Leaky Gut is basically an increase in intestinal permeability, meaning that the walls of the intestines allow substances to escape or leak through into the bloodstream.
From a medical standpoint, doctors and researchers aren’t exactly sure why it develops, especially in normally healthy adults. You might think it would only be found in patients who have a history of celiac disease, Crohn’s disease or other intestinal malfunction. But, the truth is, it seems anyone can develop this condition and it often leads to having other health issues.
Little is still known about this condition. However, dietary changes and adopting a more healthy lifestyle has given a lot of improvement to the condition and has greatly reduced the symptoms that many people suffer from this condition.
Diagnosis of Leaky Gut
As mentioned above, the medical community still doesn’t have a huge grasp on this condition. For this reason, Leaky Gut can be hard to diagnosis and may be misdiagnosed in many cases. There’s no specific test to determine if it’s Leaky Gut or other intestinal disorder, and it comes with a wide range of symptoms that cross over as symptoms for other conditions.
There’s even a lot of skepticism about Leaky Gut being a real condition, much like happened with Fibromyalgia years ago. However, there are numerous stories of people who have changed their diet and focused on colon health and have overcome the majority, if not all, of symptoms associated with Leaky Gut.
How Leaky Gut Affects Your Overall Health
Leaky Gut can aggravate existing conditions like Crohn’s disease, celiac disease, rheumatoid arthritis and asthma. However, if you don’t have any of those conditions it can still affect your overall health.
The intestinal tract is the body’s largest immune organ and defense. It is a barrier, but at the same time it’s a nutrient supplier to the body.
It is permeable and allows nutrients to pass through which nourish your body. Leaky Gut happens when the intestines develop larger openings and allow undesirable wastes, like harmful bacteria and undigested food particles, to pass through into the bloodstream.
When the gut is not in good health, a whole host of other problems can arise, such as nutritional deficiencies, irritable bowel syndrome, food sensitivities, psoriasis, and a general overall feeling of not feeling your best. You can feel sluggish and like there’s just something wrong. You can be lethargic and have low energy. When your gut feels bad, you simply feel bad all over. It can cause gas, bloating and overall digestive distress.
Conditions Worsened by Leaky Gut
Celiac disease – Celiac is a genetic autoimmune disorder that runs in many families. It is due to a gluten intolerance. You may have noticed that many food choices are now gluten free. Gluten is a protein found in wheat which attacks the small intestine and causes an immune response. Gluten is basically poisoning the body and the resulting response from the body is trying to fight it off.
However, there are other factors which also contribute to and aggravate Celiac disease. People who have Celiac should also avoid foods that relate to and increase leaky gut. Simply cutting out gluten is not enough.
Sugars should also be eliminated from the diet, along with other grains which also cause inflammation. Inflammation is a huge issue for any problem relating to the intestines and digestive tract.
Long term health conditions of Celiac include; iron deficiency, osteoporosis, lactose intolerance, vitamin and mineral deficiencies.
Simply eliminating gluten from your diet does not reduce inflammation, nutrient absorption. There is evidence that all of these, including Leaky Gut, remain even when gluten is not present in the diet. So it makes sense to treat Leaky Gut along with Celiac.
If you suffer from Celiac, you definitely want to get your digestive health back as best you can and pay attention to foods that cause Leaky Gut. It’s best to treat the overall system than to just focus on removing gluten from your diet.
Crohn’s disease – Crohn’s disease is an inflammatory bowel disease. It causes abdominal pain, severe diarrhea, weight loss, malnutrition, and fatigue. It can get in the way of your daily life. Due to constant diarrhea, it’s hard to get away from a bathroom for very long.
It’s caused from an inflammation in the lining of your digestive tract. People with Crohn’s disease need to follow a very strict diet and avoid all foods which can trigger an attact. Many times, treating Leaky Gut and eating a healthy diet to promote digestive health can help Crohn’s disease as well.
Irritable Bowel Syndrome – IBS is a common disorder of the colon, or large intestine. Some of the symptoms include; cramping, abdominal pain, bloating, gas, diarrhea and constipation. Medical professionals are now realizing that this condition can lead to Leaky Gut. But the opposite is always true and Leaky Gut can lead to IBS.
If you suffer from IBS, it’s best to get a handle on it and avoid the foods which you’ve discovered cause you problems. It’s also a good idea to go a step further and take the steps that help overcome Leaky Gut.
Some of the causes for IBS are lactose intolerance, unbalance bacteria in your gut (you need healthy bacteria), yeast overgrowth, food sensitivities and stress. These same problems also lead to Leaky Gut, so it just makes sense to treat both conditions and return your gut health to normal, if you can.
Arthritis – Having poor digestive health or Leaky Gut can worsen arthritis symptoms, especially Rheumatoid arthritis. With RA, the immune system attacks the joints, causing severe pain, deformity in the fingers and hands and a host of other crippling symptoms.
As discussed earlier, when the digestive tract is unhealthy and develops Leaky Gut, this allows unwanted bacteria and food particles to escape from the intestines. Your immune system is designed to fight what it perceives as foreign invaders. This can lead to a whole host of autoimmune diseases, like RA. The response of the immune system gets confused and begins attacking your joints, causing a great deal of problems.
Poor gut health has also been associated with conditions such as psoriasis, eczema and asthma. In fact, research is showing that when gut health is off balance and is overrun with bad bacteria, instead of good bacteria, it leads to many of the conditions we suffer from, even things we consider as skin conditions.
Leaky Gut May Be a Trigger for Some Autoimmune Conditions
Hippocrates is quoted as saying that, “All disease begins in the gut.” If you aren’t familiar with that name, he is the Father of Medicine. More and more research indicates that he knew what he was talking about over 2000 years ago. He lived from 460 BC to 370 BC. You have to wonder why we haven’t heeded his message. Imagine the problems and diseases that wouldn’t be around today if we had focused on keeping our gut healthy the past 2000 years.
Unhealthy gut flora and bacteria leads to inflammation throughout your whole body. This inflammation leads to a whole host of autoimmune disorders. We normally think of only a handful of conditions that are considered autoimmune disorders, like Crohn’s disease, Lupus, Diabetes, etc. But, it you look at the list of autoimmune disorders, you soon discover there’s an extreme amount of them. Most, if not all, may be linked back to digestive health, or Leaky Gut.
Here’s a list from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_autoimmune_diseases
Just think, if we could eliminate all processed foods and eat more like nature intended, we could probably wipe out many of these conditions over the lifespan of a generation.
Symptoms of Leaky Gut
There’s a whole list of symptoms for Leaky Gut that many of us would never associate with Leaky Gut or poor digestive health. Many of these symptoms have become “normal” symptoms of every day life or getting older. And while these symptoms may be diagnosed with one ailment or another, they all possibly link back to Leaky Gut. If you suffer these symptoms and maybe you’ve been diagnosed with another condition, like IBS. It definitely can’t hurt to treat Leaky Gut to see if it may be the root cause of all your problems. It definitely can’t hurt.
Symptoms:
● Headache
● Thyroid conditions
● Digestive Issues
● Bloating
● Food Sensitivities
● Skin conditions
● Fatigue
● Joint pain
● Weight gain
As you can see, these base symptoms can have more symptoms associated with them. For instance, headaches can be caused by food sensitivity, stress or allergies. Digestive issues and bloating can come with gas, diarrhea, constipation, acid reflux.
The list above are just root symptoms, so be aware that you can have a lot more symptoms than the ones listed.
Causes of Leaky Gut
So what causes Leaky Gut? The simple answer is poor diet and eating habits. Our diets largely consist of grains, processed foods, sugars and dairy. Products, we may not have been designed to digest in the first place.
Leaky Gut can be caused by a number of things; the foods you consume, certain infections, and medications you take. Food culprits include gluten, dairy products, environmental toxins and sugar. All of these foods were intended to be eaten in moderation, but all too often our diet consists of large amounts of these ingredients. The digestive tract is tough. but it can be broken down over time. We’ve all heard people say they have an iron stomach. That may be true, for awhile. But over time consumption of these foods will cause problems in the intestines. You notice this especially in older adults who’ve had to change their diet to avoid issues like diarrhea, constipation, heartburn, etc. The underlying problem is from not taking care of their gut health throughout their life and eating a proper diet. Now it seems that nature has forced them to eat the way they should have been eating all along.
Medications can be toxic to the digestive system. Over the counter pain relievers like Motrin, Advil and acid reducing medications can wreck havoc on the digestive tract. Prescription drugs such as antibiotics and steroids are not good for digestive health either.
Environmental toxins like mercury and pesticides also lead to having digestive issues, especially when you add a poor diet on topic of pollutants we have to deal with in the environment.
Infections like candida, and other types of yeast, can lead to Leaky Gut. Intestinal parasites and bad bacteria are also causes of Leaky Gut. Consuming sugar feeds these unwanted invaders and leads to a vicious cycle of trying to get rid of them by taking antibiotics.
And last, but certainly not least, is age and stress. As you age, the body doesn’t recover or deal with ailments as well as it did in your youth. Stress is also a huge factor, not only in gut health but overall health. Your body releases stress hormones which cause a whole host of other issues on their own.
Solutions for Leaky
Dr. Axe, who runs one of the most popular websites on digestive health, Leaky Gut and overall health, has a four step solution for healing Leaky Gut. He refers to it as the 4 Rs; Remove, Replace, Repair and Rebalance.
The first step to healing Leaky Gut is to remove all foods and substances that are known to cause problems and damage the gut. Yes, this means giving up gluten, grains, processed foods, sugars, foods that lead to inflammation.
The second step is to replace those foods with foods that are known to aid in and support gut health. Eat more vegetables, fish, and healthy fats.
Repair your gut with the right supplements.
Rebalance gut health and healthy flora with the right probiotics and enzymes.
Dietary changes – There’s no way around it, if you want to heal Leaky Gut, you have to make dietary changes. These changes have to be made for life. There’s no point in trying to heal your digestive problems if you’re simply going to return to old eat habits and cause more damage.
The first foods you should eliminate from your diet are sugar, grains, dairy, legumes, unhealthy oils, caffeine and excessive carbohydrate consumption.
Foods you want to start consuming include broths, fermented vegetables like kraut, sweet potatoes, seafood, salmon and healthy fats like coconut oil.
Start healing and rebalancing your gut health with the right supplements. Get a good probiotic, start taking enzymes and get plenty of fiber. You need the fiber so help the probiotics do their job. So eat plenty of fiber rich vegetables.
Remember, your gut did not become damaged overnight and it’s not going to heal overnight. You may relieve many of the symptoms after a few weeks and think you’re okay, but in most cases it takes a good while to get your digestive tract back in order. Even when you start feeling better, this is a plan that you need to stick to for the rest of your life. There’s no sense in restoring gut health only to damage it again.
