Leaky Gut Syndrome – How to Restore Your Health From the Inside Out
Not all my patients with leaky gut syndrome come to me complaining of gut-related symptoms.
In fact, many don’t.
When Mary came to me complaining of a flare-up of her rheumatoid arthritis, she never once mentioned issues with her digestion.
I’m Dr. Martina Sturm at Denver Sports and Holistic Medicine. I help people get to the root cause of their symptoms – even when the root cause doesn’t seem to relate to what they're feeling.
Mary was complaining of joint pain and significant swelling in her fingers, wrists, and knees. The swelling in her fingers was so significant her rings needed to be cut off. She was having trouble using her hands in daily tasks and simple things had become extremely painful, like:
Holding a fork
Gripping her toothbrush
Tying her shoes
… and she was unable to snowboard all season because of her debilitating knee pain and inflammation.
She also told me her allergies were acting up. She was feeling short of breath and needed to use her inhaler more because of her asthma. She felt like she needed to constantly clear her throat from excess mucus and post-nasal drip.
Mary’s body was inflamed and in a constant state of stress. Her immune system was dysregulated.
Just like a cut in the skin becomes red and inflamed – Mary’s entire body and its systems were being attacked by her over-responsive immune system. This caused her respiratory symptoms and joint pain.
Not only did Mary need relief from her symptoms, but she needed to prevent another flare-up.
So how did we soothe that, you ask?
First and foremost, Mary needed relief from the pain and shortness of breath. Using an integrative approach blending functional medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine, I used acupuncture to calm Mary’s overactive immune response. It’s something I often see in people with autoimmunity. I prescribed herbs and supplements to help with her inflammation and other underlying root-cause issues.
But Mary needed more. Together we needed to go deeper and look at the root cause of her symptoms.
We needed to look at her gut.
Diving deep, we identified the foods causing damage to her gut lining making it leaky. Any partially digested food and toxins could leak through her intestinal wall and into her bloodstream.
Outside of the digestive tract, these act as foreign particles, aka antigens. Your immune system creates antibodies against these antigens. This was the source of her inflammation causing pain in her joints and her respiratory symptoms.
I worked with Mary to make small shifts by:
Eliminating inflammatory foods
Removing toxins
Combating stress
This allowed her immune response to calm down and her body was able to start healing.
Her respiratory symptoms improved and she easily slides her rings on and off her fingers now. Better yet she’s back to carving down the Rockies on her snowboard.
So how can someone like Mary – who is complaining of joint pain and respiratory symptoms – get the most relief by treating the gut?
In this week's blog, we're diving into leaky gut syndrome and how it affects your body from the inside out. Let's dig in.
What Is Leaky Gut Syndrome?
To understand what a leaky gut is, we need to understand what a healthy gut is.
Your gut has an intestinal mucosal lining acting as the gatekeeper to your bloodstream. It prevents partially digested food and toxins from entering your bloodstream through tight junctions found in the mucousal lining.(1)
This mucosal lining is made of – epithelial cells, immune cells, and their secretions.
In a healthy gut, the intestinal barrier has doors (tight junctions) between the cells. These junctions are easily regulated by healthy bacteria. They’re efficient in extracting nutrients from the food we eat. They also prevent harmful chemicals and toxins – that cause chronic inflammation – from being absorbed into your body.
A leaky gut occurs when the body is overwhelmed with inflammatory foods and toxins. This opens the tight junctions within the gut lining and causes chronic inflammation.
Harmful toxins and undigested food particles enter the bloodstream where they don't belong. This causes your immune system to react. This chronic overexposure of foreign particles causes the immune system to become hypervigilant and attack its own tissues, organs, and glands which can develop into an autoimmune disease.
There are genetic and environmental factors increasing your risk of developing leaky gut syndrome.(1)
7 Factors Leading to Leaky Gut Syndrome
Several internal and external factors can break down the tight junctions within your gut’s intestinal lining leading to leaky gut syndrome. They are:
Genetics. Some people may be more sensitive to certain triggers like environmental toxins causing their bodies to over-respond or initiate an autoimmune response. Autoimmunity has been found to run in families.
Foods such as gluten-containing and gluten cross-reactive foods, low-fiber foods, highly processed foods (found in the standard American diet), sugar, GMOs, refined seed oils, conventional dairy, alcohol, and additives like artificial sweeteners.
Toxins include drugs like NSAIDs, proton pump inhibitors, hormonal birth control, and antibiotics.
Environmental toxins like pesticides (glyphosate is a big one!), mold and mycotoxins, air pollution, and smoking.
Chronic stress due to overactive cortisol which leads to chronic inflammation found within the body.
Bacterial imbalances such as an overgrowth of candida (yeast) or an overgrowth of harmful bacteria found within the gut.
Low Vitamin D levels. Vitamin D, a prohormone, plays a significant role in maintaining the integrity of the gut lining. Vitamin D is also important for a healthy immune response.
Understanding which factors break down the mucosal lining of the intestinal wall is key in helping you repair this lining. And in decreasing your risk of intestinal permeability. We need to know what is the root cause of the inflammation inside your body.(2)(3)(4)
3 Red Flags Of Leaky Gut Syndrome
Autoimmune activity can occur through a progression of stages. These stages are also hallmark signs of leaky gut syndrome. Leaky gut syndrome can be identified by recognizing these three stages or red flags:
Food sensitivities
Environmental sensitivities
Autoimmune diseases
With 70% of your immune system found in the gut, you may notice changes in your body’s ability to handle certain foods – the first stage.
Most food sensitivities are delayed IgG immune reactions and may not be easy to identify. Unlike food allergies which are life-threatening, anaphylactic IgE reactions..
Food sensitivity testing or elimination diets can help confirm such trigger foods.
Common signs of food sensitivities can include:
Bloating or indigestion after eating
Brain fog
Sinus congestions/Post nasal drip/Allergies
IBS
Headaches/Migraines
Joint pain
Acne or Eczema
Low energy
Frequent colds/flus
Mood disorder (anxiety, depression, etc)
As your immune system starts to fight against these foreign particles, you become increasingly sensitive to chemicals and toxins found in your food – and your environment (second stage). This puts your body in a constant state of inflammation.
If your body continues to stay in a chronic inflammatory state. Your immune system becomes overwhelmed by a steady influx of inflammatory foods and environmental toxins. This can eventually cause your body to over-respond by attacking itself, which is the hallmark sign of an autoimmune disease – the third stage.(5)
Autoimmune diseases linked to leaky gut syndrome include:
Inflammatory bowel diseases (such as Crohn's disease and Ulcerative Colitis)
Rheumatoid arthritis
Ankylosing spondylitis
Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE)
Parkinson's disease
Autism Spectrum Disorder
Type 1 and type 2 diabetes
Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis
Obesity is a metabolic syndrome and is not formally identified as an autoimmune disorder. But it shares underlying symptoms found in autoimmune disorders like insulin resistance and chronic inflammation.
The chronic inflammation found in people with obesity is called meta-inflammation. It is found in adipose tissue (fat), muscle, the colon, and the liver. This low-level inflammation has been identified as a contributor to intestinal permeability, otherwise known as leaky gut syndrome.(4)
Heal Your Leaky Gut with Functional Medicine
Functional and integrative medicine doctors dig deep to find the underlying cause of your symptoms. By getting at the root level of your ailments, a functional medicine doctor partners with you to relieve your symptoms and give you long-lasting results.
Functional medicine doctors look at the whole, interconnected, body – from the inside out. From microscopic bacteria found in your gut to the outside of your body. This holistic approach to healing helps you achieve and sustain your health goals.
A step forward in helping you heal your leaky gut may include taking high-quality probiotics. Probiotics help to:
Decrease inflammation
Suppress the overgrowth of certain bacteria
Support the healthy gut microbiome
Ignite an immune response to restore the mucosal lining of your intestinal wall
Prebiotics work alongside probiotics to help stimulate the growth of healthy bacteria needed to support healing. Probiotics work to suppress the growth of harmful bacteria.
Specific or individualized nutritional supplements and diet recommendations help support a healthy gut and repair a leaky one. Some recommendations a functional medicine doctor may give are:
Eating fiber-rich foods
Eliminating gluten, grains, and other cross-reactive foods
Including fermented foods in your diet
Following a Mediterranean Diet
Other personalized diet strategies(6)
Herbal medicines can be effective in treating leaky gut syndrome and autoimmune disorders. Like probiotics, certain herbs suppress the inflammation found in the body and restore the lining of the intestinal wall. They also support the good bacteria in the gut and achieve greater balance to promote a healthy gut microbiome.(7)
Acupuncture helps to reduce inflammation throughout the body and within specific systems including the gut. A 2015 study, found lower antibody levels of IgE (the antibody associated with allergies) in participants' bloodstreams following the use of acupuncture. Not only that but acupuncture has been shown to be effective in treating nasal symptoms and allergies similar to what Mary was experiencing.(8)
To help Mary and you successfully restore and maintain a healthy gut, it's important to understand two things:
How your gut functions at a cellular level.
How disease is influenced by its breakdown.(6)
If this seems a little overwhelming and confusing – you’re not alone. This is why it's important to connect with a functional medicine doctor who can guide you and empower you to restore your health from the inside out.
How Denver Sports & Holistic Medicine Can Help
Understanding leaky gut syndrome can be confusing. For a variety of reasons, your body is no longer able to protect itself against toxins found in – the food we eat, chemicals in our environment, stress, and genetics.
Getting down to the root cause of your leaky gut syndrome is the only way to help you heal your gut. Improving your gut health allows your body to prevent further disease – or manage your disease and its symptoms.
This is exactly what I do at Denver Sports and Holistic Medicine in Denver, Colorado.
I partner with you to help identify the true cause of your leaky gut syndrome. Not only do I help you find the root cause of your symptoms, but I also help you alleviate your symptoms and manage your disease.
I want you to thrive and live a fully vibrant life.
I'm dedicated to providing you with a holistic and comprehensive approach. Let’s help you go from a state of disease to a state of remission and prevention.
When we work together, we’re going to dig deep to evaluate your:
Medical history
Diet
Current medications and supplements
Lifestyle choices
Living environment
… and other factors contributing to your leaky gut syndrome. I partner with you to develop the right treatment plan for your unique, interconnected, and whole body..
Using an integrative functional medicine approach combined with my extensive knowledge of Traditional Chinese Medicine and acupuncture, I help you transform your body from the inside out.
Book a free 15-minute consultation to find out how a holistic and integrative approach can help you heal your leaky gut.