5 Foods That Can Make Leaky Gut WORSE

Hey everybody, I want to talk to five foods that can make leaky gut worse. Now, if you're trying to heal your gut, you may be focusing on all the healthy foods you should be eating, and that's a good thing. But there's another side of the equation that's just as important. What foods should you not be eating? Now, some of them are obvious, and some may not be, but let me get into this more detail. Because you can take probiotics, digestive enzymes, and all kinds of nutritional supplements, but you're continually eating foods that irritate your intestinal lining, disrupt your microbiome, or feed unhealthy organisms. So, you may be working against yourself. Again, some of these foods may be obvious, but other ones may not be, and they may surprise you. And stay with me until the end because I'm going to explain how I use a simple elimination and reintroduction strategy to help determine which foods may be a problem for an individual patient. So, let's get started. So, first, what do we try to accomplish? When I'm working with someone who has already been diagnosed or I think has leaky gut, I think about foods in two basic categories. First, what foods can help support a healthier intestinal environment? And second, what foods may be interfering with the healing process? And you really need to address both. Think about it this way. If you injure your ankle, you don't just provide nutrients that support healing and then continue running 5 miles every day. You also remove the stress that's contributing to the injury. I apply a similar principle to the intestinal tract. You want to provide the nutrients and foods that support intestinal health while simultaneously reducing exposure to foods that may be perpetuating the problem. So, let's look at five of the biggest categories. The first, gluten. Gluten isn't actually one protein. It's a collection of proteins found primarily in grains such as wheat, rye, and barley. And certain gluten proteins can be difficult for the human digestive system to completely break down. But what makes gluten especially interesting in this discussion of leaky gut is its relationship to zulin and intestinal permeability. Zulin is involved in regulating the tight junctions between the cells lining your intestine. Think of those tight junctions as microscopic gates controlling what gets through your intestinal barrier. Gluten can affect xylin activity. These proteins which act as gates again especially in susceptible individuals and influence intestinal permeability. Now I want to make one important distinction. Celiac disease is not just simply being sensitive to wheat or gluten. It's an immune mediated disease triggered by gluten and affects about 1% of the population. But there are also people who don't have celiac disease who record digestive or systemic symptoms associated with consuming wheat or gluten foods. This is commonly referred to as non-seliac gluten sensitivity or non-seliac wheat sensitivity. And some studies show maybe up to 25% of people have some degree of gluten sensitivity but not allergies. And so I've seen over 31 years that many people their digestive system does much better when they're on a gluten-free diet. But that doesn't mean it's something that everyone has to follow. It's something you can try and see how you do unless you have very specific testing done. So if you remove wheat products, uh rye products, uh barley products, remember there's one downside. These are a rich source of fiber that also not only help your bowel movements but support your microbiome. So, if you're glutenfree, you can't just take these things out of your diet and not get other fiber sources in. It's important that we boost up other fiber sources. For example, you have foods such as quinoa, buckwheat, brown rice. Uh these types of grains will give you fiber as well and other appropriate whole food sources of fiber. I also pay particular attention to prebiotic and probiotic foods because they maintain microbial diversity which of course is very important for healing up a leaky gut. So the goal isn't simply just avoid gluten. The goal is to create a healthier intestinal environment. The second category is one of the biggest problems in the modern diet and that is refined sugar and excessive simple carbohydrates. Well, why is that? Because you're not just feeding yourself when you eat. You're feeding your microbiome and different microorganisms thrive on different foods. A diet high in refined sugars can favor the growth of undesirable organisms. Simple sugars can fuel potentially pathogenic bacteria as well as fungi such as candida albocans. At the same time, a poor quality high sugar diet may negatively affect beneficial bacteria and this can create a vicious cycle. Let me explain. You consume large amounts of refined sugar, certain undesirable organisms flourish. These organisms can produce substances that irritate the intestinal environment. Inflammation increases. Digestion and absorption may become impaired. More poorly digested foods move further through the intestinal tract and that provides additional material for microbial fermentation. The result for some people can be more gas, more bloating, more abdominal distension, and potentially further disruption of the intestinal environment. Animal research has demonstrated increased intestinal permeability with diets high in glucose and fructose. So, someone has significant dispiosis or leaky gut. One of my basic nutritional strategies is to dramatically reduce refined and added sugars. And look at where those sugars and refined carbohydrates are hidened, such as pastries, the obvious candy and soda, for example. Sweetened drinks you need to be aware of. Desserts. These are all common ways Americans get excess sugar. But it goes beyond that. Many breakfast cereals are very high in simple sugars and highly refined breads and pasta products can be very problematic. You don't need pathogenic organisms thriving on a constant supply of refined carbohydrates. Hey, one second. If you're looking for help with any type of health issue, I've put together a line of doctor grade supplements that I formulated myself. They're the same formulas I use with my patients. Click the link below to check them out. Okay, back to the video. Food group number three is artificial sweeteners and food additives. Now, someone might say, "Okay, Dr. Sangler, I'll stop eating sugar and just use artificial sweeteners. No, that's not a good idea. And before I get into details, what are some of these artificial sweeteners? Well, some you've heard about saccharine, sucralose, aspartame, is also fame, potassium, neotame, and advantame. Some of these substances are hundreds or even thousands of times sweeter than ordinary table sugar. But the issue we're interested in right now isn't simply sweetness. It's their potential effect on the gut microbiome. Research has raised concerns that certain non-nutritive artificial sweeteners can alter the composition or function of intestinal bacteria. In other words, replacing large amounts of sugar with large amounts of artificial sweeteners isn't necessarily the gut health solution people think it is. It definitely is not. So, if the goal is to create the healthiest possible microbiome, I really recommend people get off not just highly processed foods, but you've got to get these artificial sweeteners out of your diet. Let's talk about the fourth group. Number four is alcohol. And this one is especially important if you're actively trying to heal a compromised intestinal barrier. Alcohol can negatively affect the microbiome. It can promote an environment that favors undesirable bacteria and fungi. It can increase intestinal inflammation and importantly alcohol metabolism produces aceta aldahhide. Acetaide is a compound that can adversely affect the intestinal barrier and increase permeability or worsen leaky gut that creates the potential for bacterial products known as endotoxins to cross from the intestine into the circulation. And once those substances enter the bloodstream, they can activate the immune system and contribute to inflammation. So alcohol can create problems on several levels. This includes microbiome destruction, intestinal inflammation, increased permeability, and greater exposure to bacterial endotoxins. If someone doesn't have digestive problems, moderation is still important. But if you already have leaky gut, or strongly suspect you do, my recommendation is much more straightforward. Consider avoiding alcohol completely while you're actively healing the intestinal barrier. Remember, you're trying to remove obstacles to healing. Alcohol is definitely one of the most common obstacles. Number five is food sensitivities. Now, we get to perhaps the most individualized category, and that's food sensitivities. This is where people often become confused because a food that's perfectly healthy for one person may cause symptoms in someone else. First, let me make an important distinction. A food allergy and a food sensitivity or intolerance are not the same thing. A true food allergy can potentially produce a serious and sometimes lifethreatening reaction. Symptoms can include hives, swelling, or difficult breathing. Now, food sensitivities are different. They're more subtle. They can produce less immediate and sometimes much less obvious symptoms. And examples of what a food sensitivity might induce would include just different types of digestive upset, bloating, you could have headaches, you could get fatigue, you could have brain fog, joint pain, muscle aches. Uh it could aggravate skin problems. It could include a variety of different other symptoms as well. Again, they won't kill you, but they can make life miserable in many ways. Now, one thing that's very important that you should be aware of is that there's a relationship between leaky gut and multiple food sensitivities. And this relationship becomes very interesting. Increased intestinal permeability may expose the immune system to food components in ways that promote increased immune reactivity. So when I see someone who says, "Dr. Mark, I seem to be reacting to most foods. I only eat maybe 10, 15, 20 different foods." I don't assume that that person needs to permanently eliminate all these different foods. Instead, I ask, why has this person become so reactive to foods in the first place? Is there an underlying problem with the intestinal barrier? Could dispiosis be involved? Could we improve the intestinal environment and eventually improve the intolerances? This would include the microbiome. And in my clinical experience, I thought that as we improve leaky gut and dispiosis, the number and severity of food sensitivities can be reduced substantially. And that's an important concept because the ultimate goal shouldn't necessarily be to put someone on an increasingly restrictive diet forever. That's going to lead to a restriction amount of nutrients you get. That actually can increase food sensitivities over time. So the goal is to improve the underlying intestinal environment whenever possible. Now you've probably heard about elimination diets and elimination diets simply are you avoid common food sensitivities, things like corn, soy, gluten, dairy products. Um, these are some of the more common foods that people are up to. Eggs can definitely be one as well. And so you remove those foods, let's say for a few weeks, and then one at a time, you reintroduce them, say every 3 to 5 days, and you notice if your symptoms first had cleared up and then second, if you reintroduce that food and you notice symptoms. Now remember, a lot of food sensitivities are not immediate. They're delayed. So you may not have symptoms for hours or even for a day or two. So, you need to keep a chart, a log of how you're feeling and the symptoms that you're experiencing. But for a lot of people, just a simple elimination and reintroduction diet over a period of four to six weeks could be quite revealing and help you heal your digestive tract and prevent systemic problems uh in your life. Now there are certain labs and some are much better than others that we integrative doctors use where we can check food sensitivities with different immune markers and that can help fasttrack for some people what their food sensitivities are. Well, there you have it. The five categories of foods that you should be aware of that by addressing these you can greatly accelerate your healing from leaky gut and greatly improve your health. Now, if you want to learn more about how the body is actually designed, engineered for your digestive system to function properly, how it interacts with other systems and organ systems in the body, then you might want to take a look at my new book, Ultimate Health and Healing, and you can get free excerpts from that book at ultimatealth and healing.net as well. The book is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other book sellers.

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