About the Episode
Learn about the gut-brain connection and how disorders of the gut aren’t just digestive issues; they’re often signals from your nervous system.
If you’ve been struggling with gut issues, anxiety, or chronic discomfort that doctors can’t explain, this episode is for you.
Dr. Ali Navidi, breaks down the science and psychology of the gut-brain connection. He explains how trauma, stress, and emotional survival patterns can disrupt digestion and how nervous system regulation and therapy can help restore balance.
We also explore the deep connection between gut health and mental health, and why treating one without addressing the other often leaves people stuck. Whether you’re living with IBS or another GI disorder and carrying the emotional toll of feeling unheard, this conversation offers insights and hope.
Episode Guest
Dr. Ali Navidi is a licensed clinical psychologist, one of the founders of GI Psychology, and one of the founders and past president of the Northern Virginia Society of Clinical Hypnosis (NVSCH). Dr. Navidi has been helping patients with GI disorders, chronic pain, and complex medical issues for over ten years.
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Episode Transcript
Introduction to Dr. Ali Navidi
Dr. Julie Lopez: Hi, everyone. On this week’s episode, we will be diving into the brain-gut relationship, and it’s going to be really exciting. I want you to stay until the end, where we’re going to hear about the three keys to empowered health.
Today, I’d like to welcome Ali Navidi, who is the co-founder of GI Psychology. He is an expert in brain-gut health. So before we jump in, don’t forget to check out our website, www.vivapartnership.com, for free and low-cost resources that can change your life.
Thank you so much for joining us, Ali.
Dr. Ali Navidi: My pleasure, Julie. Great to talk with you. I’m excited to get started talking about brain-gut health. Where do you wanna begin?
Exploring the Gut-Brain Connection
Dr. Julie Lopez: You know, I love this topic so much and I love it because I happen to know that a lot of people end up having really frustrating experiences with the medical profession of which we are both a part of, but they are often told really essentially that they just have to live with some pretty debilitating gastrointestinal struggles without real relief in sight.
So, can you tell me a little bit around the inspiration for starting GI psychology and what kinds of maybe horror stories you’ve heard from the front lines for people?
Dr. Ali Navidi: Julie, I can’t express how perfectly you started this off because that’s literally my motivation for doing this is over the years, so many of my patients have come to me after years and years and years of bouncing around the medical profession, getting tests, getting second, third, fourth opinions, and just being told over and over, you have to live with this. And that is absolutely not true.
They don’t have to live with it, and there’s a lot that can be done to help these patients. And what are we talking about? We’re talking about…
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah, I was gonna ask. Give me some examples so we know what to look for.
Dr. Ali Navidi: We’re not talking about every single GI problem out there. There’s a lot of GI problems we’re not talking about right now. You know, things like inflammatory bowel disease. We’re not talking about, we’re not talking about celiacs and things like that.
What we are talking about is a class of disorders called disorders of gut-brain interaction. And it covers about 20-something different disorders. The book right, like back there, not the mind your gut book, but there’s another book by the Rome Foundation, and it talks about all these disorders. But long story short, about 40% of the population at some point will have one of these disorders. The most well-known one is irritable bowel syndrome. And one in 10 Americans will have irritable bowel syndrome.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Wow. Can you tell us a little bit? Because there may be people listening who have heard of irritable bowel syndrome, but maybe aren’t connecting it to what they’re experiencing. I was pretty shocked when you said 40%, it’s almost half of us are going to have some type of struggle with one of these many types of gut-based, and you would say brain and gut-based, right?
Dr. Ali Navidi: Yes.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Gut-based struggle. So yeah, tell me a little bit more about IBS.
Dr. Ali Navidi: So, IBS is a fairly straightforward but very difficult disorder to have. So, essentially, you diagnose it by having some sort of bowel issue. There might be constipation, there might be diarrhea, and then there’s some sort of pain component. So usually that’s like abdominal pain. Often goes along with it is some sort of bloating also, but those are essentially the components of IBS.
But what it looks like in practice is it can be tremendously debilitating. And we’re talking about very serious pain, sometimes pain that’s severe enough that people are going to the emergency room over it. It can really drastically affect people’s lives.
Dr. Julie Lopez: I can see how that would be a real cripler in terms of lifestyle and freedom, maybe energy if you’re having being really depleted in this way, pain. And I got to say also, one of the things I love that you already said was this is not true, right? You absolutely do not have to live with us. This is not a life sentence.
And that’s what we’re all about on Whole by Design. It’s like, what are the resources within our body? How do we move forward with what science tells us is possible beyond these finite, well, you know, it’s just the way your life is going to be for the rest of your life, which is not true.
Dr. Ali Navidi: Yeah, and that’s the stigma that we want to get past, it’s that like, I have IBS, like, it’s a thing that is within me, and it’s a permanent thing. And, it’s not, it’s a process that goes on, it’s an interaction that occurs between the brain and the gut, that can be disrupted. When it’s disrupted, the body and the mind move back into equilibrium, back into health again. And it’s just a matter of knowing how to disrupt it.
Alex’s Story: From Gut Infection to Life Disruption
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah. So tell me about that.
Why does it get, I mean, why does it get out of equilibrium? Of course. I know you’re going to tell us this stuff at the end that’s going to help us understand a lot more, but in general, right away, I’m like, Oh, I don’t want that to happen to me. Like, how do I make sure that something like that doesn’t happen? What kinds of things knock it out of equilibrium?
Dr. Ali Navidi: Well, let me tell you the story. Let me tell you a story about a guy named Alex. Alex is a promising young man and he was in college and he decided to take a trip overseas. When he was overseas, he got a virus. And when he came home, the virus was eventually treated, and he was fine, but the symptoms had been pretty severe.
Then after the virus, he developed something called SIBO. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that, but it’s called Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth, and it’s just where, in our intestines, there’s places where bacteria should be growing, and then there’s places where bacteria probably shouldn’t be growing. And things got disrupted for Alex.
And so there was bacteria growing in the small intestines, which generally we don’t want to be having. Unfortunately for Alex, the treatment for it was antibiotics. So he was taking antibiotics for a long time. All of this to say that what happened, and this is where things get a little bit harder for people to kind of understand. And what happened is something that I described as PTSD of the gut. Because not only do we have a brain and a nervous system, but our gut also is considered like a little brain. It has its own neural network, they call it the enteric nervous system. And it interacts with our central nervous system. So if we go through trauma in the gut, it remembers.
The Science Behind Post-Infectious IBS
Dr. Ali Navidi: And I know that might seem hard to believe, but this is very, very common. In fact, there’s a specific diagnosis for it. They call it post-infectious IBS. So what that is is after someone’s been, had some sort of infection, some sort of trauma to the gut, after the infection subsides, the symptoms don’t stop. And it’s because the gut has remembered that trauma and is reenacting it. There are other elements to it, which we’re gonna talk about when we talk about the three keys, but that’s actually one of them. So the first key is this powerful connection between the brain and the gut, and the fact that the gut has a little brain in it. And so it’s sensitive to what goes on in the brain.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Okay, so I’m going to tell you, I’m a little hearing this with a different perspective today, because I actually did get an infection while traveling overseas in the last month or so. And someone in my family said, you know, there’s a pretty high correlation between that and IBS, like afterward. And I really like saying all the stuff, all my symptoms are gone now. But it was three weeks of pretty bad symptoms.
Oh no, I really need this episode.
Dr. Ali Navidi: These keys would make sure that you didn’t develop IBS.
The Impact of a Gut Disorder on Mental Health
Dr. Julie Lopez: Love that. I love all the preventative info. Knowledge is power.
Dr. Ali Navidi: Yeah, absolutely. And if Alex had known this then, right, so, so fast forward, you know, Alex develops this brain gut, you know, disorder and PTSD of the gut, essentially IBS, but his version is called functional dyspepsia, which if IBS is like the lower gut dyspepsia is kind of up in the upper gut. When he came to me, he had dropped out of school. He had quit his job, was living on his parents’ couch, and watching Netflix all day. He was depressed and suicidal.
It was a mess. It was a mess. Yeah.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Oh my gosh. Wow. And how long did this go on for after this infection and then the antibiotics? It just kept on going.
Dr. Ali Navidi: Before he found me, I think it was at least, he suffered like this for at least three years, maybe longer. Yeah. And he went to the best doctors. That’s the thing. He was going all over, you know, getting consults, second, third opinions.
I forget the name of it, but he was even doing this experimental treatment where they put feces from somebody else into you. Have you ever heard of that?
Dr. Julie Lopez: No.
Dr. Ali Navidi: It’s a thing. It’s a thing.
Dr. Julie Lopez: speaks to the desperation, right? He had really lost his life. You said he was suicidal. He had lost his job here. He had. Yeah. Wow. It’s really hardcore.
Okay. So tell me about how the treatment works and where you’re going to, cause you said the brain gut is in disequilibrium. It’s like a PTSD of the gut. And then they come to you. All the doctors have been like, can’t really solve it. It’s just an ongoing condition. They say you have this condition, which implies you’re just going to have it for the rest of your life, which is by, in and of itself, a pretty sobering type of thing to be told at. And I know this is Alex, but it sounds like he was a young man. So yeah, tell me a little bit about what you do with something like that. To kind of honor this truth about the psychology of it all.
Effective Treatments for Gut-Brain Disorders
Dr. Ali Navidi: Yeah. So what is not well known, and really why I started GI psychology in the first place, is because there’s actually incredibly effective treatments out there. And I’m talking about treatments that have tremendous research basis over at this point, over 40 years of different studies, over a hundred studies showing their effectiveness. These are very solid treatments that very few people know about.
And even fewer people are trained to actually do. And so that was my vision for GI psych is I wanted to train more clinicians to do this work and make this treatment available. So what are we talking about? We’re talking about a specific type of cognitive behavioral therapy. That’s not bread and butter CBT, but very gut-focused CBT. So, very specific types of protocols are designed to treat the key components of IBS, which we will be talking about in a second. And clinical hypnosis, which is also very specific, not general hypnosis, but specific to gut-focused treatment that treats the other key component of these disorders. And so these two treatments, between the two of them, they break this, this kind of negative loop that the brain and gut get into. Right.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Oh, interesting. So, how, like, okay, let’s go back to Alex, like, he came to you and he did this combination of very focused protocols that are using hypnosis and cognitive behavioral therapy. How long does this treatment take? And what does recovery look like?
Is it full and absolute? Like, what do we got?
Dr. Ali Navidi: Yeah. Um, so he had been suffering, like I said, for about three years, and it took about 10 sessions. That was it. And he was symptom-free.
Dr. Julie Lopez: That’s amazing. So, a couple of months, maybe two to three months.
Dr. Ali Navidi: Yeah, two to three months. Exactly.
Which is again why it’s so sad for me when these patients take so long to find their way to treatment. It doesn’t take long, and the efficacy is really high, meaning around 80% of patients will reach their treatment goals. So there’s a really high success rate.
Dr. Julie Lopez: That’s amazing. Yeah, well, I’m glad we’re talking about it now. Do they have to do homework, or is it all in session? Is it?
Dr. Ali Navidi: There’s some homework. Sometimes we’ll have a little homework for the CBT.
Sometimes there’ll be a little homework for the, there’s almost always homework for the clinical hypnosis. Cause what we’ll do is we’ll do a hypnosis session and then we’ll record it and then we’ll have them listen to it every day in between then and the next session, right? Cause we wanna rewire the brain. We wanna rewire that relationship between the brain and the gut. And we’re doing that through repetition also.
The Three Keys of Gut Disorders
Dr. Julie Lopez: I love that. I love that. That sounds amazing. And I love the idea that just having the information might help prevent someone from suffering for three years like Alex did.
The Gut-Brain Connection: Knowledge is Power
Dr. Ali Navidi: So let’s just talk about what those three keys are, and we can almost use your example that you’ve given us, right?
Because the first one we already talked about, which is that relationship between the brain and the gut, the nervous system, the enteric nervous system.
Hypervigilance and Catastrophizing: A Hidden Barrier
Dr. Ali Navidi: The second is something I think you also know really well, which is hypervigilance and catastrophizing.
But it’s very specific form. We’re talking about people, once they let’s say they go overseas and they like this is what happened to Alex. He developed these, all these problems, right? But after the problems were done, he kept scanning anxiously his gut. Because there was a part of his brain that was terrified about the idea of these symptoms coming back. And whenever he noticed something a little off or a little weird, he would catastrophize like, “Oh my God, am I going to get sick?” “Am I going to be throwing up?” “Am I going to…“, you know, like his brain was racing and he was scaring the hell out of himself, and all that anxiety and stress because of that relationship between the brain and the gut, it just got transferred right down into the gut and actually caused more symptoms.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Hmm. Okay, so, question on that level.
Dr. Ali Navidi: Yeah.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Was the scanning conscious or unconscious? Was it something he would consciously notice, or was it kind of under the surface of…
Dr. Ali Navidi: I think it would be one of those things that’s automatic and kind of under the surface, but can be brought to the surface with awareness, right? With the proper education, you can become aware.
It’s almost like, let’s say, you have like a little cut on the inside of your lip. And then just throughout the day, you just notice yourself, yeah, kind of messing with it, kind of messing with it. And you can be aware of that, and you can deliberately stop doing it. But if you stop thinking about it, your tongue might go right back to messing with it, right? And it’s kind of like that with people with IBS, is like their brain is always scanning, and they’ve just developed this habit of constantly scanning. And then when they notice, oh, there’s like a little gas or something feels weird, then they catastrophize.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Got it. Yeah, that makes sense.
And I know that scanning very well, in terms of our work at Viva with people who have been through something traumatic, you just automatically are scanning for safety, consciously or unconsciously, it just happens. It’s a protective mechanism.
Dr. Ali Navidi: Exactly. And they’re scanning for safety in their gut. But the problem is that scanning is actually contributing to the symptoms. And so when they notice the symptoms, they’re catastrophizing more, and then it’s sending more anxiety and stress down.
Dr. Julie Lopez: which changes our hormones, which changes like our chemicals, which changes like, I get it. I get it.
Right. It’s like compounding. You start to create accidentally create a perfect storm. Right. Yeah. So that’s number two.
Dr. Ali Navidi: That’s number two. And if that was it, that would be bad enough.
Visceral Hypersensitivity: When the Gut Overreacts
Dr. Ali Navidi: that’s number two. And if that was it, that would be bad enough.
Dr. Ali Navidi: But there’s this really nasty one called visceral hypersensitivity. I think most people aren’t aware that the brain can do this. And so what it is, is the brain has identified the gut as an unsafe place. And so in order to deal with that, it has, it has like amplified and distorted the signals that come from the gut. So as an example, you know, Alex would feel a little full, like what we would feel is full. And he would experience that as painful. Like, because those signals when they got to the brain, it was like the volume got cranked up.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yep. I, um, I did not know that about the gut, or I hadn’t had it said in those words, but it makes me think about how trauma survivors get the same way, kind of like hypervigilant.
So someone might speak with a little tone, and it sounds like they’re raging at them because their body is already like, I’ve got a scan for that because that’s the precursor to being hurt, or maybe potentially being in a life-threatening type of situation. And so there’s like a hyper, well, you called it visceral hypersensitivity. And I, yeah, I just,
Dr. Ali Navidi: Because it’s like the brain is listening so desperately to find any danger that it’s cranked the volume up, and it’s looking so hard for it, that it finds it.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah, that totally makes sense. I never really thought of it that way in terms of the gut. But it, I mean, I do think of like the Whole by Design ideas that our bodies just do the thing to help keep us safe so that we can survive. We’re built to survive.
Resetting the Gut-Brain Alarm System
Dr. Julie Lopez: And all these mechanisms, whether they’re working great or they’re running on some outdated information, right? Alex is back. Alex is done. He finished the antibiotics. He’s actually okay, he’s allowed to be full, and full doesn’t have to mean a lot of those go off and this kind of a thing. Yeah. So sometimes it just has to catch up to the new normal of what’s needed. And that, it sounds like in these cases with these 20 disorders that you mentioned, that for many of them, or maybe all of them, since those are the ones that you focus on, it is possible to rework it because the alarm code to that level is no longer needed biologically.
Dr. Ali Navidi: Exactly. For all of these disorders, it’s possible to reset. It’s possible to retrain the brain and body to say, okay, we’re safe now. Yeah, we’re not in that environment. We don’t have that sickness or we don’t have that whatever.
We’re in danger. And CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, is how we reset the hypervigilance and the catastrophizing. And clinical hypnosis is how we reset that visceral hypersensitivity.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Love that. Okay.
So I was writing my little notes here to get the three keys to greatly improving your health. And I think, but I wasn’t sure what number one was, because it was embedded in our conversation, was that was number one, like the knowledge that these two are connected.
Dr. Ali Navidi: Yeah, the power, like how intimately connected the brain and the gut really are. They have this special relationship.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Okay, that’s major. So if you take nothing else from this conversation, and we know statistically, either you or someone you know, already has struggles with things like irritable bowel syndrome, and you could probably list off all the other 20.
But any many people are struggling with these types of problems that have to do with you said vomiting, it could be like constipation, diarrhea, pain, inflammation…
Dr. Ali Navidi: Yeah, nausea, you know, gerd, so reflux, things like that. There’s like I said, there’s tons of these disorders.
If you ever go to your if you have a GI problem, you go to your GI or your primary care, they run a bunch of tests, and they tell you, “Hey! There’s good news here. We didn’t find anything wrong”. You and then, you know, and then you’re like…
Dr. Julie Lopez: But you know, because you’re living in your body, that something’s not right.
Dr. Ali Navidi: But you know, something is not right. You’re in pain, you’re suffering, but now what?
They don’t have good drugs to treat these problems. There are some diets that exist that don’t really treat the core issue. They just kind of, they just avoid foods that might, essentially that might cause any gas. And the reason they avoid gas is because the system is so sensitized that it’s gonna misinterpret gas as danger and turn it into pain. So they just avoid it. And these diets are no fun. They’re super hard to stay on.
Dr. Julie Lopez: So that sounds like a life sentence right there.
Okay, so number one is knowing that there’s this connection, and especially it sounds like understanding that if you’ve got all these symptoms and you go to the doctor and they run the test and they go, good news, you don’t have anything. And you’re like, wait a second, I’m struggling. And they’re like, no, you’re great. You’re clinically great. You are struggling. It’s just that their tests aren’t picking it up.
The struggle is that your system already went through something, and it’s on high alert. And it’s got this visceral, wait, let’s see. Let’s see if I get it right. Visceral hypersensitivity. And there may be some catastrophizing going on. So you actually are getting a signal of pain, and you actually have big alarm bells that are turned on. And that might be experiencing something that you thought was normal before. Like, Oh, I’ve got some gas or “Oh, I’m full.” “Oh, I’m really full. I’m just going to relax here.” And instead of like that, it’s like, “OH MY GOSH, YOU’RE REALLY FULL“. Full court press. This is bad. And then the anxiety feeds on itself, you’ve got hormones going crazy, and you’re in pain, and that is the problem.
And you can rework it all, right? That’s the best.
Dr. Ali Navidi: Yeah, and so let’s say you go and travel overseas like you did, and then you get an infection and then you come back, and as the infection’s going away, you realize, okay, I’m gonna make sure to just celebrate the fact that my body’s healthy and that it has this healing capacity, right? So immediately you’re shifting away from that hyper-vigilance danger mode, and you’re having some trust and faith in the body’s ability to heal and recover from infection, right, but just by having that, you’re eliminating the hyper-vigilance and the catastrophizing, right?
Moving Forward: Hope, Healing, and New Possibilities
Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah, I love it. Well, you know, I’ve always loved your work.
It’s very parallel to our work here at Viva, but I do know, like, first of all, in this podcast, understanding the framework is hugely empowering. And typically, it is not enough to just say, hey, body, don’t turn on those alarm bells, because actually, it’s not needed anymore, right? The test said I’m biologically fine. It’s not enough to hear that because it goes into a part of the brain that isn’t really going to then calm your body down, right? It’s just information. And what you’re doing actually speaks the right language to the cells of your body that actually say, oh, that is not, you do not need the five alarm fire right now. And that’s where your patients actually get relief. Is that right?
Dr. Ali Navidi: Well, yeah, just like, you know, you all do it at Viva. What is needed, you know, it’s good to have the understanding. And the CBT is helpful, but what is also needed is an experiential approach. Right?
And that’s what clinical hypnosis is. It’s one of the, in the category of experiential therapies. I love that. It’s not about that intellectualizing. It’s about having a new experience in relation to your body. And that’s what you do with hypnosis.
Dr. Julie Lopez: I love it. And I love talking to you. This is so great. And I bet there are people that are hearing this that at some point are going to have just exactly this crossroads. And I think, I love to think that this conversation could have made a difference.
So I know your website is gipsychology.com. Is that right?
Dr. Ali Navidi: Yes.
Dr. Julie Lopez: can get more information about all the good stuff they’re doing there. I appreciate what you’re doing with doctor’s offices and national conferences and all the things to try to change the conversation. So I really appreciate you.
Dr. Ali Navidi: Well, Julie, thank you so much for the opportunity to do this. And like you were saying, if we, just by doing this, if there’s just one person out there that is like, oh wait, I don’t have to live with this and there’s help out there, then I’m happy.
Dr. Julie Lopez: Good. Well, you should be happy because it could be me. I haven’t developed anything yet.
Dr. Ali Navidi: You’re not going to.
Dr. Julie Lopez: But I was like “I’m just like Alex”. Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Whole by Design, and for our listeners as well.
To you, I hope it left you feeling inspired to toss out labels, embrace new perspectives, and take one step closer to the joy and clarity you deserve. As always, please visit www.vivapartnership.com to access our free and low-cost resources that will empower you and your loved ones on health and healing. Let’s spread the message, subscribe, review, or share this episode with someone who could benefit from a stigma-dropping approach to mental fitness today.
