So what is intestinal permeability?
Intestinal permeability (aka ‘leaky gut’) is the condition where the tight junctions on the lining of the intestine loosen, allowing undigested food particles, environmental toxins, foreign bacteria, and other normally restricted molecules to cross the gut barrier and migrate to other parts of the body.
Normally, our intestines push molecules through our digestive tract, using the bits our body wants and expelling the rest as waste. The intestine is selectively permeable, that is, it allows small particles that are beneficial (such as nutrients) to cross the gut barrier, and blocks those particles that it deems harmful. But certain conditions can aggravate the gut lining, causing these tight junctions to loosen too much, thereby increasing permeability. And that’s when things go bad. Depending on what’s crossing the gut barrier, and where it ends up, anything can happen.
So what exactly does happen when some of these particles leach into other aspects of our body? As it turns out, quite a bit. And while inflammation is one commonality, other effects of IP can be vastly different from one person to the next, and often very serious. CLICK TO REVIEW THIS GREAT BLOG POST BY HEATHER JACOBSEN