So What Is Leaky Gut Syndrome?
Along with breaking down food and absorbing nutrients, the digestive tract also works to protect your body from harmful toxins. The walls of your digestive tract are like barriers; they control what enters your bloodstream to be later transported to your organs.
When the tight junctions (small gaps in the intestinal wall) are working properly, this allows essential nutrients to pass through, as well as block the passage of harmful substances.
Unfortunately, when we use antibiotics, many times we do not distinguish between the beneficial and the damaging bacteria… it can wipe them all out.
When we have a compromised gut microbiome, it can leave us vulnerable to developing something called ‘leaky gut’. A healthy gut regulates the barrier between the intestines and bloodstream, allowing nutrients to flow to our organs and preventing contamination by pathogens. But when our microbiota are imbalanced we experience inflammation that causes hyper-permeability of our intestinal lining. This means that irritants and toxins are now being released into our bloodstream, damaging and impairing the function of our brain and other vital organs. This sounds serious, right? That’s because it is! Let’s see what we can learn about the causes of leaky gut, and how to heal ourselves from this dangerous condition.
One of the common things that we see is Leaky gut. Leaky gut is actually a normal process. It’s actually normal to have Leaky gut. Leaky gut is a way for your body to actually survey the intestinal environment. To sample what’s coming in through the gut. What happens is, what’s really happening is not this picture in your mind that your gut just becomes busted, and there’s an ulcer, or there’s a hole there, and things are leaking out. It’s really that, on a normal basis, your intestinal lining kind of opens and closes, like the supermarket automatically sliding door. It’ll open to let certain things in and out, and it’ll close at other times so that bugs and things are not just flying through. It’s only a problem when this sliding door in a supermarket opens and never closes. That’s when it becomes a problem. So, really the proper term should be ‘Hyper-Leaky gut’, or ‘Chronic-Leaky gut’, rather than just Leaky gut; because Leaky gut is actually normal.
Causes:
Medicines that affect the lining of the intestine. stress, hormones found in food, various chemicals or pesticides, cleaning products to which we are exposed in our home. Genetics can also affect the lining of the gut. And all those things that keep us from being able to absorb our nutrients properly, and create those holes that permeability that exposes our whole blood to food.
There is another problem with the permeable bowel: it can also cause something called “endotoxins” to leak into the bloodstream. Endotoxins are present in the outer membrane of pathogenic bacteria. When bacteria like these release endotoxins there, our body initiates an inflammatory immune response. This systemic inflammation can cause permeable intestines or worsen symptoms if you are already experiencing it. Inflammation throughout the body caused by the presence of endotoxins can contribute to major problems – from autoimmune diseases, to insulin resistance and obesity.