Imagine a garden hose with water running through it. The water goes exactly where it's supposed to, right? Now imagine that a dog chewed tiny holes in it, not enough to break it, but enough to sprout leaks all along the hose. So, instead of watering one plant, the entire yard gets soaked, including your newly detailed car. Not good. Further imagine that your yard has a particular kind of insect that's attracted to water droplets in the air, so now your whole yard is swarming with these insects and you can't even go into your yard without all these buggers swarming on you, too. Even worse.

According to microbiologist Kiran Krishnan, “that's essentially what's happening inside your body when you eat foods that cause inflammation: the leaks allow toxins, bacterial components, viral components, chemicals and other debris found in your digestive tract to escape the intestine and enter the blood stream.” Once in the blood stream, the white blood cells of your immune system see these components invading molecules, and attacks them in an attempt to protect the host. This “leaky gut,” or intestinal permeability, causes a 6X rise in toxicity and inflammation in the body simply by eating food. The reactions to high fat, high caloric meals are worse, but can happen even after consuming healthy foods. It is a failure of the microbiome (the large population of commensals microbes and their genes) in protecting its hosts. Kiran and other scientists in this field overwhelmingly agree that this intestinal permeability and resulting inflammation from consuming food is the genesis of most chronic diseases, autoimmune disorders, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and a myriad of other chronic conditions such as high cholesterol, high triglyceride, and high blood sugar levels. All because our “digestive hose” is perforated.

What’s the cause?

Krishnan says a leaky gut is caused by “a dysbiotic microbiota which fails to protect the host in response to foods and especially inflammatory foods like gluten processed wheat, dairy, corn, soy, sugars, poor fats and food borne toxins that your body doesn't like.”

“Eating can be the most toxic thing we do to ourselves,” Krishnan added, “And unfortunately, there is no way to stop if we want to survive. However, we have developed a great symbiotic relationship with certain types of friendly bacteria that protect our body from the toxicity of consuming food.”

You can tell if you have a leaky gut, Krishnan added, “if you’re having inflammation in your body, have allergies, food sensitivities, eczema, psoriasis, skin conditions, sleep disorders, joint pain, autoimmune conditions, heart disease, diabetes, poor immune health, anxiety and the list goes on.”

In a 2015 “Frontiers of Immunology” report, European scientists Karin de Punder and Leo Pruimboom concluded that intestinal permeability (leaky gut) was the number one cause of morbidity, work place absence and mortality worldwide! This underdiagnosed and underappreciated disorder is killing more people worldwide than any other disorder. With the impact that this disorder makes on societies and families, it is imperative to find a proper solution.

What’s the solution?

Krishnan recommends starting with a unique strain of probiotic that has the capability to reform the intestinal tract to have a protective function during the process of food digestion. Additionally, the strain should be one that facilitates sealing up the “holes” in the intestinal tract. However, no probiotic should be consumed unless it has been, DNA-verified, which means the company has verified the strain identities to ensure the correct strains are in the product. Mislabeling of probiotic strains is a rampant problem in the industry. Thus far, the only strains that have demonstrated the capability to protect against leaky gut are the bacillus endospores. However, it is important to note that not all endospores are created equal; the key strains that were clinically studied are present in some high quality brands in the market. The bacillus strains of probiotics, found in Silver Fern Brand and MegaSporeBiotic, are one option to consider.

Fixing the hose, however, takes more than just consuming a probiotic. For the probiotic to do its job effectively, you must reduce sugar consumption, low quality fats and processed carbohydrates as much as possible, according to Krishnan, who covered the topic in the Silver Fern ELEVATED plan. After a couple weeks, this becomes much easier to accomplish.

This is good news for those of us who have been researching anything and everything for the answer to staying healthy and not falling into the "medicinal ditch" as we age. Avoiding sugar, and those processed grains that are broken down into sugars and cause type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and a whole host of other health conditions.

This probiotic can help you beat down your sugar addiction and get onto the road to the rehab of your entire metabolism and immune system!

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