When cutting out more foods isn’t enough, here’s what I look at next

You cut out one food. Then another. You try the probiotic, add the fiber
powder, and follow the advice as carefully as you can.

Yet your stomach still feels unpredictable.

By this point, you may know more about what you avoid than what you enjoy eating. And you are probably tired of being told that the answer is one more thing to remove.

I understand that frustration. My own experience with constipation and restrictive diets is part of what brought me to this work.

It also led me to a question I want more people to ask:

When eating seems to trigger discomfort, cutting something out feels practical. You are
trying to connect the dots and get through the day feeling better.

But the rules can accumulate. A few foods become whole categories. You restrict yourself
until you eat the same meal every day. Trying something different starts to feel like a massive risk.

I have been in that cycle myself. Learning to look at digestion more broadly changed my
perspective and became central to the way I work with clients.

It can begin before breakfast. You think about what you need to do that afternoon and plan
your meals around the possibility of feeling uncomfortable.

At a restaurant, you spend more time studying the menu than looking forward to dinner. Getting dressed involves deciding what will still feel comfortable later in case you might
bloat up. A trip always means extra planning around your stomach and almost causes more
stress than joy.

Over time, digestion can start taking up more and more headspace that used to belong to
other, more enjoyable things.

And that shouldn’t be the case. You shouldn’t have to worry about your digestion at all. It should simply work.

That is why I care about the practical side of gut health. The goal is to make eating, working,
traveling, and enjoying your life feel less complicated.

Even low FODMAP was designed as a process, with restriction followed by reintroduction
and personalization. The aim is to understand your tolerance and build back a varied diet
that works for you, while leaving out the foods that you react negatively to.

If you have become stuck in the strictest phase, it’s understandable. Once you find a few
comfortable options, expanding them can feel daunting. When you finally feel good again, you don’t want to take any risks, which inadvertently delays your recovery journey.

But a growing list of food rules should prompt a bigger conversation: is avoiding food really the right answer to building a truly resilient gut?

A probiotic introduces live bacteria into your gut. A prebiotic provides that those bacteria require to survive. Without the latter, a probiotic can’t work.

But that difference invites a second, more important question: what kind of food do these bacteria actually use?

Using generic prebiotics and fibers can fuel overgrowth of parasites, bad bacteria, fungus, and other pathogens. I see clients with high levels of candida, h. pylori, methanogens, and so much more all the time. Which is why the conversation needs to shift:

We need to start spending time feeding the right bacteria the right food.

Imagine planting a lawn. You put enough seeds in the soil to cover all of it, but there’s limited space. You don’t want to overcrowd your garden, and you definitely don’t want to plant the wrong seeds. Once you’re done, you begin to pay attention to nourishing them properly and providing the right conditions to help them grow, right?

Bifidobacteria earn my attention because of the foundational work they do in our microbiomes. Not only do they help your digestion, immune health, and longevity, but they also produce healthy compounds that other beneficial bacteria use to thrive, like butyrate.

Butyrate is an important energy source for the cells lining your colon. Those cells form a
protective barrier between the contents of your gut and the rest of your body. Butyrate
helps fuel them and supports the processes that maintain that barrier, making it one of the most important factors in gut health recovery.

In addition to butyrate production, bifidobacteria are also the first probiotics that we’re exposed to as humans, planting the seeds for healthy development as children. But now, over 3/4 of Americans are deficient, which is one of the reasons that sensitive digestion is so common amongst my clients.

That is why I support bifidobacteria so strongly. A little magical bug that’s been forgotten, but crucial to restore.

Once you understand why bifidobacteria matter, simply adding more fiber can seem like
the obvious next step. But the word “fiber” covers many different ingredients, and
prebiotics have different structures that affect which bacteria actually use them.

If any gut health supplement left you feeling more bloated, that’s why. Not every fiber or prebiotic is compatible with every microbiome, often fueling overgrowth and making you feel worse than before you started.

So the question becomes:

What is the most effective prebiotic at feeding bifidobacteria?

That is what makes me so interesting in human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs), a prebiotic first discovered in human milk.

Human lactoferrin is a protein originally discovered in human milk. It is part of the body’s natural defense system, and one of its important abilities is binding iron. Bad bacteria need resources to grow, and iron is one of those resources.

When lactoferrin binds iron, it limits its availability to pathogenic bacteria that are causing overgrowth. In doing so, it clears room for bifidobacteria to grow faster than before, which in turn help inhibit bad bacteria more.

Together, HMOs and lactoferrin help restore the microbiome that evolution intended for your gut.

kēpos brings both of these approaches into one formula designed for adults.

Its HMO ingredient, kpHMO™, provides prebiotic nourishment that supports bifidobacteria in the gut. Its lactoferrin, effera®, addresses iron management through binding, sequestration, and directed delivery to your cells, while helping inhibit bad gut bacteria.

That’s why I recommend it with my patients. It is the foundational resource to help rebuild a resilient gut.