For those following the current research, it appears that having a leaky gut wall is the starting point for most of our modern degenerative illnesses. It has been said that auto-immune disease is the big disease of the 21st century. Everything from heart disease to osteoporosis and Alzheimer’s to diabetes is now being recognized as auto-immune caused. And the basic starting point for auto-immune disease is damage to the lining of our gut.
When our gut lining becomes porous and permeable to undigested food and bacteria it drives our immune system crazy. Our immune system has two halves – the army and the police force. The army is for fighting foreign invaders and the police force is for keeping our inner citizen cells in line. But undigested food and parts of gut bacteria getting into our blood stream don’t fit either half of the immune system properly. The army sets off chemical alarms that create lots of inflammation because it thinks the body is under attack, but there are no living bacteria, virus, or parasites for it to attack and the police force reacts to the alarms and gets hyper-reactive attacking healthy normal cells just because the junk from the intestine is hanging around them. This happens because the junk from the intestine likes to glue itself to various tissue types and it gets carried to those tissues by the blood stream.
The net result is lots of systemic inflammation and the destruction of healthy cells in our organs, bones, and nerves by our over reactive immune system. Eventually things get bad enough that we are diagnosed with a disease like Alzheimer’s or osteoporosis.
What are some of the early signs of a leaky gut forming?
– more frequent food sensitivities or reactions
– acid reflux /heartburn
– abdominal bloating
– chronic constipation or diarrhea
– IBS and Crohn’s disease are more advanced stages of leaky gut
– feeling any mood or body changes after eating grains
– feeling tired after eating
– systemic inflammation
– thyroid issues, osteoporosis, dementia, or any auto-immune conditions
While these are not definitive diagnostic findings, they are very suggestive of an underlying leaky gut problem. Definitive diagnosis is made through blood testing the presence of LPS, zonulin, or occludin proteins in the blood.
I have been aware of this nasty process for about ten years now and have been trying to “cure” my leaky gut that entire time. Things I have done have definitely helped, but never really reversed the basic problem. The early warning signs were there even 15 years ago when an adrenal stress test I took showed I had completely depleted my intestinal secretory IgA. Unfortunately nobody at that time knew what this meant other than as a marker for chronic digestive stress. Now we know that this is one of the early signs of the destruction of the gut lining. Secretory IgA is the immunoglobulin that catches and neutralizes undigested food and bad bacteria inside the intestines before they can get to the gut wall and compromise it.
A healthy gut lining has a thick coating of mucus filled with IgA and good guy probiotic bacteria protecting the gut wall. Eating foods that promote the growth of bad bacteria like sugar, excess protein, fried foods, grains, and food processing chemicals gradually destroys this protective mucus layer and kills off the good guy bacteria. Even eating good foods, but eating more than or faster than your digestive juices and enzymes can handle, will produce the same result. Depleting the protective IgA, starving out the good guy bacteria, and destroying the mucus layer leaves the tissue paper thin gut wall vulnerable to attack by bad bacteria and the effects of gluten and casein. They open holes in the gut wall letting through the poisonous outer shells of the bad bacteria known as LPS – lipopolysaccharides. These trigger the immune system to go into full alert because their sensors are convinced that we are being overwhelmed by a bacterial invasion.
So what can we do about all this trouble? Obviously we have to stop eating the wrong foods and in the wrong amounts. We have to rebuild the mucus lining and feed the gut cells the kind of food they need to repair their damaged bodies. We also need to feed the good guy bacteria and starve out the bad guy bacteria. We also need to tone down the overactive immune system and build tolerance back into it. Each of these steps involves specific actions.
The first step is to stop eating vegetable oils, processed foods, flours, sugar, and food chemicals. Next is to augment our enzyme and Hcl levels to match our food consumption so our food gets completely digested. We then add specific nutrients known to help heal the gut like L-glutamine, ginger, aloe vera, zinc carnosine, and okra. We support the good guy bacteria with specific fibers they eat and avoid foods like sugar and simple carbs the bad guys love. We also increase our intake of vitamin D3, which is actually the main hormone for supporting the immune system regulation. To increase tolerance we may need to do some fasting to kill off the memory immune cells that are holding on to our reactions to various foods.
All this is good and powerful for bringing a halt to the progression of damage to the gut lining, but it still does not reverse the over reactive immune cells in the gut. For that we need to actually reprogram these cells with specific immune modulators and immunoglobulins. Hundreds of millions of dollars of research is being spent to find drugs that will do just this, but so far the drugs cause more problems than they solve. But there is one
natural substance that has been researched for over 20 years in over 500 clinical studies that does exactly what we need. That substance is called colostrum. Colostrum is the first few days of milk produced by a new mother mammal. It is designed to jump start the digestive system of a newborn infant. It is full of all kinds of immunoglobulins and immune modulators to train the baby’s gut to function properly. It literally substitutes for the immune function not yet developed in the baby.
Fortunately for us the components in colostrum are basically the same for all mammals, so cow or goat colostrum works great on human babies… and adults with gut immune systems that are not working properly. The weakness of colostrum is that it is easily destroyed by stomach acids. This is not a problem for a baby as they don’t have any stomach acid initially. But for adults this is a problem. One company, the original colostrum company that makes the colostrum most studies have used has found a way around this. They encapsulate their colostrum in liposomes – little cell membrane like spheres that protect the colostrum from destruction by
stomach acids. That company is Sovereign Labs down in Sedona, Arizona. There are many other colostrums on the market now, but their functional effectiveness is very low because of the digestion of the colostrum. Sovereign’s colostrum is the only product of any sort to be able to legitimately claim to heal leaky gut.
I have been using their colostrum for a couple weeks now and I am finding I have much greater resistance to any reactions to foods, less gut pain, and less bloating – in spite of last week being Thanksgiving. I always test products on myself before recommending it to my patients. So far this product looks like a winner. I hope to be getting some in the office soon. Additionally I am producing a combination product for all the other gut
supportive nutrients I mentioned before. I call it Gut Healer. Between the diet changes and the addition of the right nutrients and immune modulators, I expect to see some significant improvements in this leaky gut problem so many of my patients are experiencing.