Common drugs, foods, and drinks can disrupt the integrity of our intestinal barrier, causing leaky gut.
Intestinal permeability, the leakage of our intestines, may be a new target for disease prevention and treatment. With all its tiny barriers, our intestinal barrier covers an area of more than 4,000 square feet—bigger than a tennis court—and requires about 40% of our body’s total energy expenditure to maintain it.
There is growing evidence that implicates “disruption of intestinal barrier integrity” in the development of many conditions, including celiac disease and inflammatory bowel disease. The researchers measured intestinal permeability using blue food coloring. It remained in the gut of healthy participants but was detected in the blood of critically ill sepsis patients with a damaged gut barrier. You don’t have to end up in the ICU to develop leaky gut. Just taking an aspirin or ibuprofen can do the trick.
Indeed, taking two regular aspirin (325 mg tablets) or two extra strength aspirin (500 mg tablets) at once can increase our intestinal leakage. These results suggest that even healthy people should be careful when using aspirin, because it may cause intestinal barrier dysfunction.
What about blocked aspirin, an aspirin-antacid combination that “prevents” intestinal irritation? Apparently it makes no difference: Regular aspirin and Bufferin both produced more erosion of the lining of the stomach and intestines. Researchers put a scope down people’s throats and saw severe erosion and redness within 90 percent of those who took aspirin or Bufferin at their recommended doses. How many hours does it take for damage to occur? Nothing. It can happen in just five minutes. Acetaminophen, sold as Tylenol in the United States, may not lead to intestinal damage and may be a better choice, unless you have problems with your liver. And instead of making things better, vitamin C supplements seem to make aspirin-induced increases in leaky gut worse.
Interestingly, this may be why NSAID drugs such as aspirin, ibuprofen, and naproxen are “involved in 25% of food-induced anaphylaxis.” In other words, they are associated with a 10-fold increased risk of life-threatening food allergy attacks, possibly because these drugs increase the leakiness of the intestinal barrier, allowing small food particles to enter the bloodstream. But can exercise increase the risk, too?
Intense exercise—for example, an hour at 70% intensity—can divert so much blood to the muscles and away from our internal organs that it can cause temporary damage to our gut, causing small leaky gut. But this can be worse if athletes take ibuprofen or other NSAID drugs, which are unfortunately very common.
Alcohol may be a risk factor for food allergy attacks for the same reason—increasing leaky gut. But cut out the alcohol, and our gut may recover.
What other food components can make a difference? High consumption of saturated fat, found in meat, milk, and junk food, can cause the growth of bad bacteria that produce the rotten egg gas hydrogen sulfide, which can degrade the protective mucus layer. You can see the process below and at 3:21 in my video Avoid These Foods to Prevent Leaky Gut.
It is said that it is clear that a high-fat diet generally has a negative effect on gut health by “interfering with the intestinal barrier system through various mechanisms,” but most of the studies showing negative effects are done in lab animals or in a petri dish. Are people affected in the same way? You never know for sure until you put it to the test.
Rates of obesity and other cardiometabolic disorders increased rapidly with the transition from a standard low-fat diet to a high-fat diet. We know that the disruption of our good intestinal flora has been shown to be associated with a greater risk of these same diseases, and research using mice suggests that a high-fat diet “unbalances” the microbiome while disrupting the intestinal barrier, leading to disease. To connect all the dots, however, we need a human intervention trial—and we got one: a six-month randomized controlled trial on the effects of dietary fat on the gut microbiota. It found that, indeed, high fat consumption was associated with unfavorable changes in the gut microbiome and proinflammatory factors in the blood. Note that these were not even saturated fats, such as meat and dairy. Researchers recently replaced refined carbohydrates and refined fats—replacing white rice and wheat flour with soybean oil. These findings suggest that countries that consume a western diet should recommend an increase in dietary fat, while countries that already consume such foods should consider reducing.
Doctor’s Note
For more on leaky gut, see The Leaky Gut Theory of Why Animal Products Cause Inflammation again How To Heal Leaky Gut With Food.
I also talked about leaky gut in my SIBO video: Friday Favorites: Tests, Fiber, and Low FODMAP for Small Intestinal Overgrowth (SIBO).
