You’ve likely heard the term “leaky gut,” maybe from us or in the media somewhere. It sounds sort of strange and disturbing, doesn’t it? It conjures some rather gruesome mental images.

It is, in a sense, exactly what it sounds like—just on a molecular level. Our intestines are essentially tubes. When we put foreign objects into our body, like food, it goes into our stomach, then our gut where it’s sort of decided what to do with it: extract nutrients and/or flush it out.

It’s important that during this process, the foreign objects (food) don’t get mixed in with anything else in the body, i.e., the bloodstream or organ systems not related to digestion. If foreign objects get into the bloodstream, what generally happens? The immune system reacts and tries to get rid of it. It’s foreign after all!

Leaky gut syndrome is the name for what happens when the space between cells on the inside of your intestines grows large enough that molecules of this undigested food gets through and enters the bloodstream, resulting in an immune response.

How does your gut become leaky in the first place?

It comes down to lifestyle. What are you habitually putting in your body? Consider these common consumables:

• Medication – Many over-the-counter drugs like Aspirin and Acetaminophen are bad news for the intestinal wall. They reduce the protective layer of mucus that coats the insides of your intestines. This opens the door for other irritants to pass through and cause trouble.
• Yeast – There’s nothing wrong with yeast, theoretically. In fact, your body naturally has a certain amount of it. It’s when it grows too quickly and too much that it becomes a fungus called Candida, which has a tendency to poke holes in your intestines.
• Environmental toxins – Our world is full of toxins (you can do quite a bit to avoid them, though that’s for another article). Many of these, like pesticides, herbicides and fungicides that cover much of our food, are irritants in our gut.
• Modern food – We eat a lot of preservatives, coloring, processed sugars and refined flours these days. This stuff is not good for your intestinal lining.

Over time, as habits form and we become stuck in a pattern of exposing ourselves to various irritants, our intestines start to spread apart at the cellular level. Things we eat get through and before you know it, our immune system is in a constant state of alert and tissues in our bodies are constantly inflamed. This can lead to dozens of different ailments including diabetes, tuberculosis, rheumatoid arthritis, hepatitis, Crohn’s disease, sinusitis and many more.

How to treat a leaky gut?

The lifestyle that got you into this mess offers the pathway out. In a sense, you simply reverse it. Our bodies are remarkably good at healing themselves under ideal conditions. Healing leaky gut is about creating those ideal conditions.

Step one is detoxification. You’ve got to get the toxins you’ve been collecting most of your life, the toxins that are wreaking havoc on nearly every physiological system in your body, and get them out. There are ways to do this, some safer and more effective than others. It’s best to consult a cellular detoxification specialist in this case. But if you can’t do that, then you can at least stop adding to the toxins you’ve already got. Do that by:

• Cutting out sugar – that includes grains, which your body essentially recognizes as a Snickers bar in disguise. Get rid of the starches as well.
• Load up on Vitamin D, Zinc and Omega-3 fatty acids. Leaky gut correlates with a deficiency in these nutrients. And Omega-3 fatty acids (which you can get from a fish oil supplement) are necessary for rebuilding the mucus membrane on your intestinal wall.
• It is absolutely vital to your gut health that you have a healthy biome. This refers to the bacteria present in your gut that are responsible for creating much of the digestive enzymes you need as well as providing important biological communication functions. Depending on the severity of your leaky gut problem, it might be necessary to starve down your entire gut biome and start again from scratch. This involves supervised fasts and a specialized diet, and you should consult with a detox specialist before attempting to do it yourself.
• Eat clean. Stick with organic fruits and veggies. Stick with grass-fed, organic, hormone-free beef; free-range, organic, hormone-free poultry and wild-caught fish. This will minimize your exposure to toxins in your food.

As you can see, it’s not all doom and gloom. Leaky gut, and the many diseases that result from it, are completely treatable and even reversible. It’s mainly a matter of self-control. And if you’re serious about your health, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Just live a healthy, clean lifestyle and your body will take care of the rest!