Healing Leaky Gut Syndrome with Ecoimmunonutrition

Leaky guts happen, and they happen for a variety of potential reasons. They're associated with chronic inflammatory conditions including(but not limited to, obv) Candida overgrowth, psoriasis, autism, type 1 diabetes, and IBS. Although these disorders manifest differently on the outside, their pathophysiologies all have leaky gut in common.

So why does it matter if your gut permability is increased? Well, a few reasons. First, leaky gut is associated with an imbalanced gut forest. That means that pathogenic bacteria and yeasts are dominating the microbial population and generally being jerks. Second, if those nasty microbes escape the holding cell of your intestines and make it into your bloodstream, that pisses off your immune system, which has to deal with the mess. Lastly, in your immune system's smothering rage, it will stop being able to tell what is you and what is not you, and you could end up with an autoimmune disorder. Don't believe me? Take a closer look at this quote from that Wikipedia article:

"Together with the gut-associated lymphoid tissue and the neuroendocrine network, the intestinal epithelial barrier, with its intercellular tight junctions, controls the equilibrium between tolerance and immunity to nonself-antigens. When the finely tuned trafficking of macromolecules is dysregulated in genetically susceptible individuals, both intestinal and extraintestinal autoimmune disorders can occur." (Fasano and Shea-Donohue, 2005)

Now, this is all very depressing, of course. Nobody wants a leaky gut, and nobody wants autoimmunity going on in their bodies. But wait! What's that on the horizon? A bird? A plane?

IT'S ECOIMMUNONUTRITION!

This study, published in China in 2009, found that "Application of ecoimmunonutrition can protect intestinal mucosal barrier in rats with operative stress, increase the expression of occludin, maintain the gut epithelial tight junction, and eliminate gut bacterial translocation." Epigenetics FTW!

So what is ecoimmunonutrition, exactly? From my understanding, it's basically supplementation with probiotics and maybe some other immunomodulatory functional foods. I like the word, though. It looks like it was coined in Sweden all the way back in 1998 (!!!), when Will Smith was gettin' jiggy and Palmolive still made dish soap with antibiotics in it. Go Swedes!

Of course, there are other ways to treat a leaky gut: Candida diets, specific carb diets, blah blah blah. This method is by far the coolest and most integral, though, because neither of those diets work as efficiently or as well without probiotic supplementation. Also because it involves eating bacteria... duh.

L

PS The kefir is freaking delicious.