Liver congestion for one and low protein diets for another. However, most of the time nausea due to pregnancy may be due to liver congestion.
The liver gets overwhelmed having to process all those excess hormones floating around in the blood. This elevates the liver enzymes and then those spill out into the blood, tissue space and small intestine. These elevated liver enzymes cause nausea.
Elevated liver enzymes may not show up well in the blood tests as blood volume increases so much during pregnancy. Thus, liver enzymes may be elevated but hard to tell as now there is a larger ratio of blood volume to liver enzymes.
I found homeopathy works quite well with morning sickness and nausea of pregnancy. Two doses of Colchicine 30C helped my wife out tremendously during her nausea of pregnancy - in fact, it resolved it completely. This is not to say Colchicine will help all nausea of pregnancy - there are numerous homeopathics which do and the person must match the homeopathic remedy otherwise it will not work or the individual will prove the remedy causing more distress.
Liver support is useful but one must be careful with herbs and supplements during pregnancy we don't want to harm baby.
So if a person who is not pregnant gets nauseated - what to do?
Well - if protein intake is less than 0.8 grams/kilogram of body weight, then add protein to the diet. So a person who weighs 150 pounds has to eat about 70 grams of protein a day. That really is not that much. Best to space it out over morning and lunch and lighter protein at dinner. This allows less sugar cravings during the day, less weight gain, less liver processing of protein in the evening allowing the liver to detox the blood and less mood swings and more stable mind function.
If one consumes enough protein, and you are still nauseated, then think if you have reason for your liver enzymes to be elevated:
- Taking many medications - overworks the liver to metabolize them.
- Taking hormone replacement - overworks the liver to metabolize them.
- Eating fatty foods and/or high sugar foods - overworks the liver.
- High stress - high metabolite formation and decreases blood to liver.
- Alcohol - decreases glutathione, increases liver enzymes highly!
- Smoking - loads of toxins to process.
- Pregnant - overworks the liver due to many hormones.
- Poor digestion - due to low hcl in the stomach due to stress when eating or meds or h pylori.
There are other issues which may cause nausea of course which are extremely important - such as possible kidney disease and heart attack onset to name a couple. Heart attack and nausea is a large warning sign in women especially but men may have this symptom as well. Kidney disease may cause nause as well.
So it is complicated but for a good naturopathic physician or MD, it is not that bad to distinguish the cause and effect. I guess that is why there are docs on the planet.
It was an excellent day in the clinic today. One of our HIV patients with horrific nausea now has his life back he said. His nausea was bothering him to the point he quit his job. After seeing his lab results and hearing his history, we prescribed him liver support herbs and digestive acids. He is a new man - and a very happy one. I love what I do for a living. Very rewarding. At times it is extremely difficult and emotional but the good days like today make it all worth it.
Gotta catch some zzz's as I'm playing doc again tomorrow.
