Complete Guide to Healing Leaky Gut Naturally | Dr. Josh Axe

26:25There's also a connection there. And so serotonin is not made in your brain, it's made in your gut. And this is also why there is a lot of scientific evidence that when you have leaky gut, this can lead to anxiety, depression, and brain fog. So this actually starts in your digestive tract. So we're talking anxiety, depression, brain fog. We're also talking about certain cases of ADHD. We're also talking about autism having a real serious connection between leaky gut and a leaky brain barrier. And what I want to do now is I want to walk you through how we start to correct this via my six-step process of how to truly heal leaky gut.

27:05All right. Step number one is this. Remove. Remove the gluten. Remove the fast foods. Remove the A1 dairy. Remove the sugar. The glyphosate, the NSAIDs, the drugs, remove those things that are actually triggering and causing leaky gut. The chronic stress, right, constantly. So that's saying yes to everything all the time and just being too busy. Say no to those things. That's the number one step. Because here's the number one thing to understand. Your body heals itself, okay? Sometimes even without doing the other things I share with you, doing some fasting, your body could also start to heal and repair itself too.

27:41So the number one step to healing leaky gut is remove the triggers. Number two, replace. Your body is probably overwhelmed and missing some things. And so you wanna take things like digestive enzymes if you're not producing enough enzymes. 8CL, which is hydrochloric acid, if you know your stomach is overwhelmed. Bile support, right? There are certain herbs like Tudka or Ox bile that can also support that, right? So replace, maybe your body isn't producing enough of those things. Now, here's the thing. If you get out of your fight or flight response and lower cortisol, typically your body can produce more enzymes, hydrochloric acid, and bile.

28:19So when you're sitting down eating, take your time, relax, don't be working, don't be watching things, just relax and chew, and then take a short 15-minute walk afterwards. That will go a long way in helping your body heal, but that's number two, replace. Number three, re-inoculate. All right, we need to add back in the probiotics, do prebiotics, fermented foods like sauerkraut and coconut yogurt. These are very beneficial and probiotic supplements, right? There's a probiotic. When it comes to probiotics, by the way, you want to start low and really build up to very high doses over time with leaky gut.

28:53And you typically want to do a blend of a broad strain and a soil-based probiotic. So I would alternate really high dose soil-based probiotic. You go up to a trillion dose, very high dose there, of a soil-based probiotic, like a trillion probiotics. And then you want to do more of a broad spectrum that has bifidobacterium, lactobacillus, sarcomyces boulardii, just a broad strain probiotic. And I would alternate them or take one part a day and one another part of the day. But you want to just really load up. Now, if you have SIBO, you really just need to stick with the soil-based organisms and not do the broad spectrum probiotic at the start, okay, if you have SIBO.

29:35But for most people, you want to be able to do both. Number four step is repair. We need to heal the mucosal lining, okay? L-glutamine, doing that is very powerful, five grams twice daily. Zinc carnosine. Collagen is important. In fact, you know, the dominant part of your gut is made of collagen. So glutamine, zinc carnosine, collagen, the most important things to really repair your gut. I will say there's some herbs that are also helpful there, like slippery elm and licorice and marshmallow. Those sort of herbs can help soothe an irritated gut lining. Aloe vera actually is good for that as well.

30:09And then we need to rebalance, right? We need to get better sleep. We talked about lowering the stress, taking walks, doing things to just repair. Sleep's important. Number six is reframe your thoughts, your beliefs, your identity, your faith. A lot of times we have childhood trauma and we are constantly living in a state of worry or anxiousness or fear. That will keep you in that fight-or-flight state. We need to bring that down, spend more time in prayer, reading your Bible, getting involved at places like church, but really get connected and do things to get out of that fight-or-flight state and overcome childhood drama and just be in a state of contentment, joy, and happiness.

30:47There's an old saying that laughter is the best medicine, and I believe that's true. I think back when my mom had cancer, we had her watching a lot of funny movies. I mean, you want to heal and have belly laughs that actually is healing to the body. And by the way, number six here, this is one that it's just the easiest one to just skip over. I think most of the time we understand that, okay, I got to get rid of the inflammatory foods and I've got to take some supplements. And I think most people understand that, but your mind and your spirit are such great drivers of devastating your health or healing.

31:21It's really important to focus on. As I mentioned earlier, stress is the number one driver of leaky gut and there's studies on this. So there are four things I want you to do in terms of your mindset to heal from leaky gut. Number one, replace fear-based thinking. Identify what you're afraid of. Write it down. Think about it. Okay, here's what I'm afraid of or here's this thing from childhood that I continue to have issues with. Write it all down. What still bothers you from the past and what is bothering you today, causing you to have, and write down what the main emotions are you're experiencing.

31:52Like I could do this for myself. The biggest emotion I struggle with is frustration, impatience. And so I think to myself, why am I frustrated? Because I want to move forward faster and faster and faster. Well, for me, maybe it's because at some point in my life I had, and again, I could do this whole exercise, but go back and think about what I felt like at some point that I was rewarded by my parents. and I felt like my productivity was something that, part of where I get my self-worth and value, right? So I'm always trying to do more and more and more. And then also maybe I got applauded for moving quickly through things.

32:29So, but think about it for yourself, okay? So for you, maybe it's fear, maybe it's worry, but write down what are the emotions you experience most? When did it start? What's that childhood trauma that happened? And then what's going on today? And then what I want you to do is write down the truth based on what the Bible says you should have, right? So I think about this in terms of, you know, reading the book of Matthew in the Bible, Matthew 5 and 6 around the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, I take care of the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. And, you know, you're much more important than they are.

32:59So I'll take care of you, right? So I can start to think about those things or where Jesus says, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And I think about, okay, what does that mean? but replace the fear-based thinking with faith-based thinking, okay? Have Bible verses, memorize them, and go to them regularly. Number two is prayer. Prayer activates the vagus nerve. It switches the body from fight or flight to rest and digest, and that is that zonulin switch. We talked about switching it on and off. Prayer puts you in that state. If you can read your Bible, and if you can be in a state of prayer and just sit there in quiet and also listen, that activates your healing.

33:39Number three is a gratitude practice. This is proven to reduce cortisol. This is the trigger, again, that elevates zinulin. Going on a gratitude walk, you're killing two birds with one stone, okay? So you are able to go and walk and say everything you're grateful for on that walk. It could be a 10-minute walk. That is incredibly healing for leaky gut. Number four is an identity shift. Stop saying I have autoimmune disease. Stop saying I have leaky gut. Stop saying I have Hashimoto's thyroiditis. Start saying I am healed. I am completely healed, okay? Do not identify with your disease. Start identifying that you are a healer and that you're an overcomer.

34:16And if you can do that, I believe you're gonna see great healing in your life. And this is a step that you do not wanna skip when it comes to overcoming and healing leaky gut. Okay, now I wanna walk you through the top foods for healing leaky gut. So number one here is bone broth. Bone broth works because it's high in glycine proline and hydroxyproline. It's literally what your gut is made up of. And so there's this ancient Chinese medicine principle that says like supports like. So if you eat a food or an organ, it supports that organ. Think about it like this. If you're trying to build muscle, you eat the muscle meat of animals.

34:50It has the right amino acid profile. Very similar when you drink bone broth, you're getting the amino acids that your gut is made of. That's why it's so important. It's the number one food for healing lake. You got number two, steamed pumpkin, Steamed orange foods, carrots, pumpkin, butternut squash, sweet potato. They have a type of fiber that's much easier to digest than certain other types of food and great for the gut there as well. So steamed pumpkin, it's a gentle type of prebiotic fiber. Number three, fermented vegetables. This is where you're going to get your probiotics. Do coconut yogurt, sauerkraut, especially two of my favorites.

35:32They're going to be great for you to do there as well. Remember, part of what happens in leaky gut is you tend to get overgrowth of candida and H. pylori. We want to move those out of the way. And when you have good bacteria, it will act as a protector for your gut lining. Number four, coconut oil and medium chain triglycerides. Coconut oil contains lauric acid, which is a natural antimicrobial, actually can help kill candida and bad microorganism overgrowth. It's also really easy on the gut lining. So coconut oil is a wonderful oil to use. I'll also say extra virgin olive oil and its polyphenols are actually good for supporting the growth of good bacteria as well.

36:12So that could also be added to that oil list. And then wild caught fish like salmon. Salmon is high in omega-3 fatty acids like EPA and DHA that's gonna reduce inflammation. Now, in addition to wild salmon, you could do sardines, you could do halibut, and also throw out other types of meat, chicken and grass-fed beef and bison, lamb, those are also great as well if you have leaky gut. However, salmon of all of them and fish is the easiest of all of them to digest, but you can do all types of organic meat on a leaky gut diet as well. Number six here is aloe vera. Just like aloe vera helps heal a burn on your skin, it helps heal ulcers, and it helps heal damage in your digestive lining.

36:56In fact, part of your digestive lining, you have what we call the mucosal layer. Aloe is almost mucosy itself. It actually helps cover and coat and heal the mucosal layer of the gut. So it's incredibly beneficial and healing as well. I do want to mention aloe vera is very cooling to the digestive tract. So if you have IBS with diarrhea or cold extremities or hypothyroidism, you want to sort of offset the cooling nature of aloe by drinking ginger herbal tea or adding some ginger into a smoothie because ginger is warming. That'll kind of bring more balance to your body when you're doing this. Number seven is raw Manuka honey.

37:34Manuka honey contains MGO, a compound that kills candida and bad microorganisms. It's the number one sweetener you should be using if you have any type of leaky gut. So Manuka honey is amazing. It also acts as a prebiotic. Number eight, pasture-raised eggs. Cook up those eggs in extra virgin olive oil or coconut oil or a blend of the two. Really great, easy forms of digestible protein there as well. And then steamed vegetables. This could be zucchini, green beans. We talked about carrots, butternut squash. But doing steamed vegetables or foods in a soup, very easy to digest in baked pears. The easiest of probably all fruits to digest there as well.

38:16Now you might also do blueberries or baked pears. So some baked fruit makes it even easier to digest and is a great option there as well. And I just want to say in terms of a meal plan overall, some of the best things to do when it comes to healing that link you get is doing a lot of soups. All right. So a classic chicken vegetable soup or a beef stew, that is the ideal or doing, you know, meat like a grass-fed burger or a filet of salmon with steamed vegetables. That's sort of the ideal meal plan you want to follow when you have leaky gut. Of course, you want to cut out all of the gluten, the refined sugar, the A1 casein, alcohol, processed oils, and fast foods.

38:55Those are going to inflame the gut. So we want to get those completely out of your diet. This is where I would start for the ultimate gut healing protocol and food list. Hey guys, I'm here with my good friend, Dr. Dave Jockers. In fact, we've been friends for more than 20 years. He runs the podcast, the Dr. Dave Jockers Functional Nutrition Podcast. Dr. Dave, tell us a little bit about what your podcast is about. Yeah, absolutely. We dive deep on functional nutrition, really how to personalize your nutrition plan for better energy, mental clarity, better hormone balance. And we talk a lot about cellular health, mitochondrial function, cell membrane.

39:34We do a deep dive on every major nutrition topic and natural health topic. So everything you need right there at your fingertips, Dr. Jocker's Functional Nutrition Podcast. I want to encourage you, run out and listen to the Dr. Jocker show. Again, I'm a big fan of it. I think you will be as well. All right, now let's dive into the top eight supplements for healing leaky gut. Number one here is L-glutamine. L-glutamine is amino acid that your body needs in order to repair your gut lining. It's number one, five grams twice a day. Zinc carnosine. We know zinc is your immune mineral. It's your repair mineral.

40:11So in order to repair and heal your gut, you have to have zinc. Zinc carnosine at 75 milligrams twice daily is the best dose. And I know this because I've worked with so many patients on this, helping them heal their gut. Number three, doing collagen peptides or something like a bone broth-based protein powder. That's gonna give your body what it needs to repill the gut. Number four are probiotics. Now, if you have SIBO, you wanna do soil-based probiotics. If you don't have SIBO, you want to do one day, do a soil-based organism probiotic. Another day, a broad-spectrum probiotic. Your broad-spectrum probiotic or soil-based probiotic should also have our number five supplement for healing leaky gut.

40:52and that is sarcomyces boulardii. That should be part of it there as well. It's especially good if you have issues like candida. Number six, if you can tell your digestive system's weak, you can take digestive enzymes or hydrochloric acid and or something to support bile flow or breakdown in digestion of fats like Tudka. Those can be great as well. These kind of help support better breakdown and digestion of foods if your digestive system is overwhelmed. Now, one other big thing just to note as well is when you're eating, take your time, relax. You don't want cortisol to be high while you're eating.

41:33So watching a screen or TV or just being busy, like working while you're eating will actually keep you from being able to digest your food. So just take the full-time relax. Go on a walk after your meal for 15 minutes. That's been shown in studies to help heal your gut. Pretty amazing. We got to keep cortisol low. You got to get in that rest or digest state if you want to fully heal your gut. Number seven here, slippery almond marshmallow. These can be done as teas or powders. I typically encourage people to do these as herbal teas. Licorice root would also be on that list. So licorice root, slippery elm, marshmallow root, this helps soothe your mucosal lining of your gut, healing and sealing up leaky gut.

42:14And then I'd also say turmeric and ginger. Those are going to reduce inflammation. Ginger also helps strengthen your immune system, helps heal the gut lining. What I would do is I would take turmeric and ginger and then either licorice or slippery elm and just throw in some tea bags and make a daily tea that you drink twice a day to help heal your gut lining. And that would be a wonderful combination there to help heal and seal your gut lining. Now I want to talk about fiber for a minute and prebiotics for leaky gut, okay? And I want to kind of help you fine tune what's best for you. If you're dealing with constipation, psyllium husk tends to be one of the better types of fiber for leaky gut, okay?

42:58However, if you are sensitive to bloating, then psyllium husk is not the best, okay? But it is the best for if you're dealing with constipation. Now, if you are low in good bacteria and we need to feed the good bacteria in your gut, you want to do things that are more prebiotic driven than psyllium, even though I love psyllium, especially for constipation. Again, it's number one for that. But if you also really know you need to build up your good bacteria, and maybe you also have a loose stool, then others can work better. So I want to help you fine tune what type of fiber is best for you. Because by the way, I see this all the time.

43:32People are putting on some of these companies that are doing probiotics, they're throwing in some of these types of fiber, like raw potatoes, which if you have leaky gut, or if you have bloating or gas. You don't want that. That's very hard to digest. Have you ever sat there and ate a raw potato or unripe banana? So anyways, if you have leaky gut or you have bloating, you want to do more gentle types of prebiotic fiber. One of my favorites is called PHGG. That's partially hydrogenated guar gum. It's called sun fiber. This is really great. It's low FODMAP. It's the slowest fermentation. There's a hundred studies on it.

44:07It increases the type of bacteria in your a gut called Acromantia. This is a great, great option. You want to do about five to seven grams a day of this. Another one that's more gentle and low FODMAP is acacia fiber. So that's another good option. You could kind of do one or the other, the PHGG or the acacia fiber. For some people like apple pectin, you might be more familiar with modified citrus pectin, but types of pectin, they're good detoxifiers, especially if you think you're toxic or have some toxicity issues. Apple pectin is good. And then I like psyllium. Okay. So those are some of my favorites for prebiotics to support probiotics.

44:39I want to walk you through, because there's so much conversation today about, do I do a prebiotic? Do I do a probiotic? Do I do a postbiotic? And some of you might maybe even heard of parabiotics. I want to walk you through these. Okay. Prebiotics are the fertilizer for probiotics. Okay. It is typically food that feeds bacteria. Okay. It's fiber from oats or from onions or from garlic or bananas, but it's specific types of soluble fiber. the body can feed off of or probiotics can feed off of. The probiotic is the live beneficial bacteria. You're going to find that in yogurt, in kefir, in sauerkraut, in kimchi, those places.

45:19And then you have postbiotics. These are the compounds produced by the bacteria. So think about the grass like the prebiotic. The probiotic is the cow eating it. It's live. And then it's pooping out, defecating out, postbiotics, okay? And that could be butyrate or propionate or these short-chain fatty acids we talked about that are great for the brain, right? The gut produces it, helps heal the brain. So postbiotics are really great, especially for those like taking butyrate for people who may be having issues related to the gut-brain connection. And then there's something called parabiotics. These are actually some of the dead probiotics.

46:00Like let's say, for instance, you pasteurize and kill a type of bacteria found in yogurt or milk naturally occurring. There actually are still some benefits there of what's been dried up or killed. You've heard this discussion before about you want to take live probiotics, not dead ones. That's true. You do want to get live probiotics, but even the dead probiotics, they actually do have some benefits we know now according to the medical research. Now, I want to mention I put together a PDF for Healing Leaky Gut here that walks you through. It's 25 pages, and I go through all of the supplements in more detail than we had here.

46:35I go through the foods to eat. I go through a seven-day eating plan. And by the way, you can get the protocol for free. It's in the show notes. Simply go to the show notes, click on the Healing Leaky Gut guide PDF on where to download it, and you can download it for absolutely free there in the show notes. Now, I want to close with this, sort of the biblical view of the gut. In John 7, 38, it says, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. Out of the belly, right? You think about laughter and joy coming out of the human body, okay? Belly laughs. In scripture, the gut isn't just about digestion, by the way, I want to mention as well.

47:15The gut and digestion are connected to your intuition, your emotional health, your spirit, being led by the Spirit, but more than anything, joy. It's connected to joy. And so one of the things you do when a practice is thinking about, are you having fun in life? Are you enjoying yourself? Write down things you love to do and schedule doing those things. The Bible is clear on other things as well for our health. Fasting can have great benefits, picking one day a week and doing some intermittent fasting. Having a Sabbath rest, one to two days a week where you just don't work. Take Saturday or Sunday, zero work whatsoever, a total day of rest and rejuvenation, and then practice prayer, practice gratitude.

47:56Do everything you can in order to build more joy, more contentment, more peace, and build your spiritual and mental health. And if you do that, you're going to have great benefits on not only healing leaky gut because you can and will, but also just overall healing your body. All right, now, as you dive into the PDF download I have where it walks you through exactly how to heal leaky gut, I wanna answer some of your most common questions because there are a few that I get constantly. One is, how long does it take me to heal leaky gut or how long till I feel better? People will see the most relief in about, I would say, one month to three months.

48:34You can see radical healing improvement in just one to three months. Full healing for a lot of people might take three to six months, but for most people, if they follow the protocol that I laid out in the PDF, you will see incredible healing. Or if you do many of the things I talked about in the show here, your body will heal. Another question is, can kids do this protocol? Yes, absolutely, they can do the protocol. And by the way, it'd be great for your whole family to do together. Everyone will get healthy together, but yes, kids can follow that protocol. Pregnant or breastfeeding, it's mostly safe.

49:03By the way, there's one other thing I forgot to mention that I do wanna mention. If you have a chronic infection, In addition to the six steps I talked about, you may want to take one month and do a cleanse. Let's say you have a parasite. You may want to do the parasite cleanse, or if you know you have a major issue, you may want to take oil of oregano for a couple weeks or anti-parasite herbs or anti-H pylori herbs like berberine. You may want to add those to the protocol and take them while you're doing it for anywhere from two weeks to four weeks, and then just continue with the protocol. but if you're breastfeeding or pregnant, you want to skip that part of it, but you should be able to do everything else.

49:43Another question, do I have to give up gluten forever? Try 90 days and see how you feel. And here's the deal. I had gluten this morning. My wife made einkorn sourdough bread. So here's the reality. In most cases, if you switch over and do sourdough of an ancient grain or spelt or something like that, you can do it. And so you're not missing anything. Listen, we made burgers this weekend. We did sourdough bread with those. It was delicious. It was better than if I would have had a bun. So you don't necessarily have to, but try it for 90 days and see how you feel. What if I have SIBO? I address SIBO quite a bit.

50:19Here's the reality. With SIBO, you just need to be more careful with your fiber. And by the way, you really need to reduce stress with SIBO. With SIBO, you only want to do the soil-based organisms. So not the full spectrum probiotics, just the SBOs. You want to walk around your meals even more so and just relax, follow the stress reduction even more. Do licorice root. That's really good for SIBO. And then do the PHGG or the acacia fiber and not the other types of fiber if you have SIBO. Another question here, will my autoimmune disease go into remission? Often, yes. With consistency, I've seen it happen thousands of times.

50:57So in many cases, yes. All right, so here's what I want you to walk away with. And remember, leaky gut is way more common than people realize. And the consequences are also way bigger than people believe. It's tied to autoimmune disease. Again, I couldn't stress this enough. The number one cause of autoimmune disease today is leaky gut. Also, remember, it can drive hormone imbalance and metabolic issues. It also accelerates cellular aging, causes you to age much more quickly. Here's the path forward. Remove what's harming you, repair what's broken, re-inoculate what's missing, and reframe how you think.

51:36And in 30 to 90 days, your gut can be entirely healed and completely restored. Now, a couple of things before you take off. Take action right now. Wherever you are, subscribe. It's the number one thing you can do to support the show. And also, it'll allow you to continue to learn and grow in your wisdom. So you can not only help yourself, but you can help others. Also share this with someone that's struggling, whether you wanna share it on your social media platform or text it to a friend. Thank you so much for sharing this. And I just wanna let you know as well, I'm praying for your health. God bless you.

52:08And I can't wait to see you on the next episode of the Dr. Josh Yack Show.