A leaky gut is a common thing in functional medicine. I’ll be discussing why leaky gut is a problem for so many individuals. In some, leaky gut is their main issue and is contributing to their diabetes, but they’re able to get off their medications. They’re able to stabilize their blood sugars and essentially become non-diabetic once this problem gets fixed. But with a leaky gut, the intestinal tract is a super long track if you laid it out. But the main job of the leaky gut is to digest and absorb the foods. Take the nutrients the body needs and get rid of the stuff that it doesn’t need. So there’s an absorption aspect in the leaky gut where the intestines will absorb the nutrients and then goes beyond that, which is the bloodstream. Eventually, that barrier of the intestinal tract in the leaky gut starts to get thin.

In type two diabetes, contributing factor to someone’s inability to regulate their blood sugars is common because it’s an acquired scenario. It’s the insulin resistance where your cells will no longer accept insulin and your body can’t use the sugar that it produces. The most basic fundamental function we should do as human beings are: eat food, convert that to sugar, and then use that sugar as an energy source for us to function all day. Well, where does that process happen? It’s in the gut and the intestinal tract which can be a contributing problem. Maybe you didn’t know that blood sugar issues could be coming from a poor functioning gastrointestinal system. And many of the patients that we work with within our office will have GI problems, constipation, gas bloating, diarrhea, and burning. Well, many of those people are suffering from a condition called leaky gut.

From Line Thinning to Food Sensitivity

Imagine you’re looking at Berber carpet. That’s a really thick lining just like the gut. So as the thinning starts to happen, we start to get these larger molecules that should not be going through the gut lining. When the lining starts to get really thin, we start to get macromolecules coming through the barrier, which should not be happening because you’re gonna start to create an inflammatory response. Then, they’d just be given medication to treat the symptoms. But in reality, when these large macromolecules start to come through, the immune system sees it as a foreign body, starts to attack it, and create antibody. So within the bloodstream, you have your immune system. Your immune system is supposed to be your protective mechanism. It’s supposed to protect you from bacteria, viruses, fungus, environmental factors, and things that are gonna potentially cause your body harm.

An antibody is a memory cell from the immune system to remember a specific item. So then if it ever comes back into the body, it will destroy and kill it. Hence, why individuals develop food sensitivities? Now, an allergy is a different immune response from sensitivity. Sensitivity is acquired while an allergy is inborn. Let’s just say that a piece of broccoli comes through in a larger molecule and the immune system starts to attack it. So, then you start to develop a sensitivity to broccoli. Every time you eat broccoli, your immune system is going to attack it and start to create inflammatory reactions. You may not notice it, you may not have GI pain, you may not be bloating, but they’ll start to put stress inflammatory responses systemically. Over time, it starts to destroy more cells. Then, you start to develop insulin resistance, hence, type two diabetes. 

Leaky Gut Problem: Sensitivities and Disease Processes

We recognize food by tasting, smelling, or seeing it but the immune system sees the protein structure. A broccoli protein structure could look similar to a piece of fish, strawberry, or peach. So if you eat a strawberry, it’s gonna attack and destroy it, creating more inflammation and more leaky gut problems. Then, you’d just develop more sensitivities, symptoms, issues, autoimmune disease, or other disease processes. These protein structures can be very similar to the tissues in your body. As the immune system is circulating through the body, it starts to see the structure of an incision in one of your tissues. Let’s say that tissue is your liver. The immune system starts attacking your liver, destroying, killing, and eating it away day by day. Eventually, you’ll develop other disease processes, fatty liver or cirrhosis for example. All because of this leaky gut problem. 

Can you start to see how this cascade of problems starts to develop over many years? So we have all these diseases and what are they doing? They’re taking medication, trying to do things on their own, and trying to figure this out. When in reality, it’s the underlying mechanism like leaky gut, that could be contributing to type two diabetes. So we have to truly understand what is going on with every individual. We can’t just look at the symptoms, the disease process, or the medication. We have to know exactly what is going on. That’s why, in our office, we’re looking at a patient not as a disease, but as an actual individual who is suffering. We have to find out what is causing their problem. So the investigation process has to be very in-depth. We have to do multiple types of analysis to see what’s going on. 

How is the Leaky Gut Created?

Well, the weakening of the lining of the gut can happen for multiple reasons. It could be an overgrowth of bacteria, viral infections, yeast, fungus, worms, eating poor quality food, or taking pharmaceutical medications and over-the-counter type medications. This is not happening to one incident, it happens over the years. So we may have been doing things when we are younger thinking that we’re invincible. But next thing you know, our quality of health starts to decline. We’re not functioning well, gaining weight, and tired all the time. Things are breaking down because we have not taken care of it. Just because it’s breaking down doesn’t mean you can’t restore it. There’s always a way to restore it by taking the right steps, testing thoroughly, and customizing a specific protocol for them. And this is what we do in our practice.

I want to share a quick amazing little story that happened just recently. Besides type two diabetes, thyroid conditions, and autoimmune diseases, we also work with cognitive decline. Recently, we’ve been working with this male patient and one of the problems that he was dealing with was biotoxin. Now, I don’t want to get in too deep into that right now, but basically, just think of it as a pretty major toxicity scenario that was contributing to the brain problems that he was experiencing. Well, after a few months, we were able to clear that and he has seen some significant improvements and his brain function. So as a family, it’s been just amazing to really see the transition of this patient. 

Misinformation vs. Your Ability

Every diabetic has unique problems and underlying mechanisms. We have to know exactly what it is, address it, and then allow their body to heal. People need to understand that their body has the ability to heal from the day it was born. They’re just not getting the right information. Give your body what it needs then it will have the ability to go back to healing on its own. You don’t have to suffer for the rest of your life. Those who are suffering from type-two diabetes are super vulnerable to the virus. We’ve got a very high success rate. We rarely see a patient fail because we address them correctly. If you want to finally reverse your diabetes as we’ve done with almost thousands of our patients, we are here to help.  I hope this information gave you more wisdom about your health. Like our page for more!