This is a specialism of mine and I wrote the Barrier Plan a few years ago after researching the area fully. (This has now morphed into the Gluten Plan, more on this below..)

In essence, leaky gut is a commonly-used term for what is actually intestinal hyper-permeability – do use that term if you want your mainstream docs to take you seriously by the way!

It simply means that, by various known and unknown mechanisms, your gut barrier is letting stuff through it shouldn’t. That could be foods, internal and external toxins, hormones, chemicals or whatever. Either way, they shouldn’t be getting through and will eventually cause problems depending on the severity, what precisely is going through to the body’s system and your ability to deal with that ‘foreign body’ if you like.

Leaky Gut Causes

Here is a quick rundown of some of the main causes of leaky gut:

• Gluten sensitivity 
• Sensitivity to other foods (dairy, egg, soy, lectins, etc.)
• Gut infections—bacterial, parasitic, or fungal
• Hormonal deficiencies or imbalances
• Past brain injury; brain development or degeneration issues
• Blood sugar instability—chronically high or low blood sugar 
• Low blood pressure
• Gut autoimmunity
• Chronic stress
• Chronic sleep deprivation
• Corticosteroids, antibiotics, NSAIDs, and other drugs
• Alcohol consumption
• Glutathione deficiency
• Vitamin D deficiency
• Dysbiosis (imbalance of bad bacteria)

To address leaky gut and prevent things like autoimmune diseases, you need to go through that checklist and address anything found or relevant to you. 

Leaky Brain, Lungs, Skin etc

However, despite all the talk about gut permeability, we are effectively full of body barriers and others can become ‘leaky’ too. Think of the blood-brain barrier, lungs, your external skin etc. My approach to this is really about strengthening the body barriers per se, because you can bet your bottom dollar that if the gut is leaky, the integrity of other body barriers will also be in question.

Do you have eczema or other form of allergic dermatitis, for example? How about allergic asthma or rhinitis? What about anxiety, brain fog or migraine too? We do know that multiple sensitivity and autoimmune disorders are definitely related to hyper-permeability too. In fact, we now also know that the higher your antibodies to, say, zonulin or occludin on leaky gut tests (Cyrex 2, for example), the higher your risk of AI diseases developing. 

Anyway, I could witter on all day about one of my fave subjects, but, thankfully for you, I won’t!

Have a read of an article I wrote for FoodsMatter about food sensitivity and leaky gut:

The simple approach is to take a really good leaky gut healing supplement such as this one.  (Please use my name Micki Rose when registering if this factsheet is helping, thank you). It is not cheap but you only need to take it for a relatively short time compared to many others so is much better value in the long run.

Do it for 3 months and re-test or see how your symptoms are doing. I would always combine this with a good hypo-allergenic diet of course too and use it as part of general gut MOT. I would use the Gut Plan for that.

If you need more a more complex approach eg if you are autoimmune, multiple-sensitive, chronic illness etc (and grain and dairy free), use the Barrier Healing Protocol in the Gluten Plan. Ignore that this is for gluten related disorders – the diet and protocols will help you whether you are gluten sensitive or not.

You might also find the Nutrient Therapy, Malabsorption Therapy and Inflammation Therapy protocols will also be useful for you to heal effectively.

Do also check out the ‘What’s Blocking You?‘ section to identify any causes you might have missed and still need to deal with.

OK, hope that helps!