What is Intestinal Hyperpermeability?
What is Metabolic Endotoxemia?
What is Bacterial Translocation?
What is Leaky Gut Syndrome?
Do all of these terms really just mean the same thing?
What all these terms mean is that the one cell deep lining of our digestive tract is disrupted. Between the cells that line the digestive tract are tight junctions. These tight junctions help to ensure that anything that is within the lumen of the digestive tract stays in the digestive tract and doesn’t end up in the blood stream. But what can happen is that over time, as we are eating the wrong foods that are causing inflammation in the digestive tract and taking in toxic loads often through our foods like glyphosate is damaging to these tight junctions. So we get a breakdown of the tight junctions that hold those cells of the digestive tract together. Damage to these tight junctions leads to spaces between the cells. So food that is not completely digested can end up in the blood stream. This is called leakiness of the digestive tract, intestinal hyperpermability, metabolic endotoxemia, because what is happening is that the endotoxins, toxins coming from within the body, such as LPS, lipopolysaccharides, which are breakdown products of the bacteria that live within our digestive tract, can end up in the blood stream and this is something that is measureable. When these LPS end up in the blood stream it can cause a number of different problem. This can also be called Bacterial Translocation. So that bacteria that should be on the lumen side of the digestive tract, translocates into the blood stream and again this is measureable and this occurs because there is a breakdown of the lining of the digestive tract and specifically a breakdown of the tight junctions that hold those cells together.
Those tight junctions should be making sure that nothing gets into the blood stream, it is supposed to be a barrier, but when that barrier gets broken down then foods and toxins that are within the digestive tract can end up in the blood stream, which can lead to a whole host of health issues. Now what happens is that the immune system is activated because it sees the undigested foods and toxins as foreign substances. This can lead to allergies, eczema, autoimmune disease, chronic disease, diabetes, cancer. All of this can happen because we these holes within our digestive tract.
In the literature it can be called intestinal hyperpermeability, metabolic endotoxemia, bacterial translocation, leaky gut syndrome, which essentially all mean the same thing.
