Leaky gut
Wednesday 18th July 2018
What is Leaky Gut Syndrome?
Leaky gut ,or intestinal permeability means the “net” in your digestive tract gets damaged. This basically means that the gut lining has become more porous, with more holes developing that are larger in size in the lining. This leaves room for larger proteins of undigested food molecules and other bacteria, yeast, toxins, and all other forms of waste to seep into the bloodstream.
It is like a net with small holes that should only allow vital nutrients to pass through into the small intestine. Your gut lining works as a barrier keeping out bigger particles that can damage your system . It also has tight junctions that open and close. In some sensitive people a protein called zonulin can break open these tight junctions.
intestinal-barrier
The barrier of the outer cells look like a shag pile carpet and are called microvilli.
They absorb digested nutrients and transport them into the bloodstream for the body to use as nutrients. The larger particles may be proteins such as gluten, bad bacteria and other undigested foods.
When this leaks into the blood stream it causes an immune reaction. The immune system sees these as invaders and attacks them.
The main foods are gluten, dairy, eggs, but other inflammatory foods such as sugar, excessive alcohol may also be the cause.
Stress and candida overgrowth are also implicated.
The immune system is like the armed forces ready to fight any any foreign bodies in the blood stream, such as yeast,bacteria or undigested protein from gluten, dairy, eggs and other foods.
It is not the food that is the root of the problem, but the lining of the gut
Another problem with leaky gut is that it can cause malabsorption of vital minerals and nutrients including zinc, iron and vitamin B12.
The liver also starts to work overtime, as the small intestine is not working well.
The liver has to eliminate waste that accumulates in the blood. It then finds it difficult to keep up and toxins flow back into the bloodstream again.
At the same time the immune system produces antibodies to the foreign bodies, and if this is going on for some time it cannot keep up and these bodies escape and flow throughout the body and cause inflammation.
Inflammation is also an immune response and causes even more stress on your system. The weak areas of the body become inflamed,such as joints, digestion, bowel. This causes damage to the area affected.
This may eventually may lead to the body fighting itself and an array of autoimmune diseases such as Food sensitivities, skin issues, such as acne, eczema, psoriasis, Chronic Fatigue, MS, IBS, Ulcerative Colitis, and Fibromyalgia.
Normally the first thing people have symptoms of are digestive issues, such as bloating , and other IBS symptoms .
This may be happening for many years before symptoms and conditions develop.