Healing Digestive Distress and Anxiety Through the Gut-Brain Connection With Elyce Shapiro

Elyce Shapiro is the Founder of Balanced Gut Nutrition & Health, a virtual private practice that helps people restore balance in gut and mental health through a non-diet, Health-at-Every-Size (HAES®)-aligned approach. She is a Licensed Dietitian Nutritionist (LDN) and Certified Nutrition Specialist (CNS). As a specialist in the gut-brain connection, Elyce works compassionately with individuals experiencing digestive distress often tied to anxiety, trauma/PTSD, or stress. Her practice emphasizes intuitive eating and compassionate care — free from diet culture, food moralizing, and weight stigma.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[2:53] Elyce Shapiro explains the gut-brain connection and the cycle between digestion and anxiety
[05:37] Why Elyce pursued gut health after struggling with trauma, PTSD, and digestive issues
[9:40] How a misdiagnosed IBS case led to testing for SIBO
[12:38] The risks of long-term restrictive diets and their impact on mental health
[18:04] How parents can support kids’ gut health with food neutrality and a weight-neutral approach
[25:20] Why stress and cortisol damage the gut barrier and contribute to brain fog and inflammation
[32:15] When probiotics, fiber, and fermented foods may worsen gut issues instead of healing them

In this episode…

Digestive distress and anxiety can feel like an endless cycle, each one making the other worse. Many people are left wondering if the key to relief lies beyond restrictive diets and quick fixes. How can understanding the connection between the gut and brain catalyze healing?

According to Elyce Shapiro, a licensed dietitian nutritionist and gut health specialist, the gut and brain are constantly communicating, and when they fall out of sync, it can trigger both physical and emotional struggles. She highlights how stress, trauma, and restrictive diets often worsen digestive issues rather than solve them. The key is restoring balance through diversity in food, food freedom, and supporting the body’s natural healing process. Elyce also emphasizes collaboration with therapists and the importance of movement, sleep, and compassion in long-term healing.

In this episode of The Coping Podcast, Dr. Leigh Weisz sits down with Elyce Shapiro, Founder of Balanced Gut Nutrition & Health, to discuss healing digestive distress and anxiety through the gut-brain connection. They explore the risks of restrictive diets, why stress damages the gut barrier, and how food neutrality supports adults and children. Elyce also shares when common gut health fixes like probiotics or fiber may actually make symptoms worse.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Quotable Moments:

“I like to say that I have a passion for poop. It is true.”
“Seventy percent of IBS diagnoses are actually undiagnosed SIBO, which stands for small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.”
“Food neutrality means there are no good or bad foods, and pizza and ice cream belong.”
“Cortisol is basically like a battering ram to our gut barrier, weakening its protective lining.”
“I spend my life living in PubMed research, not social media or advice from influencers.”

Action Steps:

Normalize conversations about digestion and stress: Removing stigma around gut health encourages earlier intervention and more effective treatment.
Focus on food diversity, not restriction: A varied diet strengthens the gut microbiome and improves resilience against digestive and mental health issues.
Address both mental health and gut health together: Recognizing their two-way connection breaks cycles of anxiety and digestive distress for lasting relief.
Use caution with quick-fix solutions like probiotics: Tailoring gut health strategies prevents worsening symptoms and ensures more sustainable healing.
Incorporate lifestyle factors like movement and sleep: Supporting the body holistically enhances digestion, reduces inflammation, and improves mood regulation.

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Coping Partners.

Coping Partners is a mental health practice dedicated to helping children, adolescents, and adults manage various challenges including anxiety, divorce, behavioral issues, relationship problems and much more in the Chicago suburbs.

Our practitioners are devoted to building on our clients’ strengths and bolstering weaknesses.

To gain insight and tools for getting unstuck check out our website at CopingPartners.com, email us at support@copingpartnersgroup.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro: 00:01

Welcome to The Coping Podcast, where we share strategies for coping with the stressors of life, especially the difficulties of parenting. And here is your host, Dr. Leigh Weisz.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 00:15

This is Dr. Leigh Weisz. I am the host of The Coping Podcast, where I feature top experts on topics like raising healthy children, parenting, and so much more. Past guests include Dr. Doug Bolton, clinicians Ben Kessler and Michelle Winterstein, Dr. Aryn Froum and many more. Just a quick disclaimer. The information provided is for educational and informational purposes only.

This is not intended to provide mental health treatment and does not constitute a client therapist relationship. The information provided is not a replacement for being assessed and evaluated by a licensed professional, and is not intended to replace mental health or medical advice. This episode is brought to you by Coping Partners. Coping Partners is a mental health practice in the Chicago suburbs dedicated to helping children, adolescents and adults. We help manage various challenges including anxiety, divorce, behavioral issues, relationship problems, and much more.

Check out more episodes of our podcast and our website at copingpartners.com, and you can contact us with any questions you have. So before we dive into today’s topic, I wanted to introduce our guest, Elyce Shapiro. Elyce is a licensed dietitian nutritionist, excuse me, and the Founder of Balanced Gut Nutrition & Health. She is deeply committed to the gut brain connection. Elyce holds a master’s in Nutrition and Integrative Health and is a certified nutrition specialist and a health at every size practitioner.

We’ll explain later what that means. She supports individuals, often those experiencing stress, trauma, anxiety, or digestive issues in restoring gut balance without diet, culture restriction or weight stigma. Her virtual private practice specializes in helping individuals whose digestion is intertwined with emotional or psychological stress. Her website is balancedguthealth.com and she offers virtual consultation sessions for adults.

So thank you so much, Elyce, for being here.

Elyce Shapiro: 02:21

Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 02:24

Likewise. And before we even start, I have to just let you know I loved the quote on your website and for for those listening and not watching, it says your gut and your brain are besties, but sometimes besties can get out of sync. So I just thought that was like the the greatest quote for the website in terms of what you do. But I’m going to let you start by just sharing a little bit about your background. Kind of like, what is it that you do and how did you get into this line of work?

Elyce Shapiro: 02:53

Yeah, no thank you. And that is I often use that a lot when talking about the gut brain connection. Just because, you know, I say sometimes they get out of sync. And just like with if you are out of sync with your bestie, it kind of feels like your world is like done a complete 180 and you’re thinking, oh my gosh, what can I do to bring things back to normal? And the same thing you would do with your friend is what you would do with your gut, and your brain is you have to support both.

And so anyway, so that’s kind of the little narrative about like what I do. But yeah, so I am a licensed dietitian nutritionist. I focus on gut health and its connection to mental health. And what that translates to is basically people who have digestive issues. And I’m talking about all those ones that people don’t like to talk about poop, gas, all that, you know, stuff that we.

Yes, exactly. I, I like to say that I have a passion for poop. It is true. So. Yes.

But so people who have all those digestive issues, and if they have stress or anxiety or PTSD from trauma or things like that that can exacerbate your digestive issues. And also your digestive issues can make you anxious and they can perpetuate your mental health issues. And so I work to kind of break that cycle by addressing both of them, obviously within scope of practice from a mental health standpoint. And then in terms of like, you know, what even brought me to this is my I think everyone who gets into a lot of people get into the integrative health field. It’s, you know, based on your own personal experiences.

And so for me, I have a history of trauma and PTSD as well as digestive issues. And it was through my own long path of going the conventional route, seeing different GI doctors here in Chicago, Northwestern, University of Chicago, you know, Rush, and then also Cleveland Clinic and things like that. None of it getting better took years. And then it was through me understanding, becoming my own advocate. Like, I think so many people have to do and and learning about gut health, reading articles about how our gut bacteria can impact specifically PTSD and trauma for me.

And as a side note, also working with a therapist. That part is very important too. But from a digestive standpoint, when I learned about that, I wanted to learn how it could heal my gut in terms of gut bacteria. And so I saw a naturopath and, you know, she was able to do in six weeks what doctors couldn’t do in six years. And so, yeah.

And that’s nothing like I love conventional. I mean, we need them like they.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 05:36

Of course.

Elyce Shapiro: 05:37

Brilliant. There’s so much great medicine that we have out there. But also, you know, there’s room for other things too. So anyway, so yeah, that, that once I started to heal from everything and full disclosure, I was working in corporate America and I was making. I don’t know if this is appropriate to say, but a whole bunch of old white men that were already rich, a lot richer, and learning how stress impacted my life.

And I had to, you know, be very mindful of that while still getting through the PTSD and all of that. It wasn’t worth it. And so I quit my job and knew I wanted to go back to school to get a master’s and do what I do. So.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 06:15

Oh that’s incredible. What a what an amazing story. And we’re glad you did, because it sounds like you’re helping a lot of people in an area that, again, is probably not so popular at this point. You know, I don’t know many people who do what you do. So that’s wonderful.

Elyce Shapiro: 06:31

Thank you. I love what I do.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 06:32

So you can tell anyone who’s like, I love poop. You know I love it. Yes. So what does gut health really mean? And kind of like what I guess.

What are things you advise patients to do to improve gut health? Let’s start there.

Elyce Shapiro: 06:49

Yeah. So it’s a great question. And the answer is that it’s different for everyone. Similar to ask what is you know, if someone says they want to improve their health it’s it’s different for everyone. So from a gut health perspective, typically the things that I’m seeing in my practice are people who have, you know, frequent diarrhea or frequent constipation, you know, gas, bloating, especially for women when they feel like that, they can’t wear their clothes because, you know, if they unzip their pants because the bloating is so bad.

And it’s also a combination of having those digestive issues, but seeing how it’s impacting them in their social life. So what I find in a lot of people with digestive issues is we get these socialization fears, so fears to go out to dinners with friends or fears to go to parties or work events because you don’t know if the food that you’re going to eat, is that going to make you run to the bathroom? Do you have to justify why you’re running to the bathroom? Or how long you spent in the bathroom? Right.

Embarrassing for sure. Yeah, exactly. And so? So for me, it’s, you know, those are the types of people, I think when we talk about improving gut health, it is so that they can improve their quality of life so they don’t have fears around, you know, socialization or eliminating a ton of foods when people have digestive issues. I find so many people are constantly removing things, trying to find, you know, what is the food that’s causing this disruption?

And I will tell you, most of the time it’s not the food. But so for those people, it is food freedom. It’s being able to eat what they want without fear. So I think it’s really just improving their quality of life depending on how their digestion is impacted.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 08:34

Well, and I can say I work with a couple young adults who have, you know, diagnoses of IBS and and. Right. It impacts their mood. Right. Like you’re saying, they don’t want to go out.

They don’t want to do the normal things they enjoy doing. They feel, you know, often more anxious or more depressed. It definitely impacts, you know, the mood. And so we always think about gut rethink. We talk about gut like you have a gut feeling.

Yeah. You know we think about gut like a second brain. And I do think it’s sort of like a chicken egg where sometimes it’s hard to tell, like which came first and which causes what. But, you know, I’ve had patients who have anxiety, who are treated with a medicine that’s supposed to help their GI issues, and all of a sudden the anxiety gets better and vice versa. So it’s it’s really a fascinating connection for me and obviously for you, you know, a heck of a lot about it.

So maybe you could tell us a little bit about a client you’ve worked with. Obviously not with the name or anything like that, but just kind of like what they were coming in for and what kind of work you did with them to improve these symptoms.

Elyce Shapiro: 09:40

For sure. No thank you. Yeah. So I’ve got one client. She’s.

She was in her. Well, we’re no longer working together because she’s in a good place now. But but no, she came to me because she had just been has so many digestive issues for about 2 to 3 years. And it’s the gas, the bloating. Full disclosure I don’t remember whether she tended towards constipation or diarrhea at this point.

One of the. But for her, she had also been put on. And this is one of the big misconceptions out there. So IBS, irritable bowel syndrome, a lot of people get that diagnosis. And it’s really just an umbrella for we know there’s something wrong with you, but we’re not really sure what it is.

So we’re going to put you in this category. Right? 70% of of IBS diagnoses are actually undiagnosed Sibo, which is something Sibo. Sibo stands for small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. And I mentioned that because this is something that I suspected with my client based on her symptoms and things like that.

And so what’s interesting is that the GI doctors had told her you should follow a low Fodmap diet because when they give them the IBS diagnosis, and again, this is not anything against GI doctors. They’re doing what they you know, what they know and what they see. And I know that they don’t get a ton of nutrition education. Right. So totally understand that.

And they’ll put them on something called the low Fodmap diet, low Fodmap diet those it’s basically Fodmap stands for fermentable oligosaccharides. Like all these other saccharides, which are basically complex sugars that when we eat certain complex sugars that they break, you know, our body breaks them down. Some people with digestive issues have a hard time breaking them down. The low Fodmap diet is extremely restrictive. I don’t use it in my private practice.

It does not treat anything. So it can maybe resolve the symptoms for about maybe a week or two. But ultimately it doesn’t doesn’t improve anything. It doesn’t change the condition. And it’s also extremely not just extremely restrictive but extremely nutrient poor.

And she’d been following this diet.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 11:57

You’re saying like for life. Like you might know early to relieve your symptoms, but it’s really not a good long term plan.

Elyce Shapiro: 12:03

No. It’s also been known, you know, anecdotally as a gateway to disordered eating. Eating disorder. Yeah. So what I’ll say, though, is also from a gut health perspective, because this is usually a GI related thing, it deprives you of all of the foods that feed the beneficial bacteria in your gut.

And so she’d been following this. If you put someone on the low Fodmap, we say short term, maybe for weeks, you know tops. And again, I don’t use that in my practice. But that’s what some of the guidance is. She’d been on it for 2 to 3 years.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 12:37

Oh, wow.

Elyce Shapiro: 12:38

So extremely restrictive eating, she couldn’t stand it. It was driving her nuts. She had so much anxiety about her food. She was still feeling horrible and and same thing. She couldn’t go out.

She couldn’t socialize. She was getting a master’s in therapy, actually. And so, you know, she just she just wanted that quality of life. She wanted to eat more. She was going to be taking trips overseas.

And so we did this, you know, I did an intake with her kind of assessing everything. Turns out she had gotten some pretty bad food poisoning overseas, incidentally, 2 to 3 years ago when her symptoms showed up.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 13:21

Oh, wow.

Elyce Shapiro: 13:21

Yeah. And so it was after that that when all her GI symptoms started. So I ordered a Sibo test for her. I ordered a stool test, which in the state of Illinois, I do it under another through a third party. Like legally.

That’s how we do it, and I can’t diagnose. So if the Sibo test comes back positive, you have to refer her to the doctor for the formal diagnosis. The point is, we figured out she had some dysbiosis, which is overgrowth of unfriendly microbes. Microbes? You don’t have enough of the friendlies to many of the unfriendlies.

And we did. I gave her her options. There’s the conventional route. You can go with antibiotics and things like that. You can also go herbal route.

And she chose the herbal route. And so we did that. I didn’t change anything in her diet. I told her she can eat whatever she wants because it’s not the food. It’s a, you know, she’s got this overgrowth.

She also had some intestinal permeability, which is basically when the lining in our gut, we have this very thin lining in our guts, quite literally one cell thin, very protective barrier. And if it gets opened, all the stuff from our digestive tract leaks into our bloodstream. And it’s known as leaky gut. That’s the term everybody knows it by. I call it intestinal permeability, because I had a professor in grad school who hated the term leaky gut.

But same thing. Point is, when that happens, you’re not it’s not the specific foods that you’re reacting to. It’s the fact that you have your gut lining isn’t where it should be. You’ve got food and all these other particles leaking into your bloodstream, which creates inflammation. So we just needed to heal her gut, and she doesn’t need me anymore.

She travels like, you know, so.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 15:08

So. And when you say she went the herbal route, right? What does that mean? Like, what is she actually taking?

Elyce Shapiro: 15:15

Great question. It’s a bunch of I mean, honestly, it’s a bunch of supplements. So there’s certain herbs that have antimicrobial properties. And so we’ll use those, we’ll use certain nutrients that are really healing to the gut and support the gut lining to help, you know, reinforce that. So yeah, it’s a bunch of like herbs and spices.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 15:37

After and after. How long would you say you saw this turnaround where she was feeling much better?

Elyce Shapiro: 15:43

I would I mean, the thing.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 15:44

Is, from the time she.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 15:45

Started the herbal, you know, kind of treatment.

Elyce Shapiro: 15:47

Yeah, that’s the thing. And I’m, I always this is why I give my clients the option, because the herbal route takes a lot longer. We’re talking, like, maybe six months, if not longer on a gut protocol.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 15:58

She had years.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 15:59

Of pain and suffering. So. I mean, and then how long would like the antibiotic route take?

Elyce Shapiro: 16:05

2 to 4 weeks, depending on what they put you on.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 16:08

But what are the cons of that route? I’m assuming there’s also cons to that.

Elyce Shapiro: 16:12

There are cons to that. And that because antibiotics are not selective, they kill everything, the good and the bad. But full disclosure, some of the antimicrobials that we use to they also do that. So I, I will reinforce, you know, we’re doing some, you know, getting rid of some of the overgrowth, but also do stuff to reinforce and provide, you know, for the fact that we are getting rid of some of the overgrowth and maybe killing some of the good, which I could do the same with antibiotics.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 16:42

Too, right?

Elyce Shapiro: 16:43

So let them know.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 16:44

That you and they choose to go like the more conventional antibiotic route. You would still help them in terms of like, what should you be making sure, I’m assuming probiotics or something like that, to make sure that while you’re doing the antibiotics, you’re, you know, you’re kind of help helping them heal still. Yes.

Elyce Shapiro: 17:00

Exactly. So yeah. And also some people just prefer, you know, I know we’re in this era of like holistic health and that is a field I work in. But sometimes I do think we take it a little too far. But, you know, the more natural approach, some people just don’t like the thought of using antibiotics.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 17:16

So it sounds like there are two alternatives. Right?

Elyce Shapiro: 17:19

Exactly, exactly.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 17:21

So it sounds like you’re very helpful too, in helping a client who’s had these symptoms for years and years even understand how to get the right diagnosis. Yeah, it sounds like, you know, Conventional medicine, like you said, often just falls under an umbrella. And and there’s I mean, I have I have clients again, who are in their 20s who’ve had major GI issues for years. They have GI doctors, and I don’t know how much better they’re feeling. So this is really helpful information.

Elyce Shapiro: 17:47

Yeah. Thanks.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 17:48

Tell us a little bit about like from a parenting lens. Right. And I know you work with adults, but from a parenting lens kind of what should we do in terms of our kids gut health from an early age, like, or what should we do and what should we not do? I should say.

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