January 8, 2016
Well, let me tell you, leaky gut it affects you in EVERY POSSIBLE WAY.
I started battling with leaky gut, unbeknownst at the time, in October. It seemed to start off with what I refer to as having, foggy brain and lead to major stomach bloating, depression…wanting to withdrawal from everything, my family, my friends, and my work. And that’s soooo not me.
Foggy Brain– The ability to not clearly think and decipher how you feel, determine your daily routines, explain your inner emotions, a state of feeling like your brain is floating around and a state of constant confusion.
From the Foggy brain, several other symptoms started to occur on a regular and rapid basis. Literally my body was shutting down.
I had been so busy running my own business and working off of adrenaline (because isn’t that what Americans do)?! I didn’t notice my body yelling at me to slow down.
One random day, while shopping at our local Health Food Grocery Store…because like that is my thing… I wasn’t feeling well and decided to have my blood checked.
It was a little freaky, because I could see my blood moving through a microscope as the guy was telling me what all was going on with my body. Dan, the guy that checked my blood said, ” I don’t see how you’re even standing up at the moment. ” I had complained to him that I was so tired, my body had been convulsing over and it was like pulling a muscle for my eyelids to even open.
Shortly after that, it was time for me to get my yearly blood drawn for my husband’s job. This dictated whether our monthly costs on our insurance got lowered or not. So that following Monday we went to the local lab, got our blood work done and were out. Three days later, Dave, my husband calls and ask if I was ok. I said sure, i guess, I have felt a little dizzy all day, but other than that. He said, No wonder your blood work came back abnormal. I said, I’m not following you, He said, “Your cholesterol is through the roof.” I literally laughed out loud. I said there’s no way, they totally got ours mixed up…we were in the room together when they were drawing our blood. He didn’t even believe it either, so I made him call and verify. I was speechless. Only people that eat bad had high cholesterol, right?!
Needless to say, Leaky gut or Autoimmune Diseases can be masked by a pleather of illnesses and ailments.
My symptoms included bloating of the stomach, eczema, anemia, Irritable Bowel…insomnia, those are just to name a few.
When we refer to Leaky gut, it refers to the surface of the gut leaking. In a normal person, your intestines, push food through to other organs such as your kidneys, they as a filter to keep what you need, and remove what you don’t need (like toxins, and bad bacteria). When your gut leaks, you have literally opened the door to the most important protective barrier in your body, allowing room for toxins, antigens and other bad bacteria to enter.
People with a leaky gut are typically sensitive to gluten, and possibly other proteins found in certain grains. However, there are many factors that can contribute to this mechanism, such as:
So, when your body starts to inflame, so does your brain. Your brain and your gut are connected in a large way. I’m not a Doctor, but there are so many cases of this that go mis-diagnosed if you ask me. When you go to the Doctor all they want to do is prescribe a bandaid, instead of getting to the root of the problem.
What is the root of Leaky gut? For me, it was living a stressful life and working off of adrenaline on a regular basis. It was taking birth control and hormones for long periods of time due to being diagnosed at an early age with Ovarian Cystitis. It has been suppressing how things that have happened to me and how I’ve felt and tried to deal with it on my own. In other words, not taking exceptionally good care of myself and my emotions and not understanding that the medicine we take today affects our bodies years down the road.
Medicines these days like birth-control, hormone supplements, and etc decrease the good “flora gut” (I’ll break down floral gut in a later post) in your systems, which slowly starts the problems for the future.
Probiotics are living microorganisms (aka good bacteria) that aid in digesting your food and helping your organs that aid in the digestion of your food. We often think of bacteria in a negative and sense, but you have to have “good” bacteria to break down the food you eat.
Probiotics and the role they play healing from a leaky gut.
Did you know there are over 100,000,000,000 (100 trillion) microorganisms in your gut? To put that into perspective, so your brain or at least mine can wrap around how much that is, that means that if you 100 trillion dollar bills and you placed them one by one from the earth to the sun, you’d still have room to spare. Do that 100 times and that should start to give you an idea of just how much 100 trillion is.
Given the current popularity of pesticides used in produce, these agents can cause loss of critical digestion promoting enzymes and bacteria within the gut. Probiotics are a means to replenish the potential loss of our gut-friendly bacteria.They also suggest and aid in promoting weight management, immune support, oral health, and even cholesterol management.
Probiotics are the most important supplement to take because it helps replenish good bacteria and crowds out bad bacteria. I recommend getting probiotics in both food and supplement form. I see people all the time only follow part of the protocol in healing their leaky gut syndrome by removing the damaging irritants. But the part they often leave out is re-inoculating their gut with beneficial bacteria that will keep bad bacteria at bay.
Be sure you not only ingest (eat or drink) your probiotics, but to take one as well.
My favorite travel probiotics are as follows:
Kefir ( I love this one)
Coconut Yogurt (I love this one, and then add a capsule of Probiotic to the mix)
I truly hope this helps you on your battle and or journey to getting well. Stay in touch, every Friday, I’ll be posting some of my favorite recipes as I battle my way out of this leaky gut and autoimmune disorder disease. We can do this together.
P.S. Another great source for Leaky gut online is Dr. Axe.
Food truly is the basis to healing.
xo,
Emily
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