The Gastro Truth with Dr. Mel Ona

📌 Schedule An Appointment with Dr. Ona: https://www.drmelona.com Rotten egg burps. Gallbladder pain that wraps around your back. A vomiting episode that won't stop. If you are on Ozempic, Wegovy, Zepbound, or Mounjaro, these are the gut side effects nobody warns you about at your appointment. I see these show up in my clinic constantly, and most patients had no idea their medication could ca...

📌 Schedule An Appointment with Dr. Ona: https://www.drmelona.com 1 in 4 adults has fatty liver disease. Most have no idea because the early version does not hurt at all. It builds quietly for years, hiding behind blood tests that look technically normal. It stays reversible right up until it does not, and there are six things you can check right now to find out where you stand before it becomes p...

📌 Schedule An Appointment with Dr. Ona: https://www.drmelona.com Two people can get the exact same colonoscopy. One spends the evening cramping and bloated on the couch, the other feels normal enough to go back to work by lunch. The difference almost never comes down to luck. It comes down to three decisions your gastroenterologist makes before you even walk in the door, decisions most patients n...

📌 Schedule An Appointment with Dr. Ona: https://www.drmelona.com IBS is a diagnosis of exclusion. But what actually gets excluded varies wildly from one workup to the next, and the conditions most often missed are the ones with real, specific treatments. If you have carried an IBS label for years with no real improvement, this is worth twenty minutes. In this episode, I'm going to show you w...

📌 Schedule An Appointment with Dr. Ona: https://www.drmelona.com Most patients on a proton pump inhibitor have no idea it was only meant to be used for 8 to 12 weeks. Some have been on it for a decade. Nobody ever sat down to ask if they still need it. Millions of people fill this prescription every single month without a second thought, and most of them were never told there was an end date in t...

📌 Schedule An Appointment with Dr. Ona: https://www.drmelona.com The patients I see at 60 with diverticulitis, colon polyps, and chronic constipation all have one thing in common. Nobody told them what was happening in their gut at 40. By the time they reach my office, the window to prevent it has often closed. Most of them ate what they thought was a healthy diet. They just never knew the one ha...

📌 Schedule An Appointment with Dr. Ona: https://www.drmelona.com Intermittent fasting or breakfast. You've probably heard both are the right answer, sometimes from the same source in different years. If you have gut symptoms like bloating, reflux, or irregular bowel habits, you've likely tried both approaches and still don't have a clear answer for your own body. The truth is that...

📌 Visit https://www.drmelona.com If you've been eating clean for months and your gut still hasn't changed, you are not missing a food. You are missing the actual root cause. No amount of restriction can fix a problem that diet was never causing in the first place. This is one of the most common frustrations I hear from patients, and it usually points to something deeper than what is on...

📌 Visit www.drmelona.com Most people fixing their gut ignore one huge factor. It is not diet. It is not supplements. It is sleep, and poor sleep can undo weeks of good eating in just a few nights. Your gut lining actually repairs itself while you sleep, so if your sleep is broken, your healing plan is broken too, no matter how clean your diet is. In this episode, I'm going to break down the...

🎁 Visit www.drmelona.com If you've gone gluten free and you're still bloated, going stricter won't fix it. For most people without celiac disease, gluten isn't actually the problem. There is a different, more likely trigger hiding in plain sight. In this episode, I'm going to explain why gluten gets blamed for gut symptoms it isn't causing, and walk you through the r...

📌 Visit www.drmelona.com Your gut lining rebuilds itself completely every 3 to 5 days. That means a leaky gut is not stuck for six months. It is stuck because the real trigger has never been found. In this episode, I'm going to explain why L glutamine, collagen, and probiotics often fail on their own, and walk through the four hidden causes that keep tearing your gut lining down faster than...

📌 Visit www.drmelona.com If you live on the west side of Oahu, finding a real GI specialist without driving to Honolulu has probably felt impossible. Most gastroenterologists are on the other side of the island. That means a long drive, parking headaches, and half a day off work just for a follow up appointment that should take twenty minutes. In this episode, I'm going to share the three th...

📌 Visit www.drmelona.com Fatty liver disease doesn't start in your liver. The first signs usually show up in your gut, disguised as bloating, slow digestion, and feeling full too fast. Most people think they'd know if their liver was in trouble. They wouldn't. In this episode, I'm going to walk through five warning signs of fatty liver disease that hide inside gut symptoms and...

📌 Visit www.drmelona.com You could go through a colonoscopy, full bloodwork, and walk out with a clean bill of health. And still have the exact problem producing every one of your symptoms. Clean results do not mean nothing is wrong. They mean the test was not looking in the right place. I'm Dr. Mel Ona, a board-certified gastroenterologist in Hawaii. This episode covers 7 signs that point t...

📌 Visit www.drmelona.com If you live in West Oahu and you've been told you need a colonoscopy, or you know you're overdue and you're finally doing something about it, this video is for you. Most people put it off because of fear. What they do not know is that the procedure itself is not the hard part, and waiting is not the safe option. I have had two colonoscopies myself without s...

📌 Visit www.drmelona.com If you have fatigue, brain fog, and bloating, you may not have three problems. You may have one. Medicine gives each symptom its own specialist. That works when problems are truly separate. It breaks down completely when one thing is causing all of them, because the real cause never shows up in any single workup and no one was looking for it in the first place. In this ep...

📌 Visit www.drmelona.com If you have been searching for the best gastroenterologist in West Oahu and you are not sure who to actually trust with your digestive health, this episode is specifically for you. Most patients filter by location, availability, or which doctor their insurance covers. These are not bad starting points. But they tell you nothing about the quality of care you are actually g...

📌 Visit www.drmelona.com If your IBS symptoms keep coming back, the diagnosis itself might be the problem. IBS does not tell you why you feel the way you feel. It just gives that feeling a name. Most people assume a diagnosis means an answer. With IBS, a name is all you got. In this episode, I'm going to walk you through what IBS actually is, what conditions most commonly hide behind that la...

📌 Visit www.drmelona.com A computer is watching your colonoscopy in real time and catching polyps a human eye might miss. You can swallow a camera the size of a vitamin and have your entire small intestine examined without sedation and without a needle. And there is now a painless way to detect liver disease that may be silently progressing in your body right now. Most patients have no idea any o...

📌 Visit www.drmelona.com You are doing everything you think you are supposed to do for your gut. Your symptoms are still there. Your energy is still low. Nothing is sticking. The problem is probably not what you are doing. It is what you are doing wrong without realizing it. In this episode, I'm going to walk you through 7 gut health mistakes I see repeated across thousands of patients, why...

📌 Visit www.drmelona.com Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States. And it is one of the most preventable. That gap exists for one reason: most people never take the steps that could save their lives. In this episode, I'm going to walk you through the five pillars of colon cancer prevention. Screening. Fiber. Diet. Exercise. Metabolic health. Master t...

📌 Visit www.drmelona.com I treat gut disease every single day. I have seen what happens when people ignore their digestive health for years. So what do I actually do to make sure I never become my own patient?  Seven habits. All daily. All simple. And the last one might surprise you. In this episode, I'm going to walk you through the seven daily habits I follow to protect my gut, my energy,...

📌 Visit www.drmelona.com There are questions about your gut you have never said out loud. You Googled them at 2 a.m. You almost brought them up at your last appointment and changed your mind. Today I am answering all of them. No judgment. No sugarcoating. Just straight answers from a board-certified GI doctor who has heard every question you think is too embarrassing to ask. In this episode, I&ap...

📌 Looking to get into a new diet or need a Gastroenterologist? Visit: www.drmelona.com That gap between knowing and doing is where most people live. It's also where I lived for years. I was treating patients for the exact conditions I was at risk for. Fatty liver. GERD. Colorectal cancer risk from obesity. Every day I gave advice I was not following myself. Losing over 50 pounds changed that...

📌 Looking to get into a new diet or need a Gastroenterologist? Visit: www.drmelona.com You have a cabinet full of gut supplements. Probiotics, collagen, detox powders. You are spending $100 or more a month and your gut is still not right. What if most of what you are taking is doing absolutely nothing? Every product has a bold claim. Every influencer has a discount code. And nobody with real scie...