Has anyone ever had the sick sinking feeling that the rash of MS, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Type 1 diabetes, allergies, Crohn’s and other autoimmune diseases might all have the same cause?
Guess what…you were probably right.
The human body apparently needs three things to get an autoimmune disease. The first is a genetic predisposition. The second is exposure to a trigger. If you never eat a peanut you can never be allergic to one. The third and most important is failure of the intestinal barrier. And the barrier may fail due to many causes, but so far there are two things that we know can cause it to fail. One of those things is bacterial or fungal overgrowth. The other is called zonulin.
Zonulin is the name for the protein that your body manufactures that allows stuff that your body wants (like nutrients) out of the intestines while holding the pieces that your bloodstream has no interest in (like undigested food proteins, bacteria and fungi) inside your intestines.
The role of zonulin appears to be to let the good stuff out of the intestine, however, too much zonulin and the intestines go haywire causing a condition known as “leaky gut”
Large proteins get into the bloodstream where the immune system does its job and labels them as invaders and then attacks.
Misregulation of zonulin appears to be at the root of many autoimmune diseases, including Crohn’s, Type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and others.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3458511/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3384703/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22109896
As well as general inflammation and possibly cancer
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21248165
Great news, so now we have the answer as to what the issue is, so how do we stop it. What causes the zonulin to go haywire and cause the problems.
We have that answer too.
Zonulin becomes dysregulated by one of two things. One is overgrowth of bacteria or fungi in the intestines.
The other is gluten. In everyone. Not just celiacs or people with an autoimmune reaction to it.
Gluten causes a spike in zonunlin in everyone. It causes leaky gut in everyone
Please don’t trust me on this. Read the following.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16635908
And this is how it works
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2653457/
So why haven’t you heard about this from your doctor?
Now THAT is a very good question.