Love Your Gut

You've tried the fiber, the probiotics, and the magnesium, and you're still constipated (or it worked for a week and then quit). This solo episode kicks off our mineral series, and you'll learn why those tools stall when the foundation underneath them isn't ready, the order your digestion works in, and why minerals sit underneath all of it. You'll walk away with a few simple things to notice this week so you can stop guessing.

You've tried the fiber, the probiotics, and the magnesium, and you're still constipated (or it worked for a week and then quit). This solo episode kicks off our mineral series, and you'll learn why those tools stall when the foundation underneath them isn't ready, the order your digestion works in, and why minerals sit underneath all of it. You'll walk away with a few simple things to notice this week so you can stop guessing.

 What you'll hear:

• What a regular Tuesday morning looks like once constipation stops running your day
• The client who spent over $20,000 at the Mayo Clinic and walked out with one recommendation
• Why magnesium is one instrument in a mineral symphony, and why it can work for 10 days and then stop
• Digestion as a row of dominoes, where chewing, stomach acid, and bile come before fiber and probiotics
• Foundation first, then the helpers: why extra fiber piles up in a factory with the power out
• Why normal blood work doesn't mean normal minerals, and what a hair tissue mineral analysis (HTMA) can show

Taking magnesium or supplements but STILL exhausted, bloated, or losing your hair? Minerals are foundational to energy, digestion, and hormones.

Our annual Black Friday HTMA Bundle Sale is BACK! (Includes HTMA test and 1:1 consult + personalized protocol!) 🔥 

Join the Mineral Waitlist for FIRST access!

Connect + Next Steps

• Want daily education, stories, and gut-friendly support? Follow Dr. Heather on Instagram
• Ready for personalized 1:1 support and a clear plan? Apply for gutTogether®
• Want a chance to win a free HTMA Bundle? Leave a rating & review and email it to [email protected] with [PODCAST REVIEW] in the subject line! We choose a new winner every month! 

Have you ever gotten to the end of a busy day and wondered what you actually got done? Your clients have listened to the podcasts, saved the posts and asked ChatGPT about their symptoms, and plenty of clinicians do the same thing with CEUs, courses and webinars.

In Part 3 of the practitioner series, Dr. Heather explains why so much of that consuming keeps people stuck instead of moving them forward, and what the clinicians who waited years to join gutPractitioner were really waiting for. She shares what her years as a competitive swimmer taught her about getting good at something hard, names the fear that keeps so many practitioners from trusting their own read on a chart, and offers a simple checklist for judging any training before you invest in it.

She also shares the stories of two gutPractitioner clinicians who started before they felt ready, and the one thing she wants you to stop doing this week. Whether you're a practitioner or a client, this episode will help you spot where you might be buffering.

Taking magnesium or supplements but STILL exhausted, bloated, or losing your hair? Minerals are foundational to energy, digestion, and hormones.

Our annual Black Friday HTMA Bundle Sale is BACK! (Includes HTMA test and 1:1 consult + personalized protocol!) 🔥 

Join the Mineral Waitlist for FIRST access!

Connect + Next Steps

• Want daily education, stories, and gut-friendly support? Follow Dr. Heather on Instagram
• Ready for personalized 1:1 support and a clear plan? Apply for gutTogether®
• Want a chance to win a free HTMA Bundle? Leave a rating & review and email it to [email protected] with [PODCAST REVIEW] in the subject line! We choose a new winner every month! 

Your client has done everything you asked. She’s finished the antimicrobials, tried the elemental diet and low FODMAP, and she’s still constipated, bloated, and exhausted. So what are you missing?

In Part 2 of the practitioner series, Dr. Heather shares the story of Sara, a client who came to her team after six SIBO protocols. She also explains why the next move for your most stuck clients may not be in the gut at all. Dr. Heather covers why HTMA has become one of the first tests her practice runs, and she takes on the two objections practitioners raise most about it. She also shares which test she’d pick if a client could only afford one, and the answer may surprise you.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

• What Sara’s HTMA showed that six protocols missed
• Why so many GI protocols stall
• How Dr. Heather responds to “HTMA isn’t validated”
• How minerals point you to where to look next
• Which functional test she’d choose if a client could only afford one

Mentioned in this episode:

• Ep. 116 What an HTMA Test Actually Reveals
• Ep. 131 (When Low FODMAP Stops Working)

Taking magnesium or supplements but STILL exhausted, bloated, or losing your hair? Minerals are foundational to energy, digestion, and hormones.

Our annual Black Friday HTMA Bundle Sale is BACK! (Includes HTMA test and 1:1 consult + personalized protocol!) 🔥 

Join the Mineral Waitlist for FIRST access!

Connect + Next Steps

• Want daily education, stories, and gut-friendly support? Follow Dr. Heather on Instagram
• Ready for personalized 1:1 support and a clear plan? Apply for gutTogether®
• Want a chance to win a free HTMA Bundle? Leave a rating & review and email it to [email protected] with [PODCAST REVIEW] in the subject line! We choose a new winner every month! 

Have you ever sat across from a complicated client and thought, “I don’t even know where to start”? You’re in good company. 

More than a third of the clinicians who applied to gutPractitioner wrote some version of that same sentence. 

In part one of this practitioner series, Dr. Heather covers what that thought actually points to, and why it shows up even for dietitians with years of training. 

She explains why low FODMAP, fiber, probiotics, and magnesium work best as tools inside a plan, how a framework gives your clinical judgment something to stand on, and why so many failed protocols come down to timing. 

She also offers a new way to look at client compliance, and shares how two gutPractitioner clinicians, Tyler and Christa, went from feeling stuck with complex GI cases to feeling like experts in their field. If you aren’t a practitioner, this episode can still help you know what to look for in the next provider you work with.

Join Dr. Heather Live on Nov 6th for "Your HTMA Edge". Register Here!

Connect + Next Steps

• Want daily education, stories, and gut-friendly support? Follow Dr. Heather on Instagram
• Ready for personalized 1:1 support and a clear plan? Apply for gutTogether®
• Want a chance to win a free HTMA Bundle? Leave a rating & review and email it to [email protected] with [PODCAST REVIEW] in the subject line! We choose a new winner every month! 

Have you ever looked down before flushing and thought, “That doesn’t look right”? Most women do, and then they move on with their day. In this episode, Dr. Heather explains why every trip to the bathroom is a report card on how your digestion is working, from your stomach all the way down.

After 20 years of her own gut issues and more than 1,000 clients, Dr. Heather has seen the same patterns again and again. Women do everything right, with the fiber, the magnesium and the probiotics, and still don’t get relief. She uses a simple assembly line analogy to explain why the order you work in matters, shares the story of a past client who went from five safe foods to ordering at restaurants without checking the menu first, and covers where stool testing like the GI Map fits in.

You’ll also get a week of poop homework to bring to Behind the Bloat on October 23.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

• How to use the Bristol Stool Chart and the other details worth noticing
• What sticky, greasy or floating stool can point to
• Common reasons for hard, pellet-like stool
• Why your clues point to where you should start
• When a stool test like the GI Map is most useful

Episodes Referenced in this episode: 

• Ep. 69: Is Your Poop Greasy, Sticky, or Floating? It Might Be a Bile Problem
• Ep. 108: Why You’re Still Constipated: The Low Stomach Acid Connection No One Talks About

Taking magnesium or supplements but STILL exhausted, bloated, or losing your hair? Minerals are foundational to energy, digestion, and hormones.

Our annual Black Friday HTMA Bundle Sale is BACK! (Includes HTMA test and 1:1 consult + personalized protocol!) 🔥 

Join the Mineral Waitlist for FIRST access!

Connect + Next Steps

• Want daily education, stories, and gut-friendly support? Follow Dr. Heather on Instagram
• Ready for personalized 1:1 support and a clear plan? Apply for gutTogether®
• Want a chance to win a free HTMA Bundle? Leave a rating & review and email it to [email protected] with [PODCAST REVIEW] in the subject line! We choose a new winner every month! 

Is there a gut protocol sitting in your inbox right now, or a supplement order still in the box on your counter? If you’ve been calling yourself lazy or undisciplined for not starting, this episode offers a more accurate explanation.

Dr. Heather explains functional freeze, a nervous system state that lets you keep up with work, family, and every deadline while the one thing that’s just for you stays untouched. She shares her own story of staying stuck for months on a decision she already knew she needed to make, and explains why years of protocols that didn’t work can teach your body that hope is risky.

She also covers how this same protective state affects digestion, and why more willpower tends to keep you stuck. You’ll walk away with five simple ways to start moving again, gently.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

• The three nervous system states and what freeze actually is
• How functional freeze hides behind productivity
• Why repeated failed protocols make starting again so hard
• How your nervous system state affects digestion
• Five small steps to help you get unstuck

If you’ve been sitting on a decision to get support for your gut, gutTogether pairs functional testing with a practitioner in your corner, check-ins along the way, and (in VIP) weekly live calls and nervous system coaching. Learn more and apply with this link. 

Taking magnesium or supplements but STILL exhausted, bloated, or losing your hair? Minerals are foundational to energy, digestion, and hormones.

Our annual Black Friday HTMA Bundle Sale is BACK! (Includes HTMA test and 1:1 consult + personalized protocol!) 🔥 

Join the Mineral Waitlist for FIRST access!

Connect + Next Steps

• Want daily education, stories, and gut-friendly support? Follow Dr. Heather on Instagram
• Ready for personalized 1:1 support and a clear plan? Apply for gutTogether®
• Want a chance to win a free HTMA Bundle? Leave a rating & review and email it to [email protected] with [PODCAST REVIEW] in the subject line! We choose a new winner every month! 

You felt amazing after the antibiotics, the iron infusion, or the SIBO protocol, and then six months later your symptoms were right back where they started. 

On todays episode, Dr. Heather explains why results fade even when the protocol worked. She also covers why more information so often leads to more confusion, and shares a personal story about what actually created lasting change in her own life this year.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• Why a protocol can work and still not last
• The three places Dr. Heather looks for the "leak" in recurring gut symptoms
• How the nervous system affects your ability to hold onto results
• How to tell when discomfort means change course and when it means keep going
• What lasting gut health actually looks like during travel, stress, and the holidays

Mentioned in this episode: Episode 65 (for a deeper look at motility and minerals)

Taking magnesium or supplements but STILL exhausted, bloated, or losing your hair? Minerals are foundational to energy, digestion, and hormones.

Our annual Black Friday HTMA Bundle Sale is BACK! (Includes HTMA test and 1:1 consult + personalized protocol!) 🔥 

Join the Mineral Waitlist for FIRST access!

Connect + Next Steps

• Want daily education, stories, and gut-friendly support? Follow Dr. Heather on Instagram
• Ready for personalized 1:1 support and a clear plan? Apply for gutTogether®
• Want a chance to win a free HTMA Bundle? Leave a rating & review and email it to [email protected] with [PODCAST REVIEW] in the subject line! We choose a new winner every month! 

What if something else is getting to your iron before you do?

This week, Dr. Heather picks up where last week's episode left off. She explains why your iron panel works like a balance sheet: it can show you what's in the account, but it can't always show you who's spending it. Then she walks through the three hidden suspects she looks for first when a client's ferritin refuses to budge. One of them is among the most common infections in the world, and most people who have it never know. They can all go unnoticed for years, and none of them show up on a standard iron panel.

You'll learn:

• Why "absorption is the problem" is a correct conclusion that still leaves most women stuck
• The three suspects that can quietly drain your iron, and the clues that point to each one
• Why your body sometimes hides iron from you on purpose
• Why treating off a symptom list can make things worse, and what order of testing makes sense instead

Taking magnesium or supplements but STILL exhausted, bloated, or losing your hair? Minerals are foundational to energy, digestion, and hormones.

Our annual Black Friday HTMA Bundle Sale is BACK! (Includes HTMA test and 1:1 consult + personalized protocol!) 🔥 

Join the Mineral Waitlist for FIRST access!

Connect + Next Steps

• Want daily education, stories, and gut-friendly support? Follow Dr. Heather on Instagram
• Ready for personalized 1:1 support and a clear plan? Apply for gutTogether®
• Want a chance to win a free HTMA Bundle? Leave a rating & review and email it to [email protected] with [PODCAST REVIEW] in the subject line! We choose a new winner every month! 

Dr. Heather's ferritin was 9 four months postpartum, and she had a doctorate in clinical nutrition at the time. She still couldn't fix her own labs, and she spent months doing exactly what you've been doing: assuming she had the wrong iron rather than the wrong theory.
 This episode takes apart the belief that almost every woman with low ferritin is operating under. Low ferritin, therefore more iron. It's the most reasonable belief available, it's what your doctor believes, and for some women it works perfectly. If you're still listening to podcasts about your ferritin, you're not one of those women.
 Dr. Heather explains how ferritin works like savings, and taking iron is making a deposit. You can walk into the bank every week and hand them twenty dollars, and if you're spending more than you earn, your savings will not grow.
 Then she covers the three places the deposit disappears, plus the reframe for anyone who finishes this episode feeling like they wasted two years and four hundred dollars on supplements.
 What you'll learn in this episode:

• Why the belief that iron fixes low ferritin keeps women stuck for years, and how it converts every failure into a reason to try the same thing again
• What your ferritin number actually reports, and why it can't tell you anything about the cause on its own
• The three places your iron goes missing
• Why some women feel worse on high-dose iron rather than better
• The four blood markers to hold out for if your provider will only run a handful

Keep listening

Start with Dr. Heather's Story
Ep. 99: Why Iron Wasn't the Answer for My Low Ferritin

The full Iron & Ferritin Series
Ep. 112: Why You're Not Absorbing Iron (Even If You Are Supplementing)
Ep. 113: Why Your Iron Is Stuck & Ferritin Is High
Ep. 114: How Jessica Increased Her Ferritin by 20 Points in 2 Months 

More on where the deposit disappears
Ep. 100: Why Constipation Is Blocking Your Iron
Ep. 108: Why You're Still Constipated: The Low Stomach Acid Connection
Ep. 104: The Hidden Link Between SIBO, Iron & Ferritin 

More on the minerals that move it
Ep. 125: Iron, Copper, and Gut Irony Roundtable
Ep. 121: Why Minerals Fix What Protocols Can't with Lisa Pitel-Killah

Taking magnesium or supplements but STILL exhausted, bloated, or losing your hair? Minerals are foundational to energy, digestion, and hormones.

Our annual Black Friday HTMA Bundle Sale is BACK! (Includes HTMA test and 1:1 consult + personalized protocol!) 🔥 

Join the Mineral Waitlist for FIRST access!

Connect + Next Steps

• Want daily education, stories, and gut-friendly support? Follow Dr. Heather on Instagram
• Ready for personalized 1:1 support and a clear plan? Apply for gutTogether®
• Want a chance to win a free HTMA Bundle? Leave a rating & review and email it to [email protected] with [PODCAST REVIEW] in the subject line! We choose a new winner every month! 

Round two with the gutTogether team. Macy and Tyler are back, and this time we're talking about the iron and ferritin cases that have filled our caseload for the last six to eight months. If you've taken iron for months and watched your ferritin barely budge, or you've had an infusion and ended up with brand new GI symptoms, this conversation explains exactly why that isl. 

We get into the iron recycling system, why copper and ceruloplasmin quietly run the whole operation, what gut infections do with the iron you take, and why ferritin sometimes drops before it climbs. 

Plus the question we get in our inbox constantly: should I just get the infusion?

Timestamps 

• 01:50 Pattern one: the iron supplement that doesn't move the needle
• 02:30 Your iron recycling system, and when iron is truly the problem
• 03:40 Iron is a delivery system, not a faucet
• 04:20 Almost every low-ferritin client also has GI symptoms
• 05:00 Pattern two: copper, ceruloplasmin, and iron recycling
• 07:20 Why copper becomes biounavailable (stress, liver, hormones, exposure)
• 10:00 Retinol, vitamin C, and the easier fixes
• 11:00 Zinc mega-dosing and the copper fallout
• 12:40 Minerals work like a symphony
• 13:10 High ferritin, wonky ferritin, and the Goldilocks range
• 15:30 Why one lab in isolation will mislead you
• 16:10 The gut infections we see most in ferritin cases
• 17:00 The string of pearls: digestion before absorption
• 19:00 How pathogens sequester iron
• 20:20 Iron infusions and the GI symptoms that follow
• 22:20 The macro minerals that influence iron regulation
• 23:40 Under-fueling, unaccounted losses, and dietary variety
• 26:00 "Should I get an infusion?" What her labs actually showed
• 28:20 What women are self-prescribing for iron
• 30:00 The takeaway

Taking magnesium or supplements but STILL exhausted, bloated, or losing your hair? Minerals are foundational to energy, digestion, and hormones.

Our annual Black Friday HTMA Bundle Sale is BACK! (Includes HTMA test and 1:1 consult + personalized protocol!) 🔥 

Join the Mineral Waitlist for FIRST access!

Connect + Next Steps

• Want daily education, stories, and gut-friendly support? Follow Dr. Heather on Instagram
• Ready for personalized 1:1 support and a clear plan? Apply for gutTogether®
• Want a chance to win a free HTMA Bundle? Leave a rating & review and email it to [email protected] with [PODCAST REVIEW] in the subject line! We choose a new winner every month!