Kresser Institute

Tools, Training & Community for Functional Health Professionals

  1. Home
  2. Knowledge Base
  3. Supplements
  4. How do you treat bile and pancreatic insufficiency? This came up in Week 3 action steps. We’ve discussed a little in the form, and I was wondering how you would treat it?

How do you treat bile and pancreatic insufficiency? This came up in Week 3 action steps. We’ve discussed a little in the form, and I was wondering how you would treat it?

Dr. Amy Nett: It depends a little bit on the severity, and for the most part, I am seeing this in the case of either patients telling me that they’re not tolerating certain foods, in particular like high fat foods. I’m particularly suspicious of them not having adequate lipase or certain digestive enzymes, or on the stool test, I will see a low fecal elastase. Again, whenever I see that low fecal elastase, I’m going to be worried about whether or not there’s adequate pancreatic enzyme production, so what I’m using these days, again, if you have access to Emerson Ecologics, the product that I’ve been liking it is Vital Nutrients. Let me double check. I think it’s called ​Pancreatin and Ox bile Extract​. I really like the Vital Nutrients brands. Again, I think you want to eventually get yourself comfortable with a couple of companies that feel really to you. The Vital Nutrients is one that I like, and Lyndsey is pulling it up on Amazon. We’re not advocating buying things from Amazon, because remember when you buy things from Amazon, you don’t always know exactly what you’re getting. We’re pulling up in the Vital Nutrients on Amazon just as an example, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable just purchasing something off Amazon because every once in awhile people do weird things, and they won’t be selling what they’re actually saying. You could either go to Emerson Ecologics. You can go to the Vital Nutrients website and order directly from them, and that’s going to be a really safe way to do it if you don’t have an account with Emerson. But this has protease, amylase, lipase, and ox bile extract, and it only has 200 mg of ox bile extract in two vegetable capsules. Since some people are going to be a little more sensitive to ox bile extract, this allows you to really titrate the dose, I think, a little bit more slowly and carefully. Some ox bile supplements comes with I think 500 mg, which I found some patients have some GI upset in response to those. I like this one because you can really bump up the dose as needed, but I found this particular product to work pretty well for bile and pancreatic insufficiency. That’s when you can give a try, but again, choose a couple supplement companies ​Vital Nutrients​, ​Designs for Health​, ​Metabolic Maintenance​, ​Innate Response​. Those are some of my favorites. I know I’ve personally moved away Pure Encapsulations. Nestle bought them. I don’t know about the product quality. I prefer some of the slightly smaller more really functional medicine kind of companies that I think are a little bit more in line with what we’re doing, so hopefully that gives you one idea on where to start.

Was this article helpful?

Related Articles

0 Comments

Leave Comment

Leave a Reply

Need Support?

Can't find the answer you're looking for?
Contact Support
Kresser Institute Icon ADAPT Health Coach Training Program Icon ADAPT Practitioner Training Program Icon ADAPT Courses Icon