What would you do if your skin started to leak?  What if blood and serum started coming out through your pores?  You would be freaked out.  Well this is what happens in leaky gut except that the leakage is happening the other way around.

The skin of the inside of your intestines is part of the same skin that forms your outer skin.  It is supposed to keep the outside from mixing with your insides.  The difference is that your outside skin has pores that let sweat and oils out while the inside skin has pores that let tiny food molecules into your body.  Leaky gut is what you get when that inside gut skin gets broken down and lets all kinds of big molecules, bacteria, and other bad things into your blood and lymph that are never supposed to get into the inside of your body.  Scientists call this "increased intestinal permeability."

Your skin is your protective barrier that keeps out the stuff that will harm you.  If your skin gets cut, or burned, or an ulcer forms then that barrier is compromised and bad outer world stuff can get into you.  When it gets inside your immune system has to fight off the bad guys.  Because your gut has the job of selectively pulling in the good food particles, and other needed nutrients, the opportunity for negative stuff to follow along is great so massive amounts of your immune system lives in your gut area - ready to fight.

The immune system in your gut has the job of figuring out what things entering from the gut are needed by you and what things are not parts of what you need.  It attacks the things that don't belong.  Normally this works just fine, but if the load of bad things coming in is too great the immune system starts going crazy and attacking everything in sight...including your own healthy tissues.  This is called an autoimmune reaction when this happens.  Your body is attacking itself.

Leaky gut causes autoimmune reactions to get started.  Once they begin they will keep going for months and months attacking your healthy tissues.  The worst part is that these hyper-reactive immune cells travel through the blood stream to every point in your body and can cause damage anywhere.  The most common area for these reactions to hit is the brain.  It causes foggy thinking, poor memory, coordination problems, almost any brain disorder.  Another favorite target is the pancreas where it will cause type 1 diabetes and the thyroid where it causes hypothyroidism.  They can attack bones causing osteoporosis and arthritis, heart causing heart disease, kidneys, liver, and so on.  Chronic fatigue almost always has leaky gut at its core.  So far labs can measure almost one hundred tissue types in your body that these autoimmune reactions can attack.  All this just from the skin on the inside of the gut breaking down.

So what causes leaky gut?

*Decreased nerve supply to the gut due to brain degeneration (like in Alzheimer's or stroke, or brain trauma like concussion)

*Hormones - low hormone levels (thyroid, estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone) cause leaky gut

*Autoimmunity causes leaky gut and leaky gut causes autoimmunity

*Food allergies or sensitivities - especially gluten sensitivity

*Nutritional deficiencies like protein, vitamin B, or vitamin C deficiencies

In the past medicine thought of leaky gut as some sort of made up alternative medicine boogeyman that didn't really exist.  Most practicing doctors still believe this.  However research science now has thousands of papers on the subject.  It is a very well established severe condition that produces symptoms all over the body.  One common complication of leaky gut is that you end up allergic to many of the foods you eat because the foods are ending up in the blood stream not broken down.  This in turn creates more leaky gut as your gut gets inflamed and forms hives inside your intestines the next time you eat that food.  This makes getting over leaky gut very difficult.  Everything you have become sensitive to has to be avoided while your gut heals.

How do you know if you have leaky gut?  Other than inflammatory conditions in your body, the most common sign is bloating or fullness in the gut area.  Up until recently the typical test involved eating two special different size sugar molecules and seeing if the big one was able to break through into the blood stream.  This was a very unreliable test for several reasons.  Now however there is an immune test that measures whether specific parts of the gut lining have broken down.  This test is now available through Cyrex Labs at our office.  If you are concerned you may have a leaky gut because of a high stress lifestyle or any of the other causative agents mentioned above then get this test as a first step.

OK, so what can we do to get rid of leaky gut?

As I said earlier, this is a difficult process.  It can be done, but it takes adhering to a very specific diet for 10 to 90 days (or longer in tough cases.)  There is no restriction on the quantity of food, just on the choice of food.  All foods that trigger leaky gut have to be eliminated.  This means all sugars, grains, dairy, soy, alcohol, lectin containing foods, coffee, processed or canned foods, and high sugar fruits.  Basically you eat vegetables, meats, and low glycemic fruits.

During this time you take something to help repair the gut lining (Repairvite), something to rebuild the proper intestinal bacteria (Strengtia), and a combination of herbs to kill bad germs, yeast, and parasites (GI Synergy).

Anyone who tests positive for leaky gut should also then do a test for gluten sensitivity.  Gluten directly causes leaky gut in gluten sensitive individuals.  If you are one of those people you will have to 100% completely avoid gluten containing foods and possibly gluten cross-reactive foods forever.  (At least they are saying forever at this point - who know what new science will bring to help.)

One final note, in animal studies in which scientists induce leaky gut in animals so they can study it, they found that for the leaky gut to appear, the animals protective glutathione levels had to drop significantly.  Glutathione is your body's primary antioxidant.  All the plant antioxidants we read about in blueberries and pomegranates are actually used by the body to help rebuild its stores of glutathione.  The main chemical that burns the holes in the gut wall is called iNOS.  The iNOS is destroyed by the glutathione, so leaky gut does not happen until the glutathione levels are depleted.

Products that help you recycle and rebuild your glutathione levels and decrease iNOS levels can be used to help prevent leaky gut from ever taking hold in the first place.  We use these in the last phase of leaky gut repair to make the gut strong.  (Nitric Balance and Glutathione Recycler)

Also as a basic support for the gut lining and vital in any autoimmune disorder, you need very high doses of vitamin D3.  A basic dose of 2000 units is necessary for average folks (what you would get if you spent the day out in the sun in a swimsuit).  If you have any autoimmune problems that dose jumps up to 6000 to 10,000 units or more.

Leaky Gut is a nasty disorder and unfortunately an increasingly common one.  Our modern diet and high stress lifestyle has pushed our body past its ability to stay healthy and strong.  Our burden of exposure to toxic chemicals in the water, air, and foods is off the charts.  Autoimmunity has been declared "the disease of the 21st century."  We can try to bury our heads in the sand, but as the symptoms caused by these basic imbalances start piling up and we find we are regularly taking a bunch of drugs every morning to try to deal with the symptoms, life just loses its quality.  The drugs are toxic even when we do need them.  There is always a price to pay for their use.

Personally I prefer to not go there in the first place.  Health is its own reward.  There is more to look forward to in life than heart pills and Alzheimer's.  Invest in your health - it is the most precious possession you have.  Take care of yourself.

Good Journey,

 

 

david@fairoakshealth.com

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About Dr. DeLapp

Dr. DeLapp has been a philosopher, non-force Chiropractor, medical intuitive, and health innovator for over 30 years.  He began experimenting with  medical intuition in 1972 while studying physics at UC Davis.  In addition to physics he designed and completed an individual major in the philosophy and psychology of education.  Shortly after he choose to pursue a career in the only truly health oriented profession available at that time, Chiropractic.  He graduated with honors in 1981 with his doctorate and opened a private practice. 
Since that time he has continued his research into the effects of consciousness and learning on health. 
He developed the Biomagnetic Retraining system for correcting movement abnormalities. 
Since 1991 he has focused on developing a powerful system for uncovering and assisting the mind-body connection in health and personal growth.  The in-depth coaching, guided by the subconscious direction from the body, is called Heartflow and the simpler mind-body retraining for health and unfoldment he has named Gracework.  Both are available at Fair Oaks Health.

Dr David DeLapp DC
Chiropractor

Ellen Flowers FGM
Spiritual Life Coach

 

Somatic Therapies

 

Lorena Morales