Primary Causes of Leaky Gut Syndrome
Leaky Gut has several primary causes. Our diet is key to decreasing inflammation and helping to restore our health. This is no exception with leaky gut. Our diet, medications, and vitamin and mineral levels can play key roles in preventing leaky gut.
Dr. Hayden and Dr. Horsley will help to answer this question of primary causes as well as cover several other key concepts as they continue this series, “Leaky Gut Syndrome – Your Symptoms Could be Directly Associated with Your Diet”. You will learn about what leaky gut is, what the symptoms are, how it is diagnosed, what the best treatment options are, and common conditions tied to leaky gut. These videos will be released over the next couple days on our youtube account, facebook account, and as a blog post on The Hayden Institute website.
Transcript from the Video on the Primary Causes of Leaky Gut Syndrome:
Dr. Hayden: One of the most common questions that I get regarding leaky gut in the office is: “what causes it?”. People want to know what causes it to all of a sudden develop, when they had no prior symptoms. For example, we may have a 35 year old lady that walks in and is not feeling good – she’s tired, her brain isn’t working anymore, her digestion is falling apart, she’s gaining weight, and she’s like, “oh my gosh, I feel like I have all these symptoms of leaky gut.” So, Dr. Horsley, what would you say the top three things that may trigger someone to start presenting with leaky gut would be?
Dr. Horsley: Your digestive system itself is very intricate. There are lots of different bacteria and microbes in there (you actually have more bacteria than you do human cells in your body). So naturally, one of the causes is that you have dysfunction in those gut bacteria – you have more bad guys than you have good guys. This can develop gradually over time, slowing accumulating symptoms and can occur for many different reasons. One reason could be antibiotics. Perhaps you’ve taken antibiotics and you’ve killed off your good guys and those bad guys are making themselves at home. Another reason could be a high intake of sugar or things that change the quality and type of bacteria that are lining the walls of your gut. Sugar can play a big factor in overall gut health – sugar, fructose, alcohol – each of these can play a large roll in disrupting the quality of bacteria in your gut.
Dr. Hayden: So basically, if someone’s gut microbiome starts getting a little bit out of sync, it sets the stage for an inflammatory process to just get bigger and bigger and bigger. The inflammation then sets in the barrier system and that opens up the opportunity for things to start moving where they’re not supposed to.
Dr. Hayden: In addition to some of the barrier weaknesses that come from microbiome dysfunction there are other triggers as well that can cause or accelerate the leaky gut process. You mentioned antibiotics, so pharmaceutical medications can also sometimes be a stressor on the digestive system. That is where warnings against things like non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) come into play. NSAIDS are known to be beneficial for lowering inflammation, however, sometimes they can be harmful to the digestive system.
Dr. Hayden: Additionally, there are food sensitivities that can start to create symptoms. As inflammation gets worse we may not be able to tolerate things as well as we were able to in your 30’s, gluten is a good example of this. It’s not like all of a sudden gluten became bad for you, it’s almost like how you would treat a broken leg. If you break your leg, you don’t want to walk on it anymore to give it time to heal. Sometimes inflammation in the gut is similar to this, the best way to give your gut that “rest time” that it needs is to avoid eating certain foods that can be inflammatory, like dairy or gluten, or other foods that individuals know they have sensitivities to. The last potential trigger that is common is a micronutrient deficiency. So vitamin A and vitamin D are tremendously important for gut health and it’s really common to see low vitamin D levels on people’s laboratory tests whenever we run blood work in the office.
Dr. Hayden: So if we were to summarize through the major causes of what may trigger someone to have a leaky gut, what would you say the top things are?
Dr. Horsley: The biggest thing I would say would be the quality of your diet – removing those inflammatory foods – because they can lead to those imbalances in the gut. This imbalance could lead to infection and the use of antibiotics or other other things that can further imbalance the system. Therefore, inflammatory foods and too much sugar can lead to dysbiosis (imbalance in gut bacteria), leading to a pharmaceutical intervention, leading to micronutrient deficiencies, leading to leaky gut.