The body’s digestive system is a barrier that prevents disease-causing pathogens from entering the bloodstream. In particular, intestinal bacteria affect your entire body, including weight, sleep quality, mood, and appetite. If all goes well, these organisms will live in perfect harmony with you. However, if the intestinal flora becomes out of balance due to poor diet, stress, or other factors, it can lead to leaky gut syndrome.
Simply put, the leaky gut syndrome is when the intestinal wall leaks, so toxins and proteins enter the bloodstream and lead to digestive and metabolic disorders, inflammation and allergies, and even more serious diseases such as type 1 diabetes and inflammatory bowel disease (IBS). By far, a healthy diet is the most important way to maintain the balance of intestinal flora and to prevent and repair leaky gut syndrome.
What is Leaky Gut Syndrome
Your digestive system is the barrier that protects you from the outside world. The intestinal tract has three main barrier roles:
- Protecting the body from toxins and pathogens
- Maintaining a healthy immune system
- Facilitating the digestion and absorption of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients
Microorganisms in the gut play an important role in maintaining the integrity of the intestinal lining. Healthy intestinal bacteria produce short-chain fatty acids and proteins that help keep the intestinal wall strong.
However, when the intestinal flora becomes imbalanced, holes can develop in the intestinal wall, increasing intestinal permeability and causing intestinal contents to “leak” into the bloodstream, a condition known as a leaky gut syndrome. These intestinal contents that invade the bloodstream contain proteins and bacterial neurotoxins that can trigger allergies, autoimmune diseases, and inflammation.
Causes of the leaky gut syndrome
Many times, our daily diet and certain medications can affect intestinal health. The following are some of the main causes of leaky gut disorders:
- Poor dietary habits: eating a high sugar, high carb diet for a long time and eating a few fruits and vegetables.
- Antibiotics, steroids, or over-the-counter painkillers (such as aspirin and para-thiouracil): can irritate the intestinal lining and destroy the protective mucus layer, and kill healthy intestinal bacteria.
- Excessive alcohol consumption: may increase intestinal permeability.
- Inadequate nutritional intake: Vitamin A, vitamin D, and zinc deficiencies can increase intestinal permeability.
- High stress: Chronic stress is a contributing factor to a variety of gastrointestinal disorders, including leaky gut syndrome.
- Intestinal dysbiosis: A decrease in probiotics can lead to a weakened barrier function of the intestinal wall with cracks and holes.
- Yeast overgrowth: Yeast is naturally present in the intestinal tract, but yeast overgrowth may lead to a leaky gut.
Symptoms of leaky gut
If you experience any of the following symptoms, you may have a leaky gut.
- Food allergy
- Persistent acne or rosacea
- Fatigue
- Autoimmune disease (hypothyroidism, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis)
- Weight gain
- Digestive problems and bloating
- Cognitive impairment
- Depression, autism
- Headache
- Joint pain
A leaky gut can cause many inflammatory diseases, including type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease (IBS) celiac disease, multiple sclerosis, asthma, and more. If you feel something is wrong with your intestines, try the following to improve your health
How to Repair Leaky Gut
By keeping your intestinal flora in healthy balance, you can boost your immune system, improve digestion, remove toxins from your body, and prevent a leaky gut. Here are 7 ways to heal a leaky gut:
1. Reduce inflammatory foods that can affect the intestinal flora
Some foods can cause inflammation in the body and promote the growth of harmful bacteria in the intestine, thus weakening the barrier role of the intestinal wall. If you want to repair leaky gut syndrome, it is recommended that you refuse the following foods for at least three months.
- Wheat products: all pasta made from wheat flour
- Grains containing quality: barley, rye, and oats
- Processed meats: sausages, deli meats, bacon, luncheon meats, hot dogs, etc.
- Baked goods: cakes, muffins, cookies, pastries, and pizza
- Junk food: fast food, popcorn, potato chips, candy, etc.
- Dairy products: milk, cheese, and ice cream
- Refined oils: sunflower oil, soybean oil
- Artificial sweeteners: aspartame, sucralose, and saccharin.
- Sauces: salad dressing, soy sauce, teriyaki sauce, and seafood sauce
- Beverages: Alcohol, carbonated beverages, and other sugary drinks
2. Add foods containing probiotics and prebiotics to your diet
A well-balanced diet is very important to ensure intestinal health, especially those foods rich in probiotics and prebiotics, which can help the growth of beneficial bacteria in the intestinal tract and improve digestive health.
- Vegetables: Broccoli, kale, cabbage, carrots, collard greens, beetroot, spinach, ginger, and mushrooms
- Roots and tubers: potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, carrots, squash, and turnips.
- Fermented vegetables: kimchi, sauerkraut, pickled cucumbers
- Fruits: coconuts, grapes, bananas, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, kiwis, pineapples, oranges, oranges, lemons, and papayas
- Seeds: chia seeds, flax seeds, sunflower seeds, etc.
- Unprocessed nuts: peanuts, almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts
- Mass-free grains: buckwheat, brown rice, sorghum, mass-free oats, etc.
- Healthy fats: avocados, avocado oil, coconut oil, and extra virgin olive oil
- Fish: salmon, tuna, herring, and other omega-3-rich fish
- Poultry and eggs: chicken, beef, pork, lamb, turkey, and eggs
- Seasonings and spices: cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, chamomile, and cardamom
- Health drinks: water, bone broth, tea, coconut milk, nut milk
3. Take nutritional supplements when necessary
In general, as long as you can ensure that you adhere to a healthy diet, you can prevent or improve leaky gut syndrome and promote digestive health. However, if your symptoms are more serious and you need to return to normal as soon as possible, it is recommended to take nutritional supplements.
- Probiotic supplements: If you are still not getting enough probiotics through your diet, you can take supplements to improve your intestinal health.
- Digestive enzymes: The small intestine, pancreas, stomach, and salivary glands produce enzymes that help break down food for the body to absorb its nutrients. If you have gastrointestinal problems, you need to supplement with additional digestive enzymes to help with digestion and absorption.
- Collagen: Collagen contains amino acids, glycine, proline, and hydroxyproline, which are needed to repair and rebuild the intestinal lining. Supplementation with collagen skin can help strengthen the intestinal barrier, making it less permeable and retaining more of the nutrients in food.
- L-Glutamine: This anti-inflammatory amino acid acts like a bodyguard for the intestinal tract, repairing a leaky gut and removing harmful pathogens by promoting the growth of fine runs in the digestive tract.
- Quercetin: Quercetin is a strong antioxidant of flavonoids that stabilizes mast cells and reduces the amount of histamine they release, thereby significantly reducing inflammatory damage to the intestinal wall and strengthening the intestinal barrier and function to prevent leaky gut from the ground up.
- Vitamins A and D: These two vitamins help the body secrete immunoglobulins, which are vital to your immune function and mucous membranes, and help to quickly rebuild a healthy gut and immune system.
4. Try to reduce stress
Stress hormones can attack and destroy the tight junctions of the cells in the intestinal wall, making them prone to becoming lax and leaky. Additional research also shows that stress affects the gut-brain axis, the pathway that connects the gut to the brain, resulting in reduced nutrient absorption, inability to produce enough digestive enzymes, slowed oxygenation, and blocked blood flow to the gastrointestinal tract.
You can try some ways to de-stress yourself, such as:
- Exercise, yoga, or meditation
- Get enough quality sleep
- Listen to music, watch movies
- Talking with family and friends
- Keep a journal
- Take deep breaths
- Keep a pet
Conclusion
The leaky gut syndrome is a disorder caused by increased intestinal permeability. Poor dietary habits or mental stress can lead to dysbiosis of the intestinal microecology, which weakens the barrier effect of the intestinal wall, making it easier for toxins and undigested food particles to cross the wall and enter the bloodstream.
Eating less or no diet that tends to cause inflammation, eating more nutritious foods that promote the growth of healthy bacteria in the gut, avoiding alcohol, getting sleep, and reducing stress can all help prevent or repair a leaky gut and strengthen the immune system.
