Colorado Springs Functional Medicine

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Testing for Leaky Gut: Yes, It Does Exist

‘Leaky Gut’ has become a household term, at least from the clients walking into my door.  A gut’s leakiness is can be linked to mental/emotional issues, behavioral issues, auto-immune issues, and virtually any disruption in the body’s intelligent expression.

But the elephant in the room is that it’s hard to quantify.  You’re convinced there is a gut issue but you just don’t know to what extent.  There’s good news, labs are getting better and better at quantifying a leaky gut.

A newer test to me, maybe it’s old news to you, is the Advanced Intestinal Barrier Assessment from Dunwoody labs.

What Does It Test?

Zonulin

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3 Rs for Gut Restoration

I’m sure there isn’t a day that goes by that you don’t see a Facebook post talking about the gut.  In fact, I just posted one from some researchers concluding:

The study results support the hygiene hypothesis which, in the case of IBD, argues that the absence of exposure to worms in too-clean modern living spaces has left some with oversensitive, gut-based immune systems vulnerable to inflammatory diseases. Gut worms have helped to train and balance immune systems throughout human evolution, but are now missing in developed nations, which, in turn, have the highest rates of Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. #GetDirty.

I’m currently reading Dr. Kelly Brogan’s book, A Mind of Your Own:  The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives.  She is tackling the gut as a major source of mental illness.  The gut’s affect is linked to WAY more than just belly discomfort.  It’s linked to thyroid issues, hormones, joint destruction, autism, chronic fatigue, and so on and so on.

So what’s a person to do about it?  How do you know if you have gut problems?

The safe answer is to assume that you do have gut problems.  The solution is to create an internal ecosystem that promotes gut health.  What’s the danger of doing this if you don’t have gut problems?  Nothing.  It’s called creating health.  If it’s good for your gut, it’s good for your brain.  If it’s good for your gut, it’s good for your hair. If it’s good for your gut, it’s good for your sex drive.  If it’s good for your gut, it’s good for your mitochondria.

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The Gut

I like to think the readers of this blog are very savvy.  You read, you research, and you make informed decisions when it comes to your healthcare avenues.

Because you fall into that category, than you have probably heard and researched many conditions that can relate to problems in ‘the gut.’  Your digestive tract has huge implications into virtually every chronic illness, not just the ones that seem digestive related.

What’s funny is that I often get challenged that there’s no way the gut can have impact on behavior and that changing diet won’t affect ADHD, Autism, and other behavioral conditions.  To those people, I simply reply, ‘let’s go have a few beers and talk about it.’  Most of the time I get blank stares.

The Gut

For the ones that do get it, it’s like a light bulb just went on.  They put 2 and 2 together that if we drink alcohol, we have the potential to act stupid.  BINGO!  But you know this.  You’ve done your research.  The gut affects behavior, no big whoop.

With lots of sources pointing back to poor gut health, it’s rare to find any that say why?  There are just remedies and protocols to help you fix secondary and tertiary problem.  When you understand the why, the how, what, where, and when fall into place easier and you address more than just the gut.  You address you, not just a symptom.

You were born with a leaky gut.

In the world of gut health, everyone is quick to jump on your leaky gut as a cause of you illness, ailment, or dysfunction.  The reality is that if you didn’t have a leaky gut, you probably wouldn’t have made it alive past 6 months.  A leaky gut as an adult is an effect, not a direct cause.

We are born with a very weak and immature immune system.  We genetically require a leaky gut to allow for mom’s antibodies to pass through our gut and into our blood stream.  Your leaky gut saved your life as an infant.

Your leaky gut saved your life as an infant. Click To Tweet

Calling leaky gut a bad thing is like calling high blood pressure and an elevated heart rate bad.  It all has to do with context.  Symptoms are neither good nor bad.  Your symptoms are not a moral or ethical dilemma.  Your symptoms happen for a reason.  That reason is the context of your life.

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