Dr. Tabatha Barber outlines how to heal leaky gut by removing gluten, sugar, and stress, then rebuilding with bone broth, fermented foods, and supplements that repair the gut lining. She recommends stress reduction, better sleep, and switching from cardio to resistance training to restore depleted IgA immune function.
Foreign. So it's about removing the triggers that are making it mad. It's about supporting gut health. So the biggest things are, you know, like I said, you want to get your stress under control so you're not pumping out cortisol all the time, but you want to think about triggers. Gluten is a very, very common trigger because it's the protein in wheat that has been genetically modified over this past century so much that our body doesn't even recognize it anymore. And so our immune system is constantly attacking when we eat gluten. Gluten stands for glue. It's like what makes bread chewy and dough like. And glue, it's sticks to you, you know, like pancakes. So sometimes getting rid of gluten is necessary, usually symptoms of leaky gut. If you already have an autoimmune condition, you know you have leaky gut. But it also can be, like I mentioned, skin issues, headaches, chronic fatigue, brain fog, not being able to remember stuff, diarrhea, constipation, bloating, gas, joint pain, all of that stuff. So that's super important. So get rid of the sugar out of your diet. Not only will it do so much for your weight and your hormone balance and your sleep, but it will literally be part of healing your gut and getting rid of systemic inflammation, which leads to diabetes and heart disease and all of those associated things. Eat foods that are fermented that nourish the good bacteria in your gut, like kimchi and kombucha, anything pickled or fermented. Sauerkraut, kefir, miso, tempeh, that kind of stuff. Another amazing product to heal leaky gut is bone broth because it has collagen in it. And my favorite bone broth is by my girlfriend, Dr. Kellyanne Petrucci. So I'll put that link in the show notes because bone broth is super, super good for your gut. So I love it so much. Like I said, sleep more, decrease your stress. If you are doing a ton of cardio, switch up your workouts a little bit. Try to do more restorative stuff like yoga, pilates, stretching, weightlifting. Because when you're doing high intensity cardio, you're pumping out cortisol, which is destroying that gut lining again. So just keep that in mind, then we can do supplementation. I love doing certain supplements to heal an active leaky gut, like L glutamine, zinc, carnosine. Let me list them off. It's like marshmallow, slippery elm, aloe vera, deglycerinized licorice, sometimes known as dgl, citrus pectin, quercetin, cat's claw. So many good herbs and supplements that will heal that gut lining. Those gap junctions will regenerate, you'll have new cells grow and they'll be able to keep stuff out of your bloodstre so that your immune system can calm down and quit being on the offensive, on the defensive all the time and attack, attack, attack like you really want that immune system to calm down. And the other piece of it is what I've been seeing a ton of lately on my patients stool test that we do is their IGA system which is your frontline immune system system that I've been talking about in your gut lining. Your IGA levels are depleted. We are fighting the fight so much nonstop and now we've added this pandemic to the situation so our IGA levels are depleted. So I find supporting with immunoglobulin replacement to be super beneficial. So so many good things you can do to heal the gut but you have to remember to remove the triggers so that you quit damaging the gut.
