Gut Health
Oct 18, 2020
Your "gut" is your digestive tract. It starts at your mouth and ends at...your other end.
In between you have the stomach, small intestines, and large intestines.
Your gut houses a large portion of your immune system and is basically the "second brain" of your body. There are over 100 million nerve endings in your gut. What I am saying is...the health of your gut is critical to your health and when it is "sick" you will be too.
I believe if you’re going to overcome any health issue, it’s so important to look to the gut and really understand the process that happens there and in your body.
I want to talk about leaky gut. Specifically, what it is, what causes it, the things you need to avoid in order to heal it, and even a few steps at the end and some actions you want to take immediately. But really what I want to discuss again is, what is leaky gut and what specifically is happening in the body.
There are actually millions of people struggling with leaky gut right now. And they have no idea it’s the cause of their health problems. And to quote Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, he’s famous for saying, “Let food be thy medicine.” But he said something else, he said, “All disease begins in the gut.”
Think about that. Not some, but all disease begins in your gut. And if you’ve got gut issues, it is the root cause, it’s at the root of what’s causing other issues. I know that a lot of people, in our Western society today, tend to try and pinpoint and treat the organ at hand where their disease is. So if somebody has thyroid disease, they want to treat the thyroid. If somebody has a heart condition, they want to treat the heart. If they have depression, they want to treat the brain.
Where we know, according to Hippocrates, if somebody is having a thyroid issue, like Hashimoto’s disease, that could actually start in the gut. And so if you’re only treating the thyroid alone, you’re not going to actually heal the thyroid condition because you’re not taking care of the root cause of disease. And I’m telling you right now that’s what leaky gut is. It’s the root cause of the majority of health conditions that people are struggling with all across the world today. And so we’re going to jump into what leaky gut is.
So imagine this. This is essentially what leaky gut is and how it works. But leaky gut occurs when you get holes in the tight junctions in your gut. By the way, I want to mention this, I think this is incredible. But for years people questioned whether leaky gut actually existed. And from what we see now, the other term that’s used in the medical community now today for leaky gut is called “intestinal permeability.” Okay? Intestinal permeability. Permeability means open, porous. Things can leak or get through.
Imagine your gut is a net. Okay? And what can happen over time is . . . And by the way, everyone’s gut should be somewhat leaky to where certain things can get in and certain get out. But imagine a very small fine net. Like a fisherman’s net. And you get holes in there. It gets ripped. And imagine you take your hands and you rip open the net. So now when you’re trying to catch fish, they’re pouring out. There’s a hole in your net per se.
That’s essentially what happens in leaky gut. You get a larger hole than should be there in your small intestine, your intestinal wall. So things start actually leaking from your gut into your bloodstream that should never get into your bloodstream. And when things get into your bloodstream that your body doesn’t recognize or that shouldn’t be there in the first place, your body will start an immune reaction or an inflammatory reaction. Your body will start to say, “Okay, this shouldn’t be here. This is a foreign invader. I’m going to start an immune response to break down and destroy whatever is here in the bloodstream.”
The Tight Junctions protect you from large particles that shouldn't get in the blood stream. Your gut will say: “Okay, gluten, you can’t get in. And other things, you can’t get in. But oh, small sugar molecules, okay, you can actually get in the bloodstream,” and so on and so forth.
Essentially leaky gut is where your tight junctions become damaged and certain particles like toxins, microbes or bad bacteria, undigested food particles like undigested protein, those things leak into the bloodstream. And then an immune response starts. And when this happens, it also causes inflammation.
So again, inflammation and immune response is the response that starts happening in the body. And so that’s what leaky gut is. Again, leaky gut is when you have larger holes than should exist in your intestines and certain bad bacteria and food particles and things that aren’t digested get through. And what really happens is imagine the small intestines while there’s serious inflammation there. So inflammation, if you sprain your ankle, if you ever get a big cut, and it gets red and swollen around the cut, that’s what’s happening in your intestines. They’re swelling, there is inflammation taking place and there’s chronic damage.
Here are just some of the symptoms I see with gut issues and Leaky Gut:
- autoimmune conditions
- joint pain
- weight gain or inability to lose weight
- brain fog
- acid reflux
- constipation/diarrhea
- bloating
- sugar handling problems
So what causes Leaky Gut or the intestines to become permeable?
- Poor/unhealthy diet
- medication
- stress
- allergens
- GMO...
What can you do about leaky gut?
Start with changing your diet. Here is a great visual for what to eat to help heal the gut.
Want to learn how to dial in nutrition for your gut health?
Join me on Tuesday March 16th at 6 pm LIVE online for the NEW "What is your Gut Type" Workshop. Each person has specific nutritional and dietary needs based on their gut type: Do you have a Stressed Gut? Immune gut? Toxic Gut? Candida Gut? Gastric Gut? Learn which gut type you are and how to address it with food, supplements and lifestyle modifications to heal and energize!
Save your seat here: What is Your Gut Type?
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