Autoimmune-Leaky Gut Connection
Leaky gut – also known as increased intestinal permeability – is a digestive condition in which bacteria and toxins are able to “leak” through the intestinal wall. Unfortunately, many people suffer from leaky gut and attribute their symptoms to aging, having a “sensitive stomach”, or random stress. Sometimes a person is not even aware of the inflammation in the gut until it is gone.
Autoimmune-Leaky Gut Connection
Leaky gut – also known as increased intestinal permeability – is a digestive condition in which bacteria and toxins are able to “leak” through the intestinal wall. Unfortunately, many people suffer from leaky gut and attribute their symptoms to aging, having a “sensitive stomach”, or random stress.
Leaky gut can be caused by a wide range of issues from undiagnosed food sensitivities such at gluten intolerances, eating too much sugar or over consumption of alcohol, overgrowth of yeast, parasites, or even from taking too many medications, especially antibiotics.
How Leaky Gut Can Lead to Autoimmunity
Once your gut becomes leaky, this has a serious impact on your immune system because it automatically intensifies your inflammation levels. Once the delicate barrier of your intestines is compromised, bits of food, toxins, and bacteria can enter your bloodstream, resulting in a condition known as endotoxemia in which your blood becomes toxic and continually triggers your immune response.
This creates a persistent low level of inflammation , which triggers your immune system to use white blood cells to attack, creating massive inflammation. This also creates confusion for your immune system and “less accuracy” to deal with the invaders or toxins in your blood. Eventually, this leads to autoimmunity because your healthy tissues get attacked as well.
The Functional Medicine Approach to Treating Leaky Gut
The functional and integrative medicine approach to healing leaky gut first focuses on giving our patients the correct in-depth testing to assess the current state of your gut health. The next step consist of a 5-step cleansing protocol to help heal your gut while upgrading your diet.
Since your gut health impacts in your health in other ways, when patients are dealing with autoimmune illness it’s one of the first places we examine. Leaky gut along with other gut issues such as irritable bowel syndrome, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), or its cousin small intestinal fungal overgrowth (SIFO) can all have a huge impact on your immune system.
Reestablishing a healthy gut microbiome is one of the best ways we can bolster your immune system and help you to free yourself of some of the symptoms typically linked to autoimmune illness. These symptoms include include fatigue, joint pain, headaches or new food intolerances to thing like dairy and eggs.
Sadly, conventional doctors rarely factor in gut health when dealing with autoimmune illness and are simply not trained to deal with gut dysbiosis or run the testing required to identify it.
With Sarah Yoakam, MD, we can see an incredible decrease in symptoms and even remission for people with autoimmune disease once they healed their leaky gut and other gut issues.
Our team has expertise in identifying and treating leaky gut and dealing with autoimmune illness, including how to manage flare-ups.
If you have been experiencing chronic symptoms that may be connected with digestive problems and are looking for answers, schedule an appointment with our patient coordinator, at Sarah Yoakam, MD today!