Leaky Gut as Root cause for Chronic Diseases

Welcome to Active Human’s 15th newsletter.

As you know we are learning about the root causes behind our lifestyle diseases.

5 major root causes behind the most common chronic and lifestyle diseases are:

1. Bad Gut Health (Leaky Gut and Dysbiosis)

2. Insulin Resistance

3. Inflammation

4. Oxidative Stress

5. Imbalance Nervous System (Stress and Anxiety)

Most of the time they coexist or get interlinked or by the time you come to know about them, one builds another. But the good thing is they are the measurable root causes that can be corrected. Advanced blood tests help a lot these days. We at Active Human can work towards these root causes with the right intervention.

We have already covered all 5: Bad Gut health, Insulin resistance, Inflammation, Oxidative stress, and Imbalance Nervous System (Stress and Anxiety) in our previous newsletters.

Today, I am deep diving into Leaky gut in detail as a root cause.

What is Leaky Gut? (also known as Reduction in the intestinal mucosal barrier or Increased Intestinal permeability)

Imagine your gut, or intestines, as a long tube that helps your body absorb all the good stuff from the food you eat. Normally, this tube has tight junctions between its cells, like a strong wall, preventing harmful substances from leaking out into the body.

But sometimes, due to factors like poor diet, stress, or certain medications, this wall can become damaged or "leaky." It's like poking small holes in a hose. When this happens, things that should stay in your gut, like bacteria, toxins, and undigested food particles, can slip through those holes and get into your bloodstream.

This can trigger inflammation and cause problems throughout your body, like digestive issues, food sensitivities, fatigue, and even autoimmune diseases. So, in simple terms, a "leaky gut" is when the protective barrier in your intestines becomes damaged, allowing harmful stuff to leak into your body where it shouldn't be.

For example, the size of a glucose molecule is 0.15 nanometers, size of an amino acid is 0.4nm to 1nm but the size of an average human gut bacteria is 0.5 - 5 micrometers which is 500 - 5000 times bigger than glucose or amino acids, So your gut pores should allow glucose and amino acids and other nutrients but should not allow bacteria, virus, toxin and undigested food particles. When this starts happening, your body’s immune cells don’t recognize them in the bloodstream and start attacking them wherever possible. Please see the image below to build some more understanding.

Image credit: google

How to check if you have developed a Leaky Gut?

Please understand, that Conventional allopathy is yet to quantify and measure the extent of leaky gut. Zonulin protein which starts increasing when intestinal infection or barrier starts breaking can be measured from blood serum and stool samples. But this test is debatable and still not mainstream common. Scientist claims that this test sometimes gives false negatives and sometimes false positives and doubts on various commercial kits for their accuracy.

Then How do we come to know?

There are 10 commonly discussed signs or symptoms associated with leaky gut:

1. Digestive issues: Bloating, gut irritation, diarrhea or constipation in cycling order, or irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) indicate a leaky gut.

2. Food sensitivities: Developing sensitivities or intolerances to certain foods, even ones you used to tolerate well, can be a sign of a compromised gut lining. The best way to know is the food you have been eating since childhood and you become intolerant to it.

3. Chronic Fatigue: Leaky gut can lead to nutrient malabsorption, which can result in fatigue and low energy levels when you take a good nutritious meal and still find yourself nutrient deficient.

4. Skin problems: Most common is, observing your skin, your skin reflects your gut health, any sign of skin allergy, repetitive toxin break out, acne, eczema, or psoriasis is a sign of leaky gut, getting hives after 1-2 hr of eating some foods indicate leaky gut.

5. Joint pain: Inflammatory molecules released into the bloodstream as a result of a leaky gut can contribute to joint pain or arthritis.

6. Autoimmune diseases: Leaky gut has been linked to the development or exacerbation of autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, or Hashimoto's thyroiditis (getting very common these days).

7. Mood disorders: Gut health is closely linked to mental health, and a leaky gut contributes to symptoms of anxiety, depression, or mood swings.

8. Allergies: Increased intestinal permeability can lead to an overactive immune response, potentially resulting in allergies or asthma without having external viruses or bacteria.

9. Poor immune function: A significant portion of the immune system resides in the gut. When the gut is compromised and becomes leaky, your immune gets tired and fights unnecessary molecules and genuine infections take much longer to cure.

10. Nutritional deficiencies: Malabsorption of nutrients due to a damaged gut lining can lead to deficiencies in essential vitamins and minerals, which can manifest as a variety of symptoms, including hair loss, brittle nails, or poor wound healing.

More and more I am researching leaky gut, I am convinced that we urban people who have stress and urban lifestyle habits have developed some amount of leaky gut and when it increases we develop many chronic diseases we don’t recognize leaky gut but we keep on fighting symptoms of our problems.

At Active Human, we pick leaky gut very quickly and start working on it from day one.

Next week, I am going to deep dive into what to do when you develop a Leaky gut, A lot of healing protocol depends on where you are coming from, your diet, lifestyle, your age, medication history, and current medication. But there are some good practices to keep the gut healthy and help repair leaky gut which apply to everyone. I will cover those.

Important Note: At Active Human, We work on 150+ kinds of Chronic disorders including Diabetes, High Blood Pressure, Obesity, Thyroid Issues, PCOS, IBS, IBD, Migraines, High Cholesterol, Autoimmune Diseases, Depression, Anxiety, Joint Pains, Muscle Pains, Heart health issues and Hormonal Imbalance issues. We have started “Reverse Your Chronic Disease (RYCD) Module where we take a scientific approach to arrive at your root cause using blood reports (advance tests) and then set protocols to reduce and cure your root cause. It is a process and not a quick fix and it takes 3-6 months to understand and work on the root cause and start seeing results. If you know someone who has any lifestyle disorder. Please help me spread the word and help them reach out to me at manishkbhagwani@gmail.com. We are a team of healers who follow a functional medicine and corrective nutrition approach.

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See you next Saturday.

Manish Bhagwani,

Human → Active Human