Leaky Gut Explained

Brain fog that never lifts. Skin issues that bounce from cream to cream. Fatigue that shows up even after eight hours of sleep. We see these as separate problems, but the body often tells a single story, and the gut is a common place where that story begins. We break down how the gut-brain connection and the immune system interact, and why chronic low grade inflammation can spread across “boundaries” into joints, skin, mood, and energy.

We spend time on intestinal permeability, also known as leaky gut, and we clarify what that phrase really means. It’s not Swiss cheese holes. It’s a gut lining that stops acting like a smart, selective filter, so absorption drops and the immune system stays on alert. We walk through the biggest drivers we see again and again, including stress, alcohol, processed foods, medications, infections, dysbiosis, and ongoing inflammation, plus how food sensitivities can be more about gut condition than the food itself.

We also connect the gut to hormone balance and immune regulation. Estrogen metabolism happens in the gut, and cortisol and insulin resistance do not operate separately from sleep, stress, and inflammation. To move past symptom management, we talk about practical next steps like food sensitivity blood testing and stool analysis, and why having one trusted clinician “quarterback” your plan can change the whole path forward.

If you’re tired of chasing symptoms, listen through, then share this with someone who needs a clearer root-cause map. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us what symptom you want us to connect back to gut health next.

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Transcript

Why Symptoms Are Connected

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome back to Living a Full Life. Last week we talked about how the gut is deeply connected to the brain, immune system, nervous system, and overall health. Today, we're diving into something even more important: how dysfunction in the gut may be contributing to symptoms all throughout the body. I'm Dr. Enrico Dolchkori. Thanks for joining us on episode two of a three-part series on the gut-brain connection. Last week we went through what the gut-brain connection was, how vast the gut system is, the mesenteric system really is, and how it's the underlying web to our health in general. So this week we're going to talk about, you know, what if your fatigue isn't just exhaustion? What if your skin condition isn't just a skin problem? What if your anxiety, inflammation, headaches, brain fog, or hormone imbalance actually have roots in the gut? Because many times the body is not dealing with isolated problems, it's dealing with one interconnected system under stress. And that interconnected system is a vast communication superhighway between the brain and what we call the gut. The gut is given a very specific spot in our abdomen, but the mesenteric system runs a vast portion of our entire torso. And the body is one integrated system as a whole. The conventional medical model separates all these systems because medicine is the study of, right? Study of the human body. That's physiology. And when we do science, what we have is we break things into distinct parts to study them better, to have a better understanding of how each part works. Then we're supposed to reassemble the machine and then understand how the whole thing works together. But we fail to do that because when we get into healthcare, what ends up happening is the GI doctor ends up handling gut issues, the neurologist handles the brain issues, the dermatologist handles the skin issues, and the endocrinologist handles the hormone system. But the body doesn't function in isolated departments. And when we do that, we're missing the other systems. And we focus, hyperfocus on the one thing. The endocrinologist is going to focus on the hormones. The GI doc is going to focus on the gut through endoscopies and colonoscopies. The neurologist is going to look at the brain. And the dermatologist is going to inspect the skin to see if there's anything they can do for the symptoms. The body doesn't function in isolated departments like this. One of the biggest drivers connecting these systems is inflammation. Inflammation runs rampant in the human body once it starts and it crosses all boundaries. It has no borders. Chronic low grade inflammation, for example, we've heard this shout out before. We have low grade inflammation. What does that mean? Low grade inflammation throughout the body? Why is it inflamed? Why is the inflammation everywhere? Where are my shoulders sore? Why are my knees tender? Why is my stomach uh digestion off? Why do I have brain fog? What is that? Why does chronic low-grade inflammation affect everything? Immune activation. So inflammation will create an immune activation in the body where the body's now attacking the inflammation. It's like, well, what's going on? Where is this coming from? And then we have inflammatory signaling that happens back and forth as well. We have increased uh lymphocytes, increased white blood cells, increased eosinophils. We start getting increased production of the immune system because it's trying to, because it's being signaled by inflammation all over the place. It's like all alarms are going off. Inflammation is helpful short term. Chronic inflammation is where problems begin. Once we're inflamed for too long, it's like heat, it's like fire. Once the heat is there, it's nice, it feels good, but the heat's there for too long. The room gets warm, it gets too warm, it gets too hot, fire gets too big. You guys have been camping, you know, it starts, it gets out of control, danger can happen, right? It can catch other systems on fire, can catch the grass on fire, the grass can then catch the trees on fire, the trees catch fire, then California burns, and then like it turns into a big mess really quick. So that's how inflammation

What Leaky Gut Really Means

SPEAKER_00 4:51

works as well. One of the major concepts discussed in functional medicine is intestinal permeability, commonly called leaky gut. Leaky gut, and that's what this episode is all about. What is leaky gut? Intestinal permeability is not like a sponge where we create a bunch of holes. Intestinal permeability is the lack of the intestine's ability to absorb. Kind of counterintuitive to what it sounds like. I always used to think of like leaky gut as like Swiss cheese. Oh, okay, that makes sense. There's holes in the gut. It's not holes, it's the gut's lining inability to absorb anymore. So think of it as like windows in the house that help, when you open them up, helps produce circulation. You get air in, get set stagnant air out. It's a nice little system that you can open and close at will. If it gets a little too windy, or if it gets cold, or if it starts raining, you close the windows and you protect the inside from the outside. It's a barrier. Well, our gut works that way too. We eat food, the windows open, minerals and nutrients go into the body, and then we close it, and then the waste keeps passing by through the wind. Right? I like that, the wind, like passing gas. That's great. So it goes, it goes by, and then you open and close these windows. However, if the windows get rusty, or if the locks get jammed, or if the screens start to fall apart, or they seal shut for whatever reason, and we can't get these open, the absorption ability of the gut slows down. Where now there's all these windows that are going down, they're not being able to open up. That's leaky gut. Your intestinal lining is designed to act like a selective filter. Nutrients pass through, harmful substances stay out. That's the baseline of it. When the gut lining becomes damaged or inflamed, particles can pass through that normally. Sorry, particles that should pass through that normally do not. They don't. And that's the issue. So the triggers of this are typically stress, alcohol, processed foods, chronic inflammation, medications can do this, infections, chronic infections, poor diet, dysbiosis. We touched a little bit on this last week, but now we're diving into it a little bit more. When the immune system constantly reacts to what's leaking through, inflammation can spread throughout the body. This is the whole idea of food allergies. And when we test for this, why are there certain compounds, amino acids, particles from certain foods that create an inflammatory response to us? They can be drastic, like a peanut allergy or something where it closes the airways in the throat, a bee sting, um, it's that histamine response that happens. How is that happening? Why does that happen? When we ingest certain proteins, carbohydrates, and fats, typically the carbohydrates and proteins that get broken down into amino acid chains, if those certain particular chains can get through these windows, through these areas of inflammation along the gut, and they get into the bloodstream, that's where they leak wreak habit. The gut system is considered external to the human body. Think about it this way. On the outside, our skin protects us from the barriers of the elements of the environment of the world. On the inside, our gut has to do that. Why? Our mouth, ears, nose, everything, well, mostly our nose and mouth is an opening to our body. It's everything from the outside can get in. We can literally put things in our mouth and eat them if we want from the environment, right? So it's an opening. The other opening is on the other end where all the waste comes out. And think of it as one long tube that's contained within the body that's being protected from the outside in. It's protecting the outside stuff from the inside stuff. So once we get these windows allowing certain amino acid chains that are not broken down properly because of chronic inflammation in the gut, they break through into dysfunctional chains into the bloodstream. Now your body's like, well, that's a weird amino acid chain. What do we do with that? Where do we put that? It's not broken down into particular amino acids so that we can take it to the liver, do its thing, and build more muscle, or go do stuff. We don't know, we don't recognize that. And it goes to areas, typically joints, um, or it can go to organs, but it goes to the skin. The body starts to put it through the lymphatic system and tries to get it out of the body through our immune system. Our immune system attacks it, tries to break it down. It's like, why are you like this? That's a weird chain of amino acids, that's a weird chain of carbohydrates, that's a weird chain. How'd you get in here? You're not glucose, you're not sucrose, you're not dextrose, you're not maltose. Like, what are you? Like it doesn't make sense. So it breaks, and then what it does is it tries to get it out through the skin or through the urine or wherever it can. And that's the inflammatory response. It gets into our blood and lymphatic system. And that's why it ends up on all different parts of the body. We can get rashes anywhere, we can get skin allergies anywhere, we can get skin or dermatology issues anywhere because of how it all works. So when the immune system constantly reacts to what's leaking through it, inflammation can spread anywhere. Not every disease is caused by leaky gut, but growing research continues to show gut integrity plays an important role in overall health and immune regulation.

Brain Fog Mood And Skin Clues

SPEAKER_00 10:35

So this is not your most, you know, this is not the most entertaining part of the segment, but it's symptoms. And many people feel mentally sluggish all day long because of things called like brain fog. And this is inflammation, microbiome imbalance, and poor nutrition absorption. So brain fog, what does that mean? It's a blanket statement to just not being able to think and act clearly, and it's due to the chronic inflammation over time. Like we said, if things are flying through the entire body, through the circulatory system, through the lymphatic system, hopefully they're not crossing the blood-brain barrier, but it creates mental fatigue because the brain is constantly uh spurring the immune system to attack, attack, attack, produce more white blood cells, attack, you know, and this it's it's taxing on the systems. Imagine being in World War III as the military operational director, and this war just keeps going. The inflammation just keeps going. Yeah, for four months we're working hard. For four years, boy, we're fatigued. For 10 years, oh man, this person's gonna quit or step down. I mean, they for 15 years, I mean, so the longer we have this, the more fatigued the brain gets, the master control system gets. And this is where we feel sluggish. It can also affect anxiety and mood. Kind of ties in with brain fog as well. If you're just not feeling well, your mood's gonna change. You see this all the time. You see this with people with just general pain anywhere. If they have pain for long enough, you can deal with pain, a sprained ankle for a week, but if the ankle hurts you for seven months, I mean, now it's starting to get irritated. Now you're getting you know concerned. The mood changes. Like, man, I can't go for a run, I can't do so. That pain is the signal on that. Your gut bacteria influences directly neurotransmitters, inflammation, and stress signaling to the brain. And if they're constantly signaling, we're constantly in this feedback loop of attack. This can affect serotonin relationships and stress response overall. And fatigue, general fatigue overall. You can sleep eight hours and still feel exhausted if inflammation and dysfunction are occurring internally. This is where we may not feel like we can ever rest properly, is because of the chronic inflammation within us. Your skin often reflects what's happening internally. Acne, eczema, psoriasis, rosacea, these are all chronic inflammation, food triggers, and immune responses. All of those. So by looking deeper into this, into the gut, not only do you reverse a lot of this stuff, but you change the way the body functions overall. Because once it's under chronic inflammation for years, and you start to reverse that process, which takes time, it takes some patience in there to do this. And once you start to reverse it, a lot of things, not only do they get better, but it changes the way you function overall. Researchers continue exploring strong connections between gut health, immune regulation, and autoimmune conditions. Hashimoto's research is on the rise, rheumatoid arthritis is back in full swing across uh universities around the world, lupus, inflammatory bowel conditions, these were big 20, 30 years ago. A lot of money was being put into this because of the chronic wear on the workforce. It still is, never stopped, but because there was no conclusive um treatments for it overall, it was just, you know, ulcerative colitis, do the surgery, remove the resected portion of intestine, leave what's relatively healthy, monitor for a while with steroids as the years go by, as the as it spreads, the inflammation spreads and attacks more of the gut, you remove more of the intestine. That's that's where they default. And all that research didn't change those outcomes with ulcerative colitis. So they're like, that is still the treatment for extreme ulcerative colitis patients and diverticulitis patients is surgery, which is extensive. So autoimmunity is the immune system becoming dysregulated. That's what autoimmunity is. Autoimmune conditions. What is the automatic immunity? What does that mean? Well, it's when it comes disreg becomes dysregulated, your your signaling automatically triggers everything. It's all on war when it comes to your immune system. That's the autoimmune. It's like constantly stuck in a war. That's my best analogy for it. And a major portion of the immune system interacts with the gut daily, a major portion, not minor, a

Hormones Autoimmunity And The Gut

SPEAKER_00 15:22

major portion. Hormones. This one is a big one. Big one. We have hormone podcasts that you can go and listen to specific hormones. But when it comes to the gut, and listen closely, the estrogen metabolism happens entirely in the gut. Entirely. And the estrogen is not just a female or hormone, it affects men as well. We both have it, just different balances of it. And it's really important to have that balance. Men can be estrogen dominant, which throws everything off for them. Mood, fatigue, energy, body composition, and for women too. So it's not just that. Cortisol entirely discussed in the gut and insulin resistance. Hormones don't operate independently from inflammation, sleep, stress, and gut health. They do not operate independently, they operate together. And when inflammation attacks, they all struggle together. Food sensitivities. You've heard a lot about this. Blood testing for uh food sensitivities and food allergies is the most conclusive way to do this. You have to look at the blood to get a conclusive idea on what's going on. Now, to test every substance in the environment would be hundreds, if not thousands, of points. So typically you look at about 100 or 200 of them at a time. And the most common ones that are used. So when you do a food sensitivity or food allergy testing, they look at about 200 of the most common, which means you could be missing some other little things as well. However, it's a nice blanket to do and check. We do this for kids. This is where we start with kids. Kids going down the medical route of endoscopies, colonoscopy. I mean, that is just it's too intense for them. And typically they're young and very healthy that you don't really find pathology. So you don't do that with them. So starting them with a blood test is the e a fingerprint test, is the easiest way to start. And I recommend many adults should do that too. You should know what you're sensitive to because it means that's where the leaks are in your gut. So doing a food sensitivity test, such a smart way to start. Bloating, headaches, skin flares, fatigue after eating, food sensitivity. Need to look into that. Spend the hundred and what is it, 90 bucks to get that test done, get it back. You get mild, moderate, and severe test results on each and every one: almonds, chicken, apples, oranges. Like it just everything shows shows back from that. And you can even environmental sensitivities as well. Sometimes food sensitivities are less about the food itself and more about the condition of the gut. So people will look at this, like me. I remember having uh eggs and dairy and all these things on there. I'm like, man, what am I gonna eat? Almonds, eggs, dairy. I forget this is probably over 10 years ago, that first one that came through. I'm like, what am I gonna eat? Like apples, I think were on there too. I'm like, okay, well, you're taking away everything here. And I can eat eggs now, and they don't bother me at all. Dairy is still not a good, not a good choice for me uh for other reasons. But you learn this stuff, you stay away from them, you feel great, and you know in the back of your head you're controlling inflammation. Pretty smart test to start with. Very smart test to start with.

Why The Medical System Misses Roots

SPEAKER_00 18:59

Now, here's why people stay stuck after helping thousands of people. Uh it's unbelievable as the years go by. Next year will be 20 years in practice for me. And I'm just adding it up in my head. We're in the thousands talking to people, thousands of conditions. Like, I mean, this is why people stay stuck. Or you know, why people stay struggling for years. It's the management that we have in our system. When we have something wrong, we go to our GP. This is typical for most people. GP, or or hopefully you have a functional med person or somebody or nurse practice, or somebody that's more functional-minded. But you go to them and they dissect pathology first. Okay, well, let's send you for some blood tests. Start there. Great, that's what that's smart. Blood and urine, check that. Okay, nothing really leads us to anything from the basics there. Now let's check your hormones, right? Is it we go back to that list? The GI doctor, the endocrinologist, the neurologist, and whoever else we got there. You go through there and they just check those things. And if they don't have a direct referral for you, then they're like, oh, I don't know what to do. Let's send you to the GI doc, or let's send you to wherever the or the dermatologist, whatever the condition is. So we have antacids for reflux, we have creams for skin, we have stimulants for fatigue, and sleep meds for insomnia, and antidepressants for the brain or uppers, whatever, whatever they do. That's that's the system, right? And we're always stuck in that system. Medications absolutely have a role when needed, but if we never ask why symptoms in the first place, the underlying dysfunction may remain inevitably. Many people have never had anyone evaluate their gut. Many people have never had a true gut assessment. Inflammation, microbiome balance, digestion, absorption, or nervous

What Stool And Food Tests Reveal

SPEAKER_00 21:06

system function. Before social media, before television, before all this stuff, you'd go do your business, number one or number two. And when you did number two, you'd look at it. People would look at it. It used to be a thing. They used to tell you, look, make sure you're okay. Are you okay? How are you pooping? You pooping okay? Now we are disgusted to even look at it. We won't even look at the toilet. We hit the flush button before we even get up because we don't want to look at it. It tells you a lot about your overall health and microbiome. What should your poop look like? It should be solid, should not be loose, shouldn't be very hard. That's not very common for adults in America to have that very hard, stiff poop. They don't do that anymore. No one eats that much fiber anymore, so you don't see that, but it should be firm, shouldn't be falling apart in any way or scattering in the toilet in the water. That's the issue there. Your kids, you look at your kids, many of your kids have healthy. Digestion when you see that. Or if you dealt with a kid with constipation, that's the hard poop I'm talking about. That should, that's painful. That shouldn't happen. But looking at that can tell you a lot. And we all do. I think naturally, when you once you stand up, you look, you everyone just kind of takes a peek. It's a natural thing. Your body wants, you want to know how your body's functioning. If you completely don't and are completely ignorant to that, I mean you should. You should look at it and be like, okay, I don't know what I'm looking at, but is that right? I mean, looks like all the collards that I ate are just right there. Did they even digest? What's going on? I can see the kale. It's right there. Well, why is the kale coming right through me? Well, there's this, there's a reason for that. It's microbe dysbiosis. We don't have the proper microbiome that eats deep green leafy vegetables or breaks them down properly, or you may be too low in that. So they're passing through you a little bit quicker. Just as one example, we can sit here and all day and talk about poop. But let's not do that. Many, yeah, many people have never had a proper and thorough assessment. So, but there's hope, and there's a way to do this. The body can heal. The body's trying to heal every single moment of your life. Inflammation can improve, gut function can improve, nervous system balance can improve, and it matters, and your lifestyle matters. Your body is constantly trying to survive, thrive, adapt, and heal. Symptoms are often signals, not betrayals. Stop getting upset about how you feel. You can take control of this. And it starts with the right doctor, the right health professional in your corner that quarterbacks your health. They should not have all the solutions and the answers. They should have a direct and clear path to the solutions and the answers, to winning the game, to winning the playoffs, to winning the Super Bowl. That is the quarterback you want that has a direct path. They're going to need the help of others. They're going to need other things to make this happen. But that's what a good quarterback does in healthcare versus a bad quarterback does in healthcare. So that's it. If you surround yourself with the right people and get the right people in your corner, you can do this. And one good quarterback can do 98% of the work to get you there. So microbiome is where it starts, usually, typically with a food sensitivity and a stool test together. What's passing through the gut and what's in the gut? Nobody looks at the gut. No one looks at poop. That was my whole connection with the poop is doing a stool test. I started talking about the poop. Stool test. That's a gut test. That's the ones that are not being done. You actually send a sample of your poop to the lab. They come back with hundreds of bacteria and viral species, and you don't know what you're looking at. But somebody, the quarterback who does, knows every single play and how that works and where it should be and the chances of it being successful versus a Hail Mary. And that's the

Finding A Health Quarterback

SPEAKER_00 25:02

one who you want quarterbacking all of it. If you've been dealing with chronic symptoms and feel frustrated because nobody has looked deeper into the root cause, this may be the missing piece, finding that quarterback. And at our office, we utilize functional medicine testing, stool analysis, nerve system focused care, and personalized strategies to help patients identify underlying dysfunction and restore optimal health. Info at fulllifetampa.com. You email us. This can all be done virtually. Test kits can be sent to your home. You do it at home. You throw it in the mail. You don't even have to live. Uh leave the house. So this can be done remotely anywhere. If you're listening to this anywhere, call us first. If you're in a different state, we may connect you with somebody interstate so they can help you with some insurance stuff if you need that. But typically, this is out of pocket with those tests. There isn't any insurance companies that cover any of this, hence why your GI doctors don't send you for this stuff. And if they do an allergy test, it will be a blood or a skin prick test to environmental allergens because insurance typically covers those things for environmental allergies. But you still have to jump through some hoops with that. You have to be uh prescribed Claritin or Zurtec or something and go through a process of that first, come back with the same symptoms saying it's not helping, and then get approved for an allergy test. So there's hoops we have to jump through through that. With functional care, you have no hoops to jump through. We get a thorough uh background and a history, and then we go ahead and get to work. That's how it all works. Reach out to us if you need anything, stay well, stay healthy. Next week's podcast is part three of this. And we're gonna be going through how to fix the gut. This one is how it ties it all together. So if you didn't listen to today's podcast, next week's podcast is just gonna be a big bomb on you, but man, I gotta fix everything. But it's gonna be streamlined on how to address a vast array of conditions and how to truly eat and live for a healthy gut. Stay well. Take care.