You may never see the term “leaky gut” on a hospital chart. That's not because it isn't real or acknowledged by the functional medicine community. Leaky Gut Syndrome, sometimes referred to as Intestinal Permeability, is a term used to describe a set of symptoms that have an undiagnosed cause. It can be challenging to get your doctor on board when you have the symptoms. This is due to the fact that there are no specific diagnostic criteria for leaky gut. Plus identifying the cause is not always easy. That can leave you struggling to find answers, much less a solution. The good news is that there are ways to combat leaky gut syndrome.
Symptoms of Leaky Gut Syndrome
Leaky gut syndrome can have a lot of symptoms, though all of them are a result of the digestive organs. The most common symptoms include:
- Gas
- Bloating
- Cramps
- Aches and pains
- Food sensitivities
The first four symptoms often point toward a food sensitivity that may be triggering the other symptoms. Many doctors fail to find the reason why. Why do you have these symptoms after eating gluten, large amounts of fat, red meat, or whatever your triggering food or ingredient happens to be? Research hasn't caught up to the symptoms, but many doctors acknowledge that there must be some underlying cause for food sensitivities. Until mainstream medical care catches up, you can still mitigate your symptoms by avoiding foods that trigger a negative response.
Identify Your Food Sensitivities
If you want to say goodbye to the worst of your leaky gut symptoms, you need to know what is causing the reaction. One common starting point is to implement an Elimination Diet. Eliminations diets usually remove the seven most common food allergens–corn, eggs, soy, wheat/gluten, nuts, fish, and dairy. You'll also avoid added sugars and processed foods where possible. You want to follow this dietary plan for approximately 6-8 weeks. One issue with an elimination diet, however, is that you might not find everything. As you start adding foods back in on a weekly basis, you could be missing delayed reactions or attributing them to the wrong foods. An elimination diet also does not easily identify additives or environmental exposures that can be contributing to the issue.
A simpler way to identify food sensitivities is to use testing such as a Delayed Allergy Test (LRA) by Elisa ACT. Through blood draw and analysis, the LRA test identifies all three of the different reactions to food sensitivities on as many as 505 distinct items. It includes foods, food additives, toxic metals, molds, and environmental chemicals. That means that even if you don't notice a reaction, the test will. That's really good news when you have delayed reactions that can be easily overlooked or attributed to a different cause.
Control Your Symptoms Through Diet
Once you know which foods trigger your sensitivities, you can just avoid them, right? Unfortunately, it's not really that easy. Simply knocking food items off of your grocery list can leave you with an increased risk of developing new sensitivities. This is because you often wind up substituting something you're sensitive to for a new food and then eating large amounts of that food. A common example is people who choose a gluten-free diet and then start to consume large amounts of corn or rice starch. They then find out six months down the road, when they retest, that they have now developed a sensitivity to corn or rice.
Rotation diets can help you handle this issue. Following a four-day plan, you eat foods on a strictly controlled schedule. By limiting exposure to proteins so you only consume them once every four days, you reduce the likelihood of developing new sensitivities or intolerances. This is one of the biggest benefits to the rotation diet. The last thing you want is to develop an endless cycle of additional allergies.
Additionally adding in functional foods, where allowable, such as bone broth and lacto-ferments can help support good gut health. Lacto-ferments can include kombucha, kefir, and lacto-fermented vegetables such as kimchi. Increasing collagen peptides in the diet is also supportive as this is very healing for the gut.
Get On Board With Treatment
There is no cure for leaky gut syndrome, primarily because there is no single cause. Those with celiac, Crohn's, IBS, or several other autoimmune disorders can have many of the same symptoms. Your gut is the heart of your immune system. When it isn't working properly, you are more vulnerable to disease and other illnesses. A leaky gut can leave you feeling generally worn down, and causes can range from poor stress management to diagnosable diseases. When you can't find the cause, you should still work toward mitigating your symptoms. Run the tests and come up with a nutrition plan and rotation diet that works for you.
Our suggestion is to run an LRA test and come up with a nutrition plan and rotation diet that works for you. It's important to remember that the more compliant you are with your new nutrition plan, the more effective these changes are going to be when it comes to improving your gut health. Strict elimination, combined with good nutrition and gut support, can often be very helpful in reducing or removing the uncomfortable symptoms that lead you to test in the first place.
