Before starting raw food, we need to prepare our guts first. Healing a leaky gut may be the answer.

Hi guys! So the dogs and I are transitioning to raw food in the coming weeks (well, they’re eating and I’m serving-but it’s a change for everyone!). We decided to take the next week to prep our bellies in order to help the transition go more smoothly. After doing a bunch of research, it looks like doing a pre-detox (more will happen naturally after eating raw) and having a healthy gut are your best bets at a smooth transition. Now, I’m sure leaky gut takes weeks to turn around, but I decided a week or two of plugging the holes in their guts wouldn’t hurt.

What is Leaky Gut?

Symbiosis is one of my favorite words. It means to work together in harmony for the benefit of each other. Leaky gut or also known as a form of, dysbiosis-not living together in harmony-, is a condition both humans and dogs can get… and a lot of us have it. More so than you think. But having Increased Intestinal Permeability is not a disease in and of itself. It is a condition that thousands of diseases can be linked back to.

You gut is where your body filters nutrients like carbohydrates, proteins and fats and keeps the bad guys-like bacteria, foreign objects and large undigested food bits-out of your bloodstream.

Remember all those brush-like things we learned about in tenth grade biology? Those are villi and they line your intestines as a part of the mucosal lining. The transport of items through your intestine is call active transport as described below:

Imagine New York City. Streets upon streets as far as the eye can see. This is your villa separated into pathways. Along these streets (pathways) are red lights (junctions) and taxis (carrier molecules). The taxis of the gut carry essential nutrients like amino acids, vitamins and minerals down the villi streets. When these taxis make their way to a stop light they let their tiny passengers out and the passengers make their way through the doors of a building (your bloodstream). The larger, bad-der guys, keep driving. But when you have leaky gut, the giant molecules, toxins and bacteria are able to get out of the taxi because the doors in the buildings are triple the size. And so, they easily fit in. When this happens in the body, the giant food particle or bacteria that sneaks through the gut is seen as an intruder, which sets off a huge reaction in the immune system and inflammation occurs. You can read more about inflammation here:

What also happens is that those bad guys are now inside the bloodstream and into your cells.

What Causes Leaky Gut?

• Terrible Food: Most of the time it’s the crap food we feed our dogs that hurts their guts the most. So when we’re still feeding kibble, the best we can do is try to support the gut and help it do all it can.

“Diets of highly processed foods injure our intestinal lining”. –Digestive Wellness.

Since almost everything in processed dog (and human) food are synthetic food additives and high in carbohydrates, more times than not, our and our pup’s bodies are leaky city.

• Chronic Stress: is also another cause of leaky gut. If you need ideas at how to calm down your dog naturally, look here: When our bodies are stressed, we secrete less of the anti-aging and anti-stress hormone, DHEA. We also slow down the active transport thing I mentioned above, which reduced overall blood flow, especially to our digestive organs-which is our topic of conversation here.
• Candida: the ugly ugly bad guy yeast that finds its way into our guts. Candida can colonize in the gut, and by doing that, it wreaks havoc other places in the body.
  

  “Candida colonies produce powerful toxins that are absorbed into the bloodstream and affect our immune system, hormone balance, and thought process” –Digestive Wellness by Dr. Elizabeth Lipski.So basically, by having leaky gut, these toxins are more readily available in the bloodstream, and they get there because they colonize in the gut. It’s a chicken or the egg scenario.

• Environmental toxins and over vaccination: Most of us Americans have toxins running rampant in our households. Over the last year, I have made the quest to “ditch and switch”, meaning replacing anything in my house that can be deemed as toxin, ad only using all natural products. These products stress out our immune system (which 70% of it stems from your gut Bee Tee Dubs). Chemicals disrupt all of our natural systems, like our endocrine and immune systems. So only being able to put attention on repairing one thing at a time, our body can’t keep up with the amount of repairing it has to do when chemicals are involved. The toxins leach out all our good minerals and then we get leaky cells! WTF everything is leaking?!!
• Medications/Alcohol: birth control, antibiotics, NSAIDs, chemo and radiation drugs all disrupt the delicate lining of our intestines and cause LG.

How to fix leaky gut:

Diet, relaxation and the addition of the below can all aid in reversing leaky gut.

• Below is a list of healthy nutrients needed to help repair a leaky gut
• Prebiotics-helps probiotics “stick”
• Probiotics-replenishes good gut flora
• Antioxidants (discussed here)- to catch all the free radicals from our damaged intestines.
• Glutamine-nutrient to help repair the mucosal lining
• Zinc-needed for gut repair
• N-acetylglucosamine
• Quercetin (firms up mucosal lining)

Here’s the smoothie recipe (to share) that includes all the nutrients above

Dairy Free, Sugar Free Gut Check Smoothing Recipe!

1 small handful Spinach (Glutamine)

3 tbs fresh Aloe (N-acetylglucosamine)

1/4 C Kefir/Kombucha

1 dose of Probiotics (I’m using Garden of Life 5 day Max care–perfect for a week!)

1/4 teaspoon to start of Spirulina (candida fighter)

1 dose of Young Living Essentialzymes-4 Digestive enzymes (liver and pancreas support)

3 long Dandelion greens (prebiotic)

1/2 frozen Banana (prebiotic)

1/4 c Blueberries (quercetin)

1/2 Green or red apples (quercetin)

3 Kale leaves (quercetin)

3 drops Ginger Essential Oil (protective)

1 drop Thyme Essential Oil (dysbiosis support)

1-2 inches of fresh Turmeric root –or 1tbs dried–& black pepper (why black pepper? See here🙂