How to strengthen your gut barrier, and why you should

From brain to heart, skin and bones… this barrier is the interface between health and disease

What starts as an irritable bowel can end as anything, from depression to dementia, from joint pain to fatigue, with a host of other problems along the way.

But if your gut barrier is strong and well maintained, you’ve got the basics of a healthy mind and body.

The digestive tract is essentially a tube running from mouth to anus. The middle section – the small intestine - is where most of the action takes place. From there, nutrients and fluids are absorbed into the blood, with much of the traffic directed by the gut microbiome.

It’s an efficient system, but not foolproof.

The lining that acts as a barrier between gut contents and the blood is comprised of just a single layer of cells, called the epithelium. These cells are held together by links called tight junctions.

As well as facilitating the passage of nutrients, the role of the epithelium is to block undesirable elements from breaching security and accessing the rest of the body.

These undesirables include toxins, undigested food, assorted alien particles that may have fallen on your food, and metabolites created by hostile pathogens.

Leaky gut, intestinal permeability, gut barrier dysfunction…. these are the terms that are used interchangeably to describe damage to the intestinal lining that create tiny holes and cracks.

That’s just the start of your problems.

The mayhem in your gut triggers an immune response, which is to release pro-inflammatory proteins, including cytokines. It is this inflammation that disrupts the tight junctions, creating gaps large enough for the passage of foreign substances.

A certain amount of inflammation is good, where there is infection. But major disruption can cause a cytokine storm, which is uncontrolled, excessive and damaging. That damage manifests in many ways, as outlined below.

Depression

Like the gut, the brain has its own barrier, called the blood brain barrier. What causes a leaky gut can also cause a leaky brain: cytokines weaken the tight junctions of the BBB, breach the wall and enter the brain, where they promote depression.

It is estimated that 47% of people with clinical depression also have heightened inflammation in the gut.

The effect can be severe, even leading to major depressive disorder, or MDD.

‘The results of the present study show that patients with MDD should be checked for the presence of leaky gut.’

Dementia

Levels of proinflammatory cytokines increase with age, and inflammation is considered a significant risk factor for the development of dementia. When toxic compounds from the gut enter the brain, they create the neuroinflammation that can lead to the neuronal damage seen in dementia.

Skin disorders

Once in the blood, toxic metabolites and inflammatory compounds can make their way to the skin and manifest in any number of ways: eczema (atopic dermatitis), psoriasis, acne and seborrheic dermatitis.

Bone loss

Damage to the gut lining caused by pathogenic bacteria can result in a rise in metabolites called lipopolysaccharides (LPS).

LPS can promote bone loss by stimulating the breakdown of bone and reducing new bone formation.

Urinary tract infections

About 75% of UTI cases are caused by the bacteria uropathogenic Eschericha Coli (UPEC). UPEC proliferates in the urinary tract, but that is not where its life begins.

UPEC, like other bacteria that can cause a UTI, normally cohabits in the gut with all the other assorted microorganisms. It turns into a troublemaker when it translocates from gut to urinary tract.

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease

An impaired intestinal barrier function is increasingly recognized as a key player in the development of liver disease. The translocation of microbial metabolites through the barrier is believed to be an early step in this development.

Autoimmune diseases

Intestinal permeability is seen in people with autoimmune diseases, including coeliac disease, type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease.

An important finding of our study indicates that intestinal permeability has a generalized role in autoimmune diseases, involving the brain, the endocrine gland, joints, smooth muscles, the cardiovascular system, etc. These findings support the notion that autoimmune diseases throughout the body may share a centralized role, involving the integrity of intestinal junctions.

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Now it’s time to strengthen that barrier