Episode 11: Why Your Gut Barrier Matters More Than You Think
Is “Leaky Gut” Real? The Truth About Intestinal Permeability and Why Your Gut Barrier Matters More Than You Think
If you’ve been told leaky gut is a myth—or you’ve seen it blamed for every symptom under the sun—this episode is for you.
In this episode of Team Gut Girls, naturopathic doctors Dr. Whitney Baxter, Dr. Christina Carew, and Dr. Dominique Vanier unpack one of the most controversial topics in gut health: intestinal permeability, often called “leaky gut.” They explain what the gut barrier actually is, why it’s only one cell thick, and how stress, infections, hormones, medications, inflammation, and microbiome changes can affect its function.
You’ll learn:
✔️ What “leaky gut” really means (and what it doesn’t)
✔️ Why bloating, fatigue, brain fog, skin issues, food sensitivities, and hormone symptoms may all be connected
✔️ The role of tight junctions—the gatekeepers of your gut lining
✔️ Why your immune system and nervous system are deeply involved
✔️ Common myths about gut healing and why one-size-fits-all protocols often fail
✔️ The practical framework we use in clinic: calm, remove, repair
✔️ Why more supplements aren’t always the answer
Most importantly, you’ll walk away with a clearer understanding of how to support your gut without falling into the trap of restrictive diets, supplement overload, or fear-based wellness advice.
Because better gut health changes everything.
00:00 Why Your Gut Barrier Matters More Than You Think
01:01 Leaky Gut Controversy
01:47 What It Really Is
05:36 Tight Junctions Explained
07:59 Inflammation and Immunity
12:31 How It Starts
17:01 Myths and Oversimplification
20:35 Research and Conditions
23:36 What Keeps It Open
26:31 Calm the Fire First
30:42 Remove the Ongoing Assault
34:41 Repair and Practical Takeaways
41:22 Recap and Closing
11: Why Your Gut Barrier Matters More Than You Think
Leaky Gut Controversy
Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Welcome back to Team Gut Girls, the podcast where we simplify gut health so you can ask better questions, find answers, and feel empowered.
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: Today we’re tackling one of the Internet’s most controversial bug word- buzzwords: leaky gut. Is it real? Is it a myth? Is it the cause of all of your bloating, your acne, your brain fog?
We wanna talk about this
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: And honestly, it’s much more nuanced than social media makes it seem. It seems like leaky gut is just like this thing. You take one supplement for it, everything goes away. And most of the time when you might have gone to your medical doctor and asked about leaky gut, they told you that doesn’t exist or it’s something that naturopaths made up.
What It Really Is
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: And technically it isn’t a diagnosis, but it’s actually like a slang term for a process that happens in your body called intestinal permeability. And so if you went in and asked your doctor about [00:02:00] intestinal permeability, they may have a better understanding of that, or they may not. But essentially, think of your gut lining like a tightly woven cheesecloth or a coffee filter.
It’s supposed to let nutrients in and keep bacteria and toxins out, and all the inflammation on one side of the barrier. But what happens is that filter becomes dysregulated, so things that are crossing into circulation shouldn’t be, and they’re slipping through until your immune system starts to see them.
So what this sometimes can look like might be, feeling bloated after meals or having a skin reaction to food that never bothered you before. So you might get like rosy cheeks or irritation. your periods might be worse, so more cramping, more bloating, more intensity. anxiety, so I like feel like I did something or I ate something and I feel really anxious after.
or feeling, exhausted even though [00:03:00] all your tests come back normal. There’s a whole bunch of other things you might see. that range from things like having, issues with, histamine intolerance. It could be a issue with a particular food or food category. And so we know that or, we believe that the current research says that leaky gut, may be the cause of things like peanut allergies where people had an overexposure to something that continued to leak out of their system and drove their immune system to create a response immune system reactions are things like fatigue, fever, infections or slow recovery, things like worsening or new allergy symptoms, food sensitivities that seem to multiply, so that snowball effect, poor tolerance to supplements, and even things that we sometimes associate with hormone changes like brain fog, anxiety, depression, irritability.
So there’s a wide range of things that could be, possible, and we’ll definitely include a list in the show notes [00:04:00] of symptoms that people might be experiencing so you can look through that and, see. There’s lots of crossover with a lot of other stuff that we talk about, so remember that, even if you’re like, “Oh, yes, this totally sounds like me,” we’ve all been there, especially in naturopathic school.
We all thought we had every disease when we learned it for the first time. And keep in mind that this is just information to help you to get some better ideas or widen your expansion list if things that you’re trying are not working. It’s not a definite “Yes, this is it.” and so you probably are wondering is, my gut trying to tell me something if you’re getting all these symptoms, and that’s really what we’re talking about today.
Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Yeah, so I guess the biggest question is, leaky gut, is it a real thing?
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: Yeah. So the mechanism is real. this idea of leakiness or permeability, there’s lots of research on it. We’ll go into that later in the podcast about some of the areas that are being researched related to this. [00:05:00] but the sort of like a lot of the influencer, information that’s being out there isn’t necessarily…
it’s not that you have giant holes in your system. It’s not that leaky gut is, one disease or one symptom. it’s that in general the research says that the intestinal barrier becomes more permeable under certain conditions that could lead to some of the symptoms that people are experiencing
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: So can you talk about what’s going on then be- if it’s not just you’re getting big, giant hole, leaky holes-
in your intestine?
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: Yeah.
Tight Junctions Explained
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: So we have, we have these things called tight junctions, and they’re little protein structures that are like gatekeepers. So I always think about it when I talk to patients about it like bricks on a wall. And so in between the bricks there’s all this cement that holds the bricks together, and everything’s really tight and close together.
And when we’re seeing more leakiness or more intestinal permeability, what we’re [00:06:00] actually seeing is some of that cement is, being, eroded away or pulled away, or the bricks are separating a bit. And so now instead of the rain staying on the outside of your house, the potential for it to come inside your house, comes a little different.
Now, it’s a little bit different than that because these are actually a dynamic pathway, and so they actually open and close based on signals that happen in your body. no different than your eyes open and close, your mouth opens and closes, these barriers basically open and close. They’re like gates.
And so stress, inflammation, microbes, food, hormones, even, nervous system interaction, they can change, how closed or open are the gates, how fast are they closing or opening, and there’s, little zipper seals in between the cells that are supposed to identify things that are okay to enter and leave the system, and keep some things out.
So larger particles, [00:07:00] bacteria, inflammatory compounds, things that we would think about as, food pieces should be kept out, where things like nutrients might pass through because we need them in other parts of the body. so the more tight the junctions are and the more regulated they are, the less permeability that we’ll experience.
And so the leaky gut is really like your g- gut gatekeepers have been, like, having a party or they’re, like, not paying attention. They have a little ADHD and things are coming in and out. so they’re not really literally holes in the intestine but, this intestine that isn’t working in a way that we think it should be
Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Okay, that’s helpful.
Yeah. W- and I guess another point too is, is when we see this dysregulation or when things are not supposed to- when they’re not working like they should, we’re seeing that correlated with symptoms, digestive symptoms. So yeah, so when people say, your gut lining is damaged, is that an oversimplification?
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: Yeah.
Inflammation and Immunity
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: So [00:08:00] the gut barrier has all these signals, right? So the signals come from the immune system, the nervous system, your hormones, the microbiome, inflammation, the things both above and below where we’re digesting and we’re, doing things. So really, leaky or permeability just really means, more inflammation.
And that’s a lot of what we talk about are, like, all these drivers of inflammation and how they change the signaling in your gut. and what people don’t always think, I think people think, their immune system lives in their lungs or maybe in their nose. I don’t actually know where people think that it lives.
But 70% of your immune system actually lives in your gut. Actually, someone asked me yesterday, “Couldn’t we just test the organ of my immune system?” And, I was like, “Oh, I wonder what that would be.” and so the gut literally is part of the immune system. It’s why they call it, the second brain.
and so when the barrier becomes irritated or permeable, [00:09:00] the im- immune system says “Ooh, something’s going on in here that shouldn’t be going on,” and so we get more inflammatory signaling in the body. And so leaky gut may be a contributor to both symptoms, but even disease, but it doesn’t always mean that it’s involved, but it could be So when people have experiences like bloating, fatigue, food sensitivity, skin, flare-ups, those might be things that we’re starting to think about could be contributor to- contributed by leaky gut.
Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Yeah. and I, like that point, and I, get a lot of questions about, does this mean I’m inflamed? And so for some people we can actually see that their, their nonspecific inflammatory marker, which we all test often, CRP, is high in the blood work. But for a lot of patients that have functional digestive issues and this intestinal hyperpermeability, we may not see that systemic inflammation, but there definitely is low levels of inflammation happening at the gut wall.
so [00:10:00] okay, so next question would be what does leaky gut actually mean?
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: Yeah. So it’s a bit about the gut making these little tiny decisions every day saying, “Let this in, keep this out, let this in, keep this out.” It’s like the airport security, right? You can have 100 mils of liquid, but not more than that.
Take your shoes off today, but not in this airport. and so there’s all these sort of like restrictions or rules that the gut is following, and when those rules become awry or things start to sneak through, that’s when there’s areas that become more, more difficult. And, our barrier really at the end of the day is like one cell thick.
And so when we think about, oh, it must be just all this like layers and layers of stuff, it really isn’t. The part that keeps things in and out is actually very minuscule. We can’t see it. but it, is very small and tiny, and it’s not layers and [00:11:00] layers like we might think it is.
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: And I think what confuses people the most is how it escapes, or how things- Yeah … show up on the skin or outside of that gut.
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: Yeah. So remember, it’s like dynamic, so it’s like those grocery store doors that open and close, and because something passes by, it, decides whether to open or close.
The same kind of idea. And how does things get dysregulated? It’s like anything in our body, we have a signal or we have an experience that changes how our body responds to things. So our blood sugar becomes dysregulated, or we have a really stressful environment, or we get sick, or we’re going through hormone changes, whether that’s in the teenage years or in menopause.
maybe we’re also having outside contributors. when we think about things like mast activation, which we talked about on one of these podcasts, or environmental triggers, these are all playing a role [00:12:00] in what our intestine does, on top of things like medications, probiotics, supplements that we might be taking, antibiotics that we might be taking.
So there’s all kinds of different things that are going to affect it. It doesn’t mean every time you do something that your barrier gets, disoriented or dysregulated. It just means that, sometimes that could be a hap- a thing that happens, whether that’s, the primary reason that you’re feeling that you are or something else.
How It Starts
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: Let’s talk about how leaky gut might even start to happen
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: when I like– I’ve been doing a bunch of presentations on this lately, and so I tried to break it down to what actually happens. So there’s some kind of trigger, which we just talked about. That barrier then becomes disrupted.
And so when the barrier’s disrupted and things leak through, then our immune system’s seeing things where it shouldn’t be seeing and [00:13:00] starts to get activated. So it’s “Hey, this shouldn’t be here. I’m gonna create immune system, response to it.” a single immune system response to anything that’s not super strong is not gonna create this like ongoing cascade of things.
But when we get a multiple immune responses on top of each other over and over again, that’s when we’re starting to see all kinds of things that start happening. And so immune dysregulation means like that all of the energy or a lot of resources in your body are allocated to this immune system. It’s why when you get sick, you feel so tired, right?
You wanna sleep longer ’cause your body is taking that energy and redirecting it. And so as that starts to happen, your nervous system gets involved. we feel more cranky, we feel more irritable, we feel more anxious. Maybe we’re not sleeping as well. Like, all those things start to happen when our immune system’s kinda taking these resources and reallocating.
And so part of what has to happen is the immune system needs to clear those things out of the body. And so lots of [00:14:00] times impaired clearance can look, for instance, like anyone that gets skin irritation. that’s like an impaired clearance response where we get rosacea or acne or psoriasis or itching or even flushing.
we might get bloating as an impaired clearance piece because a lot of our clearance comes through our urine and through our stool and through our sweat. So those tend to be the areas that are most affected. And then if that thing gets shown over and over again to the immune system, then we get what’s called a antigen exposure or antigen response.
And so the body starts saying “Hey, every time I see this isn’t good.” It’s why you might have been able to eat… I have a friend who ate almonds all of her life. She worked on, an account that was like the Almond Board of California. She loved almonds. She ate so many almonds. And then one day when she got sick and she ate almonds, her body had this crazy immune system reaction.
She’s anaphylactic to almonds now. It’s literally the person that used to eat the most almonds I’ve ever known, [00:15:00] and she’s one day everything just switched and changed, right? So in her case, her immune system just saw these almonds over and over again ’cause she was like hyper firing them. It’s why we tell people, “Eat a variety of foods in your diet.”
so the immune dysregulation just started attacking it, and that’s where we started to see this like hypervigilance, hyperactivity. And so the immune dysregulation means that we lose tolerance to that food anymore, and we’re more hyper responsive. And the more of this cycle that keeps going, then we don’t have that barrier re-healing and kind of restarting.
And so we have this sort of cascade of things. It’s not oh, the first time I have an exposure to something, I’m gonna disrupt my barrier. It’s that over time these things accumulate.
Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: It’s, interesting because leaky gut, you’ll see it spread out through many conditions, right? It’s not like leaky gut itself is a condition.
And this is, this reminds me of the first time I was ever exposed to celiac disease. [00:16:00] One of my really good friends, we were, halfway through university. She went on exchange. She got a parasite. I think she was in Po- Thailand, it was a long time ago, and had gastroenteritis. And then, at some point developed celiac.
She had the genetic predisposition, and then lost a lot of weight. And then with that, there was significant leaky gut or intestinal permeability happening, right? So we can see it in things like allergies and things like celiac and things like IBS.
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: Yeah. We saw that post-COVID too. a lot of people’s immune systems really just got changed, and I have a whole group of people that are celiac now in my practice that were never that before.
and so some of the things that you might be considering as already checked off your list, but you had a tremendous illness or a parasite or something that happened between, may change how your body has responded to things that maybe were once cleared. So you’re like, “Oh, yeah, I fixed my leaky gut before, but then all this other stuff happened.”[00:17:00]
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: Yeah.
Myths and Oversimplification
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: maybe we’ll talk about some of the myths. one of the myths is, everyone with bloating has leaky gut. What do you guys think about that?
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: I think when, whenever you see things on social media that there’s an answer to all things, right? It’s really easy to make a post about that, and I’d love to break this down with the two of you, but we all learned about the 4R protocol in school- naturopathic doctors for every- What about we
Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: talk about that?
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: Oh, yay, yay. For every single digestion case. Reduce, remove, repopulate, reinoculate. I don’t know what it is.
Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Yeah. I’ve stopped. Deleted it out of my brain. But when we start to think about there’s one answer to everything or everybody’s gut functions the same way, it can be It c- we can lose our good question asking and a good history taking with what was your trigger, right?
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: What’s going on in your environment? What [00:18:00] could have you been exposed to, to start being more specific about that. but what do you guys think about the 4R protocol?
Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: I think, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, right? if something is just so simplified to that degree, Oh, I just have leaky gut, so that’ll… if I fix that my bloating will resolve. it’s- it is so beyond just that one small piece.
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: Yes. There’s the gut- And- … brain communication, the nervous system, the immune system Yeah … all these pieces that we can’t just- Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: And one of the things, that we’ll talk about is just, like, how do we approach healing leaky gut.
and actually one of the things that is really critical is, not adding in those antimicrobials until the entire system is calm, ’cause you’ll actually just make things worse and not better. And so sometimes when people are really rushing to add in antimicrobials [00:19:00] and not doing the prep work, we’ll see that people, get worse or maybe things don’t work for them.
And so that’s a piece of understanding, like, where’s the role of all the pieces of the immune system and the triggering and all of that in the pieces. I’d say another piece-
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: I think that-
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: Oh, go ahead. I
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: just, I think that’s a good point to make, that if we do too much too soon it could get worse.
Because people read about these antimicrobials, or they read about SIBO, they read about these things and it makes sense, but people want it to be fixed really quickly. I think we’re just used to that in medicine. Whereas, telling someone we have to stabilize you first can be difficult. a, just the timeline thing.
But that’s, so I think that’s a really good point to make.
Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: and even just the discussion of, we need to heal your gut. For a lot of people, it, again, it’s oh, it’s just this thing. But, it, it, it still feels really, vague, right? For, and I think we need to talk a bit more about, this is, [00:20:00] it’s very condition specific, right?
We have this condition, we need to calm the, we need to calm the system down. This is how we’re gonna do it. And then when we talk about healing, it does mean actually that we’re reducing this permeability aspect so that our immune system is not so activated.
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: And so many of the things that do this also help heal the co- and create calming in lots of other parts of the body.
So remember, we’re like, even though we’re treating one part of the body or you might see symptoms in one part of the body, the same mechanics work in lots of other places, so keeping that part in mind.
Research and Conditions
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: there’s also, as Dr. Dominique discussed earlier, there, there’s, oh, there’s no medical evidence around leaky gut and its relationship to health issues. and I… One of the things that I sent you guys a couple weeks ago was that there’s this article about type 1 diabetes, and it was a research team that had reversed, type 1 diabetes by healing leaky gut in a, in 18 people [00:21:00] in a trial population, which was really cool. what are some other things that you’ve, seen or heard in the research about, leaky gut’s relationship to things?
Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: it’s, it’s a, the intestinal permeability part or leaky gut part is part of disorders of gut-brain interaction. So we did one of, I think it’s episode, I wanna say three or four, which, like we’ve talked about is, an umbrella term for at least 30 different conditions. and so we’re seeing that as one of the mechanisms that lead to very specific symptoms like diarrhea, constipation, bloating.
there’s many others. So that’s one kind of main category that we will see leaky gut in.
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: We can see it in mood conditions too, like anxiety, depression, because it is like that systemic inflammation and it can … those neurotransmitters and hormones and everything is communicating together, so if the gut is just, yeah, [00:22:00] dysregulated, then, and we calm that piece, then the communication can be a little bit better.
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: And if the gut barrier is disrupted, the brain barrier may very well be disrupted, which is the other piece of that. one of the other areas I think that’s really growing is this, long COVID post-viral illness, and I’m actually doing a presentation on that, later in this year, at the Gastro AMP, just, like, how leaky gut in this sort of ongoing illness, virus, inflammation condition is maybe affecting our patients and how we need to think about that differently.
So lots of places that we’re starting to see it pop up. And certainly, maybe not under the name leaky gut, but intestinal permeability is basically the same thing. It’s just, maybe a little bit longer and harder to say. maybe we can, jump to some things about like some conditions.
We talked about some [00:23:00] conditions already. I would say there’s a few more maybe that we could add, just for people who are wondering. PMS would certainly be one. autoimmune conditions. Our favorite, IBS, could be one. even sometimes people who have difficulty with weight loss or insulin resistance or, elevated, cholesterol or triglycerides or food cravings.
certainly there are some, metabolic clues that we might see beyond some of the things that we haven’t looked at before.
What Keeps It Open
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: and so I guess, some of the things that might be helpful for people to understand is, what keeps our barriers open? and so this would be things like we talk about in a lot of the podcasts that are like the foundations of health that we need to make sure are in place regardless of the type of, bloating condition [00:24:00] we have.
if people are under chronic stress or having, poor sleep or infections or mold exposures, antibiotics, lots of NSAID use for pain or medications for PPIs, microbial shifts, hormone shifts, anything that drives inflammation. And so it’s not really just about food
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: And like you mentioned, it’s dynamic, so it shifts and opens and closes, and it’s like this system in and of itself. So it’s not forever, which is- can not be so afraid of leaky gut and this thing, but we can really identify the triggers and what could be keeping these tight junctions open or dysregulated to, to close them up.
And it, it opens and closes, and it… Yeah. It can be-
Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: and two examples of that is, truly, and, I know I keep going back to autoimmune, but celiac is a good example, is when we remove gluten 100%, no cross-contamination, we are seeing that hyperpermeability or [00:25:00] that closure actually happen. And then we see this person better absorb iron and other things, right?
And their diarrhea does resolve. And then same thing with IBS is when we, for a lot of patients, when they will follow a low FODMAP diet, we can see this leaky gut picture decrease, where that hyperpermeability literally has been studied to get to, to decrease.
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: And quickly.
Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Yes. Very quickly. That’s a good point.
yeah, yeah.
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: Yeah.
Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Yeah, the gut responds pretty quickly to certain things.
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: Yeah. if you find out you have celiac disease and you stop eating gluten, within, I’m sure it’s, within days, within a week, you’re like, “Oh, my gosh.”
Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Yeah, Although, on endoscopy, you’re looking at least six months.
Yeah.
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: Yeah. Yeah. But you will feel better.
Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Yes, you will feel better before then, hopefully.
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: Yeah.
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: so when we’re thinking about why these barriers are failing in these patients, we talked about some. We talked about immune system activation, whether that’s autoimmune or post-viral. [00:26:00] we talked about mast cell and histamine, nervous system dysregulation.
certainly things like bacterial and fungi and then endotoxins and parasites and Lyme disease, all these microbial-type drivers. medications, hormone shifts, food proteins, so certainly if we’re sensitive to something. nervous system dysregulation. Anything else you would add to that list?
Anything that you’re thinking?
Calm the Fire First
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: So maybe we can talk about how would we go about solving this problem for someone. and I started to think about it, earlier this year and just what are the steps that we need to take. And so I think about it as like kind of four areas. So the first area, which we alluded to a little bit earlier, was like stabilize and calm the fire.
So we want to stop the immune system overreaction, reduce the inflammation, [00:27:00] stop that mast cell over-firing. And there’s research on lots of different tools to use for this. So these are things like, flavonoids. So flavonoids can be things like quercetin, luteolin, rutin, dismutin, parsley, cinnamon, chamomile.
So there’s like all kinds of different things in these area. Saffron. they really help with bringing in the nutrients to stabilize the barrier, but also reduce some of this like histamine and mast cell. The second area in this, stabilization are things that help with the mast cells. So those might be medications.
They may also be things like, vitamin C, magnesium, luteolin, DAO. Some, vitamins can help. butyrate might be falling into this category. things that are more mast cell, stabilizing, and then [00:28:00] anti-inflammatory like lipids. So we think about things like omegas, ATMs, GLAs. So anything that kind of creates this perfect environment for all of this, inflammation to be calm.
It’s gonna be different based on different conditions. is it showing up as eczema? Is it showing up as ch- bloating? Is it showing up in hormones? Like the goal, I think, that when we’re in practice is try to, pick things that help to cover many bases for our patients instead of giving them more and more supplements.
if your practitioners are just giving you boatloads of supplements, it’s probably not helping completely. And so Even when we’re thinking about this first calming piece, anything to help with our nervous system can help with that. So sometimes that might be, mood support medications. That could be things like breathwork or vagal nerve stim or [00:29:00] getting better sleep.
It might be things like pacing or reducing stimulations or, making sure your body’s aligned with circadian rhythms. Eating good foods, warming foods. That’s what we learn in TCM, right? Slow eating, calming. So not everything is about taking supplements. It’s also about, changing the way that you operate.
And so many of the patients that I see, one of the persons I saw this morning was just like, I don’t know how to do anything except on maximum speed.” And like she is a prime candidate for, having more nervous system dysregulation, having more inflammation in her body, because we don’t…
She doesn’t have a way to regulate it. So that’s kinda like step one, so like calming, regulating. Would you add anything else in that category?
Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: it’s interesting ’cause we… A lot of the research is still the, in the pharmaceutical side of things, right? So when we- compare it to, the natural products.[00:30:00]
and so when you look at when patients, are working with their primary provider or gastro or GI specialist, they’re often given an SSRI, which is the main drug for anti-anxiety. And I have many patients where they do have the comorbidity of nervous system dysregulation, depression, anxiety, and digestive issues, and I have seen great improvement in their gut health when they’re actually addressing the brain first.
So we can extrapolate a little bit, right? When we work on our nervous system, is we wanna make sure we’re taking what would be similar herbs that support cortisol, stress reduction, and we can see improvements often in gut health and gut symptoms. It’s pretty cool.
Remove the Ongoing Assault
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: Okay, so the second area that I think about is, removing the ongoing assault.
what is creating the inflammation in the first place, and there’s really three buckets that we see probably directly related to the idea of, [00:31:00] of the leaky gut or the intestinal permeability. So one is these, food antigens, one is, microbial drivers, and one is, environmental or internal triggers.
And so this might be a place where reducing, some foods for a very short period of time may be effective, especially if, some of the activity that’s coming is from over-firing because of eating the same foods over and over again. this might be a good strategy for, a two to six-week elimination where we’re getting the reactive foods out, but not overly restricting.
Instead, we’re trying to diversify the diet, so get people to really try different things and different foods and not… as much as we all love making meals in bulk on the weekend, eating the same thing every day, every week is probably not great . [00:32:00] and so the goal is not really avoidance, but it’s like tolerance restoration.
And so sometimes we have to take out the fire to, be able to reintroduce it, what you talked about in the gluten case. In that case, likely not in reintroducing it, but the gluten’s causing the fire. that microbial load category, this might be where, it’s appropriate for someone to get some kind of antimicrobial support.
but always thinking about it, especially if someone’s having this, over-firing immune system, is more like a gentle, sequencing interventions in, supporting the terrain, trying to, not get Herxheimer reactions or worsened mast cell activation or increased inflammation because there is this sort of underlying idea that “Oh, if I get a Herxheimer reaction or I feel terrible, I must be getting better.”
And that is not in fact the case. In every single [00:33:00] patient I say, “More is not better. Just because this is the dose I put on the paper, if you can’t take that dose, that doesn’t mean you can’t get better.” and so sometimes I think that’s a piece of that. And in that same- kind of category, we think about, biofilms, anti-adhesions.
there are other things of, like, why people have, this overwhelming load for so long. But it may not even be about that at all, right? It might just be about taking some of the pressure off the system, or reducing the exposure environmentally or things that they are having an exposure to that are creating…
changing the medication that they’re on, that may be creating the environment And then the… Yeah. Oh yeah, go ahead.
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: I don’t know about you guys, but I get a lot of questions from when we get started with this from my patients in the first few weeks of starting. ‘Cause like you said, not everybody can tolerate the dose you’re writing down on paper.
Start with half, slowly taper up. If you see this [00:34:00] response, do this. So there’s a lot of questions back and forth often, because not everybody is the same body. Not everyone’s microbiome is the same environment or what’s going on in your system is the same. So-
Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: and it’s interesting too, like the dosing can make a big difference, and it can- Yeah
set somebody off, if their system is so sensitive. So I know there’s a lot of practitioners that discuss even microdosing for those patients that have digestive issues, but they are so significantly affected by, let’s say, mold or environmental exposure or other things. and so the reg- the, we’ll call it the regular or the therapeutic doses that have been studied in a normal population may not apply to them.
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: Yeah.
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: Yeah.
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: Yeah.
Repair and Practical Takeaways
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: And so the last piece of that puzzle is now repairing the barrier. So we want to, stop things from changing the barrier function, so we need to, remove those, calm that all down, and then try to, re-support those tight [00:35:00] junctions, the mucus in the immune interface, the cellular turnover, the mitochondria, like all the things that are affected.
And throughout this time, we might see that people get repeated flares. they might get increased bloating. They might get more fatigue or more brain fog or more reactivity, and that’s what you were talking about earlier is, like, when the repair isn’t tolerated, simplifying the protocol is really important.
going back to some of that calming stuff, the nervous system, the inflammation, the mast cells, they can all be really helpful. and so that can be really helpful for people to be able to get some restore and repair. So it’s unfortunately not one supplement, but a series of things that might make a difference, and they might make a difference in a lot of different ways for people.
And so it’s not without, it- it’s not like that anything that you’re going to do [00:36:00] will not help. It’s that maybe you’re not doing some of the steps that you need to think about first. So maybe we can have some practical takeaways for people, on, what are the areas that we can, talk about.
some ways that people could calm their nervous system.
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: Yeah, you talked about some good ones, and everyone’s different. I always present some things for people and just say, “Whatever sounds like you could stick with this on a regular basis, that’s for you.” So if it is an app that kind of keeps you with this meditation every day that’s a prompt or something, great.
If not, if it’s deep belly breathing before meals, that’s great. Something like that or slower eating, being present with your meals, walking instead of these high-intensity runs. Maybe you just need to shift into something different for a little bit. just eating in a calm environment, that can [00:37:00] make a huge difference.
So just whatever, yeah, can be consistent for calming the nervous system is a great starting point.
Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Yeah, and on that topic, and this is a conversation I do have pretty often, is if we’re, feeling burnout with our health, feeling burnout in the environment, people are just doing something all day long, is the opposite of that is actually doing nothing.
So thinking about all the things that are on somebody’s plate, and I know that maybe sounds, simple, but we wanna focus on what’s our control and where we can create space in our life because that also facilitates healing
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: I would say number two is, like, don’t jump straight into aggressive gut protocols. Remember that there’s some things that, you know, even just calming the system might support everything that you need, that you don’t necessarily need to have antimicrobials. Um, more supplements equals more stress, more things you’re asking your body to do.
They don’t always make you feel better. They can actually worsen your symptoms. And so, [00:38:00] um, taking something and not feeling good is not a reason to continue taking it and think that you’ll just work your way through it. Um, precision over piling. So if you’re getting a ton of supplements or you’re looking at your counter and you can’t see the top of it anymore, something is probably needs to be simplified And, uh, I would say focusing on the foundations before restrictions.
So instead of being obsessed over cutting over, cutting out foods, like, think about some of the foundations first, which include things like, you know, sleep. Uh, what else would you guys add on there?
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: structuring your day to be kind of like what Dawn said. If you need to remove things, that’s huge. Um, just trying to find something consistent where your body feels less in survival mode, go, go, go, I need to do this and I need to do this.
Just kind of take things out a little bit would be good so [00:39:00] you can get that regular sleep consistency, those mealtimes.
Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Yeah. The foundations I discuss with my patients are sleep, not- it’s non-negotiable, fluid intake, uh, trying to have some level of, you know, like home-cooked meals, right, where you’re making it in your kitchen, um, where you’re nourishing your body, and, um, yeah, stress and exercise.
Those are the big pillars.
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: And laughing. Yeah. Have fun.
Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Chilling out. Y-
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: chilling out. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: Uh, any suggestions on how to approach this topic with, um, someone’s practitioner?
Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Well, you know, uh, and I think we, w- we know this from a different angle ’cause we work with a certain population. So a lot of patients do feel dismissed when they bring up their gut symptoms, so we wanna recognize that and validate that. There are some phrases that may be helpful when you’re working with your doctor.
So things like, “I’ve noticed consistent bloating and fatigue after [00:40:00] meals. Could we explore possible digestive or inflammatory contributors?” Um, or even things like, “I’m interested in understanding whether stress, sleep, hormones, digestion could be connected. Can we look at some blood work?” Um, you know, even bringing in, like, family health history, right?
Like, if you, somebody has a, a family health history of digestive issues or autoimmune, and we’re starting to see some of those symptoms percolate into this specific patient, is having that discussion too with their practitioner. And then also the person can r- you know, have a discussion about focusing on sustainable lifestyle strategies, um, before jumping into more of the extreme restriction.
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: People c- will come in and say, “Okay, I’ve cut out gluten, I’ve cut out dairy, I’ve done all these things. I’m…” You know? And they’re very regimented, and they feel like they’re doing it all right. But we can take the, a step back and make it more practical and, um, yeah, not be so restrictive.
Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Well, and the goal is to not, like…
I, I know we’ve talked about this [00:41:00] before in other podcasts, but wouldn’t it be so nice if we can just enjoy that, that, whatever, that, that glass of wine or that dinner on a patio and not have to think about it, rather than thinking- Yeah … about all the things that we can’t eat, right? There’s a, there’s the w- you know, it’s the opposite of, of taking out food from somebody’s diet.
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: Yeah. The guilt that could arise is not helpful.
Dr. Dominique Vanier, ND: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Recap and Closing
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: So quick recap. Um, today we’re mi- busting myths about leaky gut and whether it’s fake or the root of every problem. We learned-
Dr. Whitney Baxter, ND: We learned that the gut barrier is real science. It’s also deeply connected to the immune system, so that’s why you’re feeling the fatigue, brain fog, kinda like little flu-y- Mm-hmm
sometimes. And our stress hormones also play a huge role, sleep, and inflammation
Dr. Christina Carew, ND: Um, and our biggest takeaway might be that healing isn’t usually about attacking your body harder. It’s sometimes really about reducing [00:42:00] things that are when you’re stuck in an alarm mode. So thanks for listening to Team Gut Girls. We are thrilled to keep bringing you more episodes on bloating. If you can believe it, we have at least a dozen more coming your way.
Um, thanks for listening in to Team Gut Girls, and you can always visit our website to see past episodes. We’re also on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, and wherever you get your podcasts. And thank you for remembering better gut health changes everything
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