Leaky Gut – Confusion Rules

Published: June 17, 2019

Why Your Doctor Doesn’t Know as Much as You Do

Here it is – Father’s day June 16, 2019 – and so I thought I would write a little about the problems that those of us who want to impart truth and wisdom to our children and our fellow man have to deal with. From the top man in our country down to my Uber/Lyft drivers, no one seems to be able to know for sure what is the truth about almost any thing.

All around this country families will be taking Dad out to dinner or making him his favorites and it is a moment where the man of the house can maybe relax and enjoy a little of the hard earned love that he expects and desires. If you live only in the moment (which is generally a good thing) then stop reading this and go enjoy yourself! On the other hand you may want to know about the debate the world is having over the existence of a “leaky gut”. This term refers to a condition in which the lining of the intestinal tract is damaged and allows the poisonous toxins from the gut microbes to leak into the body and cause a variety of problems. Go to google and put in the term “leaky gut” and you will find many more articles written by well meaning medical and scientific people who claim there is no such thing or at least the condition has never been proven to cause any medical problems.

Having studied this area of interest for the past 40 years and having read and treated thousands of papers, books and people I think that all of us should recognize that if you look back in time a little you can find many other ideas or concepts that were called quackery and that sooner or later turned out to be the opposite of quackery. The proof of these ideas took many years but finally resulted in many people being saved from a variety of conditions.

A Case Study

An example of such an idea and the doctors that originally proposed it was the cause and cure for stomach ulcers. Before 1982 when Barry J. Marshall and Robin Warren discovered the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, gastric ulcers were considered to be due to stress and lifestyle factors. These two physicians discovered that 90% of duodenal ulcers and 80% of stomach ulcers were caused by this organism but their discoveries were rejected by the majority of the medical and scientific world and the doctors were called Quacks.

However, since its discovery there have been over 25,000 scientific papers published on this bacterium and the two doctors were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2005 for this great discovery!

Now going back to the Leaky gut theory, H. pylori has also been demonstrated to produce neurotoxins which can contribute to a variety of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, MS and ALS. Rather than list the publications that allude to this I thought I would just relay my own experience with H.pylori and ALS patients. In the 3 patients I have treated with ALS and who also had H.pylori they all improved significantly after the normal course of therapy for this stomach ulcer producing bacterium. So yes, the improvement may have occurred anyway with the standard triple antibiotic course but in any case when a physician can identify an infection in a patient with a neurodegenerative condition, it is always the best therapy to get rid of the infection if at all possible.

Did the neurotoxin enter the blood through a leaky gut? Hard to prove but when patients get better after treating a potential leaky gut then we should be more accepting of the fact that a variety of harmful substances such as alcohol, low fiber diets, high fat diets, chemicals, metals like lead and mercury, food allergies, etc. that can damage the gut should be eliminated and a more bland, soft, high fiber, low sugar diet with small frequent meals may help people with a variety of problems that otherwise can only be treated by medical doctors who don’t believe that your diet has anything to do with your health.

Now when you read this article you can see why your local doctor is confused.

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