Healing a Leaky Gut
Feeling foggy and low energy? Do you have skin conditions that won’t go away? Constant bloating and/or gas? You may be suffering from intestinal permeability, also known as Leaky Gut Syndrome.
What is Leaky Gut?
Leaky Gut occurs when the epithelial cells that make up the lining of your intestines become compromised. These cells are the barrier between the gut microbiome and your bloodstream. When the lining is no longer effective as a filter, toxins, waste, and undigested food products leak into your bloodstream; the body’s immune system reacts, and inflammation increases, resulting in problems with your health.
Fatigue, unexplained weight gain, digestive trouble, food allergies, and skin conditions are just some of the signals that you are not assimilating and absorbing the nutrients that you consume.
What causes Leaky Gut?
A poor diet can lead to nutritional deficiencies that can increase intestinal permeability. Diets high in saturated fat, processed, fatty foods, and low in fiber can affect the balance of beneficial bacteria.
Leaky Gut is sensitive to inflammatory foods such as gluten, dairy, alcohol, and sugar. Chronic stress can negatively affect our parasympathetic nervous system, our rest, and our digestion. Excessive strenuous exercise can be detrimental because blood flow is diverted from an inactive gut out to your limbs and muscles. The use of antibiotics can also disrupt our microbiome and intestinal environment.
How can I improve Leaky Gut?
Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture are excellent for improving the nervous system and digestive health. Your practitioner will guide you in fine-tuning your condition based on your TCM diagnosis.
Good quality prebiotics and probiotics can help. Prebiotic fiber acts as food for preexisting good bacteria and stimulates their growth. Green bananas, garlic, artichokes, and berries are good prebiotic dietary sources. Probiotics are living strains of bacteria that add to the population of good bacteria in your digestive system. Miso and cultured veggies like kimchi and sauerkraut provide digestive enzymes that are beneficial to the health of the upper and lower digestive tract.
Vitamin deficiencies have been linked to an impairment of the intestinal barrier. Vitamins A and D are two nutrients that have been found to be important for maintaining a healthy gut barrier while Vitamin C is important for collagen formation which strengthens capillaries.
Exercise moderately to move the blood through your body. Keep your stress levels at bay with meditation, tai chi, community, and laughter.