Leaky Gut. Is it real?

Leaky gut is a new term going around that refers to gut damage caused by food interlaces and lifestyle. The official medical term for Leaky Gut is Increased Intestinal Permeability, and is still not thought to be a real diagnosable thing by most conventional doctors. Lets dig a little deeper into what it is and what are the symptoms.

Increased intestinal permeability is when the mucus lining of the intestines is damaged and the little gaps that are there for nutrient absorption start to get bigger and allow toxins through into the blood stream, when these toxins get through the can cause an array of symptoms and issues like Irritable Bowl Syndrome, Chrones Disease, and other Autoimmune Disorders. The intestines have a mucus layer, and a epithelial layer (little fingers) and the microbiome that processes and allows passage of nutrients through into the body. Damage to this mucus layer, epithelial layer and microbiome are caused by many things; inflammation caused by food intolerances or allergies like soy, corn, gluten, dairy, wheat. Also it can be caused by our lifestyle; lack of proper sleep, stress, too much caffeine, lack of sunlight, the suppressing of emotions.

Its when you get into this area that most doctors think that it is woo woo and not real because there is very little understanding of the mind body connection. In recent times we are told that there is no connection to what we think and the affect it has on our body. This has caused a lot of issues in different aspects of our lives and the disregard of our daily thoughts and what we eat and how it affects us physically.

I was experiencing symptoms of leaky gut in the beginning but I just ignored them and went about my life eating just about anything I wanted except dairy and stressing about daily life ALOT. I always felt tired and relied on caffeine to get me through my day. I felt sluggish after eating carb heavy meals. As my gut damage progressed I woke up tired, had no energy or drive to do anything, if I ate just a little git of starchy carbs and gluten I would bloat so much I looked 6 months pregnant. I talked with my functional doctor and he told me about leaky gut and that is what I was most likely dealing with.

My first course of action was to remove those things from my diet but that wasn’t enough to help heal it, that was just putting a bandaid on the problem. Soon after no matter what I ate I was bloating and cramping, I became intolerant to eggs and I had the worse reaction one day after eating eggs for breakfast. My husband and I went for our walk and I started to get flu symptoms; cold sweats, weak, mouth starting to quiver and water like I was going to throw up and my stomach hurt so bad I almost fell to the ground. He had to almost carry me back home and I spent the rest of the day in bed with the worst stomach pains. At that point I knew something was wrong and I needed to fix this because life just sucked, I didn’t want to eat for the fear of the stomach pain and bloating and having to run to the bathroom after each meal.

There are a range of symptoms involved with Leaky Gut and you may experience some or all of the following:

Constipation, Diarrhea, bloating, nutritional deficiency, headaches, fatigue, joint pain, overall inflammation, confusion and loss of concentration and motivation and skin rashes.

As I mentioned above that our diet and lifestyle can cause leaky gut and once you have reached a certain point it doesn’t matter if you’re eating a good diet you will still have these symptoms because your body is unable to break down and absorb the proper nutrients and is still getting bombarded by the toxins that are being put in our bodies. This is where people eating a nutrient rich diet are still nutrient deficient.

I came to the point where I could not take living life like that anymore and I needed to fix my gut. But how do you do that? There a few routes you can take; the slow route of consuming a very strict diet for a long period of time and get better sleep and manage stress. Or the quicker route with a big lifestyle change, short term nutrition restriction and supplementation. I know there are people that don’t like taking supplements, but in all actuality we aren’t getting everything our bodies need from our food due to many factors, plus sometimes you just need that extra help to take the load of the body of breaking down masses and masses amount of food to get what it needs. There are also people who take too many supplements are rely solely on supplements to get what their body needs and that isn’t helping the body either. That is why you need a combination of Lifestyle changes, nutrition changes and supplementation to achieve the proper healing recipe.

So is Leaky Gut real? Is there a way to cure it?

Yes it is real despite the majority of conventional doctors saying otherwise and it does lead to many other issues with the body and mind even with the vague symptoms that they say could be anything. Yes it can be cured; you can heal your gut, repair the mucus, epithelial layer and the microbiome and get your digestion back on track and off that restrictive diet. Its going to take some work but if you really want it anything is possible.

My doctor created a Gut Healing protocol and I jumped on the opportunity to heal my gut and get my life back. It is an 8 week program and I started feeling better after just day 3! Check back for my post about my 8 week journey to a healthier happier digestion.