Dr Michael Griffin Facebook ad: “Read this if you bloat easily”

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I'm a GI specialist, and I put a patient through $4,200 in testing to find out why her stomach kept swelling. Every test came back normal. Her bloating wasn't random. It showed up the same week every month. Swelled her stomach by three inches in a matter of hours. Made her look pregnant by dinner. Then disappeared the day her period started. I ran every test I had. I found nothing. Because I was looking in the wrong organ. Eight months after she stopped coming to my office, she sent me a photo. Flat stomach. Taken at 8pm on the day before her period. The exact day that used to be her worst. What she told me she'd been doing for those eight months made me realize I'd been sending women like her through thousands of dollars in GI testing for a problem that was never in their gut. This patient was 32. Married. No kids. She worked as an event planner in Austin. She came to me because her stomach would swell so badly in the week before her period that strangers asked her when she was due. She wasn't pregnant. She was bloated. And not the kind you get after a big meal that goes away in a few hours. The kind where you wake up flat and by noon you can't button your jeans. The kind where your stomach gets so tight it's hard to take a full breath. The kind that makes you change into stretchy pants the second you get home because anything with a waistband hurts. It happened every single month. Same week. Same pattern. She'd be fine for two or three weeks. Then seven to ten days before her period, her stomach would start to swell. By the day before her period it was at its worst. Then her period would start and the bloating would slowly go down. Every month. Like clockwork. For three years. She'd already been to her primary care doctor. Blood work was normal. Thyroid was normal. He told her to eat more fiber and drink more water. She was already eating more fiber. She was already drinking more water. Her stomach didn't care. She came to me because she wanted answers. I did what any GI specialist would do. I ordered tests. Stool analysis. Normal. SIBO breath test. Negative. Food sensitivity panel. Mild dairy sensitivity. She cut dairy for three months. Still bloated the same week every month. Celiac panel. Negative. Abdominal ultrasound. Normal. Total cost of initial workup: $2,800. I put her on a low-FODMAP diet. She followed it perfectly for six weeks. Her everyday bloating improved slightly. The premenstrual swelling didn't change at all. Same week. Same pattern. Same three inches. I prescribed a prokinetic to help her motility. $45 a month. She took it for four months. It helped her feel less full after meals. It did nothing for the weekly swelling before her period. I tried a prescription probiotic. $60 a month. Three months. Her digestion felt smoother. The cyclical bloating continued. I added simethicone for the gas pressure. It took the edge off the tightness. But her stomach still swelled the same amount at the same time every month. Visit costs across seven appointments: $1,400. Total in my office over 14 months: roughly $4,200. For a bloating pattern that showed up on schedule every 28 days and disappeared the moment her period arrived. She sat across from me at appointment number seven and said something that stopped me. "My stomach doesn't bloat when I eat. It bloats when my period is coming. Why are we testing my gut?" She was right. And I should have heard it sooner. Let me tell you what she was spending outside my office too. A daily probiotic from a wellness brand. $48 a month for 14 months. $672. Digestive enzyme capsules she took before every meal. $30 a month for 10 months. $300. Apple cider vinegar gummies. $25 a month for 6 months. $150. Peppermint oil capsules for the tightness. $18 a month for 8 months. $144. A "gut reset" powder from an influencer who had a flat stomach and said this powder was the reason. $65 a month for 3 months. $195. A $200 food sensitivity test she ordered online that told her to cut eggs, gluten, and soy. She cut all three for two months. Still bloated the same week every month. Gas-X. $12 a month. Every month. $168. Psyllium husk fiber supplement. $15 a month for a year. $180. Total outside my office: $2,009. Total including my treatment: roughly $6,200. For bloating that followed her menstrual cycle. Not her meals. And here's what I missed. Every test I ran was looking at her digestive system. Gut bacteria. Food reactions. Motility. Gas production. And her digestive system was fine. The bloating pattern was never random. It spiked in the luteal phase. The seven to ten days between ovulation and her period. Then it resolved when her period started. That pattern has nothing to do with food. It has everything to do with estrogen. Her body makes estrogen. That's normal. Every woman's body does. But estrogen has to be processed out. The liver handles this in two steps. Step one breaks it down. Step two clears it out. In many women, step one works fine. But step two is sluggish. The broken-down estrogen doesn't fully leave the body. It recirculates. It builds back up. And when excess estrogen builds up in the luteal phase, it tells the body to hold water. Specifically in the abdomen. The tissues swell. The midsection expands. The stomach gets tight and distended. Not from gas. Not from food. From fluid the body is holding onto because the hormonal signal says hold. That's why she was flat in the morning and swollen by noon. That's why it happened the same week every month. That's why cutting dairy didn't fix it. Why the low-FODMAP diet didn't fix it. Why the probiotics didn't fix it. Why the digestive enzymes didn't fix it. None of those things address estrogen clearance. And estrogen was the signal driving the entire pattern. I was scoping her gut while the problem sat in her liver's clearance pathway. I was looking downstream when the signal was upstream. She came back eight months later. Not for testing. To show me her stomach. Flat. 8pm. The day before her period. The exact day that used to be her worst. "How?" She told me she'd spent those eight months researching one question. Why does her bloating follow her cycle instead of her diet? Not what helps digestion. Not what reduces gas. Why the swelling maps to her hormones and not her food. She learned that most approaches for bloating address the gut. Probiotics. Enzymes. Fiber. Low-FODMAP. All of them assume the problem is digestive. None of them address the hormonal signal that tells the body to hold water in the abdomen during the luteal phase. She found diindolylmethane. DIM. A compound found naturally in cruciferous vegetables. She started taking a capsule from a company called Purelo. Their formula included calcium D-glucarate. That's the compound that supports the second clearance step. The step most DIM products skip. $28 a month. She tracked her cycle. By week four her premenstrual bloating was less severe. Still there. But less. Her jeans still buttoned on day 22 of her cycle. That had never happened before. By week six the distension that used to start a full week before her period didn't show up until two days before. And it was mild. Not the three-inch swelling. Not the pregnant look. Just slight fullness that she barely noticed. By month two she went through an entire luteal phase and her stomach stayed flat. She wore a fitted dress to dinner on cycle day 25. A day she would have spent in sweatpants the month before. Not on a prokinetic. Not on prescription probiotics. Not on a low-FODMAP diet. Not with thousands of dollars in GI testing. Her body found its own balance once both steps of estrogen clearance were supported. The DIM supported step one. It helped her body break down estrogen through the gentler pathway. The calcium D-glucarate supported step two. It helped the broken-down estrogen actually leave her body instead of building back up. Most DIM products do step one and skip step two. That's why many women try DIM and feel worse at first. The estrogen gets broken down but it has nowhere to go. Same body. Same cycle. Same hormones. But when the excess estrogen was being cleared instead of recirculating, the signal to hold water in her abdomen quieted down. The environment changed. The bloating followed. This patient spent $6,200 on tests and treatments for her gut. She spent $28 a month supporting what was happening in her liver. And her stomach stayed flat through her worst week for the first time in three years. There IS money in GI workups. $2,800 for initial testing. SIBO breath tests. Food sensitivity panels. Colonoscopies. Prescription probiotics at $60 a month. Each normal result leads to the next test. Each test more expensive. Each one looking at the same organ while ignoring the signal driving the pattern. There is no money in a patient whose bloating resolves on its own. I can't promise this will work for every woman reading this. Every body is different. But if your bloating follows your cycle and not your food, if you're flat in the morning and swollen by dinner, if it gets worse the week before your period and goes away when your period starts, the problem may not be your gut. It may be your body's ability to clear excess estrogen. And no probiotic, no enzyme, and no FODMAP diet addresses that. Every month that excess estrogen recirculates, the signal to hold water in your abdomen continues. The swelling continues. And the cycle continues. Link below. You can take it alongside whatever your doctor has you on. Give it six to eight weeks. That's how long the body typically takes to adjust its estrogen metabolism. Because I spent 14 months running every GI test I had on a woman whose gut was never the problem. She spent $28 a month supporting the hormonal clearance underneath. And the clearance is where the bloating actually stops. Link below.

Where the ad sends people

purelonutrition.com

Read this if you bloat easily

Purelo