Many people can have leaky gut, and it can develop at any time in your lifetime. The diseases and conditions it can lead to are different in each person. And many things can cause this imbalance in your system. Here are some of the culprits:

1. Exposure to environmental toxins. Toxins in foods, like growth enhancers, pesticides and other chemicals, or environmental toxins you breath can cause inflammation and overload your immune system, causing a break down of the mucosa lining of your intestines.
2. Yeast. Many believe this to be the main culprit on most people with leaky gut. All of us have yeast in our intestinal tract. Most of us have a healthy balance of “good” bacteria that feed upon the yeast. (The yeast feed upon all the sugary carbohydrates we eat.) However, if you have a lot of bacterial infections and take a lot of antibiotics, this throws of the balance of your bacteria to yeast, because antibiotics don’t differentiate between good and bad bacteria…they kill them all! The yeast can actually damage the mucosa lining of the intestines, causing them to leak.
3. Chronic stress. Stress suppresses the immune system, and we already know how the immune system is related to the intestinal tract (the mucosa lining is an intricate part of the immune system). Over a long period of time, stress can weaken the immune system and leaky gut can occur.
4. Medications – some medications, like pain killers and antibiotics, can actually weaken the lining as well.
5. Diets that have too much refined sugar (feeding the yeast) or are too low in fiber.
6. Zinc Deficiency. I was surprised to see this in the list of potential causes. Zinc supposedly helps to maintain the intestinal wall integrity.

Given that LuLu has pyroluria, which is a genetic predisposition to not metabolizing zinc correctly, all of this starts to make sense. Supplementing with zinc is a good idea for many reasons.

More information:

Leaky Gut Syndrome

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