, we don’t necessarily even feel stressed because it’s been our baseline for so long, it’s been so normal.

So sometimes we kind of need this little. You know, maybe it needs to show up on a test result, like maybe it’s showing up in these physical manifestations. So really briefly, there’s a few core places that stress really challenges the body. It really adds tax, it taxes the body in different places. So the first is digestion. When you are in a stress state, of course, we always use the example running from the tiger. Your body could care less about digesting, right? And so when we are distracted, when we are not really doing the things to prime digestion, which would be literally enjoying what we’re eating. That’s as simple as it would be.

It would be smelling it to actually stimulate the cephalic response and the digestion in the mouth, chewing it enough. I know that’s really simple, but it’s like actually the hard part, to be honest. And that’s why we have recurrent things upstream and downstream very often, to be honest. Um. So with stress, [00:19:00] our stomach acid gets suppressed first.

Our stomach acid is essential for digesting proteins, assimilating certain nutrients, especially B12, which is huge for energy. And by the way, if you, you can go test that, but our reference ranges have gotten a lot lower. It’s kind of pathetic actually. So just so you know, it should be at least 500 or above.

So that’s actually one thing you can get checked if you ever needed to. It doesn’t necessarily mean you know that you don’t. There’s some simple basic things people can do to test stomach acid and pretty much everyone fails. We can talk about that if you want, but stress suppresses stomach acid. It also suppresses all digestive function, pancreatic enzyme function, et cetera. So this is why I say no one was digesting from the perspective of I was eating quickly. I was, and you know, I, I have children in school, they, the lunch period is 10 minutes. It’s a little crazy. Right. I’ve been in very, I’m been very intrigued. I know you have heard people say this, and it’s very popular to talk about in health communities online, but people will sometimes talk about tolerating food better in Europe and I took a lot of, I’ve, I’ve monitored this. I’ve really kind of turned this over in my head when visiting [00:20:00] there and I’m like, they’re having so much more fun and they’re

dr–supatra-tovar_2_12-03-2025_110820: Yes.

christa-biegler_1_12-03-2025_120820: so much more slowly because they’re smoking and staying up really late and drinking a lot of alcohol, but they’re having a good time, right?

They’re enjoying company. They’re actually taking a long meal. It’s very normal for them. Whereas we are typically eating as fast as we can, whether we realize it or not. This was actually a really pain, a big pain point for me for a long time I couldn’t quite figure out why I was finished eating before everyone else for a very long time, but I grew up with a military dad and he was like, it was like instant, right?

And so kind of what your conditioning

dr–supatra-tovar_2_12-03-2025_110820: Right.

christa-biegler_1_12-03-2025_120820: is you tend to absorb typically. And so it took a lot of unlearning and, and relearning to kind of let that go. So at. The very top level, which is extremely important, is that stress is suppressing digestion. So that means we’re going to need to support digestion at different times, and I, this is where the conversation around kind of ultra processed food is potentially [00:21:00] valuable as well, or. Being exposed to things that you don’t always eat. Sometimes you’re not digesting those things particularly well either. Meaning I am saying like if you go traveling and you get indulgent, and I love to be indulgent. When I travel, I love to try new things, but when I’m doing those things, I may need to take some additional digestive support because these are weird things that my body’s not necessarily used to digesting, and there’s a lot of things I don’t control when I’m out. the wild, right? And that’s okay. I’m not stressed about that. I’m just gonna support my body to digest it because I don’t expect that your body should be able to digest Franken foods or out ultra processed foods or things that are not even truly food ingredients, what we put in foods. I don’t expect that your body should necessarily be able to do that well.

And so I wanna help it process through that instead of taking a big stress. So I just kind of putting that in there as well. ’cause that’s where a little bit of that conversation can play in. So.

dr–supatra-tovar_2_12-03-2025_110820: Right.

christa-biegler_1_12-03-2025_120820: Stress, it suppresses the digestion, but it also suppresses the immune system. Now we know the immune system’s also in the gut.

Not [00:22:00] surprising. There’s a specific marker that we can see on testing where it gets very suppressed, called secretory IGA. This is the immune system cells in the gut lining. Now, this is. Again, very commonly suppressed by stress. It’s also suppressed by pathogen overgrowth or essentially those weeds being overgrown in general.

And remember, if we’re not digesting, we’re gonna feed those weeds. The weeds love to consume undigested, nutri undigested foods. So it’s sort of like this self-supporting system. It’s like this happens then that, and so it, of course this is the ecosystem we’re in. So those are the a couple main things. Now, if the immune system is suppressed, you may or may not see more frequent illness.

I would say getting a cold more than once or twice a year is frequent. So I think sometimes if we’ve had colds more often than that, we sort of need to like have a, a metric to somewhat go by. So we can kind of maybe assume that something like that’s going on. Again this is something that is on some testing. Um, a conventional GI may not consider this a, an incredible [00:23:00] marker. And so I only tell you these things just because sometimes when you hear, hear these things on podcasts, you’ll maybe seek out some of that information from different providers. And so I just want you to have options or to know what, how you might be met with that.

So with secretory IGA, when that is suppressed from stress, there are some specific things that can improve it. Immunoglobulins, bovine immunoglobulins. Somewhat in the form of colostrum. There’s also, uh, non colostrum options. Uh, vitamin A retinol and saac bii. It’s a antifungal probiotic yeast. So all of those things will improve secretory, IGA, and I think this is important in this like winter season, depending on when this podcast comes out, because tend to have a more suppressed, well, not everyone, not everyone has a suppressed immune system, but sometimes you’re traveling, sleeping less, like things that we don’t always recognize as stress.

We’ll still stress the system

dr–supatra-tovar_2_12-03-2025_110820: Right.

christa-biegler_1_12-03-2025_120820: and then when we’ve all experienced this at some point where we had a stressor, and then it allows the illness to kind of take over, it makes you opportunist. You know, these, these, these issues or viruses especially, are very opportunistic, so they’re gonna take [00:24:00] hold when the immune system is suppressed overall.

Okay. And also with exposure to like mold or mycotoxins, that’ll really suppress the immune system as well. So stress, there’s many things that can look like stress on the body, so digestion, immune system. And then the other big bucket that stress does, in my opinion. I mean, there’s many more things, but it’s also really going to deplete nutrients.

Now there’s multiple, of course, on the front end we were talking about digestion. If you’re not digesting, you’re not really absorbing nutrients, right? You know? Stomach acid suppressed. You’re not digesting those animal proteins they require that absorb the B12. So there’s all of that. then also with stress hormone or stress chemistry, um, as like cortisol goes up, potassium is dumped, magnesium is depleted, and this is where you will sometimes see out.

A few people will resonate with this. You know, some people will not, but maybe you’ll see eye twitching. Or

dr–supatra-tovar_2_12-03-2025_110820: Wow.

christa-biegler_1_12-03-2025_120820: or like a leg cramp, like restless leg or something like that. Those are pretty severe, um, symptoms, to be perfectly honest. Uh, something a little bit lighter could be, you know, just a little tension headache, but still that can be kind of a little more severe, uh, or even [00:25:00] increased cramping with your period, right?

Because the magnesium’s a muscle relaxant overall. And so dumping out the potassium, by the way, potassium’s pretty under appreciated. It’s actually the doorway. The sodium and potassium are the doorway into the cell. And so actually, I consider that magnesium and the calcium are on the outside. They’re kinda like the bouncers of the doorway into the cell. So a lot of people understand magnesium, but not so much the logical order of how minerals come into the cell. So potassium’s pretty under recognized or underappreciated, and it’s a really big nutrient for blood sugar. Um, improving blood sugar, which is the backbone of all hormones, uh, whether you realize it or not.

And then also with checking thyroid into the cell as well. So you don’t need to have, you know, issues on blood labs to have opportunities to improve blood sugar. You don’t need to have issues on blood labs to improve thyroid. By the time these things show up on blood labs, they’re significant at that point.

Right? So the [00:26:00] sooner we catch those things, the sooner we support a system. You brought, you mentioned this earlier, and this is my entire thing, is like if you support the systems to work and function optimally, you win, you win. Because most symptoms are coming from, and you’ve learned this as we’ve talked, is the system gets compromised because of one or two or many reasons. The system gets compromised, it becomes depleted or imbalanced, and then symptoms present. So when you bring back balance, when you get things back into balance, when you replete the deficiencies, do not have the sym, the symptoms start to fall away

dr–supatra-tovar_2_12-03-2025_110820: Yes. Oh, Christa, we’re really gonna get into that in the second half, and I can’t even believe we’re out of time for this half, but you have given such an amazingly detailed overview of, you know, how stress affects digestion and what can happen in our immune system as a [00:27:00] result of that. And. I am so excited for the second half because this is really about what I, uh, am very passionate about, which is restoring balance, uh, whether it’s psychologically or nutritionally.

So we’re gonna get into precisely how you might help somebody with food sensitivities when we come back for the second half. So thank you so much for joining us for this half. Please tune in next week for the second half of this amazing interview with award-winning dietician, root cause nutritionist, and host of the popular Less Stressed Life podcast Christa Biegler.

christa-biegler_1_12-03-2025_120820: Thank you so much.

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