Dr. Tabatha Barber explains how gut problems like SIBO and leaky gut send bacterial toxins directly to the liver through the portal vein, overloading its detox pathways. Bile acids recycle 15 to 17 times per meal, so damaged gut function backs up the whole system.
because when we think about this intimate connection of the gut and the liver through the portal vein, which is a 24/7 conversation, he directly said verbatim, "We don't believe in supporting the liver." And this is coming from a GI doctor, right? And so he's working with all of these patients with recurring SIBO or whatever the infection, the Crohn's, the IBD, the IBS might be, and they're not supporting the liver. And then we wanna know why, right? These, uh, either aren't resolving or it keeps coming back. And so when we think about this conversation, and it's again a 24-hour thing that's happening in terms of communication. And so when we think of this highway, if you are ingesting a food, right, our gut is there to help process it, hopefully absorb the nutrients and good nutrients. But if we have a lot of underlying infections, we have inflammation, or let's say leaky gut, right, this intestinal permeability. When the tight junctions start to break down, we can see things seep into the bloodstream, bacterial toxins or things, endotoxins to our body, LPS, lipopolysaccharides. So when they seep through the gut lining and get into the lumen, they go straight to your liver. And, um, this is really, really important because now your liver is not only having to process all the things that you're just living life with right now, right, in our current world. But if you have an underlying infection or you have hormones that are backing up because you're not pooping and you don't have adequate bile flow, now we're really starting to see the dysfunction in the cascade here where detox pathways are burdened, they're overburdened, blood sugar starts to dysregulate, the liver starts to produce inflammation to protect itself, In turn, bile acids and that bile acid supply starts to diminish. It becomes a little bit more stagnant. I say to people, think layman's terms here, peanut butter instead of fluid. We want those bile acids flowing through our small intestine. Really fun fact, and this is a credit to a mentor of mine, Karan Krishnan, 15 to 17 times bile acids filter through that small intestine every time you eat.
