Understanding Leaky Gut
Leaky Gut & Leaky Brain
Have you ever wondered what people really mean when they talk about “Leaky Gut”?
For years, the medical world dismissed it. If you brought it up at a doctor’s appointment, you might have gotten an eye roll. Maybe that has happened to you.
But science has finally caught up. Today, we call it by its real name. Increased Intestinal Permeability.
Here is the simplest way to picture it. Think of the lining of your small intestine like a giant cheesecloth. If you could stretch it out flat, it would cover the surface area of a tennis court. That is a lot of ground to cover.
The job of that lining is simple. Keep undigested food and bacteria on one side. Let nutrients pass through to the other.
But when that lining gets damaged, the holes in the cheesecloth get bigger. Things start leaking into your bloodstream that do not belong there. That is Leaky Gut.
Now here is where the detective work gets interesting.
Have you ever noticed that when your digestion is off, your thinking feels fuzzy too? Maybe you get brain fog along with the bloating. There is a real reason for that.
There is a protein in your body called Zonulin. Think of it as the gatekeeper for your gut lining. It controls how open or closed those tiny doors are.
But here is the catch. Zonulin does not just control the doors in your gut. It also affects the barrier that protects your brain.
So when Zonulin goes haywire and starts opening doors in your gut, it is often opening doors in your brain at the same time. That is what we call Leaky Brain.
So the big question becomes this. Why is your body making too much Zonulin in the first place?
Is it a food sensitivity? Is it stress? Could it be a lingering infection? Or maybe it is dysbiosis, where the balance of bacteria in your gut has shifted.
That is what we need to figure out. And it starts with paying attention to what your body is telling you.
When your gut acts up, do you feel it in your head too?
Authored by Gerard Guillory, MD
Gerard Guillory, MD, is a board-certified internist who practiced for nearly four decades with a focus on functional, root-cause medicine. He is the author of three books on irritable bowel syndrome and the founder of It’s My Health, where he and his team put current health news in context and help members understand the underlying causes of chronic symptoms.
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