What you Need to Know about Leaky Gut Syndrome

Leaky Gut Syndrome: When You’re Sick of Being Sick, Look Here

Weight gain, bloating, fatigue, pain, headache, allergies, mood swings, hormone troubles, and eventually every possible symptom can result from this single, reversible condition.  

Your regular doctor may not catch it, as they focus on individual symptoms as if they are all separate conditions.  However, you have only one sick body and as it gets sicker you will experience more symptoms and be on more drugs unless we find the root cause.  

Leaky gut syndrome is a common, root cause condition. It is also associated with other autoimmune disorders.  It typically begins with digestive trouble, which may go unnoticed.  Typical digestive problems include bloating, acid reflux, or changes in stool from loose to constipation.  If you were put on antacids, proton pump inhibitors or antibiotics for any extended length of time, then the likelihood of leak guy syndrome is even higher.  

The antacid medications decrease an immediate symptom (such as acid reflux) while shutting down digestion.  This increases the irritation that is probably already happening to your gut.  

Think of your stomach as a blender.  It’s not where you absorb your food, but instead where it is broken down.  Many leaky gut cases start with indigestion, food not properly breaking down in the stomach.  Symptoms include unusual fullness after eating, bloating, burping, acid reflux, and later changes in stool (this is because the food which is not broken down all the way is now irritating the gut).  

The stomach is naturally very acidic (1.2 pH).  When you eat, your stomach fills with hydrochloric acid and enzymes.  If you are not producing enough acid, then the food will not break down.  With acid reflux, some of that undigested stew pushes up and eventually irritates the lower esophageal sphincter (LES).  Once the acidic undigested stew weakens the LES, it feels like too much acid, but it’s not.

Instead, it’s a small amount of acid in the wrong place.  Restoring proper digestion reverses this permanently. Taking an antacid (when you actually may need more acid) will decrease symptoms while your food now sits like a brick, undigested, and then goes down to irritate your gut.

The small intestines (your gut) have the function of separating nutrients from waste.  The nutrients enter the bloodstream directly while the waste continues to the colon and is eventually evacuated.  When digestion is not working, the small intestinal lining becomes damaged over time. The function of separating waste becomes weaker and weaker until waste is actually entering the bloodstream.  

The next stop is the liver to filter the debris which eventually leads to allergies, skin irritations, cravings for sugar, and randomly waking up between 1-3 a.m., the time the liver goes into phase II detox.  

With the extra toxicity floating around, the body begins to hold on to weight.  Fat cells act as a secondary detox mechanism by storing difficult to eliminate toxins.  Your fat cells become full of toxic waste that your body will not let go of until you heal your liver and your gut!  

The liver directly affects the function of your thyroid, so now your entire hormone system gets put out of balance.  As you slump in energy with fatigue and malnutrition (you’re eating but at the same time starving because the small intestine isn’t taking in nutrients very well) you’re adrenal glands try to pick you up to get through the day.  The adrenals go into fatigue, which, if you’re peri-menopausal, will drop your libido as your adrenals begin to play a more important role in sex hormones closer to menopause.

You can see how leaky gut will have the average doctor chasing symptoms and band-aiding with drugs that will not address the root cause. Pain relievers and anti-depressants are often where they start.

In treatment, I have to assess which parts of the system are in need of support.  There aren’t any one-size-fits-all approaches to leaky gut. Some of my sickest patients (came in most sick on the most amount of drugs) end up being leaky gut cases in which every symptom improved once the root cause is addressed and I’ve told them what they should know about leaky-gut nutrition.  What you need is a doctor that specializes in functional medicine, which focuses on restoring function to organ systems instead of just medicating.  I am certainly not anti-drug, but drugs do absolutely nothing for leaky gut syndrome (drugs aren’t bad, just not the right tool).