Why a Whole Nation Would Be Constipated Without Coffee
Episode 283
In this episode, Dr. Nicole and Dr. Nick dive into the surprising relationship between coffee, constipation, and the deeper mind-body connection. Starting with a poolside conversation about why so many people rely on coffee to “go,” they unravel the root causes of sluggish digestion—going far beyond the obvious. The duo explores the powerful interplay between liver/gallbladder health and our willingness to let go of what no longer serves us, both physically and emotionally. With stories, science, and a bit of humor, they challenge listeners to stop masking symptoms and start asking better questions about their health and habits. #IntegrativeHealth #MindBodyConnection #DigestiveHealth #LetGoToGrow #HolisticWellness #RootCauseHealing #LiverHealth #GutHealth #EmotionalDetox #InspiredLiving #FunctionalMedicine #CoffeeTalk #ConstipationCure 3 Key Takeaways: Coffee Isn’t the Root Solution: Relying on coffee (or any quick fix) for bowel movements is just masking the real problem. True, lasting digestive health starts by addressing the root causes—especially liver and gallbladder function. Your Mind and Body Are Bi-Directional: Physical constipation often mirrors emotional or mental “stuckness.” If you’re holding onto anger, resentment, or old stories, your body will reflect it—sometimes literally. Quality Questions = Quality Health: If you want different results, ask deeper questions. Don’t settle for “why am I constipated?”—get curious about what you’re holding onto and how your decisions and mindset might be driving physical symptoms. Quotes: “You become dependent on coffee to go to the bathroom, but what you’re really doing is avoiding the real work—letting go of the shit (literally and figuratively) that doesn’t serve you.” “The quality of your life is dictated by the quality of the questions you ask. If you want to change your health, start by changing your questions.” Find Integrative You Radio On: Website Youtube Apple Spotify 2 Doctors Committed to Innovating the H
Topics: coffee, root, health, integrative, unknown, causes, questions, radio
Key takeaways from this episode
- ## Integrative You Radio: Why a Whole Nation Would Be Constipated Without Coffee
- Coffee provides a temporary fix for constipation, masking deeper issues rather than addressing them. True digestive health requires looking at root causes, particularly liver and gallbladder function.
- Physical constipation can be a physical manifestation of emotional or mental "stuckness," such as holding onto resentment or past experiences.
- Asking better, more curious questions about our health habits and emotional states is crucial for uncovering root causes and achieving lasting wellness, rather than just treating symptoms.
- Liver and Gallbladder Function
Pull quotes
This is the place where you become limitless. **Unknown:** We are covering the latest and greatest topics, of course, in a disruptive fashion, around integrative medicine, mental health, and human behavior.
We will be sprinkling in some truth bombs for our healthpreneurs so they can join us in our mission to evolve healthcare.
If you are health curious and growth focused, you are in the right place. **Unknown:** But buckle up, because this is real, this is raw, and this is disruptive.
Transcript
**Unknown:** Welcome to Integrative U Radio, hosted by Dr. Nick Carruthers and yours truly, Dr. Nicole Rivera. This is the place where you become limitless.
**Unknown:** We are covering the latest and greatest topics, of course, in a disruptive fashion, around integrative medicine, mental health, and human behavior. We are also covering how those topics affect the human and family dynamics. We will be sprinkling in some truth bombs for our healthpreneurs so they can join us in our mission to evolve healthcare. If you are health curious and growth focused, you are in the right place.
**Unknown:** But buckle up, because this is real, this is raw, and this is disruptive. This is Integrative U Radio. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Integrative U Radio.
**Unknown:** Getting it. I, like, literally don't know why I can't just say radio normally. You're not a normal human being. Um, but we're bringing you a, a very, uh, interesting topic that we were talking about this morning as we were actually enjoying coffee out by, um, by the pool.
**Unknown:** And I was like... A- and this was partly stemmed from a previous conversation I was having with a client as well. And there's so many people that drink coffee in the world. Um, you know, some drink it for pleasure, some drink it to wake them up in the morning, but there's a lot of people that drink it because it helps them go to the bathroom.
**Unknown:** Like, do we agree or no? Stimulates that shit reflex. That is a very scientific textbook term. Yes, indeed, my friend.
**Unknown:** Uh, but- Maybe that'll be the title for the podcast. Well, part of the, the conversation that I was having with a client is, you know, she was, uh, drinking coffee breastfeeding, and she was like, "You know, I feel like when I drink coffee and breastfeed, it helps the baby go." And, you know, I was obviously educating her on, we don't wanna create a dependency on caffeine in an infant or even manipulate the reality, because I think that's really the biggest thing that we see a lot in this current age of pharmaceuticals, is we see that things can be manipulated very easily. So it doesn't lead to the opportunity to find the root cause, which allows people to have the best quality of life. You know, if you get headaches, you can take a Tylenol, a Motrin, acetaminophen.
**Unknown:** You can take those things. You don't necessarily... You're not pained enough to figure out the root cause and deal with it. But the thing is, is if you have headaches, you have elevated blood pressure in your intracranial vessels, which can lead to way bigger issues later in life, from dementia, Alzheimer's, stroke, et cetera.
**Unknown:** So we're gonna be talking a little bit more about that specific topic, cardiovascular disease, in another podcast. But the point is, is that we could drink coffee to make us go to the bathroom, but we were... The conversation that we were having this morning is, like, what if tomorrow coffee was just gone? You know, it wasn't on the market anymore.
**Unknown:** Like, what would be the percentage of the population that would be constipated? Pretty high amount. And, you know, and then the, the main two drivers, factors we wanna bring to this podcast is, is helping you to understand the underlying foundational problems that are associated with why you need coffee to go to the bathroom. And don't get me wrong, we're covering two major areas.
**Unknown:** There's a lot of things that go in between. You know, we're gonna kinda talk about the black and white, but there's a lot in the gray. So if we were to look at the hierarchy, you know, you could have things in your gut that shouldn't be there. You could have parasites.
**Unknown:** You could have bacteria. You could have yeast overgrowth. You could have mold toxicity. There's all those things.
**Unknown:** But there's a lot of people that might be listening in this moment, there's a lot of people we've worked with, that have tried to target those infections. They've tried to clear the parasites. They've tried to address their SIBO naturally, maybe antibiotics. They've done candida cleanses.
**Unknown:** They've done elimination diets. And they haven't necessarily had the outcomes that they wanted. Things are not fully resolved, and that's because there's a hierarchy of things, and at the top of the hierarchy, there's two major players that we're gonna talk about. One is your liver, gallbladder, bile system, and then the second is your willingness to hold onto shit, literally and figuratively, that doesn't serve you.
**Unknown:** And that's the two areas we wanna dive into. And so when you wanna get into the physiological, physical aspects, if you've listened to our other podcasts, the, the staggering statistic of the fif- almost 15 years, oh my God, we've been doing this, God, we're old, uh, is about 98%, honestly, it might even be a little higher. Like, 99% of the people that we have worked with over that length of time have ha- been positive for autoimmune liver disease.People are like, "I don't understand. I don't drink.
**Unknown:** I don't understand. I don't, I don't have pain. My liver enzymes were never high with my primary care." It doesn't, it doesn't matter. You don't have to have pain.
**Unknown:** You don't have to have fatty liver. You don't have to have liver cancer. You don't have to have elevated enzymes. You don't have to have any of those things, but you could still have an autoimmune attack on your liver.
**Unknown:** So they're really not separate. You know, we, we tend to say that they're, they're separate from the, the two things that you talked about, the hierarchy of not wanting to let go of shit, and then there's the liver gallbladder. But it's really understanding that your physical body is just really a representation of how the mind's working. Yeah.
**Unknown:** So we found through clinical experience that you can get the best results working on both sides 'cause energy's bi-directional. You can work on the liver gallbladder on the physical aspect to actually help give some extra support to the mind. But if you don't work on the mental connection, the psychosomatic connection back to the liver, the gallbladder, you know, it's... Either way, it's an uphill journey if you're only working on one side.
**Unknown:** Mm-hmm. So breaking it down quickly, you know, the, the liver- Can I interject really quick- Yeah ... so, and you not lose your thought because I want people to understand what that looks like in, in your experience because what you just described is 100% accurate, and what happens sometimes is people embark on taking certain supplements, doing a liver gallbladder flush, maybe doing a coffee enema, which is supportive to, um, helping the liver detox, the gallbladder bile ducts detox. Sometimes people do those physical, uh, therapies, modalities, supplements, and they are having, like, rage outbursts.
**Unknown:** They are crying. They feel mentally really off, and that's because it's bi-directional. If you're gonna work on the physicality of things, you can also have a mental emotional detox as well, and the same thing happens. We've actually seen the most success when we work with people on the mental emotional aspects, and then they, they reach out to us in our portal, and they go, "I just passed parasites." And, you know, we worked with them either the day before, two days before, three days before, and they're like, "I don't understand.
**Unknown:** I was taking supplements for, you know, parasites, and I didn't pass any, and now I'm not taking those supplements, and I pass them." And I'm like, "Well, it's because you had a mental emotional shift, and now things... Y- you're, you're willing to let go of shit. Like, literally, you are letting go. You're eliminating toxicity out of your life.
**Unknown:** You're l- eliminating toxic emotions that you've been holding onto." And so, you know, and it's not just about passing parasites. Sometimes people work through mental emotional stuff, and they're like... They f- they get a flu. They feel sick.
**Unknown:** They get a runny nose. They get a stomach ache. So again, it's very bi-directional, and, uh, a lot of times we can perceive these things as bad. "Oh my gosh, I'm having an emotional meltdown after starting my supplements.
**Unknown:** Oh, um, I did mental emotional work, and now I feel like shit and my immune system's run down." It... Nothing is bad. It's just part of the process. So when you understand that, you can lean into it, and everything can pass quicker, and you can recover faster.
**Unknown:** Yeah. Pain isn't always a bad thing. It's, uh- 100% ... just why is it created?
**Unknown:** So jumping back to what I was gonna say but tying into more of kinda where you went with that explanation is when you look at the... Simply put, it gets more confusing, uh, or complicated I guess than this, but you have the liver, the gallbladder, and, you know, the liver is in Chinese medicine kind of the, the storage center for your anger, your resentment- Fire. ... all, all of that.
**Unknown:** Yeah, yeah. And the, the bile is, you know, that goes along with bitterness, um, for the most part. And so when you think of anger, anger is really... When you talked about holding onto shit- Mm ...
**Unknown:** you... Most people get angry when you really look at it because you're, you're stuck. You haven't released that. Y- y- you're holding on to whatever it is, and it's making you fucking angry.
**Unknown:** Mm. And that is... really goes back to the, the depths of it, of a decision-making issue, and this is what people don't really talk about is like, you know, you have to work on what's, what's the anger aspect. Well, what created the anger?
**Unknown:** It was a shitty decision. And well, that's- I'm like... I'm literally playing so many stories of my own life in my head right now, so yes. And I was trying to put play in there with a, you know, shit decision.
**Unknown:** Um, dad joke. Getting really good at 'em. And- Oh, yeah. It's really brutal.
**Unknown:** It's bad. But we made a shitty decision, or that's the perception that we have that keeps us stuck, and then we create a story around being stuck, and that story tends to grow, um, and grow and grow and grow. And we try to go back and change the story, hence what therapy, most therapy does is, you know, works in the story, but the story's bullshit. It's not true.
**Unknown:** Half-truth. So you have... It's a half-truth. Well, even if that's the case.
**Unknown:** So you, you go back to that moment where the true resentment, anger, frustration, et cetera came from, which is the judgment of that decision. It might not be right when you made the decision 'cause you didn't have the judgment or the splitness then. It was when you really first judged that decision.And that's when you go through... 'Cause it's the quality of space that actually creates time, which is confusing for people, unless you're autistic like me.
**Unknown:** Yeah, I'm like, "What?" Space, space is really created subjectively. So space is created by the perception, and then from how we judge, how we perceive that space, we have an experience. Oh, yeah. And what's the tool for experience?
**Unknown:** Time. So when people, we live in this universe of space time, that's really all people are saying is perception collapses the particle into the space, and the only way we can perceive space is through time- Mm-hmm ... through experiences. So if we wanna change the quality of our experience, it's not through time.
**Unknown:** It's going back and changing our perception in that moment, the space. Mm-hmm. And that's honestly the only scientifically way this can truly occur. Well, it's like looking at the world glass full, glass empty.
**Unknown:** You know, like if for, for, if we wanna really, really, really dumb it down as, as much as possible for just basic understanding, it's just, you know, two people can look at the same situation, the same conversation, and perceive it in two totally different ways. You know, you can call one person the pessimist and one person the optimist, but it's just, it, this is what I'm kind of describing with the half-truth is nothing is all good or all bad. It, it could fall right in the middle. Um, but it's the lens that you look at things from.
**Unknown:** I- if you- Well, and you're- ... look at the lens- You're really only set free when the awareness is both of those, the optimist and the pessimist. Yes, that's what I was gonna say. You know?
**Unknown:** And, and we get taught that, you know, don't be a pessimist, just be an optimist. But- No ... that's the same side, the opposite side of the same problem. Yeah.
**Unknown:** You know? We could- But it's also fucking unrealistic, and this is why people become pessimistic. Because if you try to be optimistic and then you get burned, then you're like, "Oh, everybody sucks," or, "Everything sucks." And, but at the end of the day- Well, I might as well do both- ... you both sides ...
**Unknown:** 'cause it's gonna protect me. It's gonna protect me. It's- Yeah ... a protection, and that's one thing that I wanna m- drive home is that...
**Unknown:** It's funny, I, somebody, like, re-shared something that I, I posted a couple of weeks ago, and I was almost, like, reminded of, of the lesson, um, that's very congruent with what we're talking about. But you can use, people will use their pain and use their anger. I did this for many, many years. You know, I held...
**Unknown:** I, I didn't know this consciously, but I was holding on to the anger of my past in order to be the driver to keep me going to achieve a certain level of achievement, success. You know, I don't even wanna call it success. That's why I'm hesitating, because I was so angry of, of always living in a place of scarcity as a young kid that I was like, "I will do whatever it fucking takes to not have that be my continued reality." So I was willing to work 80 hours a week and sacrifice myself, bend over backwards, make accommodations, this and that. And so this is kind of what you're saying with the decision-making issue is that- Well, and- ...
**Unknown:** when you use... Let me just finish this statement. Yeah. Like, when you use your pain, you use your anger to get, to get yourself, or to use it as a driver, you make a lot of decisions out of desperation.
**Unknown:** You don't make decisions out of inspiration, and this is where you just continue to piss yourself off. Well, and that's the, the black and white aspect of it m- when I was going through and saying like, you know, "And that will grow. The anger will just grow," it's growing because you've learned to use it to serve yourself. Yep.
**Unknown:** Which is, starts out great, but then it becomes imbalanced and an issue when that's your primary tool. So then like you said, it's like I use the anger to force me to work. I use the anger to learn. I use the anger to this.
**Unknown:** Mm-hmm. And guess what? That goes right to the very start of our conversation is dependency. You become dependent on coffee to go to the bathroom.
**Unknown:** You can be... Like, I did the same thing, but it was with exercise. Mm-hmm. E- exercise, I became dependent on exercise as my therapist, as a release of my anger, and it was awesome.
**Unknown:** I was in fantastic shape, and, but the sad part of it is for me is like, and I think a lot of people, is once you balance out the root cause and you're not holding on and using the anger anymore, I didn't wanna exercise. You have an identity crisis. Yeah. I, well, I didn't wanna exercise because- Yeah ...
**Unknown:** I wasn't using exercise actually to be healthy. But you also kind of guilt and shamed yourself about it. You were like, "Oh gosh,"- Mm-hmm ... "I should be exercising." And it was like your driver for exercise wasn't there, and then, you know, it took you a while to finally transform that.
**Unknown:** Like, how do I d- How to create a different relationship ... how, how do I cr- uh, do physical movement out of inspiration and not desperation? And that took you a while to finally figure out, you know, what does this l- what does this new version look like, the one that- And it looks weird as fuck. Yeah.
**Unknown:** Yeah. Nick's doing, like, weird shit in the yard. I'm like, "I'm so glad, like, we have enough trees that neighbors can't see you." It looks like I'm on drugs, but I'm not. I'm just like...
**Unknown:** Like, yeah, one with the trees and the grass. So- Um, but yeah, it, it's just kind of rounding out what we're saying, too, and this is what I said in one of the recent social media posts, was you get to a place where-You feel the most stuck and the most out of balance or even unfulfilled than you have, and it's because the driver that, that you've used, if it's been your, your anger, your pain, your resentment, whatever it is, you've exhausted that tool. You've exhausted that driver, and now you feel, like, so stuck and so overwhelmed with that stuck because you're like- Well, and that's- ... well, what do I use now?
**Unknown:** That's the psychosomatic. That's the psychosomatic is that you physically do get stuck. The bile gets stuck. Like, when you're hitting that max mental aspect of, "I'm a, just a b- bitter son of a bitch," like, the body's equally right there.
**Unknown:** And that's when you get gallstones. An equal representation. And that's when you- And that's when you have the gallstones ... have gallbladder attacks.
**Unknown:** And, and- Yeah ... it's, it's just, it's, for me, it's beautiful because everything's so perfect working together. But it's only beautiful when we can see it to use it to serve ourselves. Yes.
**Unknown:** Otherwise, we stay in the anger, the bitter, the resentment. And then you have a gall- have, uh, a l- less, one less organ. You get your gallbladder out. Um, or you get, you know, part of your liver removed because it's so damaged.
**Unknown:** Um, or you go on medications like MiraLAX, which is fucking antifreeze, in order to make you shit. Um, like I can't believe they actually give people MiraLAX. Like, literally the primary ingredient is propylene glycol, which is extremely toxic. But hey, that's a different podcast.
**Unknown:** Um, so the moral of the story is, is that, uh, you know, our, our coffee side conversation of, of talking about how a whole, you know, country, maybe even the whole world could pot- potentially become constipated by removing coffee away, uh, the point is, is that it's about looking at what's underneath the hood, what's underneath of that. You know, why do we have so many people that are dealing with, you know, abnormal bowel function with a, you know, leaning towards constipation without coffee or, or other types of diuretics? Um, you know, we have to look at... There's a lot of things to look at, but w- if we, again, go to that hierarchy, we need to look at liver function, gallbladder function, the health of the bile ducts, and we need to look at the psychosomatic of, you know, what are you holding onto that doesn't serve you, but you're using it as a driver to keep you going in your life?
**Unknown:** And- And one of the best things, my favorite quote is, "The quality of your life is dictated by the quality of the questions you ask." So if you ask, "Well, what are you holding onto?" And nothing's really coming up, well, don't ask the same question. Just ask the same type of question, but a different question. You know? Maybe go deeper, like, "What, what decision-making have I done in the past that I would change?" 'Cause if you wanna change something, it means you haven't figured out how to fully use it.
**Unknown:** It's still working against you. Mm-hmm. You don't wanna change something that's, that you've completely, you know is serving you. Mm.
**Unknown:** That's called love, gratitude. But if you wanna change something, there's no love, there's no gratitude, and that's, that's the polarized mind. And that polarized mind, that's what gets dropped down to the subconscious, what gets held in the tissues of the body, which then is a representation of dysfunction, what we call disease, but it's... The disease is really just an imbalanced mind, an imbalanced perception.
**Unknown:** Yeah. And for those of you looking for more of these tangible, um, tools, solutions, you know, uh, I'd mentioned earlier that a lot of times when people have liver dysfunction, they have completely normal enzymes. So for most of you that have had basic blood work done, they've looked at two markers called AST and ALT, which are liver enzyme markers. Very, very, very rarely are those out of range, and, you know, most people just get the green light, like, your liver is, is functioning totally fine.
**Unknown:** And, you know, uh, two things is you can still have normal enzymes and have an autoimmune liver attack. Number two is this is not about alcohol, because anything and everything is filtered through the liver. All the pesticides that are on your food, the chemicals that are in the tap water, the chemicals that are in the water that you shower in, any drugs, over-the-counter medications, anesthesia, all of those things are processed through the liver, plus more. So there's a lot of reasons why your liver might be taxed out from more of a physical standpoint, let alone what we're talking about here when it comes to the mental and emotional aspects.
**Unknown:** So these are, are factors that you really need to, to understand. And, you know, there are simple things that you can do to really kind of test your liver, you know, how well is it functioning? You know, there's some people that will go and do, uh, castor oil packs, and then they'll realize that, you know, it completely shifts their bowel function. So, you know, there, there are simple at home things that you can do to really look at the physicality of your liver.
**Unknown:** But as we always say, you know, you can't really get very far without data. You need to really understand the big picture of what's going on. You know, get the blood work done for the autoimmune liver panel and l- and then have someone have the ability to look at the big picture of everything, the mental, the emotional, the gut, the liver, the gallbladder, the pancreas, the blood sugar, because it all works together.And so it all works together, um, harmoniously until it doesn't. So this is one of the reasons why people have the, the ripple effect.
**Unknown:** You know, they, they have blood sugar dysregulation, but then they also get constipation in conjunction, et cetera. So there's a whole intricacy of organs that work together, uh, when it comes to having properly functioning digestion. And when you go to a gastro and they only look at that, and they're not looking at the liver, the gallbladder, the pancreas, the blood sugar, you have a problem because you're only getting a portion of the information. And then, you know, we all know that you go to a therapist or a psychiatrist and, and they're not necessarily looking at the health of your organs or how your IBS is correlated to your mental and emotional state or your stress levels.
**Unknown:** So, you know, we're always gonna be the biggest advocates for the integrative approach because otherwise you keep your, your s- your, uh, wheels spinning, and you're just trying things, trying things, never getting ahead, and then you move into that more pessimistic outlook, or you think your body's failing you. And it's not. It's doing exactly what it's supposed to do, what it needs to do for adaption and, and safety, uh, until you remove the roadblocks. My advice is to act like a three-year-old, 'cause we have a three-year-old, and constantly just respond with why until it makes perfect sense, until you have extreme clarity of all the different connections, how to bring those connections back into a state of harmony and balance so that there is that healthy communication- Mm-hmm ...
**Unknown:** until you don't have a need to say why. But giving yourself enough time to even process that because, you know, we live in a world where a phone is fucking attached to our hip and, you know, it's, it's very, very easy to be constantly on, distracted, um, you know, communicating, uh, through these, you know, these smartphones. And a lot of people don't have much time to just... or don't prioritize the time to sit, ask themselves questions and, you know, clear, clear enough space to get true answers.
**Unknown:** Instead, a lot of answers that we receive are from external sources. They're not from, like, our internal space. So it- it's really so important for people to give themselves some time to actually think, make decisions out of inspiration and not desperation. If you don't prioritize that, you are gonna live in a state of chaos pretty consistently.
**Unknown:** I've seen it a million times. I've been it so, you know, I think we, we know it very well. And when we came to Italy to give ourselves a little bit more of that, um, space and, and slowness is when we started to have more clarity than we ever have in the past. Mm-hmm.
**Unknown:** Constantly growing that inspiration. All right, guys. See you on the next one. We thank you so much for being an avid listener of Integrative U Radio, formerly known as Integrative Wellness Radio.
**Unknown:** We appreciate all of your support. We love your comments. Please visit us on social media as well as our website to see all of the fun things happening behind the scenes and the new amazing content and courses that is being rolled out on a monthly basis. We hope to see you there.
Related episodes
About Integrative You Radio
Integrative You Radio is a root cause medicine and integrative medicine podcast hosted by Dr. Nicole Rivera and Dr. Nick Carruthers — two integrative doctors who build personalized wellness protocols from your DNA, minerals, hormones, gut, and nervous system rather than from a population template. Looking for an integrative doctor who reads your labs together instead of in isolation? This is the show.
Further reading
Listen and read the full episode →