Can leaky gut effect weight loss? This is a good question. Let’s start with what exactly is a leaky gut.
The term leaky gut refers to the condition were the lining of the intestinal tract becomes damaged to the point that it can no longer serve as an effective barrier preventing undigested food particles from entering the blood stream. When this happens, undigested food enters the blood stream and causes an immune reaction to common foods. When it comes to weight loss a leaky gut is an unhealthy gut. In a healthy gut fats and proteins are broken down and absorbed effectively. When the gut lining become damage, it is hard to digest fats and proteins. With out the digestion of fats and proteins our metabolism is affected adversely. The only thing we can digest is carbohydrates and this can cause blood sugar problems and lead to insulin resistance.
Another component of leaky gut is dysbiosis or an imbalance of the good bacteria or an overgrowth of bad bacteria in the Gastrointestinal tract. The bacteria in the G.I. tract (gastrointestinal tract) can have far reaching effect on your ability to lose and maintain weight. A study was done with rats were the researchers observed that mice who had a certain type of bacteria in their GI tract were thin and those mice that didn’t have the bacteria were overweight. When the researchers implanted the good bacteria from the thin mice into the overweight mice, they last weight. This is how important the bacteria in the gut can be.
With a functional medicine approach to weight loss we are looking at the whole person and leaky gut is part of that. To truly get tot the root cause of weight loss problems we have to look at all the possible metabolic imbalances and correct those. When this is done the metabolism does what it was meant to do, and weight loss becomes effortless.