The title of this article is "why most leaky gut cures won’t work" but it may not be what you think. I’m not against treating leaky gut and I don't think that it's useless to treat it. The focus and point I want to discuss is why these treatments fail or don't work fully.
So we will look at some of the steps that we see people taking to cure leaky gut with limited to no results. Usually the problem is from skipping or missing some of the steps in the process. As a result, there is wasted money and time. In this article I will discuss more on sequencing your treatments.
What is Leaky Gut?
So before we get into talking about why most leaky gut cures are not going to work, I wanted to give you a little bit of information on what it is and explain my perspective on it. Many people may know or already understand it a little but the details are important. Leaky Gut is a process that that occurs in your body allowing foreign proteins to get through your digestive tract into the body. This triggers the body’s immune response to to kick in which causes systemic symptoms and problems. The number of problems or symptoms that leaky gut are linked to is very broad. They are too numerous to mention here but some include:
- Skin reactions like eczema
- Hives and allergies
- Autoimmune issues
- Hashimoto's
- Rheumatoid Arthritis
- Lupus
- Any Autoimmune condition
- Elevated liver enzymes
- Mood disorders
When linked to leaky gut syndrome, these symptoms, signs and conditions are occurring from inflammation that starts in the digestive tract. Leaky gut occurs from chronic and long term inflammation. You can get a little bit of inflammation from an acute short lived event. However most of the time leaky gut is the result of chronic inflammation. The chronic insults are over and over and the body isn't able to keep up with fixing the proteins. These proteins, called tight junction proteins, are the stuff that keeps the digestive cells linked together.
What Does Leaky Gut Do To The Body
Another way that I think about leaky gut does to the body, is to imagine the lumen of your digestive tract. It has all these finger-like projections projecting into the middle of the lumen. These are what allow us to absorb the food and absorb nutrients. Those finger-like projections are part of the cells and are cinched together by proteins that allow them to open and close. The damage basically damages those proteins and the body isn't able to keep up with that damage. As a result the junctions between the cells can no longer close. This is leaky gut syndrome.
Why Your Leaky Gut Cures Won't Work
The main reason why I say that most people's leaky gut cures are not actually going to work is because they haven't fully figure out why they have it to begin with. You may have gone on a really strict diet (which could have bene very strict and hard). This may have helped your symptoms but it may not be enough. So we're gonna talk a little bit about what you can do to to look at that in a little more 
detail. Many of you have put in the work to find out exactly why you have leaky gut. Maybe you did some testing with your doctor or you followed specific things that tracked it back to the source. So don't get it wrong, this isn't me saying there is no such thing as leaky gut or it can't be cured. It's more so to say if you're not getting the results that you want, we need to look a little bit closer at some other things.
What other things? For instance, we see people all the time saying they're taking X Y & Z supplement for their leaky gut. This is fine perhaps even good. Yet when I asked them what the source was, they can't say. They never really looked at why they have leaky gut to begin with. No one told them to find out why. They just changed diet and started taking some supplements for leaky gut. This is a problem, especially if it did not really work or only helped partially.
You shouldn't just take supplements for leaky gut without finding out why. This is putting the cart before the horse. Another analogy that I like to use is, taking leaky gut supplements without removing the cause it is like dumping water and gasoline on fire and expecting the fire to go out.
So you're not removing the obstacle to these proteins being damaged your body can't really catch up. If you don't remove that obstacle, it will not be effective. The cause is the gasoline and the supplements are the water.
If there’s still imbalance or problems in your microbiome or other problems, then you're not going to get the full benefit. A lot of times people do change their diet and but they don't do much testing so they don't know if the foods they removed are the cause of their leaky gut or something else is.
Before removing foods, I recommend looking to see if you have:
- Bacteria in the wrong place like the case of small intestine bacterial overgrowth (SIBO)
- Other pathogenic microbes
- Candida or other
- Parasites
The other thing is, if you go on a really strict diet to begin with you may get false negative results from some of these test. If you have no other options doing diet experiments could be a good place to start. Not what I recommend but if it is your only option, it is better than doing nothing. Check out this post for some considerations
If you're not getting the results you want look into the microbial tests.
The other thing to consider is histamine intolerance and clearance. If you're not breaking down your histamines effectively, it also causes those tight junction proteins on the cells to open. This can be a trigger by itself without having any microbial issues. Sometimes histamine intolerance and microbial problems will trigger food sensitivities . When you take care of these first, most people have less sensitivities and less severe sensitive.
There's are a lot of supplements floating around claiming to be leaky gut cure. They probably will not work or only be partially effective, if you haven't figured out why you have it to begin with. Sometimes you don't even need extra supplements to get your digestive tract back in order. Once you remove the cause the body does the rest. The body is an amazing instrument that can cure itself when you remove that obstacle causing the problem, inflammation.
This is not to say that the supplements are bad. They really won't hurt you but potentially just wasting time and money. So find the cause then decide if you need them.
Hopefully this makes sense. If not, let me know in the comment section below. If you want more specific guidance on leaky gut cures, improving your digestion, or digestive health, click on the link below and come in for a free consult.
