Leaky gut has reached epidemic proportions and sadly, is often the precursor to an autoimmune disease.

If you’re reading this post, you’ve probably, at one time or another, dealt with running to the bathroom at the most inconvenient time, terrible pain in your stomach or crazy skin issues and mood swings. Or, you’re just plain tired of feeling bad and have heard about leaky gut and want to learn as much as you can.

All those above symptoms and even obesity and extreme weight loss can come from having a leaky gut (increased intestinal permeability)

 

Did you know there are actually hundreds of symptoms that can arise from having leaky gut?

Though this list is not exhaustive, some of the most prominent ones are:

• Eczema
• Psoriasis
• Depression and other mood disorders
• Anxiety
• Autoimmune conditions like Hashimoto’s
• Joint Pain and Arthritis
• Rashes and Hives
• Extreme Food Sensitivities
• Intense weight loss
• Unbearable fatigue (or chronic fatigue)
• Fibromyalgia
• Insomnia
• Headaches and migraines

Connecting the Dots to Leaky Gut

I’ll never forget almost a decade ago, after purchasing a food sensitivity test and getting the results, being told that I was intolerant to over 175 foods and environmental agents!

To say I was overwhelmed was an understatement.

I ended up calling the company that I got the food sensitivity test through and asking them, “With these results, what in the world am I supposed to eat?”

They told me that it’s likely that I had leaky gut and they could work up a menu for me to help my immune system calm down and my gut heal. I trusted they knew what they were talking about.

At this point in my life journey, I had never even heard the term “leaky gut.” It sounded weird and gross. However, I decided to trust them and follow the menu I paid them to create for 6 months believing that it would help me get better. I knew nothing about nutrition and digestion and I trusted that they did.

Long story short, the menu removed all of the foods my body supposedly did not tolerate at the time and added in foods that, according to my results, my body was ok with.

Sadly, the menu was full of grains, pseudo-grains, legumes, fruit sugars, nuts and seeds AND there wasn’t a word about the proper preparation of these foods in the entirety of the documents.

So, upon finishing this journey which was supposed to allow me to heal, instead I got down to 96 pounds, my skin issues were so much worse, my depression became suicidal and I was itching so badly every day that every time I ate that I would be sobbing and in tears.

Wasn’t The Menu Supposed to Heal Leaky Gut?

Here’s Why It Didn’t

If I would have known then what I know now as a (soon to be) Nutritional Therapy Practitioner and a current Certified Essential Oil Coach, I never would have consented to the menu that this company gave me. It contained the antithesis of foods that heal the gut. The foods that they loaded my menu with were extremely hard on the digestive tract and even pulled nutrients from my body that I needed so badly.

Furthermore, the menu alone didn’t address my stomach acid levels, the way I was eating, if I was in a sympathetic or parasympathetic state or my enzyme and bile status to actually break down the foods I was eating.

 

Top 6 Trigger Foods for Leaky Gut

Let’s talk about the top six foods that were on my menu that are known to make leaky gut worse.

We’ll start with Sugar.

Sugar, as we all know, is an inflammatory substance. Interestingly, when refined sugar was first introduced in the 1600s, only the wealthy could get their hands on it. Consumption was around 1-2 lbs annually per person. In our current day in the American population, sugar is consumed at a shockingly alarming rate of 150-200 lbs per person per year! Refined sugar is literally in everything these days.

Sugar damages the gut in four specific ways:

1. Nutrient Steal

Sugar binds with certain minerals like magnesium and is metabolized in the body. When this happens, those minerals are no longer available for your body to use. When your gut doesn’t have the proper vitamins and minerals to work, it malfunctions.

FUN FACT: Did you know that in nature, real sugar cane in its whole form actually contains 56 molecules of magnesium for every one molecule of sugar? This is important because in order to metabolize one molecule of sugar in the body it takes 56 molecules of magnesium! Isn’t God good in the perfect way He designs things? (I learned this from Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride)

2. Toxic Burden

Sugar is ultra-inflammatory to every part of our body. It lights up the addictive parts of our brain, puts a burden on the liver which has the responsibility of 500 actions in the body and, through metabolic processes, results in unconjugated, toxic substances flowing through the body.

The gut mucosal lining, valves and microvilli get bogged down by sugar.

3. GMO

90% of refined sugar in the United States is Genetically Modified (GMO) and made from sugar beets. This genetic modification is designed to repel and even kill insects on the plant. Some GMO seeds are also modified to inject a toxin known as BT toxin into the gut of the insect which will then kill it. If it can do that to insects, it can damage the gut of insects, it can to humans as well. It has also been recognized that GMO foods will damage pig stomachs! (1) GMO foods damage the intestinal lining in humans and that lining is what is responsible for absorbing nutrients. When it’s not absorbing well, the human gets sick and diseased.

4. Dysbiosis

Sugar feeds bacteria and yeast. When you eat sugar, microbes feed off of it and live off of it. This causes imbalanced good and bad bacteria. Additionally, as the microbes feed on the sugar molecules, they excrete aldehydes which are toxic to the gut lining. They are directly responsible for damaging the microvilli lining the small intestine.

Before we move on from sugar, I wanted to mention one more important nuance. Don’t ditch the refined sugar and replace it with xylitol, mannitol, sorbitol or erythritol. Those are sugar alcohols that are fermentable and incompletely absorbed in the intestines thus providing food for the microbes, often exacerbating leaky gut and Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO). These will also increase actions in the tight junctions of the intestines causing more intestinal permeability.

Grains, Legumes and Pseudograins

Grains, Legumes and Pseudo-grains (quinoa, buckwheat, amaranth, teff, etc.) all contain lectins which are the plants way of resisting digestion by humans or animals. Lectins don’t fully break down during digestion. They hinder certain digestive enzymes which are a part of digestion that helps to break down food so it’s absorbable. They cause changes in the enterocytes (which reside on the microvilli of the small intestine) and, due to damage, block nutrient absorption. If lectins get across the intestinal barrier, which they will if it’s permeable, they activate the immune system. Immune system activity will result in a myriad of symptoms from skin issues, headaches, fatigue, itching, etc.

{If you don’t know what any of those parts of digestive anatomy are, you’ve got to take my free Gut Renew course to learn about digestion.}

Prolamins are proteins found in abundance in these foods. They cross the intestinal barrier and cause immune system stimulation and inhibit various digestive enzymes.

Glutinous grains, specifically through increased zonulin, open up the tight junctions in the intestinal barrier resulting in leaky gut.

A caveat: In a person with a viable gut lining, grains, legumes and pseudo-grains can be consumed in small amounts if they are properly prepared.

When healing from intestinal permeability grains, legumes and pseudo-grains have no place in the diet.

Nuts and Seeds

The problem with nuts and seeds is much the same as with grains, legumes and pseudo-grains. They contain lectins and prolamins. Additionally, they contain saponins and phytates, known as antinutrients. (*grains, legumes and pseudo-grains contain high levels of saponins as well.)

Saponins have a detergent-like structure and create pores or holes in the surface of the enterocyte and it loses its ability to transport nutrients across the barrier.

Furthermore, grains, legumes, pseudo-grains, nuts and seeds all contain phytates that bind to macro and microminerals that our bodies need. When this binding takes place, the mineral is no longer available for the body to use. The result in the body is a vast amount of nutrient deficiencies and a stressful negative cascade effect causing adverse symptoms.

Are You Eating the Foods That Trigger Leaky Gut or Make it Worse?

Now that you have a better understanding of the top 6 foods that will increase intestinal permeability or make your already leaky gut worse, you’ve got to ditch these foods (at least temporarily until you heal).

If you would like to learn more in-depth about digestion, what leaky gut is and how to fix it forever, be sure to take my free Gut Renew online course. The course is the perfect guide to start you on the path to optimal health and premium gut integrity! Enroll Now by Clicking HERE.