The 10 WORST Foods for Leaky Gut

hey everyone this is Dr R show let's discuss the 10 worst foods for leaky gut a few of these will make sense a few of these are controversial and will want to find the right way to determine if they are a problem for you or not because overly avoiding food is an issue and then a few of these are also probably quite counterintuitive they are otherwise healthy foods that for some people can actually flare their leaky gut so if you're making dietary attempts to improve your diet and noticing that you're not feeling any better these food might really be keyy for you to avoid at least for a short period of time all righty so let's jump in welcome to Dr rer radio providing practical science-based insights into Health exploring the importance of nutrition lifestyle and gut health through conversations with experts research reviews and personal stories we break through the bias and the noise to bring you simple trustworthy information that matters just taking a moment moment to Define leaky gut this is where too much material food stuff or other things like leria and fungus pass through the lining of the small intestine which is meant to be absorptive in fact 95 is% of your calories and nutrition are absorbed through the lining of your small intestine but if there's too much absorption you can then have what's known as leakage and this hyper testinal permeability AKA leaky gut is something that is implicated in anywhere from 36 to 88% of pretty broad a category of symptoms so the symptoms include obvious symptoms like IBS bloating gas pain altered bowels could be diarrhea could be constipation could be both reflux but due to the fact that the small int intestine is where the largest density of immune cells in your entire body resides and if there's leakage there's immune reactivity and there for inflammation you can see implications of distant sights like the brain where brain fog and problems with the lyic system leading to stress and even poor memory might be connected to leaky gut issues with your joints issues with your skin maybe even liver or metabolic issues so it's hard to say specifically based upon this or that symptom but rather knowing that the gut and leaky gut specifically impacts so many symptoms from neurological down through the skin then it might be better to look at it this way there is a 36 to 88% chance that the symptoms that you're experiencing could be driven from leaky gut and so because of that we really want to be attentive to the foods that we should be avoiding so as to reduce or hopefully even heal the chances of or if licky gut is present so to start off the most obvious here are highly processed foods I distinguish between highly processed and processed because something like a ginger shot is technically processed whey protein technically processed it's really these highly processed foods that have a long shelf Life have preservatives flavorings colors sometimes perfumes and emulsifiers added to them that are problematic but let's detail a few of these just to equip you with the knowledge about why you should be at least reducing I wouldn't say you have to be totally avoidant although these Foods aren't good for you I think a little bit of unhealthy eating is okay just so that you can have a little bit of fun in your life but certainly I would go out of my way to seek these Foods out and it's with the the process Meats we should start there's three compounds in process again highly processed meat that you should be aware of the first is poly cyclic aromatic hydrocarbons the second nitroamines you often times will see these in canned foods and the third and potentially most deleterious are the heterocyclic aromatic amines and to quote here it was widely found that many factors affect the content of carcinogens in processed meat it was established that the highest percentage of CA Gins are released in the small intestine and that the amount can increase up to 6.6 fold so pretty remarkable and to quote one other Journal paper excessive consumption of process meat can lead to intestinal dysbiosis and a high risk of Colo rectal cancer now it's not just meat and I want to be really careful to lineate that whether it be meat protein carbs or fat any of them can be implicated in in unhealthy changes when they're highly processed a challenge and a problem that occurs in some nutritional research is some researchers have it out for meat or for carbs or for fat and then they'll point to the correlation between highly processed food consumption and ill health and this is really a baby with a bath water sort of argument so we want to be careful to not make the mistake of implicating the food stuff but it's the highly processed nature of said food stuff oh and by the way guys uh reminder please like subscribe and comment I really enjoy the comments they give me ideas for future videos and this is where we next then come to Fat the process fats can impair tight Junction function as found by one study another study found it can promote intestinal disbiosis This Is A disruption of the commensal bacteria another Flora that should live with you symbiotically and not form a detrimental relationship and the other component here that we've discussed before are the emulsifying agents and these emulsifiers will prolong shelf life but they will also break down the lining of the gut and this is why High consumption of emulsifiers in the diet are correlated with IBS and with IBD and then continuing further also highly processed sugar has been correlated with spikes and blood sugar but also to correlate with damage of the gut lining and or the indu ction of disbiosis or A disruption of the colony again I want to just Echo really quick that it's not carbs it's not fats and it's not proteins it's the highly processed nature of these so we just want to be careful so that you don't get misled by messaging that wants to vilify carbs or fat or protein or whatever is in Vogue these can all be fine to consume obviously just avoid the highly processed intake of them now along with processing similar but different is cooking you could argue that cooking is actually a form of processing it would be minimal processing but processing nonetheless and there are two components here to be careful with fried foods they probably pretty obvious but fried foods will damage fats and this damaging of the fats can lead to what's known as lipid hydrop peroxides and these have been correlated with a 1.65 increased risk of IBS so some fried food okay but certainly would not be something I would make part of your day-to-day dietary practice along with this Browning of food can be problematic now as an Italian one of the things I learned was caramelization and Browning can lead to a lot of flavor but there is a balance point here or a threshold we want to be careful not to go over two or or really the one main thing that's formed here are known as ages AES and this stands for advanced glycation end products and these ages are essentially oxidizing they're they're inflammatory and a high intake of Ages in the diet which are contained in brown you know highly Brown Foods has been shown at least in one study to lead to a 71% increase of gut leakage as measured by LPS one of the particles that leaks through the lining of the gut now again it's not to say that you can't have any brown food but highly charred Meats highly Brown Foods when consume too frequently may not be healthy for your gut if you're going to eat out you know on occasion fine we want to be able to live we want to be reasonable but we want to be careful let's say not to be doing meal prep and all of your vegetables are sort of decadently Highly caramelized and browned and all of your let's say proteins are somewhat charred and have cooked another component here to be Conant of is avoiding pesticides and therefore opting for organic food and I just want to quote a journal paper on this for you here current Studies have confirmed that exposure to pesticides can cause disbiosis of the gut microbiota and alternatively another paper found that organic food had higher levels of polyphenols these antioxidant-rich compounds and quoting again a polyphenol Rich diet can reduce serum zonulin levels serum zonulin probably the most accurate marker for leaky gut so avoiding as much as you can foods that have been uh ladened with pesticides and opting as much as reasonably possible for organic food instead now I mentioned a moment ago wanting to have a gut healthy diet that's also livable so one of the components come comes up here is alcohol consumption and I think moderation albe at it's a trite comment about alcohol I think it's probably reasonable and we do know and there is data that has found overc consumption of alcohol leads to a five times increase level of lipopolysaccharide so that's important to keep in mind and also there's a correlation between overc consumption of alcohol and irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease so overc consumption is a problem now regarding moderation I did want to quote one paper for you moderate and light drinking either were not associated or weakly associated with gastrointestinal symptoms and so I'm using gastrointestinal symptoms as a proxy for leaky gut but I think it's reasonable to say that firstly drinking is probably not good for your gut categorically but if we think about sort ort of the the environment that the human is in if this can foster fun friendship and socialization then at least my perspective is some moderate and responsible consumption of alcohol is probably going to give you a net gain and just the scenario here and this might be a little bit of a stend scenario but if you could risk feeling partially lonely or isolated or you could have let's say two to four drinks in a week I think the net impact would probably be more healthy to not be lonely and to have that time with friends and connection it's not to say that you have to drink in order to to have a social life but as someone who works with people in a clinical setting you will hear some people remark well you know I'm I'm withdrawing from certain social activities because I have these symptoms and I've read that alcohol is going to make my CBO my fungus my my whatever my Lecky got worse and the degrees here matter right I I think it's really important to denote that loneliness is a growing epidemic and a feeling of isolation is definitely not good for your health so just try to find a reasonable balance as pertains to alcohol and no conversation would be complete about Ley gut if we didn't touch on gluten it's important to denote that gluten can be a problem for some people clearly and this even permeates Beyond just Celiac and also goes to this other entity known as non-celiac gluten sensitivity and just to quote a 2020 clinical trial zulin helped to distinguish non-celiac Gluten Sensitive subjects from healthy controls wheat withdrawal was associated with a reduction in zulin levels so yes there is a cohort outside of celiac that can have a problem with gluten and by eliminating gluten you can see an improvement in Zan but there's a crucially important distinction here we need to draw which is how prevalent is non-celiac gluten sensitivity and the data here range anywhere from 0.5 up to 15% of the population so we could say that maybe the average is somewhere around 6 or 7% of the population one of the best papers here that I've discussed in the past was the study by Volta that looked at people who had a number of symptoms either gastrointestinal or systemic who were at risk for ncgs nonstic Gluten Sensitive and they found a 3% prevalence in that cohort so why all this matters is my observation in Consulting with people is that gluten is vastly over avoided and I'll share with you in a moment what I think is probably a different mechanism through which people do react to gluten do improve when they cut it out of their diet but when understanding this mechanism it helps us to realize that the gluten intolerance if you will is probably more so due to the microbiota can be corrected and therefore long-term gluten avoidance is probably not necessary I know some people are are are um they're they're quite attached to the hypothesis that gluten is a problem for everyone I'm agnostic on this I want people to be able to eat the broadest diet possible and make these decisions in a data driven fashion so let's pin the other component to gluten avoidance to the board for a moment and just come to Dairy really quick because gluten and dairy fall underneath the same principle where it could be a allergy or it could be due to the microbiota and therefore something that can be corrected so there there's actually a lot of Hope with this one um but regarding prevalence for dairy lactose malabsorption in the North American population is about 42% and a cow's milk allergy is between 1 to about 5% and this is a good sort of transition to this next concept so lactose intolerance is actually not really an allergy it's an inability to metabolize sugars in the dairy and what helps with metabolism well it's your commensal bacteria and so this is what's exciting in that if we can improve the microbiota and someone's intestinal lining Health where enzymes are released we can improve tolerance so the next category is foods that feed bacteria these are high FODMAP or high Prebiotic Foods FODMAP just stands for fermentable oligo D monosaccharides and polyols it's a mouthful just to describe the structure of carbohydrates in these foods that tend to be very Pro bacteria now this isn't necessarily a good thing or a bad thing it just depends on what's going on in your gut microbot for those who have leaky gut gut symptoms and certain systemic symptoms they may have an overgrowth of bacteria that's leading to all this reactivity including food reactivity including foods that are high in the compounds that feed the bacteria these are the high FODMAP or the high Prebiotic foods and many of these are stereotypically healthy so this would include but not limited to cauliflower broccoli asparagus garlic onions avocados apples wheat and dairy and also certain sweeteners like arrol allulose chory sorbitol and manitol so especially if you've noticed let's say certain protein powders or certain protein bars that are formulated to be lower carb Do not sit well with you it could be that you're overly fermenting the carbohydrates and that's where the problem's coming from now the good news is this can be corrected but let me go into a little bit of the evidence that connects these high FODMAP bacteria feeding foods with leaky gut so this comes from a 2021 clinical trial in adrenal nutrients after 3 months on a low FODMAP diet quoting the present study found that a low fob maap diet improved gastrointestinal symptoms psychological State and quality of life in patients with IBS Improvement in intestinal permeability and intestinal mucosa Integrity occurred so what that's saying just said more simply is that a low fob map diet for a few months not forever can improve symptoms quality of life and also reduce leaky gut and this is what I think eludes some people who are reducing processed food reducing alcohol perhaps even coming off gluten and dairy seeing some benefit but still feeling like they're floundering it could be that you're consuming healthy foods that are also high in these fob maps in these prebiotics and you're actively flaring the imbalance wherein a shortterm reduction as this study found three months could be even shorter actually in a lot of cases could reduce that imbalance in the microbiota and there for could lead you to then later reintroduce these Foods successfully and that's a really important concept I want to make sure to highlight which is the low fob map diet tends to be corrective not only for leaky gut but it can also lower the levels of a overgrowth known as sibo in fact one study found in just two weeks there was a 30% clearance of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth when undergoing a low FODMAP diet so especially if you're some someone who's been making changes to improve their diet and you're still noticing symptoms this might be something that you've missed is the need to temporarily reduce fod maps and then reintroduce them and so coming back to the gluten and dairy piece what this could mean is that your reactions to wheat gluten and dairy might not be due to True allergy or intolerance it might be due to the fact that they're higher fob and if that's the case it's it's incredibly hopeful because you will gain tolerance back and this is something I can say again as someone who works with people you will see a surprising number of individuals who when they reintroduce dairy or gluten after doing some work to heal their gut they're shocked at the tolerance some people again are very married to the concept that gluten and dairy are bad and are inflammatory for everyone and are a problem but it's really the prevalence data here that reconciles yes a problem for some people but it's probably roughly around 5% for gluten and for dairy based upon the data we covered a moment ago so all this just to empower you with the ability to eat the broadest diet possible and not to avoid food just based upon Faith or upon fear there are also some controversial foods and this is where myself and our research team really try to do a thorough job factchecking I do not want to expose you to dietary Dogma so we'll have certain principles that guide us like ancestral eating things that are naturally occurring are probably best for you but then toggle over to a scientific review to try to have the most contemporary and informed perspective on these issues and with artificial sweeteners there's not really compelling data suggesting that they are a problem and I want to quote a 2023 review paper although some human trials have observed a dis biotic effect of artificial sweeteners many randomized control trials have reported a lack of significant effect on the gut microbiota so what this means is there really may not be much of a delerious effect from these sweeteners now if you're someone who does notice a problem like we like to say your body is boss listen to your body but also remember that some of those intolerances might be shortterm due to this overgrowth that over ferments these artificial sweeteners so whether you want to include these in your diet or not is up to you I generally avoid these although if I'm traveling or I'm out at a dinner I you know won't really care too much the other thing I wanted to comment on here was tap water and I personally just tie in my own experience prefer to drink filtered water and there's some evidence showing that filtered tap water May reduce the risk of obtaining a gastrointestinal infection there's not really much data looking at tap water and it's impact on leaky gut just to disclose that my thinking is since it's not a high cost intervention probably makes sense to filter your tap water and soy is another area that we fact checked and there's not really much in the way of direct research looking at soy and its impact on leaky gut but two meta analyses did find that soy consumption decreased ccal cancer risk now could that be to confounders that people were eating a generally healthy diet I'm not sure on this I didn't drill too deeply down into the meta analyses again here I would say there there seems to be an ethos of avoiding soy and certainly if you notice a problem with soy okay uh but not a lot of good sort of randomized Control Data to fact check this claim so I think the jury's a little bit out on this one okay so tying everything together remember that leaky gut can manifest as a fairly broad constellation of symptoms so we can use prevalence data here 36 to 88% of people with chronic symptoms could have leaky gut implicated in their symptoms and that there are a few things you should avoid highly processed food being one opting for organic as much as possible so as to reduce pesticides being moderate in your consumption of alcohol potentially avoiding gluten and dairy but remembering that the stats there are helpful that it's roughly 5% for each and in more cases it might be that there's a intolerance to the prebiotics or the fod maps in those foods and that is a temporary avoidance for a long-term ability to tolerate those foods and obviously remember that higher fob map foods can be a problem and a temporary elimination of those may help to reduce licky gut as we discussed in those few studies and that sweeteners are hard to tell at this point filter tap water probably good and and maybe the the most overarching concept would be reasonable and targeted avoidance so that you don't make them the stake of thinking that more avoidance leads to better gut health there's a balance and overly avoiding food can have psychosocial implications that can also be deleterious for your health if avoiding of food is the right move for you you should see Improvement upon its withdrawal and a elicitation of symptoms upon its reintroduction and also again remember that as your gut heals your tolerance should improve over time therefore allowing you to eat a broader diet and have more food Freedom okay guys this is Dr Rio and I hope that [Music] helps

Channel: Dr. Michael Ruscio, DC, DNM

Views: 59,343

Keywords: leaky gut, leaky gut foods to avoid, leaky gut diet, leaky gut symptoms, what is leaky gut, gut health, gut healing, dr ruscio, gut science, health science, small intestine, intestinal permeability, leaky gut syndrome, how to heal leaky gut, healing leaky gut, leaky gut treatment, leaky gut repair

Id: P3Y7XNUwg7k

Length: 24min 52sec (1492 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 27 2023