Five Ways I Ruined My Gut

It bothered me that I got leaky gut and I found five ways I ruined my gut! I went down the typical path of asking: “Why me?” I spent years trying to get meaningful answers. If you do basic google search you will be told that autoimmunity isn’t curable and at best, you will take drugs that will manage the symptoms. I couldn’t accept this as an answer and wanted to get to the root cause and found five ways I ruined my gut.

When I approached my autoimmunity as problems with the gut, and started healing my gut issues, things began to turn the corner. I have a post about gut permeability test, check it out.

Let me share with you how I ruined my gut in five (easy) ways. 

I OVERINDULGED IN GRAINS

In my twenties I became vegetarian, and then vegan for a while. The animal foods were replaced with grain products, and I used to overindulge in grains because my body demanded proteins. Even as a vegan, soy products weren’t my thing so eating food that were full of gluten were my go-to. We now know that gluten is one of the major contributors to leaky gut. About 80% of proteins contained within wheat is gluten, and it is very damaging to the intestinal barrier. I mentioned this in my previous posts, Alessio Fasano who’s work you should check out on gluten.  

Check my video about leaky gut here.

Some people can eat food rich in gluten and their gut lining stays unchanged. I wasn’t one of these lucky people.

I HAD TOO MUCH PROCESSED FOOD

In my university years, cup noodles or snack bars were my fall back when I was too tired to cook. Dangers of processed foods and the emulsifiers in them weren’t on my radar at all. And here we have studies showing that emulsifiers such as polysorbate 80 (P80) cause not only weight gain, but also inflammation and increase intestinal permeability. 

You can look at any packaged, processed food and almost always it will have polysorbate 80 in it. As you can imagine, I had no clue at that time, but It is fair to say I had too much processed food. 

I DRANK TOO MUCH ALCOHOL

For number of years, I worked and studied full time. I literally had no time for social life, none. When I finally graduated and my scheduled freed up, I had to catch up: partying Thursday, Friday and Saturday, all of it accompanied by alcoholic drinks, and the worst kind of them: sugary alcoholic cocktails. 

Ethanol, the chemical name of alcohol will impair intestinal barrier function through mitogen activated protein kinase signaling. Link to the studies can be found here.

Because I was young, it didn’t even occur to me that I drank too much alcohol, let alone that it would have any health consequences later in life. 

I TOOK TOO MANY PAINKILLERS

Sometime halfway through the university, I had a car accident that resulted with a serious head injury.  For about two years I had daily, unbearable headaches which I managed with Ibuprofen, a lot of it. Because it was an over the counter medication, I didn’t think it would have any side effects. In fact, this was my go-to painkiller to manage my joint pain as well. I took way too many painkillers, and the time I thought it was all safe because it didn’t need a prescription. Only a few month ago I learned that prolonged intake of anti-inflammatory medication (NSAID) increases intestinal permeability.

Link to the studies can be found here.

I ATE TOO MUCH FOOD HIGH IN PESTICIDES

Again, back to my university years, money was an issue, so saving on food was one of the strategies to manage the bills.  Organic fruit and vegetables were way too expensive, but I was a dedicated vegetarian that was eating my veggies. There was a grocery store in Brooklyn that had its fruit and veg displayed outdoors, on the major busy street. So not only was I buying produce that had pesticides, they had also residues of car fumes.

It looked like healthy diet to me then, but today I have to say I ate too much food that was high in pesticides. 

FINAL THOUGHTS

Even though the mainstream medicine is reluctant to link leaky gut to all autoimmune diseases, I was able to reverse my Rheumatoid Arthritis by undoing those five (easy) ways I ruined my gut. If you want to hear from professionals that have multiple case studies about it, you should check out Paleomedicina.

Some days I still can’t believe, that with diet I was able to reverse autoimmunity, or at least put it into remission. 

Click to watch my YouTube video on this subject as well!

Big City Mom