Q&A: How disease can be rooted back to the GI tract

Photo Cred: Kindel Media/Pexels

By Avery St. Onge

Most diseases originate in the gastrointestinal tract (GI) tract, according to Sean McCaffrey, DC, IHS, LDHS, founder of McCaffrey Health Center, in Springfield, Ill.

McCaffrey’s integrative medical practice aims to uncover chronic stress and identify the root cause of medical problems through acupuncture, chiropractic, and nutrition. We had a conversation with McCaffrey about his perspective on how the GI relates to disease.

Integrative Practitioner: Can you tell me about what exactly the GI tract is? How do diseases originate from the GI tract?

Sean McCaffrey: The gastrointestinal tract is really everything from the mouth to the anus and everything in between. It’s a whole long tube all the way through the body. Something that people get confused or misled about is that the GI tract is technically outside of the body because it’s exposed to the outside world at either end. In turn, the GI tract is vulnerable to bacteria, bugs, and viruses and all these opportunistic things that can infect the body from the outside. If these foreign substances are allowed to get inside the body or they leak inside the body, that’s when they challenge the immune system. A lot of the disorders and dysfunctions that happened to us occur because of the GI tract’s inability to stop foreign invaders. When you think about immune functions, 70 percent of your immune system is in the GI tract, and that’s where a lot of health issues begin.

Integrative Practitioner: When you’re talking about diseases that are rooted in the GI tract, which diseases are you talking about?

Sean McCaffrey: There’s a lot. Of course, some are more connected to the GI tract than others. For example, something like COVID-19 technically has to come through that GI tract. If you look at the mouth and the sinuses as a continuation of the GI tract, because they’re both directly linked to how you breathe air, it’s clear that the GI tract is how a lot of upper respiratory bugs get into the body. Really, almost anything you can conceive of, including numerous cancers, have been linked to it. Schizophrenia, bipolarism, depression, and anxiety are all directly linked to the gut as well. Most of your skin conditions are also linked to the GI tract, in addition to more obvious diseases like celiac, Crohn’s, colitis, and other GI disturbances.

When you start looking at autoimmune disorders, that’s where a lot of people don’t make the connections. Autoimmune diseases such as Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis are associated with the gut. So, when you’re looking at disease in the body, if you don’t start at the GI tract, a lot of times you miss the connection and you end up chasing symptoms.

Integrative Practitioner: When treating a patient, how do you identify what’s wrong with their GI tract?

Sean McCaffrey: In my practice, there’s a couple ways we do that. You can go at it from a purely musculoskeletal standpoint where you can literally palpate the body to see if different organs have problems. When organs get in trouble, they will cause a muscle contraction in the tissue above the organ and at the innervation point in the spine on its way up to the brain. Often, you can literally use touch to see if the body has a muscle contraction that’s palpable.

I also run something called an integrated urinalysis panel (IUP). It lets me know if the body is digesting food properly. I find a urine test in this case is valuable. Because urine is something the body gets rid of so frequently in the day, it’s very easy to see change or a shift. In contrast, with bloodwork tests for example, you’re not really going to see any change unless it’s catastrophic because blood cells live 90 to 120 days on average. That’s more of a damage assessment. The urine can give early warning sirens of a system being pushed beyond its means. The IUP is 24 different tests, and you can read each one of the 24 results like a musical note, string them together, and let them play the song for that patient. It gives you a clear indication of what the body’s trying to do and what it can’t do.

Integrative Practitioner: After identifying the problem, what does the process of rebuilding a patient’s gut look like? And in turn, how does that help with whatever disease they’re struggling with?

Sean McCaffrey: Once you get an indication of where the body is being pushed too hard, where the body is struggling, then you start looking at the dysfunctions that are showing up. If we look at viruses and bacteria, for example, because that’s what most people associate diseases with, those are opportunistic. They’re going to move into an environment that’s user friendly. If you change the environment, those guys don’t set up camp.

When you get into the diabetes, for example, and cancers and heart disease, those are a different animal. Now, those aren’t always viral in nature. Those are the body literally being overwhelmed. The system is saying, ‘look, I just can’t do what you’re asking me to do any longer,’ and it starts to fail. So, you can use something like the IUP and look at the status of gut health. The lining of the intestinal tract turns over every six weeks. After that six-week window, then that’s when you can change whatever is going on in the body and the gut will heal. You balance it and you bring it back into line. When the gut heals, you seal it and you let the body take care of itself. The key is finding the cause behind why it got into trouble in the first place and then dealing with the effects.

A lot of healthcare, in my experience, gets caught up in the effect. Practitioners need to be asking questions like ‘why did you get this disease? Where did it start? What was going on in the body that allowed it in?’ When you start looking at the IUP and you start balancing gut health, you can literally close the door that something opportunistic went through. When you close that door, now it’s done. It doesn’t have that opportunity to keep chipping away at the body. Then you can heal the body from the ramifications of whatever the disease caused.

Integrative Practitioner: How long is this process of healing the gut? Is it a lifelong treatment? Is there an end date to it?

Sean McCaffrey: It’s not a never-ending proposition. The key is once you find what’s irritating the gut – and everybody’s unique – you have to find out what is aggravating a patient’s system. When you look at stress, for example, you look at fear and worry. We know that people who have lots of worry, they often develop GI problems. They get ulcers and they get stomach problems and indigestion and heartburn. Physiologically, thoughts and emotions can really tear up the lining of the gut. The lining of the gut is made up of fatty acids, water, alkaline minerals, flora, etc. In theory, you can heal and balance the gut with supplements in six weeks, but after that, what if they don’t get rid of that stress?

What if the stress is an ill child or something of that nature? What if it’s a financial problem that they’re having? What if it’s something they can’t get away from? Then, no matter what supplement you provide them with, you can’t get over that hump.

There are also physical things that can go wrong and impact the gut. Sometimes people will eat something toxic by accident like bad sushi. Or maybe someone is eating something chronically that they’re sensitive to which irritates the lining of the gut. If you don’t change the environment, it doesn’t matter what therapy you do. You’ll just be chasing symptoms to make patients feel better momentarily.

The goal is to not do that. The goal is to identity the root cause and treat that instead of a patient’s various symptoms. If you can make sure that that the GI tract is working properly and realize that a lot of the immune system lives in that tract, then you can begin to prevent and treat diseases more effectively.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited and condensed.