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Fixing Leaky Gut: Avoid These 10 Mistakes

Fixing Leaky Gut: Avoid These 10 Mistakes

Written by Amy Myers, MD

The quest for discovering how to fix leaky gut is no longer a mystery. You may be familiar with the basics, but if your digestive issues, eczema, brain fog, seasonal allergies, or other symptoms persist, don’t give up! Learning how to fix leaky gut permanently takes time. Remember, everyone responds to protocols differently, and there are several factors that can complicate your leaky gut treatment.

In fact, you may simply be overlooking a few key steps. Once you’ve made the necessary tweaks in your protocol. As you continue using supplements such as Leaky Gut Revive® (now in delicious Strawberry Lemonade), your healing should should be smooth sailing.

Let’s have a brief recap on how The Myers Way® protocol teaches you how to fix leaky gut for good.

How to Fix Leaky Gut

The 4R approach is a proven approach that I recommend to all of my patients to fix leaky gut and restore your entire health.

  • Remove the bad – Eliminate all factors that negatively affect gut environment. This includes all inflammatory and toxic foods. It also includes addressing intestinal infections such as yeast overgrowth and SIBO. Gut ImmunIG™ is great to incorporate during this phase.
  • Restore what’s missing— Add in digestive enzymes and Gut Restore with Betaine HCL to your daily regimen. These support optimal digestion and nutrient absorption while assisting intestinal repair and inflammation responses.
  • Reinoculate with healthy bacteria — Replenish the beneficial bacteria in your gut. It helps re-establish a healthy gut environment.
  • Repair the gut — Give your body the nutrients needed to help the gut repair itself. L-glutaminesupports the gut lining. Drinking bone broth or collagen are excellent ways to help heal your gut. You can also supplement with omega-3s, zinc, and herbs like slippery elm and aloe vera.

Following this protocol on how to fix leaky gut is a commitment. Naturally, you want to know if all your hard work is making a difference. Lab tests are available, but I typically didn’t use them in my clinic. I use the functional medicine approach when diagnosing leaky gut, which includes all aspects of your health, including diet, lifestyle, stress, and sleep factors.

After you’ve competed the protocol, how do you know if your leaky gut is fixed? The strongest indication of whether or not you’ve been able to restore gut health is your leaky gut symptoms (or lack thereof!). You might notice that your digestive issues disappear, food sensitivities go away, skin issues clear up, and your autoimmune labs improve. You feel more like yourself, or better!

If you’ve been following The Myers Way® and aren’t noticing any improvement in your symptoms, discover how these mistakes can get in the way of your leaky gut treatment.

10 Mistakes to Avoid When Fixing Leaky Gut

1. Eating too many raw vegetables

It’s true that vegetables are good for your gut. However, when you’re on a gut healing journey, too many raw vegetables could slow your progress. This is because digesting raw vegetables takes a lot of work. If you’re short on digestive enzymes, raw veggies can contribute to bloating gas, and other kinds of GI discomfort. Instead, focus on cooked vegetables while trying to fix leaky gut.

Another option to fix leaky gut is to drink juice or smoothies, as the vegetables are already broken down in a way that makes their nutrients easier for your body to digest and absorb.

2. Not trying an elimination diet

If you’re working to fix leaky gut, you’ve presumably cut out triggering foods such as gluten, dairy, and sugar. You’ve also removed all packaged and processed foods from your pantries. That said, if you’re still struggling with leaky gut symptoms, you could be dealing with undiagnosed food sensitivity.

As I mentioned earlier, anyone wondering how to fix leaky gut should try an elimination diet. This approach rules out hidden food intolerances, or serious food allergies. If you experience bloating, constipation, brain fog, or joint pain that seem to mysteriously come and go, chances are that you have a food sensitivity or allergy and could benefit from going on an elimination diet. For additional support, enroll in my Leaky Gut Breakthrough® Program. There you’ll find in-depth resources for leaky gut treatment, including a symptom checker, shopping guide, and easy-to-follow meal plans to fix leaky gut.

3. Cheating on your gut-healing protocol

Let’s face it—nobody’s perfect! With that said, if you want to fix leaky gut for good, this is one step you cannot skip. Each time you figure “a little pizza can’t hurt” or “I’ll just have one glass of wine,” your digestive system takes a hit. All the progress you’ve made to restore your gut health takes a few steps back.

Even once you know how to fix leaky gut, it can be tempting to go back to the way you ate before your healing protocol. However, this is exactly what triggered leaky gut syndrome in the first place!

Instead, there are plenty of recipes that will help you enjoy the plethora of delicious, nutritious gut-healing foods you CAN eat during your leaky gut treatment so that you’re not consuming inflammatory foods. Remember, all the toxic and inflammatory foods you’re use to can compromise your gut health and increase intestinal permeability.

4. Eating when you’re stressed out

We all know stress is bad news for your digestive health. It’s also one of the main causes of leaky gut. Eating while stressed can significantly derail your leaky gut treatment. That’s because when your stress response kicks in, your digestive process slows to a crawl.

Rather than forcing yourself to eat, go for a walk or do some deep breathing exercises. Making these little changes will support your gut healing treatment.

5. Missing one or more of the 4Rs

I know it can be challenging to stick with your leaky gut treatment when you can’t physically “see” the progress. You also don’t know how long it might take to fully restore your gut. You might be tempted to cut corners or skip steps. You figure, “I’ve removed the toxic and inflammatory foods from my diet — do I really need the gut-healing supplements?

Removing inflammatory foods is an important and necessary step to fix leaky gut. However, it’s only the first step. Healing the damage that’s already done may require more than simply incorporating gut healing foods into your diet.

That’s why I love Leaky Gut Revive® powder. It contains a high concentration of L-glutamine, an amino acid that helps seal the tight junctions in your intestinal walls, along with aloe vera to replace the lost mucus in your gut, deglycerized licorice, and other powerful ingredients to help fix leaky gut. In addition to Leaky Gut Revive®, I also recommend Complete Enzymes. These help break down proteins and carbohydrates, aiding digestion. It’s also beneficial to include a high-potency probiotic to restore gut balance. Collagen can help heal and rebuild damaged gut cells.

6. Taking medications that damage your gut

Medications are the double-edged sword of our modern world. Some are life-saving and non-negotiable. Yet there are other gut-damaging medications such as antibiotics, oral contraceptives, and NSAIDs that can do more harm than good. Even though they’re commonlny used, they get in the way when you’re learning how to fix leaky gut.

Antibiotics

Antibiotics are one of the most over-prescribed medications. Nearly half of all outpatient prescriptions are unnecessary, according to the CDC.1 They work by blocking bacterial processes by either killing the bacteria or stopping them from multiplying.

Unfortunately, antibiotics cannot tell the difference between the “bad” bacteria causing an infection and the “good” bacteria that belong in your gut. As the number of good bacteria in your gut decreases, you become susceptible to gut infections including Candida overgrowth and SIBO, which can contribute to leaky gut and interfere with leaky gut treatment.

Oral Contraceptives

Oral contraceptives, or birth control pills, contain synthetic hormones such as ethinyl estradiol and norethindrone. These are not recognized or broken down by the body in the same way natural estrogen is.

Birth control pills also disrupt your internal balance of Candida by causing something called estrogen dominance – meaning too much estrogen in the body. Candida cells have the ability to permeate your gut lining, causing leaky gut. When working to fix leaky gut, talk to your doctor about alternative methods of contraception.

NSAIDS

NSAIDs such as Advil and Motrin work by stopping your body’s production of a chemical called prostaglandins. This chemical promotes inflammation, pain, and fever by blocking cyclooxygenases (COX) enzymes.2

These enzymes produce prostaglandins, but they also protect your stomach and intestinal lining. This is why NSAIDs can damage your gut, derailing your gut healing progress.

7. Eating “health” foods that really aren’t healthy

We grew up being told that foods such as dairy, grains, and legumes are “healthy.” As it turns out, these foods might be what’s keeping you from fixing your leaky gut. Dairy is one of the two most inflammatory foods. Roughly seventy percent of women (depending on ethnicity) stop producing the lactase enzyme needed to properly digest dairy after they finish breastfeeding. This is why so many people have a dairy intolerance.3

Meanwhile, grains and legumes contain chemicals such as lectins and phytates. Lectins and phytates can aggravate your gut lining and interfere with your leaky gut treatment. In some cases, they can and even lead to autoimmune disease.

8. Taking the wrong probiotics

If your’re trying to fix leaky gut is due to SIBO and you can’t seem to make it past step three of the 4R approach, your probiotics could be to blame. Bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine can be a surplus of good bacteria as well as bad. It also typically involves lactobacillus or bifidobacterium species. When you take a lactic acid-based probiotic (which most on the market are) you are actually feeding the bacteria that have mistakenly inhabited your small intestine.

If you want to know how to fix leaky gut caused by SIBO, I recommend soil-based probiotics. They are able to bypass your small intestine and colonize your colon and large intestine instead.

9. Eating too many fermented foods

You’ve probably heard countless sources say fermented foods are a gut’s best friend. The truth is that when you introduce fermented foods into your diet and your gut microbiome, you don’t really know exactly what kind of bacteria or yeast they contain.

As with probiotic supplements, if you have SIBO or Candida overgrowth, you should wait until after you fix leaky gut to eat fermented foods. That’s because they could potentially be worsening the overgrowth and derailing your leaky gut treatment.

10. Not addressing the other three pillars of The Myers Way®

Perhaps you’ve worked your way through the 4Rs and are still showing leaky gut signs and symptoms. Well, healing your gut is only the first pillar of The Myers Way®. The key to fixing leaky gut is to address all underlying environmental causes of your condition. That means you also have to optimize your diet, tame your toxic burden, heal your infections, and relieve your stress in order to fully restore gut health.

Completing Your Leaky Gut Treatment

These four pillars are the recipe for overcoming chronic illness, autoimmune flares, leaky gut symptoms, and other health problems. Once you know how to fix leaky gut, you’ll see digestive issues disappear and food sensitivities go away. Your mood will improve, your energy will return, and you’ll feel amazing!

Most importantly, you will feel like yourself again. Your healthy gut will be able to support your digestion, your immune system, and so much more. What are you waiting for? There’s no better time than now to fix leaky gut and achieve optimal health.

Leaky Gut Treatment FAQs

What is the best way to fix leaky gut?

My 4R approach is a proven approach that I recommend to all of my patients to fix leaky gut. Remove toxic and inflammatory foods, restore essential ingredients, reinoculate beneficial gut bacteria, and heal your gut.

What foods should I avoid to restore gut health?

Gluten, dairy, sugar, and packaged and processed foods are all foods that can derail your leaky gut treatment. I recommend that everyone cut them from their diet entirely until after they fix leaky gut.

What is the best thing to take for a leaky gut?

Leaky Gut Revive® is the perfect supplement for supporting a healthy gut lining. It features pharmaceutical-grade L-Glutamine and a potent blend of gut-soothing botanicals that get to work immediately to repair your gut lining and restore gut health.