This week we’re sharing more fascinating health information from Lisa Fitzgibbon, our favourite Naturopath and Medical Herbalist from Oomphhealth.co.nz. Lisa has been involved in the Natural Health industry for 16 years. She draws on her professional training and experience, as well as her own personal experience to bring you realistic, holistic health advice.
In this article Lisa explains how Leaky Gut is not an actual thing – unwanted substances cannot actually leak through the gut barrier into your blood stream. Read on to find out in an easy to understand way what is actually meant by the term ‘Leaky Gut’, what causes it, and how to heal.
It Turns Out You Actually Need a ‘Leaky Gut’
I’m leaking this important information to you about your gut.
A number of people have been either diagnosed (or more likely self-diagnosed), with something called Leaky Gut Syndrome. Otherwise known as Increased Intestinal Permeability.
In this article, I’m going to try to make some super technical information easily digestible. To that end, I’m going to start by breaking things down into some bite-sized chunks.
Firstly: From a gut perspective
Nothing is in your body until it crosses the gut barrier and gets into your bloodstream. This is why a huge percentage of your immune system resides in your gut – to police your very own internal border control.
Secondly: Leaky Gut
It’s not an actual thing.
Unwanted (bad) substances cannot leak from the gut lumen (the ‘Hydroslide’ that runs from your mouth to your anus), through the gut barrier into your blood stream. Let’s stop using this term as nobody suffers from this condition.
Thirdly: Increased Intestinal Permeability
This is an actual thing.
But, it’s a potent response to stress and/or inflammation – it’s not a diagnosis. And, it works in reverse to what you might think; water gets drawn from the body, through the gut barrier, flushing the gut lumen out with ultimately results in diarrhoea, and/or vomiting.
In my opinion, Increased Intestinal Permeability should only be used to describe the body’s perfectly normal response to an immune challenge/treat, or irritant that occurs in the gut lumen.
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a bacteria to enter the kingdom of you.
The investigation has come up dry on ‘Leaky Gut’.
Proponents of this theory told us that ‘Leaky Gut’ caused your gut barrier to have defective tight junctions, which instead of blocking pathogens (bacteria and other toxins) from gaining entry into your bloodstream, allowed their entrance willy-nilly through a pathway between the cells of the gut barrier.
This giant free-for-all supposedly caused chronic inflammation throughout your body which would result in a set of correlated symptoms (a syndrome) which could include: chronic diarrhoea, constipation, bloating, nutrient deficiency, poor concentration, confusion, fatigue, rashes, joint pain, headaches and/or migraines.
Here’s the thing though… It was my gut instinct that made me not treat ‘Leaky Gut’.
To read the rest of this article on Lisa’s website ‘Lisa Said So’ click here
Lisa Fitzgibbon is a qualified (2006), experienced and registered Naturopath & Medical Herbalist. If you have any health issues I highly recommend getting in touch with Lisa, you can see her in person or via Zoom if you are not in the Auckland area.
About The Author: Katie Brooks
More posts by Katie Brooks