Leaky Gut: Article Correlates A-Immune/liver/brain/allergy/antibody/nervous System Problems

[spinner]

http://paleohacks.com/questions/65534/how-do-you-hack-a-leaky-gut.html

This is an interesting article about a suspected cause of chronic disease. This reads like a flow chart on the interaction from autoimmune disease, nervous system breakdown, and finally to the harm to liver and brain and gut axis.

""""The brain gut axis is vitally important to all of us. Understanding how it basically functions is really a study in how our liver protects us. Our liver is the last line of defense before the brain is assaulted. Once the brain is involved , hormonal disruption ensues first with leptin resistance and then cascades to every other hormone in some fashion. Once this occurs the brain loses its control over cellular homeostasis and neolithic diseases become prevalent. We can understand this process dynamically when we look out our VAP profiles."""""

[badhbt]

Really interesting. I think there is so much to the gut and all the other systems of the body.

[Kellysavedbygrace]

Hi Spinner!

Thanks for sharing this link. It is interesting that one of the symptomatic signs of Mast Cell Disease progression is organopathy - commonly seen as abnormal functioning and/or failure of the liver and the spleen.

In the coming DINET newsletter I have submitted an article, "GI Symptoms, MCAS and Dysautonomia: Part 1- Signs, Symptoms and how Dr.'s diagnose" which has been edited by Dr. MJ Hamilton from Harvard and Brigham & Women's Center for Excellence in Mastocytosis. Although it doesn't address the role of liver function- it does connect gut permeability to MCAS and Dysautonomia which is a connection few researchers are studying.

Hope this finds you in a good moment. Blessings!

[yogini]

You may want to google leaky gut or read old posts here. It is a controrversial diagnosis.

[Chaos]

It has been very controversial, although I've been hearing more mainstream physicians talking about it recently as though they have accepted it as "real'. Not all of them certainly but seems to be gaining acceptance in many quarters. My daughter in law is in med school and was telling me about a lecture they had on it recently.

[sue1234]

I think it is only a matter of semantics. Alternative medicine has always called it "leaky gut". Conventional medicine refers to it by:

--- intestinal barrier dysfunction

--- tight junction

--- permeability issues

So, it seems to be a real phenomenon, just worded differently. It boils down to the fact that proteins and/or bacteria can "permeate" through the intestinal "tight junctions", causing a systemic reaction.

[Kellysavedbygrace]

Yogini, I am I right in thinking you are referring to the term "leaky gut"?

I have been skeptical when others used the term, "leaky gut.". So during one of my interviews with Dr. Hamilton I asked him about this term "leaky gut" and specifically if it is "real diagnosis." He said, "most inflammatory GI issues fall somewhere on the spectrum of gut permeability". I think is a great way to think about this issue and consider it light of its severity.

-On one end of the spectrum you have something like necrotic tissue created by a severe case of Inflammatory bowel disease such as ulcerative colitis where the gut lining is dying, bleeding and actually leaking out its contents filled with bacteria into the interstitum (which can be life threatening)

- On the other end you have a patient with irritable bowel syndrome reporting various systemic symptoms that could be attributed to malabsorbtion but there is little or no clinical evidence to prove it.

The challenge for the doctor is- can he or she find objective evidence of "gut permeability" that can be replicated and proven?

And if not, does that necessarily mean "gut permeability" doesn't exist? We don't really know, but we can make some educated guesses.

If chemical mediators located near the smooth muscle walls of the vascular system can make our blood vessels more permeable, then it is possible that a similar neuro/chemical reaction may be occurring in lining of the gut in cases without current clinical evidence. Since the gut is much more complex and difficult to study than the blood vessels with many more layers: mucosal, sub mucosal, visceral, smooth muscle wall, etc. it is also much more complex to study.

For instance, Dr. Hamilton mentioned he was studying proliferation of the mast cells and various proteases in MCAS patients. At that point, he had found no evidence of proliferation of mast cells in the inner mucosal lining. He went on to point out that just because he hadn't found proliferation of mast cells in this study, doesn't rule out that there isn't proliferation in another layer, such as the smooth muscle wall lining, where the nerve cells and mast cells are abundant. We do know that mast cells which can cause all sorts of systemic havoc and have been seen to degranulate close to the synapse of the nerve cells. So if there is proliferation and or activation going on in the smooth muscle layer it may greatly effect the permeability of the gut. Yet at this point he is only studying the inner mucosal layer.

I suspect with the growing number of chronic conditions which involve GI issues of varying nature we will continue to see more research on the pathophysiology of "gut permeability".

[Kellysavedbygrace]

Sue, I just saw your post. You said it much more concisely.

[ramakentesh]

I'll believe in leaky gut when someone can tell me how food matter leaking into a person's blood stream doesn't result in septicemia and when they explain how these particles cross the blood brain barrier...

the gut is involved but its probably different.