These are symptoms that are all linked to gut inflammation and Leaky Gut Syndrome. Your focus on food as the culprit is natural, because you, like Hippocrates, the father of medicine, as well as other scientific researchers, strive to believe in the power food has, stating.

“Let thy food be thy medicine…when possible¹.”

Food can be your medicine again, yes. But only with the right environment. When you have a healthy, balanced gut, your Leaky Gut symptoms will be reduced.

So what else is at play, causing your gut inflammation besides food?

Many other internal and external factors are perpetrators as well.

• Supplements
• Probiotics
• Prebiotics
• The microbiome

And so many more factors all contribute to gut inflammation. Interesting, right?

There are many factors causing your gut inflammation and Leaky Gut symptoms, ones that are important to explore, yet food is a great place to start. It is with this starting point that you will discover the complexity of how your gut health truly is in your hands and how you can take steps to feel better. As Sherlock Holmes, the most famous detective would say,

“It’s Elementary, Dear Watson!”

Food Sensitivity and Your Environment for Gut Health

So let’s dive in! As you uncover the pieces to the puzzle that make up your gut health, the first thing to note is your body’s first response to food, which is, by definition, a foreign substance complex that enters your gut, or inside world. Anything foreign has the possibility to cause an internal reaction, good or bad, depending on both the substance and the environment in which it is placed.

Whether or not you have a sensitivity to a specific food can be irrelevant, because when there is gut inflammation, even healthy food can become a sensitivity. This is one of the reasons why the validity of food sensitivity testing purchased online is questioned². These kinds of tests can be misleading, to you, the consumer, and your present state of gut health.

Although these tests seem to be testing different foods, the interpretation from many integrative and functional medical doctors is that you must first determine how much inflammation is in the gut or how leaky the gut may be.

How to Examine your Gut Health Environment?

You simply cannot just look at food sensitivities without also examining the health of your gut environment.

Of course there are some foods like gluten and dairy that are associated sensitivities³, especially in women who have Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. This hormonal metabolic condition is highly linked to both gluten and dairy sensitivity and Leaky Gut Syndrome.

Whether it’s the food sensitivity or inflammation that came first, we do not know, but we do know they come hand-in-hand, and begins with generalized gut symptoms that indicate gut inflammation like:

• Bloating
• Constipation
• IBS

So as the inflammation grows, Leaky Gut Syndrome develops⁴.

What role does leaky gut syndrome play in gut health?

Let’s take a closer look at what is occurring internally when it comes to Leaky Gut Syndrome and the related symptoms. These wide-ranged symptoms happen when inflammation irritates and disrupts the integrity of the gut wall.

Your gut health is very dependent on the gut mucosa cells that are connected via gap or tight junctions⁵, which act like the links of a chain that keep the healthy gut cells (epithelial cells) bound together, protecting our internal bodies from the outside world, from substances like food.

When the tight junctions become increasingly irritated and inflamed, most often by food and its components, such as sugars, fats or even fibers⁶, these tight gut health junctions cannot hold together. Therefore, the links in the strong chain break and the barrier that protects the body from the gut contents, becomes like a pasta strainer, instead of a brick wall, allowing everything you’ve ingested to flow out into the body.

Download our infographic to learn more about how the body is being bombarded by foods you may not suspect – including all those healthy supplements! Would you love to learn more about your gut health and the ways a Queen of the Thrones® Castor Oil Pack for Liver practice can help restore your body back to balance? Sign-up to receive our FREE eGuide!

Why isn’t Leaky Gut easily cured?

When your gut wall is disrupted, everything – all the food, supplements, probiotics, and prebiotics that entered via the oral route, pass out into your body. All the items that are meant to stay contained in your digestive system for proper digestion, processed through the cells without bypassing them, now seep through in undigested larger shapes, sizes that aren’t recognizable by the body’s defense systems, aka, the immune system.

This complex protective mechanism – your immune system, is used by the body to identify friend or foe, to achieve homeostasis or balance. Food that was once medicine now becomes a sensitivity to you, depending on how inflammed your gut is, and how leaky it has become.

How does leaky gut syndrome stress the whole body?

These don’t appear related to your gut health, making food sensitivities and your health so confusing! Agreed? But everything is very much interconnected!

It’s All About Creating an Environment for Gut Health

The reality is, our bodies are always aiming to achieve good gut health and if you only focus on the food sensitivities that cause bloating, you are going down the wrong rabbit hole, my friend! Your belief may be that identifying and removing your food sensitivities will solve your gut health problems. Although it is an important first piece of the puzzle, it won’t give you the complete relief you’re seeking from your bloating, anxiety, constipation etc. It won’t give you the whole picture.

To ultimately feel better, it is essential to create an environment for good gut health. It is essential to begin the healing of your stressed gut lining, repairing the gaps and tight junctions in your gut lining caused by gut inflammation and Leaky Gut Syndrome.

Self-caring for the environment of good gut health is understanding that there is a complex interplay of more than just your sensitivity to food affecting whether you feel good or bad, have gut inflammation or are dealing with Leaky Gut Syndrome.

All disease begins in the Leaky Gut because the gut is like Grand Central Station, and where there are multiple players in the game, there is always a possibility for chaos to occur or a fight to break out⁸.

What Are The Many Factors at Play with Leaky Gut?

Everything you take in from the outside world, including:

• Food
• Supplements
• Probiotics
• Prebiotics
• Emotional experiences
• Gut microbes
• Medications like birth control pills, antibiotics or stomach acid reducers

On top of that everything made in your body like:

• Hormones (estrogen, progesterone, thyroid, oxytocin, cortisol etc.)
• Neurotransmitters (melatonin, dopamine, gaba, serotonin, glycine, histamine etc.)
• The balance of your microbiome, whether healthy, dysbiotic or overgrown with candida, or the presence of SIBO
• The waste products you create (such as uric acid, carbon dioxide etc.)

All of this, including the cells and tissues of your body, can be attacked inappropriately when there is gut inflammation, which is why Leaky Gut is a danger signal for autoimmune disease⁹. This is, of course, a simplified explanation of a complex chronic metabolic gut inflammation condition. But know that both your level of gut inflammation and the state of your gut lining, are determinants of good gut health and how sensitive you may be to the food you consume.

It’s a tad overwhelming, right? Agreed. Since food is so foundational (you have to eat it, right?) – you can’t run away from it. So, therefore, it really is the best place to start your journey to gut health! This is why functional medical doctors, integrative medicine doctors, naturopathic doctors, nutritionists, holistic medicine doctors, and other natural health experts who work with gut health, will most often start here.

How can we revive & restore a leaky gut?

The focus must be on returning your gut health back to a relaxed state, to the ‘gated community’ it was meant to be. It takes time and consistency and intentional actions like:

• A regular Queen of the Thrones® Castor Oil Pack for Liver practice
• Healthy food choices
• Properly washing your food to remove toxins
• Awareness of the emotional stressors
• Properly chewing your food
• Intermittent fasting to allow your gut to relax
• Stress-reducing techniques like calming breathwork practices

What are the next Steps to Gut Health?

There are a number of ways to support your body moving forward, to begin the process of healing your gut inflammation and Leaky Gut Syndrome. Now that you have a better understanding of how food sensitivities cause inflammation in your body and the role Leaky Gut Syndrome has to play in your persistent symptoms, you are on track to returning your body to a relaxed and nourished state. You’ve got this, my friend!

Download our infographic to learn more about how the body is being bombarded by foods you may not suspect – including all those healthy supplements! Would you love to learn more about your gut health and the ways a Queen of the Thrones® Castor Oil Pack for Liver practice can help restore your body back to balance? Sign-up to receive our FREE eGuide!

And as always, if you have any concerns about your symptoms or overall health, please consult your integrative doctor or trained medical professional.

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