Ep 566: Gut Issues or Brain Signals? How the Mind Impacts Digestion with Dr. Ali Navidi

In this episode of The HealthFix Podcast, Dr. Jannine Krause sits down with Dr. Ali Navidi, a gut-brain therapy specialist and co-founder of GI Psychology – a nationwide gut-brain axis focused psychology clinic, to explore how chronic gastrointestinal problems are often rooted in the nervous system — not just the gut.

Whether you’re dealing with IBS, chronic bloating, food sensitivity, or just sick of restrictive diets, this episode offers a fresh, science-backed perspective on what might really be going on in your body.

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🔗 Mentioned in This Episode:

• Dr. Ali Navidi – Gut-Brain Therapy Expert
• Learn more: https://gipsychology.com/
• Schedule a free consult: https://gipsychology.clientsecure.me/request/service
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Podcast Transcript

Chapters

00:00 The Gut-Brain Connection: An Overview
05:44 Understanding the Role of the Nervous System
08:17 The Power of Clinical Hypnosis in Gut Health
10:49 Conditioned Food Sensitivity and Its Implications
13:16 Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: A Tool for Change
15:49 The Practical Application of Hypnosis in Therapy
18:40 Ali Navidi’s Journey into Gut-Brain Psychology
21:01 Telehealth and Accessibility in Gut Health Treatment
25:43 The Power of Anchors in Healing
29:02 The Journey to Recovery: Timeframes and Expectations
30:04 The Interconnectedness of Gut and Chronic Illness
30:48 Exploring the Vagus Nerve and Immune Response
35:03 Food Sensitivities: The Role of the Nervous System
37:47 Addressing Children’s Gut Issues and Anxiety
40:23 The Importance of Self-Hypnosis in Healing
41:12 Connecting with Ali Navidi: Resources and Consultations
44:59 Outro THFP 2022.mp3

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Jannine Krause (00:04.933)
Ali Navidi, welcome to the Health Fix Podcast.

Ali Navidi (00:08.962)
Well, I am happy to be here, Janine, and I’m eager to get started talking about all the nerdy gut brain stuff that we can handle.

Jannine Krause (00:20.069)
Well, I have no doubt that folks listening are going to be excited because I haven’t talked a ton about nerd now, basically on the gut. I talk about it here and there. I talk about his foundation, but he brought up something before he hit record that I think is really fascinating to bring forward because you’ll hear from the functional medicine space and the natural medicine space gut up and you mentioned brain down to the gut. And I’m like, you know what? Both work and they both work in terms of how we’re a

approaching certain clients and certain situations. And in particular, I’m gonna bring up a couple cases I’ve had and we’ll geek out on those as we move through. But in particular, just thinking about how important just having a connected body is.

Ali Navidi (01:06.128)
yeah, yeah. And sometimes my patients are surprised when they find out how much of an effect their brain has on their body. And what I tell them is, look, you know, you’ve got a brain and you’ve got a body, but you also have a neck and that really, you know, it connects the two very powerfully. So I’d love to hear those cases that you’re talking about.

Jannine Krause (01:34.917)
Yeah, you know, it’s funny. You know, we got a neck, we get a chest, we’ve got other things in there as well. And you know, one of the cases in particular that comes up, you know, as I knew I was gonna be speaking with you, is one in which I will see women in particular, perimenopause, menopause time of life, we tend to feel disconnected or feel like we’re a stranger in our own bodies because we’ve got roller coaster emotions. Sometimes you’ll say something and be like, who was that?

I don’t even know, know, someone on my shoulder, what’s going on? And in particular, this is also a time when if someone had gut issues previously, things can show back up or will have new gut issues start to show up as hormones flux. And one of my most memorable folks is a gal who was complaining about SIBO. So small intestine bowel overgrowth. And she had done all the things, all the things. And still we would go back to

Where’s your vagus nerve? Where’s your nervous system connection? So I’d love for you to dive into when folks have done all the things for the gut and there’s still that nervous system connection where there’s that anxiety, there’s that, don’t feel so good in my body. Let’s talk about that.

Ali Navidi (02:49.826)
That’s funny that you brought that up because I was also thinking of a patient, Alex, patient’s name is Alex. And they had gone into the Middle East and then come back with Middle East respiratory virus. I think there’s a specialized virus. Anyway, they had all these symptoms and then they blasted him with antibiotics. And then following that,

Jannine Krause (02:56.069)
You

Ali Navidi (03:18.99)
Um, you know, the virus was gone, but he kept having symptoms, kept having problems. And he went all to all the right places and did all the right things in terms of standard Western medicine. Um, and he couldn’t get any help. And then he found a naturopathic doctor and got maybe like 50 % there. And the, he had developed SIBO.

over, over that time. And that was causing a lot of trouble, but that last 50%, he just couldn’t, couldn’t get there. And, and he was crippled. He was really crippled. He couldn’t work. couldn’t, he had such discomfort and pain and essentially what we call functional dyspepsia. So kind of like the upper GI, but responded amazingly to clinical hypnosis and

Jannine Krause (04:05.487)
Mm-hmm.

Ali Navidi (04:15.054)
cognitive behavioral therapy, that combination within about, I think, 10 sessions, he was symptom free. but it just goes to show you, know, you got to find the right pieces for the puzzle. And sometimes when you’ve tried everything else, that last piece is the central nervous system. Right. So I absolutely agree with what you said.

Jannine Krause (04:40.257)
Mm-hmm.

I’m glad you say the last piece when we’ve gone through all the other things is the central nervous system because I’ve tried over and over to convey it to a lot of folks and and sometimes I think it just needs to be said by someone else it’s kind like the mom saying it and we need someone else in the department to to say it. Now when we’re looking at cognitive therapy when we’re looking at hypnosis a lot of folks will be like man what what are we

Ali Navidi (04:55.95)
Yes.

Jannine Krause (05:08.281)
doing, like what’s going on in particular, you know, lot of folks probably understand on a base level, you know, cognitive, but hypnosis, how does that work for the central nervous system? How are you implementing it? Give us a, give us a background there.

Ali Navidi (05:23.372)
I think, I think there’s a few things I want to explain so that people get the right context. so first, let’s just talk about what hypnosis is and what it isn’t. Right. And the, and the problem I think with hypnosis is that everybody knows about it and what they know is entertainment hypnosis, right? They know mind control, they know magic, they know all that wacky stuff and what they don’t know.

Jannine Krause (05:29.509)
Yeah.

Jannine Krause (05:41.061)
you

Ali Navidi (05:53.742)
is clinical hypnosis and clinical hypnosis has at this point, 40 years of research of using hypnosis on GI problems. And the research is amazing. I mean, we’re talking about hundreds of studies, all uniformly effective. And it’s a tragedy to me that people don’t know about that side of hypnosis, right?

without spending too much time on it, let’s just separate all the entertainment stuff and we’ll say this clinical hypnosis is a whole other thing. How does it help with the gut? Well, you’ve already probably taught your audience well that there’s a very powerful gut brain axis and that what happens in the gut can affect the brain and what happens in the brain can affect the gut. Well, what we often see in patients with gut

Jannine Krause (06:42.159)
Mm-hmm.

Ali Navidi (06:50.794)
issues is something called hypervigilance. And it’s this unconscious, anxious scanning of the body and of the gut, particularly if there’s a problem area and the brain is always going there looking, how’s it feeling? I don’t know. It doesn’t quite feel right. And it’s always getting, and when it finds something it doesn’t like, then the catastrophizing kicks in. my gosh, what’s, I’m not going to be able to go out today. This is a bad day.

I shouldn’t really try to eat it. So they start catastrophizing and then all that anxiety and stress get funneled right into the gut. And then the symptoms actually increase. And then all those symptoms feed back up to the brain and they get amplified and distorted by something called visceral hypersensitivity.

So we’ve got these three components, right? The anxious scanning and catastrophizing, the visceral hypersensitivity, which amplifies it, and the powerful gut-brain connection. And that creates this really nasty cycle that traps a lot of people in symptoms.

Jannine Krause (08:02.821)
I think this happens so often for folks, especially in chronic gut issues.

Ali Navidi (08:10.86)
Yes, yes. Yeah, on the chronic side, absolutely.

Jannine Krause (08:16.673)
It seems, know, when I’m looking through them and just scanning through my brain about the different cases I’ve had, know, SIBO obviously is the top one in my mind because I’ve seen people go through so many different protocols and all the way down to like, you know, eating nothing and they still have symptoms and it’s like, I’m guessing you’ve seen that too.

Ali Navidi (08:36.184)
Yeah.

Ali Navidi (08:40.054)
yeah, yeah. We, mean, we’ll often see patients come to us where they essentially have something called RFID. And I’m sure you’re familiar like avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, meaning they’ve systematically reduced their diet to the point where it’s negatively affecting their life. It’s negatively affecting their health.

Jannine Krause (08:55.182)
Okay, okay.

Ali Navidi (09:07.902)
And the sad thing is they’re doing it to either avoid pain or to increase health, but they’re getting the opposite effect.

Jannine Krause (09:17.445)
And sadly, I’ll admit that I’ve gone through this in my practice of like, am I causing more trouble than good with elimination diets and these kind of things when it comes down to a very chronic case of folks. It’s like, ooh, I don’t know if we’re doing the right thing.

Ali Navidi (09:25.6)
Mmm.

Ali Navidi (09:36.302)
I think also there’s a lot of danger when people do these things on their own. So as an example, there’s a few different diets out there. One of them is FODMAP. Another example would be AIP diet. And both of these can be very strict, you’re not meant to stay on it.

Jannine Krause (09:40.537)
Yes.

Ali Navidi (09:59.81)
their elimination diets, meaning you go on it and then you reintroduce things back later. And I don’t know that people always do the reintroduction part because either they don’t know they should or they get anxious about reintroducing that food and they’re just not able to do it.

Jannine Krause (10:12.933)
it.

Jannine Krause (10:21.859)
I think both are things that I’ve seen when folks have come to me and the anxiety around food. I’m sure you’ve heard this too. Many people will be like, I don’t want to eat out. I bring my own food everywhere.

Ali Navidi (10:33.9)
Yes.

Yes, is. No, that’s, and just the image, that image, you know, you’re at a rest. You just imagine everybody, all your friends or family, they’re at a restaurant, they’re joining themselves, they’re eating. And then you’ve got this little sad little sack there and you don’t get to have that same enjoyment. So we’ll work with a lot of patients like this, where they’ve got that, that central nervous system component. Maybe they’ve

And we, often work with naturopaths and, and they’ll cause we, we don’t know SIBO like you all, and we’re not, we’re not able to treat it. That’s not our specialty. So, so you all will be treating the SIBO and there’ll be a certain percentage that need that nervous system component. And so they’ll kind of stall out in their progress. And so that we’ve got a few naturopaths around the country that, that send those patients to us.

And then what you see is they get this, they start improving pretty quickly when that’s the missing piece. And then after they’ve desensitized their system, then we work with them on reintroducing the food.

Because while they still have this hypervigilant, visceral hypersensitivity kind of spiral happening, it’s really hard to reintroduce food because they’re very likely to have a bad reaction to it. Not because the food is bad for them, but because their system is just running hot.

Jannine Krause (12:13.989)
Let’s talk about the system running hot because that’s one of the things a lot of folks, know, it’s hard to tease out because you associate the food being the problem and it’s hard to be like, wait, no, it’s my nervous system. So how do you work with the cognitive, like CBT and how do you work with different, you know, I guess the quick.

Not the quick, but the hot terms rewiring the brain per se. And I don’t know if you use that term. I’m curious as to what your term would be for helping someone in this case and having these reactions.

Ali Navidi (12:47.66)
Well, an example, one thing you want to educate them on is this phenomenon called conditioned food sensitivity. And most, most patients that are in this situation don’t even know that’s a thing. They know about food sensitivity. They know, you know, like I eat this food and bad things happen. but they don’t know that there’s a percentage of that that can be conditioned. That’s nervous system based. The symptoms are still real.

the reaction in the gut or the reaction in the body, 100 % real, but the cause is not because the food is not getting along with the body. It’s the causes that their nervous system has conditioned them. So how could that happen? An example, let’s say someone is just having a bad day. Maybe they’re stressed out. Maybe their system isn’t just feeling good that day and they happen to eat pizza and they have a bad reaction.

So then there’s a part of their brain that’s going to be like, huh, pizza. I don’t know about you. And then the next time they eat pizza, that part of their brain is going to pop up again and going to be like, I remember what happened last time we ate pizza. And there’s going to be this increased hypervigilance. And then if anything starts feeling weird in the gut, catastrophizing, man, I knew it. I knew I shouldn’t have eaten that pizza.

Jannine Krause (13:54.084)
You

Ali Navidi (14:15.99)
See, I’m gonna have a bad day. My gut’s gonna give me trouble. And at that point, all that stress and anxiety feed down to the gut and it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

and now they’re sure that pizza is bad for them. And every time they have that experience, it reinforces itself until that reaction is essentially automatic.

Jannine Krause (14:40.747)
sense that makes sense man so so how do you undo that what’s what’s the what’s the story on undoing that

Ali Navidi (14:51.086)
So we get back to our buddies, cognitive behavioral therapy and clinical hypnosis. And by the way, cognitive behavioral therapy is fairly well known. What we’re talking about here is a very specific type and a very specific protocol within it. So if you just go out into your community and just pick a random CBT therapist, it’s very likely they won’t know what to do with a GI problem. I just want to put that warning out because I’ve seen that happen.

very frequently. So you’re going to use that cognitive behavioral therapy to to reduce and change that hypervigilance and that catastrophizing. You’re going to teach the brain how to how to think and react in new ways. That’s not just an intellectual thing. That’s also just an experiential thing. And then you’re and then that’s where clinical hypnosis it

It’s a tool that can do so many different things, but one of the things it does that I don’t really know of a better way to do it is it can directly reduce the visceral hypersensitivity.

And that’s a, that’s a really powerful thing because the sensations from these people’s guts are not actually bad. It’s just that the brain has learned to amplify and distort them. It’s kind of like the metaphor I use is if you’re listening to music, you know, and you got headphones on and as a joke, someone goes and like cranks the volume up really high. It’s not like the music’s bad. It’s just.

the volume has been cranked up really high, so you’re not gonna enjoy it. In fact, it’s gonna be painful. And that’s kind of what happens to sensations in the gut.

Jannine Krause (16:44.815)
Wow, know, lot of people right now might be thinking like, okay, you know, is hypnosis then maybe reducing histamines or is it maybe reducing, you know, adjusting serotonin and dopamine, neurochemical or GABA, you know, are there any studies that highlight the neurochemical effect? Just out of curiosity and it’s more me asking on the studies, like just so I can relay things to folks or anything that.

Ali Navidi (17:13.206)
Yeah, it’s a great question. And I’m more ignorant than I should be about the biochemical effects. know as an example, I know I remember reading one study, it was out of Italy and they were using hypnosis and they actually found

that after the hypnosis, saw epigenetic effects and also reduction of immune response.

Yeah. And I was like, oh my gosh. And, and they’ve done brain studies also. I’m just, that’s, I’m like a, I’m a clinical guy and I just like to treat the patients. Um, but there’s a lot of studies out there looking at, you know, FMRI and different things like that. Um, it’s one of those things where it’s surprisingly well studied. If you go into something like PubMed, just type hypnosis in you’ll get

thousands of research articles studying hypnosis. Yeah. So, but I, but I don’t want to like make anything up and, the research is out there. It’s just, I’m not the man who knows it.

Jannine Krause (18:27.769)
You’re fine. You’re fine. I asked just because a lot of people might be interested, but me, I’m always like, where can I geek out more? Right? Where can I geek out more? Now, of course, I usually start podcasts off with this question, but I’m going to throw it in now just for fun. What brought you to really looking at the gut brain axis and all of this? What was what was going on in your world when you’re like, there’s something here.

Ali Navidi (18:47.939)
Yeah.

Ali Navidi (18:52.366)
Actually, I fell backwards into it. I was a microbiology major. I was working in biotech and I just started reading more and more about psychology, about hypnosis, about, and I loved it, but I never actually put it together that I could do that for a profession. I was about to start a PhD in biochemistry.

and luckily my wife was like, you might want to actually do something you are passionate about. I was like, okay, well, yeah, like, yes. Best, best advice I’ve ever gotten in my life. Right. so then I switched gears and you know, long story short, I’ve got my own practice. I’m using hypnosis all the time. I’m using CBT all the time. And I didn’t know it when I first started, but.

Like I mentioned before, hypnosis is an amazing tool for GI problems. And, and so I started with one patient and got great results and then did it with another and another, and then their doctors found out and they started referring to me. And, and it was just, I think, basically a need thing. There just wasn’t anyone else in the area doing this kind of work. And I was the only one there doing it. So slowly it was like eventually 80%.

of the patients I was seeing became GI patients because there were so many of them and there was nowhere else to go. And that’s actually why I started GI psychology. Why myself and another psychologist started it because it was frustrating and sad to know that, you know, like once I was full, there wasn’t anyone else in the DC Metro area who could help these types of patients. And I thought that was crazy.

And so we started this practice and we’ve grown very quickly since then.

Jannine Krause (20:59.597)
I can imagine, mean, second to fatigue, gut issues are the number two thing that folks see me for. then, of course, hormonal is in there, you know, in the mix too. And right now, I mean, it is hard to find folks.

that are specialized, right? And of course I wanna highlight, you I of course had to ask him like, really, you can see people in every state. So guys, I like to see people in every state. And so tell us a little bit of how that works and like what a typical session with you is like so folks can get a sense because I think for many people they’ve had therapy before and it’s just straight up health based.

Ali Navidi (21:37.642)
Mmm. Yeah.

Jannine Krause (21:39.167)
And all that. So they might be like, okay, when does hypnosis come in? When does CBT come in? How do you do it? How does it work?

Ali Navidi (21:46.776)
So this isn’t your everyday regular therapy. This isn’t what I would describe as supportive therapy. Not that the therapist isn’t supportive and kind and nice, but the goal is very focused and it’s very skills-based and it’s very problem-focused. So you’re going to learn specific techniques. You’re going to learn…

skills in terms of how to use hypnosis, how to use cognitive behavioral therapy to break that cycle that I described earlier, to break that hypervigilant visceral hypersensitivity cycle. And for that reason, it’s probably a little different than just the talk-based. There’s a lot more of an experiential component, right?

because people can talk all they want about, you know, this idea and that idea, but to have the experience of what it’s like to, to use hypnosis, to go into trance, to use that trance, to turn down the visceral hypersensitivity. So they can go in one session from, say an eight out of 10 pain to like a two and see that happening, have the experience of it.

in 15 minutes. It’s something you just have to do rather than talk about.

Jannine Krause (23:13.189)
Wow.

Jannine Krause (23:19.429)
Right, right. And I think for a lot of people, they’re like, okay, you can do this telehealth, obviously, because you’re in all the states. And when you’re talking through things, you’re doing the trance state of the hypnosis, the person is, like you said, talking down the pain, like literally working through the area or visualizing the area, know, something of that nature, depending on what you’ve prompted them, of course, with the hypnosis.

Ali Navidi (23:46.732)
Yeah. So, so hypnosis really is actually kind of simple. All it is is, teaching someone how to on purpose go into a trance state and a trance state is a normal human state of consciousness. We all go in and out of trance. you know, when we’re driving our car, when we’re watching a movie, when we’re exorcist, you know, like it’s hard to keep people out of trance.

It’s very common. I always make, what’s that?

Jannine Krause (24:17.422)
Interesting.

I’m like really? So we have, we’re all walking around in a trance and it’s in a lot of ways on autopilot.

Ali Navidi (24:30.09)
Yeah. I mean, just think like you’re in a meeting at work and your mind wanders and you’re thinking about what you’re going to do later. And then you’re thinking about, I need to go shopping. I need to get this, that, and the other thing. And then you come back and you’re like, what the hell were they just talking about? So you think about it, your ears were working. Your ears were receiving those sound waves, but your brain was somewhere else.

That’s an example of trance. I always make the joke, because I’ve got teenagers. If you want to see what trance looks like, just hand a teenager their phone.

they’re gonna be gone.

Jannine Krause (25:15.808)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, you’re absolutely right. I mean, just scrolling on social media is trans-state. And driving, of course, I think a lot of folks can relate to that, where you drive home from work, same path, a million times over, and you’re like, oh, look, I’m home already. What even happened on the way home?

Ali Navidi (25:32.398)
Yeah. Yeah. I’ve got my book on tape playing. Suddenly I’m home. I’m like, okay.

Jannine Krause (25:37.155)
Right. Yeah, here I am, here I am. You know, and I don’t think a lot of people realize that during these states, and I’m very curious too, if you recommend homework and folks to, you know, do some exercises that maybe they could tap into the drive home from work, working on their pain. I don’t know, just throwing it out there. Give us a little background on like, what kind of homework do you provide for folks?

Ali Navidi (26:01.742)
So there’s two types of homework we really almost always give. One is when we do the hypnosis session, we’re going to record it. And then we’re going to want the person to listen to it and practice it every day between, you know, that time. And then the next appointment, because we’re rewiring the brain doing it once is good.

Jannine Krause (26:12.709)
Mmm.

Ali Navidi (26:29.41)
doing it three, four, five, six, seven times is just going to, you know, reinforce that new pathway in the brain. The other thing we teach, which is really powerful is something called an anchor. An anchor is, is so simple, but it’s just such an empowering thing to learn. All it is is conditioning. So, you know, we,

We see like a sign, you know, a commercial for our favorite food. We suddenly get hungry, you know, like, um, we, see a certain person that we don’t like, we just see their face and we’re a little annoyed, right? These are all different kinds of anchors. Um, and so we, we create, uh, a relaxation or we create, uh, a comfort anchor or we create.

an anchor for managing their pain. But we, we create it in a conditioned response so that they can do the anchor whenever they need that effect. If they need more confidence, you can have an anchor for that. If you need to just relax and chill out, you can have an anchor for that. a patient I just started working with recently, came back and said, you know, I’ve, I’ve been using my anchor like at work and it’s just,

She’s so happy about it because she’ll have a meeting, it’s about to start. She does her anchor and muscles she didn’t even realize were tense just immediately and automatically start relaxing.

Jannine Krause (28:12.581)
That’s neat. And I can see where that would be really useful for folks who have spastic kind of gut, like colons and all kinds of abdominal muscles and things of that nature.

Ali Navidi (28:22.542)
Yeah.

Ali Navidi (28:25.806)
because they need to access that state fast. can’t go off and see me. They probably don’t even have time to go and listen to the recording. They need that help right now. And so you create these anchors that can get whatever that effect is and have it happen immediately.

Jannine Krause (28:47.971)
and then you can practice it and then eventually symptoms kind of just fade away from there.

Ali Navidi (28:54.626)
Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting. What you see is when people respond, let’s say this is their symptoms and it, starts to like kind of destabilize and then it goes, goes, goes, and it’s kind of trending down. And then it hits some point where it just boom. It just, the system breaks and you reset to a new way of doing things.

Jannine Krause (29:19.587)
It’s just what people describe like rewiring, you know, your thought against trauma or whatever, you know, other things too. How long on average do you see it take someone if say they’re doing the homework, they’re doing the things, they’re getting their anchors, practicing them, doing all

Ali Navidi (29:37.122)
Our data from our practice and also the data from all the studies that have been done is that we want to do at least eight sessions. And probably on average, it’s going to be between eight and 12. People often start seeing improvement by like the fourth or the fifth session, but the research shows that you want to finish off and do probably at least eight because that

kind of, they start to improve. but what, kind of really burns it into the brain are those last few sessions that, that make it so that the changes last. So, cause when the treatment is done, these patients actually tend to keep getting better, which is really interesting.

Jannine Krause (30:31.333)
I like this because it’s been that thing that I talk about a lot for folks when it comes down to, like you said, and we said earlier, is like the missing link. And I think that it’s a missing link not only for the gut, I think it’s a missing link for lot of chronic illness.

Ali Navidi (30:47.862)
yeah, yeah, you’re, opening a whole other topic, which is dear to my heart, but, but you’re absolutely right. Yes. there’s a lot happening in, just the body, where there’s that brain body connection also.

Jannine Krause (31:05.741)
Now I know you focus on the GI. Do you ever dabble in the other space when people have worked with you and they’re like, my GI side of things is better, but my chronic fatigue hasn’t gone away or my chronic mono or my chronic, you name it.

Ali Navidi (31:20.982)
a hundred percent, like all my career, I, I would always get the patients that had kind of reached the end of the line. Meaning, you know, they’ve been everywhere, they’ve done everything and nothing seemed to help. and you almost never see someone with just GI problems. what you often see is, this, this kind of constellation.

Jannine Krause (31:32.431)
Mm-hmm.

Ali Navidi (31:50.294)
of issues. So you’ll often see a GI issue. You’ll see headaches and then there’ll often be some kind of muscular skeletal pain that’s also happening. And there also might be an anxiety disorder of some kind or depression or trauma.

It’s like this very common constellation. And the good news is they’re all treatable. You know, it might feel like these are all different things, but there’s kind of this common central nervous system theme that goes throughout all of them.

Jannine Krause (32:30.917)
Have you dabbled in, and I’m guessing you probably have or some form of this, is like the cell danger response and the work around vagus nerve and all of that as it relates to immune system and response.

Ali Navidi (32:46.794)
Yeah. my gosh. it’s good timing. You asking me this. I just had the most fascinating conversation, with, this guy that invented a Vegas nerve stimulation device that was noninvasive.

And it was literally yesterday and he just kind of blew my mind. I mean, I, and I thought I was already pretty knowledgeable about the vagus nerve and the, the nervous system and you know, all this stuff, ventral vagal, dorsal vagal. but he took it to a whole other level, super impressive. and that connection between the vagus nerve and the immune system, I was not very familiar with.

previous to this conversation. It was really neat.

Jannine Krause (33:40.74)
Yeah.

It’s something, it’s something. And I’m seeing a lot more folks with, they just keep getting sick over and over again. They can’t seem to shake bugs, whether it’s chronic mono, Lyme, you know? And it’s fascinating to me. But, you know, nevertheless, it’s something that I always wanna touch on a little bit and be like, there’s so much more. So are you going to be implementing some vagus nerve stimulators in the clinic and having folks?

Ali Navidi (33:54.86)
Yes.

Ali Navidi (34:11.03)
Yeah. So the, step, like something like this, I’m, very willing to test it on myself. So that’s, that’s going to be my first round. they were nice enough to, they’re going to, they’re sending me one of the devices. So I’m going to, I’m like, okay, like, I’m going to start doing it every day. Let’s see what happens, you know? and I’m, I’m so excited to try it. I don’t know. Have you already tried devices like that? You have.

Jannine Krause (34:18.949)
Yeah.

Jannine Krause (34:32.794)
Hmm?

Jannine Krause (34:40.153)
Yeah, yeah, I’ve tried the Pulsato. I’ve also tried one from a fellow named Mark Fox. He owns, it’s Rezona Health. He has one that they just came out with. And I’ve kind of beta tested red light therapy with some tapping on acupuncture points because there’s a company called Kinian. They’re coming out with one that goes with red light therapy. And so those have been like my three I’ve been playing with over the last six-ish months.

Ali Navidi (34:58.649)
Jannine Krause (35:09.7)
No.

Ali Navidi (35:09.932)
I’ve also heard really interesting things about red light therapy also.

Jannine Krause (35:14.469)
Super cool, super cool stuff. And, you know, a lot of them are panels, right? But if you’ve got the targeted little, little red lights, kind of like Kinney and not, mean, yes, I have an affiliate with them folks, full disclosure, but I’m not, it’s really, like the device, but I like it it’s small and you can put it over points, targeted points. So I use it like acupuncture and you can put it over the belly points. You can put it, you know, neck, you can put it, I mean, it’s

Ali Navidi (35:39.009)
interesting.

Jannine Krause (35:44.31)
awesome fur.

Ali Navidi (35:45.902)
So I am, so this whole area is like, this is outside of my zone of expertise, but I’m fascinated by it and it’s so neat. I really love this stuff and absolutely. So if I try it out and I’m also gonna review the research, cause he was telling me there’s a lot of good research and so I’m gonna check that out also. And if it all lines up, I will absolutely be recommending it to patients.

I think I’d be crazy not to if it was even half as good as what he was describing.

Jannine Krause (36:21.785)
Yeah, yeah, definitely play with it. You’re like me, you gotta try it on yourself first. I won’t recommend anything unless I’ve tried it on myself. And yeah, that stuff, PEMF, also pulsed electromagnetic frequencies. Also another thing, yes. There’s the big Beamer mats, and those are like 10 grand, but there’s a portable device. Mark Fox, who owns Rezona Health, has the little.

Ali Navidi (36:38.062)
Fancy.

Jannine Krause (36:51.511)
stimulators, but the PMF that too is very interesting. It’s very, very interesting and something that, know, someone will look into. We’ll get you connected with his stuff too, because I think we’re at a place in health where the guts are just going to keep getting more and more inflamed. you know, one of the things I think a lot of folks are going to ask me to ask you.

and I’m gonna do it now before I get the ass later, is, do you believe that folks could technically eat anything and not have a reaction to it if they worked on the top-down approach to central nervous system and gut? Do you think that folks could be completely reaction-free, even eating like the junkiest of the junk out there?

Ali Navidi (37:22.071)
Yeah.

Ali Navidi (37:45.048)
I’ll give you the worst answer anyone ever gives to these kinds of questions. And then I’ll talk more about it. The answer I would give is it depends. Right. Cause from what I’ve seen, I do believe there are biologically based food sensitivities. Obviously there’s things like celiac and you know, different, different things like that. So I think.

Jannine Krause (37:52.037)
Sounds good.

Mm-hmm.

Ali Navidi (38:14.284)
different and then just, think, and I don’t understand this and I don’t know that science has caught up to this yet, but I think just genetically, there’s probably an ideal diet out there for each of us based on our genetics, our biochemistry, that we’re just not sophisticated enough to understand yet, all the nuances and the personalization of it. So I would say like big picture, there’s, I think there’s always going to be foods that

Jannine Krause (38:33.541)
Mm-hmm.

Ali Navidi (38:43.224)
that are better for people and worse for people. What I would say is that, if you’re somebody who has a history of GI issues, it’s very likely that you’ve picked up along the way, some conditioned food sensitivity. And it’s worth your time to try to decondition that to, to calm the system down. and I think that can.

vastly expand the amount of food that some people eat. Cause I think we’re talking about this off camera, I believe, that some patients will come in just incredibly restricted in terms of their food. Like you could, they could give you a piece of paper that has all the foods they’re allowed to eat, right?

Jannine Krause (39:35.919)
Mm-hmm

Ali Navidi (39:37.186)
And that is scary, you know, getting to the point where they have ARFID, like avoidant restrictive food intake disorder. it’s reached the level of an eating disorder. So I think, and I talked about this with you already is that you gotta, you gotta cool down the system and then you can reintroduce. And so for people who have that question, I think the first step is

you work with the nervous system, work with a gut brain therapist or you know, you do something to calm that system down. And then you can see about systematically, carefully reintroducing foods.

Jannine Krause (40:19.749)
makes no, that makes perfect sense. That makes perfect sense. I know a lot of people out there will definitely wonder, you know, like, can I really eat anything? And of course, I’m always bringing the caveat of like, well, you know, if you go to Kentucky Fried Chicken, and you overeat it, you’re probably not going to feel great. Anyway, you have to there are logical situations. And there are, you know, things where we’ve gotten to the point where yeah, you’re eating three foods, and that’s all you can eat. Now we’ve got

Ali Navidi (40:38.414)
Right.

Jannine Krause (40:49.583)
we’ve got something else behind all of it. And that’s…

Ali Navidi (40:52.894)
I I had a patient, because we see kids also. see, you know, kids, adolescents.

think there was a kid who was having a reaction to water.

Ali Navidi (41:07.182)
At that point, can be 100 % sure that this is nervous system thing. Because I don’t know that it’s possible to have an issue with waters considering what percentage of us is water. Right?

Jannine Krause (41:25.573)
It’s true. The only thing I would have in my mind is unless it’s really toxic water, then if they live in Flint, Michigan, probably impossible. All joking aside. Yeah, yeah. All joking aside, like, yes, it would probably have to be some kind of toxic water. But like the truth is, like, yeah, that would that would sound very similar to.

Ali Navidi (41:30.67)
Yeah.

Ali Navidi (41:34.639)
Right, ugh. That’s sad.

Jannine Krause (41:48.293)
It’s good to know that you work with kiddos because that is a common complaint that I do get from parents though, like my kid does not eat anything. They say their stomach hurts with everything. And I’ve also gotten cases where we’ve had teenagers where I think anxiety is manifesting and we’re getting acid reflux, we’re getting cyclical vomiting kind of stuff.

Ali Navidi (41:57.357)
Yeah.

Ali Navidi (42:09.324)
Yes, yeah, we get those kiddos, we get those teenagers all the time. I just got done, well, I’m not done, but he made a lot of progress. A little guy, 13 years old, tremendous amount of stomach pain, clearly related to anxiety, very quickly reducing all the food that he would eat to the point where it was really scaring people.

but responded, I mean, and that’s the nice thing about kids too, is they can have some pretty bad symptoms in terms of nervous system, gut problems, but they respond really well to treatment, better than adults. Their nervous system can reset and can learn faster than adults can. So you see like this guy, he did two sessions and he’s almost back to normal again.

Jannine Krause (43:07.023)
Nice, nice. That’s huge. That’s huge. So if parents see like a shift in the child’s eating based on maybe some stress or whatever it may be, maybe there’s something with school, we always blame it on, know, the kids got the stomach aches because they don’t want to go to school, but maybe something did happen and we can work on that. So, passed. Two date, two sessions.

Ali Navidi (43:16.13)
Yeah.

Ali Navidi (43:22.435)
Right.

Ali Navidi (43:30.798)
Oh yeah. mean, people have the capacity to learn. and, and I think that’s, I get a bit preachy when I start talking about hypnosis because it’s so misunderstood and it’s so incredibly powerful. I almost think of it as this is, this is almost your right as a human to learn these skills. Cause we all have the ability to go into trance.

Jannine Krause (43:47.461)
Yeah.

Ali Navidi (44:00.93)
but most of us do not know how to use it in a productive way, which is sad because, you know, self-hypnosis is an amazing tool for anxiety. It’s an amazing tool for pain and discomfort or for using it for habit change. It’s a really nice skill to have that sadly most people will never learn.

Jannine Krause (44:25.541)
Well, hopefully they’re listening to this podcast and we will get that word out. Now, of course, that being said, folks can reach you at gipsychology.com, but where else? Give us kind of the background in terms of all the ways folks can interact with you, how to get in touch for a session, what it looks like, all that kind of stuff.

Ali Navidi (44:30.03)
Thank

Ali Navidi (44:45.058)
Yeah. so we’re, think on the, the major prop, like Instagram and think like LinkedIn and, I apologize because I’m just such a, not a social media guy. but, but they, but more importantly, they can go to that website and they can get a free consult. So if they’re skeptical about it, they have a lot of questions. They can go.

Jannine Krause (44:58.523)
So good.

Ali Navidi (45:13.176)
There’s somebody clinically trained who will answer all their questions and help them figure out if this is the right kind of thing for them.

Jannine Krause (45:22.383)
That’s huge. That’s huge. And like we had mentioned before, you’re all across the US. What about Canada? What about, you know, international folks? Do you have any resources for them? Things of that nature.

Ali Navidi (45:34.87)
It’s, we were just talking about this the other day, cause I was at a conference and I met a Canadian dietitian and she was saying they, they just don’t have these gut brain therapy resources in their country. And we’ve looked into trying to treat patients in Canada and it’s like this licensure nightmare. And so we’re like, okay, what do we do about that? And then we started thinking like, okay, over, cause we’ve been around for about five years.

And I’ve been in charge of training. And during that time, I’ve taken what was a very informal process of me training the therapist to a very structured. We have like a very structured curriculum that has, you know, videos and things to read and then individual supervision and group consultation and experiential exercise. It’s, it’s a whole like very solid thing. And so.

We started talking about the idea of at the very least, maybe we can offer that training to clinicians in Canada. If, know, even if we can’t treat patients there that maybe we could train people to do it because big part of our mission is that it’s just, it’s a very sad situation that these very effective treatments are not available to more people. And I didn’t mention this earlier, but when you look at the research about 80 % of

patients will reach their treatment goals when they engage in these treatments. So they’re very effective, they’re short term, and they’ve got lot of empirical evidence supporting.

Jannine Krause (47:17.583)
I think it’s fascinating and you know, being on the other side of seeing folks reach a point where it’s like, okay, there’s a big missing piece here. I can see where this is absolutely helpful. And I really do hope that you guys do take advantage of Ali’s Group’s free consult to see if it’s a fit for you because like you said, it sounds pretty fast, especially for the kids, which I know for a lot of parents, that’s a big frustration for them.

And in my mind, I’m like, why wouldn’t you? Why wouldn’t you?

Ali Navidi (47:52.706)
Yeah, and it happens so often with those poor kids, you know, and the parents see it, they know it. They’re like, okay, little Johnny, little Susie is, their stomach is hurting every Sunday night, or it’s hurting every Monday morning before they go to school. They’re having all these symptoms. They know that there’s a brain gut component.

but they don’t know what to do about it. you know, they’ll go to their doctor, they’ll do all the tests and the tests are going to show that there’s nothing wrong. And then they’re kind of like, take them to a therapist. But a standard therapist isn’t really going to know how to address the GI issue. If there’s an anxiety disorder, they can help. If there’s depression, they can help, but they don’t know how to address that mind body connection. And so they really end up spinning their wheels for a long time.

until they find the right provider. And again, so that’s kind of the motivation that we had for creating the practice is, you we don’t want people to suffer longer than they need to.

Jannine Krause (49:03.095)
Absolutely. No, this is great. And Ali, I’ve learned so much. And I’m also, you know, know, I know that folks are going to hear this and be like, okay, Dr. Krause has said this before. I’ve heard it. Like someone else to back me up here. But nevertheless, we’ll make sure we get out your links and we get out the website, gi psychology.com on the podcast notes at drj krause nd.com. Ali, thanks again.

I really appreciate it. Great conversation. Look forward to hearing how things develop with the Vegas nerve stimulators and the red light in the practice.

Ali Navidi (49:41.58)
Yeah, I’m super excited and all of you listeners, should listen to Dr. Krauss. She knows what she’s talking about. You know, when she tells you about the brain gut, she absolutely knows her stuff.

Jannine Krause (49:56.261)
You’re the best. Thank you so much.

Ali Navidi (49:59.982)
Thanks.