metsol maia

It is well known that people who have been diagnosed with Celiac Disease should avoid foods containing gluten.  It maybe that even people who have not been diagnosed with Celiac Disease should consider restricting their consumption of gluten. If you are suffering from unexplained and long term gastric distress look at the article linked below.  This article is a well written in depth review of the potential problems associated with gluten including IBS, leaky gut syndrome and autoimmune diseases .

A new study may explain why people who do not have celiac disease or wheat allergy nevertheless experience a variety of gastrointestinal and extra-intestinal symptoms after ingesting wheat and related cereals. The findings suggest that these individuals have a weakened intestinal barrier (leaky gut), which leads to a body-wide inflammatory immune response.

This article appeared a few days ago on the Dr. Oz website. It is a good summary overview that defines leaky gut syndrome and ways to reduce symptoms. It mentions the mannitol/lactulose test for detecting leaky gut syndrome. While that is an OK test, we believe that our sucrose breath test is more accurate because it is assessing sucrose activity which would certainly be compromised if you have intestinal damage. Furthermore, our breath test doesn’t require a visit to the doctor and can be done at your convenience and at home.

Leaky gut syndrome describes a condition in which the small intestinal walls are damaged and allow microorganisms and/or food particles access to your bloodstream. For many years physicians debated the legitimacy of leaky gut syndrome. Opinions have begun to shift in the direction that leaky gut syndrome is a real medical condition. Lead by researchers like Dr. Alessio Fasano, director of the Mucosal Immunology and Biology Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, it is becoming more evident that the syndrome plays a role in food allergies, type-1 diabetes, Celiac disease, Crohn’s disease, irritable bowel syndrome and other digestion-related conditions. The article found in Time.com presents some of the latest findings. Metabolic Solutions (Gut-Chek) offers a test to determine whether you have leaky gut syndrome.

A recent peer reviewed publication presented evidence that probiotics may significantly improve the symptoms of leaky gut syndrome. While the study was done on athletes there is no reason to believe that the findings wouldn’t apply to normal people. Essentially the findings were “The probiotic treatment decreased Zonulin in feces, a marker indicating enhanced gut permeability. Moreover, probiotic supplementation beneficially affected TNF-α and exercise induced protein oxidation.” So what does this mean? First you need to know that zonulin is a protein that is believed to modulate the permeability of tight junctions between cells of the wall of the digestive tract. Zonulin was discovered in 2000 by Dr. Alessio Fasano and his team at the University Of Maryland School Of Medicine. Based on Dr. Fasano’s research, we know that the two most powerful triggers to open the zonulin door are gluten and gut bacteria in the small intestine. As the zonulin level rises, the seal between the intestinal cells diminishes, opening up spaces between cells that allow all sorts of things to pass right through. This is called “leaky gut”. So by showing the probiotics can decrease the volume of zonulin that means the space between the cells is diminishing and leaky gut is being successfully treated.

There is a growing body of evidence that migraines are associated with gastrointestinal disorders. People with gastrointestinal problems such as irritable bowel syndrome, celiac disease, inflammatory bowel syndrome and leaky gut syndrome have a higher prevalence of headaches. In addition these diseases are associated with an increased frequency of headaches. A possible solution may be pre and probiotic treatments. In conclusion, if you have migraines it makes sense to test for leaky gut syndrome and small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. If you test positive the pre and probiotic treatments might reduce the severity of your migraines.

A consortium of researchers have just published that emulsifiers, a class of additives used in many processed foods to improve texture and extend shelf life, may alter the composition of microbes found throughout the digestive tract.  The study showed that emulsifiers altered good bacteria in the gut which in turn initiated intestinal inflammation.  Inflammation is the root cause of inflammatory bowel disease and leaky gut syndrome.  Inflammation is also associated with obesity and type 2 diabetes.

In recognition of the growing interest to understand what causes and how to cure leaky gut a researcher at Case Western Reserve University has received $4 million in funding.  Leaky gut, medically known as intestinal permeability, is defined as damage to the intestinal tract that allows bacteria and other toxins which normally are contained to seep into the bloodstream.  The result is inflammation throughout the body.  Drug and alcohol abuse and prescription medicines are believed to cause leaky gut.   Inflammatory bowel disease has also been associated with leaky gut.  In addition to better understanding the causes of leaky gut the study will look to identify potential treatments.

The cause of autism has confounded medical science.  Recently, research from Caltech has suggested that there may be a link with leaky gut syndrome. This research showed that GI barrier defects (leaky gut) and microbiota alterations in the maternal immune activation (MIA) were found in mice that displayed features of autism. By oral treatment of MIA offspring with the human commensal Bacteroides fragilis the gut permeability was corrected and the behaviors associated with autism were reduced.  This suggests that in autistic patients with leaky gut syndrome healing the leaky gut through pro-biotic therapy might be beneficial.  The researchers cautioned that this is probably only one factor in this complex disease not  a cure and more study needs to be done.

Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have been studying whether leaky gut syndrome is a factor in multiple sclerosis (MS).  What is known about MS is that inflammation develops that effects the central nervous system.  The question is whether the function of the intestines is also compromised by this inflammation.  This effect wouldn’t be unusual because other inflammatory diseases such as Crohns Disease, ulcerous colitis and type 1 diabetes are associated with intestinal permeability problems.  What these researchers found was that MS patients had structural changes in the mucous membranes including an increase in inflammatory T-cells and a reduction in immunosuppressive cells (regulatory T- cells).  Thus the researchers hypothesized that “a damaged intestinal barrier can prevent the body ending an autoimmune reaction in the normal manner, leading to a chronic disease such as MS”.  More work needs to be done on this hypothesis, but there seems to be little downside to testing MS patient for leaking gut syndrome.  Perhaps those MS patients who test positive would benefit from therapy to heal the gut.