What is Leaky Gut?

So, question for you, as you’re going down the road of middle age, do you find that you’re starting to get a lot of bloating and a lot of cramping? You’re not really sure what’s causing it, and you’re not really sure what to do to help yourself? Could it be fluctuating hormones or could it be your gut and digestive system?

Let’s talk about what our digestive system looks like. As we’re eating food, it goes through our stomach, and from our stomach, it’s passed on to the intestines. This is where the absorption of nutrients happens. You have a fairly tight barrier between the inside of your intestines, and the rest of your body and your bloodstream. I say, fairly tight, because it’s still permeable. This is where the nutrients get absorbed, pass through the wall and enter the bloodstream. From here it’s able to feed the rest of the cells of the body. Now, what happens in leaky gut syndrome is when our digestive tract becomes unbalanced, it’s not healthy, we go into a state of what’s known as dysbiosis. Little cracks start to form, little holes start to form. What happens is, not only are the nutrients getting absorbed and being passed into the bloodstream, but also toxins that should be passing through an out of your body, and also bits of food particles. 

So what does this mean? 

This obviously shouldn’t be happening, and it tends to wreak havoc on the body and really cause inflammation. The immediate symptoms that you get from this are most notably bloating, cramping, and gas. But now if a leaky gut goes, unhealed, untreated, it can escalate further causing inflammation in the body. And then it can present itself in areas such as autoimmune disease. And this is why I think I suffered from leaky gut. When I was diagnosed with MS, this was something that I really focused on healing so that my whole body could heal. And I think as a result of doing that, and a few other things, my MS has been in remission for over 20 years. 

So what causes leaky gut? 

Well, there’s a couple of things that are thought to cause leaky gut. But as I mentioned earlier, it’s still one of those conditions that there’s not a lot known about. Some of the information out there is more of a well educated guess of what’s causing it and why it happens. And they’re continuing research on it. And, traditional Western medicine doesn’t accept it as a condition. The Standard American diet, or more commonly known as the SAD diet, is thought to be one of the big culprits.

And the SAD diet is exactly what it sounds like. It’s very sad. This is where you’re eating a lot of processed foods, a lot of processed carbohydrates, a lot of sugar, a lot of unhealthy fats and oils. It’s not nutrient dense. And our microbiome doesn’t optimize itself when it doesn’t have the right fuel. Because of this, it’s thought that way of eating could create those cracks and holes in the intestinal lining. Heavy alcohol use can also be a culprit for this, along with excessive sugar intake. Also taking NSAIDS. Now, NSAIDS stands for is non-steroidal anti- inflammatory drugs. Things like aspirin. And, unfortunately, we’re a society that’s popping a lot of pills. And, I’ve always thought that most pills are a band-aid just covering up the symptoms. It’s not getting to the root cause of what’s going on and how we can heal ourselves. Plus there’s our constant stress. In these times, we are all under pretty much constant stress.

Last week, I was talking about the thyroid. And it’s very interesting because a thyroid that isn’t functioning optimally can have an impact on leaky gut. But, here’s the chicken and the egg. Having leaky gut can also have an impact on your thyroid not working at its absolute best. Again, they don’t quite understand exactly what is going on with with leaky gut. But they do know that chronic levels of stress, which raises your cortisol has an effect on it. And stress also has an effect on your thyroid. So it’s all like I said earlier, it’s definitely all connected. We are one giant system. We’re not like separate little individual compartments. 

So what can you do if you suspect that you have leaky gut? 

The first thing is to start cleaning up your diet. Start to pull back and limit the quantity of refined carbs you’re eating. Ideally, I would love for you not to eat any refined carbs. I would rather see carbs coming from more of a plant based source. Also, taking a really high quality probiotic that’s going to tend to that microbiome. Don’t forget about eating fermented foods. Think sauerkraut and kimchi and kombucha and miso. What we’re trying to do is support that microbiome gut health. Eat a high fiber plant based diet and try to back off from those NSAIDS. Don’t take a pill every time you don’t feel your best. Try to get through it the best you can. 

If all of this is something that really is speaking to you, and you would like to go a little deeper on it, I invite you to book a Makeover your Menopause Discovery Call with me. It’s a free 45 minute call. You can book one here. Until next time, peace and love!