Let’s talk a little bit about leaky gut. Now leaky gut has been around for a long time within the complementary medical system. It is not well recognized in traditional medicine. Leaky gut is actually a phenomenon of essentially the epithelial lining of the digestive tract, what is called the mucosal layer, breaking down and essentially you get holes, these microscopic holes that can develop in the lining. These holes, or leaky gut, allow for food proteins or other infectious toxins that come from bacteria and yeast to filter through the mucosal lining, into the lymphatic system, into the bloodstream to a significant degree that can essentially stimulate inflammation, cause an overactive immune system and create other problems.

Leaky gut is controversial because there are many scientists and physicians that look at leaky gut and say “well that’s impossible, how could you develop holes in the gut“ and they are correct, you are not really developing holes per se. What is happening is the cells that line the digestive tract are grouped very tightly together. You normally have things that can be absorbed across the cell surface, through the cell and then excreted out the other side. That is how many nutrients and whatnot get into our body.

But between the cells sometimes things can get by as well. There is something called tight junction and the tight junction is chemicals that help attach the one cell to the next. You can almost think of it like Velcro. You have one cell is being velcroed to another. If that Velcro structure starts to breakdown then those tight junctions start to breakdown and you start to create microscopic gaps in between cells which is leaky gut. And you can now get food protein or other toxins that can flow across the mucosal lining unabated and into the blood stream and essentially that is what we are talking about with respect to leaky gut.