Has a functional medicine practitioner, health coach, or nutritionist ever told you you have a “leaky gut”? I’ve worked with many people who have been told this and now believe they have a life-long diagnosis that they will have to deal with indefinitely, but that’s not how it works.
Let’s clear up some confusion on “leaky gut”.
What is leaky gut and what does it mean if you’re told you have it?
First things first – it’s not a long-term diagnosis.
Leaky gut is shorthand for “intestinal permeability” which means that larger, undigested food particles and microbes are able to get past the gut lining and into circulation. This can cause issues with inflammation and digestion imbalances.
I’ve encountered many people who were told by a provider that they “have leaky gut” and they now believe this is more like a long-term disease or disorder they are going to have to live with for the rest of their life.
That’s not what’s going on here. Leaky gut is more like a wound that needs to be healed rather than a state or status of your digestive tract. If you strained your hamstring, you wouldn’t refer to this injury as “my strained hamstring” for the rest of your life. After it healed, it would just be a past injury. It’s easier than you might think to heal a leaky gut.
Additionally, there is no official medical diagnosis for leaky gut or intestinal permeability. So you can rest assured that you do not have a new health diagnosis that’s going to impact your life in any significant way.
Do I need to follow a specific diet for the rest of my life?
The short answer is “no”. Though this is too complicated a question for a functional nutritionist to answer with a simple yes or no.
While, of course, I’m a proponent of healthful dietary changes to support health and well-being, this does not mean you have to make immediate and drastic changes.
An inflammatory diet will absolutely lead to, modulate, and even exacerbate leaky gut. We all already know that we should cut back on the fake food products that plague the Standard American Diet (fast food, processed grains and sugars, artificial ingredients, additives, sugar-sweetened beverages, and ultra-processed foods) for the sake of overall health.
You can still get very far without a restrictive elimination diet or strict autoimmune paleo protocol.
The best place to start is by making some easy substitutions with the following gut-healing foods:
- Bone broth is excellent for gut health! Use bone broth in soups, and other dishes in place of regular broth or water. For example, if you’re cooking rice, beans, or other grains, use bone broth instead of water to enhance the therapeutic benefit of these foods.
- Garlic, ginger, turmeric, and other spices are great gut healers. Keep fresh garlic in the cabinet to add to meals. Keep fresh ginger and turmeric in the freezer to easily grade and add to dishes.
- Greens and fiber-rich fruits and vegetables. A super easy way to add more greens to your diet is to keep frozen kale and spinach on hand. You can easily add these to scrambled eggs, cooked grains, sautee them up, or soups.
- Fermented foods are excellent for your microbiome. Yogurt is an easy choice – just make sure it doesn’t have added sugars. Any fermented vegetables like sauerkraut, kimchi, tofu, natto, vinegar, and kombucha are great.
- Eat plenty of protein. Your gut turns over cells every 3 days and it uses about 30-40% of the protein you eat just in repairing itself. You want to ensure you’re eating adequate amounts to ensure you have the elements needed for gut repair.
Do I need to be on supplements for leaky gut?
Many patients are often unfortunately put on supplements but never told to stop taking them. When it comes to leaky gut, you’ve probably been instructed to take things like glutamine, digestive enzymes, and a probiotic.
These supplements are definitely very therapeutic in the short term, but they are not something you need to be on indefinitely.
Let’s go back to the strained hamstring example. While you’re healing the injury, you’re going to ice it, rest it, and maybe take something anti-inflammatory for the pain. But you wouldn’t keep doing these things after it’s healed.
We should treat gut supplements the same way (unless, of course, you follow the standard American diet – in that case, you likely should take supplements indefinitely to offset the toxic impact these foods have). If you regularly incorporate the foods listed above into your diet, you only need to supplement until you’ve healed.
Your body makes its own digestive enzymes and we want to get it back to doing that at a rate that will sustain healthy digestion. Your microbiome is meant to thrive on its own when fed healthy fiber and support with fermented foods, and you’ll get plenty of glutamine by eating enough protein.
How do you test for leaky gut? Should I do a stool test or food sensitivity test?
The only validated testing method is a biopsy of the gut lining. Though there are some less-invasive tests that you can run to determine if you have leaky gut. The most validated of these methods is a lactulose/mannitol urine test. There are also some other markers you test for in regard to the gut microbiome to inform on the status of gut health.
In my opinion, the best method is symptom assessment. A Therapeutic nutrition approach is the same for any gut imbalance and the presence of symptoms (see below) is enough to inform without expensive testing.
Don’t waste your money on a stool test or food sensitivity test. Neither test is clinically validated for leaky gut. Food sensitivity testing usually comes back informing the avoidance of ultra-processed inflammatory foods and grains (which we all already know we should avoid), additionally, the markers it calls ‘sensitivities’ are actually foods that people tolerate well and that they eat often.
A stool test is only clinically validated for determining if parasites are present. If you have GI issues, a therapeutic round of a multi-strain probiotic is likely in order regardless of the results.
How do you know if you have leaky gut?
If you eat inflammatory foods, it’s very likely you have leaky gut. Hate to be so blunt – but that’s just the reality. The good news is it’s easy to heal!
You might also have leaky gut even if you follow a clean, anti-inflammatory diet. I’ve seen it across the board from vegan to carnivore, to home-grown diets. It can happen to anyone.
It can be caused by microbiome imbalances, illness, stress, impaired recovery, inadequate protein intake, food reactivity, too little, and even too much fiber (of a certain kind, that is).
Often leaky gut accompanies other GI imbalances like SIBO, IBD, IBD, malabsorption issues, gastritis, etc. Many of the same interventions that correct leaky gut also are used to restore balance to these areas as well.
You likely have leaky gut if you experience gastrointestinal issues like:
- Bloating
- Distention
- Slow digestion
- Feeling tired and sluggish after meals
- Gas
- Nausea with meals
- Constipation
- Diarrhea
You might be surprised at just how much healthy digestion can improve the quality of your life. It seems like a small thing, but when you feel great from the food you eat, you have more energy, liveliness, and vitality to do the things you love with the people you love. Life is far more enjoyable when you don’t feel awful after every meal!
If you’ve been told you have leaky gut and feel that your life has been restricted to supplements and rigid diet regimens, reach out to me to find out how what you DON’T need anymore.
If you suspect you might have leaky gut or other GI imbalances, we can get you back to balance with simple but effective approaches. Click here to schedule a free consultation.
