Healthy Gut, Healthy You

Hippocrates said, more than 2000 years ago, “All disease begins in the gut.” Turns out he was right. For a long time, researchers have known that the body carries bacteria, viruses and a variety of microorganisms inside of us. In the last two decades we’ve come to realize just how much that “microbiome” of organisms impacts our overall health. An unhealthy gut contributes to a wide variety of diseases. These include obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, depression, chronic fatigue, and autoimmune conditions like Hashimoto’s, rheumatoid arthritis, and lupus.

The Gut Microbiome

According to Dr. Amy Meyers, M.D. “In recent years scientists have discovered that the gut microbiome, contains tens of trillions of microorganisms, including up to 1,000 different species of bacteria with over 3 million genes. That’s 150 times more genes than human genes! With 80% of our immune system in our gut, we must support and nurture our microbiome, because all of those good bacteria influence our immune system and determine if it will be healthy or if it will go rogue as with autoimmunity.”

Scientists also call your gut the “second brain.” Hidden inside the walls of the gut are millions of nerve cells called the enteric nervous system (ENS). The ENS controls the entire digestive process. According to Jay Pasricha, M.D., director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Neurogastroenterology, “The enteric nervous system doesn’t seem capable of thought as we know it, but it communicates back and forth with our big brain—with profound results.” Researchers are finding that rather than anxiety and depression contributing to problems like Irritable Bowel Syndrome, that it may also be the other way around.

In other words, an irritation in the gut or digestive system may send signals to the Central Nervous System (CNS) that trigger mood changes. This would explain why, when I’m accidentally exposed to gluten, (to which I’m sensitive) I experience anxiety and sometimes depression among other symptoms.

The gut also produces 90% of our body’s serotonin (our “happy” hormone) and comprises 80% of our immune system. Makes you want to keep your gut healthy, right?

What Affects the Health of Your Gut?

There are many aspects of our modern lifestyle that impact the health of your gut and contribute to unhealthy gut flora. These include:

• Antibiotics and other medications like birth control or NSAIDS
• The Standard American Diet high in refined carbohydrates, sugar and processed foods
• Diets low in fiber
• Dietary toxins like wheat and industrial seed oils (both of which cause leaky gut)
• Chronic stress
• Chronic infections

As a child, I had frequent rounds of antibiotics for infections like recurring tonsillitis. As an adult, I experienced even more antibiotics and regular rounds of steroid packs for chronic sinusitis. These bouts with antibiotics no doubt altered my microbiome in a way that it was not able to recover. That, combined with stress and other lifestyle factors, contributed to my leaky gut, IBS, hormone imbalances, and anxiety.

What is Leaky Gut?

Think of your gut as one big hollow tube that goes from your mouth all the way to the other end of your body where food comes back out. The food passes right on through. It never enters your body outside of that tube. Food is digested and nutrients from the food are absorbed through the walls of the gut and into the body. The actual undigested food particles, themselves, exit the body.

What happens is the lining of the gut becomes permeated, or gets little holes in it, due to the impact of those things in the list above. That’s called “Leaky Gut.” This makes it possible for large molecules of protein, from the foods you eat, to escape into the blood stream. Because they don’t belong outside of the gut and in your bloodstream, your immune system responds by attacking them. This is how food sensitivities develop, and it’s also how experts have come to believe that a leaky gut is a major factor in developing autoimmune disease.

Bottom line, this kind of reaction in your body creates inflammation. Repeated exposure to those things that harm the gut lining creates chronic inflammation. We know that systemic inflammation is the driver behind the majority of chronic illness today, like heart disease, cancer and dementia. A really important takeaway, however, is that you don’t need to experience gut symptoms in order to have a leaky gut and inflammation. It can present in many different ways such as skin conditions like acne or psoriasis, autoimmune conditions, depression, obesity, body aches and pains. All of us can benefit from nurturing our gut health.

Next week we’ll talk about delayed reactions in your body that may signal a food sensitivity that can create inflammation in your body.

Learn it. Apply it.

1. Do you already have one of the conditions that that may be linked to an unhealthy gut and inflammation?
2. Which of the listed lifestyle factors might have affected the health of your gut?

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