As you guys know, endo is a full body disease which causes a host of symptoms throughout the body and also often comes with co-conditions that trigger these symptoms, heighten them or add new ones.
IBS issues are a problem for many people with endo and it’s important to address these, not by masking but by getting to the root causes.
The reason why getting to the root cause is so important is because gut inflammation is a key cause of pelvic pain and could even contribute to the continued growth of endo. Seventy percent of your immune system is in and around your gut and inflammation is simply a normal immune response. Inflammatory immune cells are released in response to injury, infection, bacteria or some kind of threat and these inflammatory cells cause swelling, pain and heat as they get to work on healing the area.
Now leaky gut or intestinal permeability occurs when tiny holes appear in the gut lining. Think of the gut lining as a sausage skin, it’s a tube from the mouth to the colon that seperates what’s coming in and going out from the rest of the body. The lining is incredibly thin, just one cell thick and these cells are tightly packed together with only the tiniest gap between them, to allow for the absorption of nutrients. When the gut gets inflamed from chronic IBS reactions, infections, SIBO, allergies, intolerances, an inflammatory microbiome, etc. the gut lining gets damaged and the gaps begin to wide. Other issues can also cause damage to the lining, like medication, stress and alcohol to name a few.
When this happens, food particles can pass through the gut lining alongside bacteria and toxins from bacteria, known as LPS. While some of the immune defences are inside the gut, there is also a large amount on the outside of the gut lining, waiting to attack anything that passes through which shouldn’t be there. It doesn’t matter if this is food or bacteria, inflammatory immune cells will be released and because the blood stream is also on the other side of the gut lining, the inflammatory cells can get swept along the blood stream, causing full body inflammation.
If you have leaky gut, this is going to be happening every time you eat, putting you in a state of chronic inflammation.
Of course, as you probably know, chronic inflammation causes chronic pain, and so, calming down your gut is key for calming down your pain.
But there are many other reasons to heal leaky gut.
Leaky gut causes symptoms like brain fog and fatigue, but it’s also now showing up in the research as a leading cause behind many autoimmune diseases. The reason being is that as the immune cells become more and more exposed to food particles (and whatever else is coming through), they start to develop antibodies for them, and these antibodies accidentally start attacking certain cells in our body, leading to an autoimmune condition. Research has shown people with endo are significantly more likely to develop certain autoimmune diseases and that autoimmune diseases are strongly associated with endometriosis. So, for us to keep ourselves as healthy as possible, healing leaky gut is really important.
Then there’s also the presence of LPS. Lipopolysaccharides are parts of the cell wall from certain bacteria that trigger inflammation in humans. LPS can move from the gut to other parts of the body, known as translocation. LPS have been shown to play a key role in autoimmune disease development and also play a lead role in endo development too, alongside oestrogen and inflammatory chemicals like prostaglandins.
So, whilst there are more extensive protocols for healing leaky gut that I take my clients and course students through, I get that for some of us, starting slower and with fewer steps is a better way to get going with healing.
Because of this, today I wanted to pay attention to three leading causes of leaky gut that commonly affect our endo community and tips for managing their damage. There are;
Stress
NSAIDS
Gluten
Listen to the episode to hear about the research and the studies and for tips for healing if these specific causes are affecting you personally.
