What Exactly is Leaky Gut?

Were we wrong about leaky gut?

For years we have been hearing the term leaky gut or intestinal permeability. Doctors and health practitioners originally thought that leaky gut was only an issue with your tight junctions, the rubber band-like connections that hold your gut cells together. But we now know differently.

Here is the information I received from top researcher Steven Wright.
Researchers concluded the spaces between those tight junctions “leaked” particles into the bloodstream.

These particles then wreak havoc on the rest of the body, resulting in severe food sensitivities, chronic inflammation, and a host of other painful symptoms most people wouldn’t wish upon their worst enemy.

Based on this model, fixing Leaky Gut should be simple, easy, and straightforward…get tight junctions to stay tight…Right?

These Supplements Fix Tight Junctions – But Not Leaky Gut

In theory, the cure to leaky gut would be by supplementing with these supplements

L- glutamine
Collagen
Slippery elm
Triphala
Deglycyrrhizinated licorice (DGL)

Some of you have tried these supplements like I have but have not seen the results you are looking for.

Researchers from VCU Medical published a paper on February 1st, 2020 that explains it….

Leaky Gut Revealed

Leaky Gut is much more complex than patching holes between tight junctions and thanks to the Researchers at VCU Medical Center, we now know there’s much more to Leaky Gut than we thought.

We now have a new, updated map which means our approach to fixing Leaky Gut has to evolve.

Image Source: Journal of the Endocrine Society

In this groundbreaking paper, the researchers showed how a leaky gut is happening at 4 layers at the same time.
And how a breakdown in just one of these layers can trigger the deterioration of the others. What do all these layers mean?Here’s a summary:Layer 1: Tight junction proteins (the epithelium cells)
Tight junction proteins are responsible for sealing the “spaces” between the cells that make up your gut lining, or your epithelium (gut wall cells).
In other words, they help regulate how permeable your gut lining is and what things can pass through.
This is what we all used to think was the main cause of leaky gut, but turns out there’s more that’s involved…Layer 2: Mucus layer
Sounds gross, but your gut is also lined with mucus.
There are actually 2 layers of mucus in your gut:
The outer layer, where the microbiome is located, and the inner layer, which is actually very clean and acts almost like a skin barrier between your gut cells and the microbiome.
Not having enough mucus production means that our sensitive gut cells and their tight junctions aren’t properly protected from damage by food particles or pathogens…
Not only that but the mucus lining is also an important habitat for the microbiome to adhere to and grow on top of.

Layer 3: Microbiome
The third layer is your microbiome, which is made of trillions of bugs and bacteria that live in your gut and keep you healthy.
The microbiome is in and around the mucus layers.
And while science is still trying to figure out exactly what creates a “healthy microbiome,” the trend in the research is that it’s better to have a wide variety of different gut bugs.
These gut bugs do many helpful things, like digesting food, creating nutrients, and protecting the gut lining from becoming damaged or inflamed.
But they can only survive if there are enough protective factors in the gut…

Layer 4: Gut-defense factors
And the final 4th layer are the compounds that defend and protect your gut from harmful substances, there are many of them and probably some we haven’t even yet discovered.
However, the 2 most understood for health are the antibacterial peptides secretory IgA (sIgA) and Intestinal alkaline phosphatase (IAP).
They are located in the mucus layers, the microbiome, and floating around inside the gut cavity.
These peptides are secreted by gut cells to fight pathogenic invaders, calm inflammation, and keep the gut lining healthy.
Without them, your body loses key protective defenses, your bacteria are vulnerable, and your gut lining can become compromised…
In summary, you want plenty of sIgA, IAP, and other gut defensins protecting you.

Is Your Gut A “House of Cards”?
Now we know that each of these layers works to protect you…
They have each other’s backs if you will.

But if just one of the layers is weakened your gut could be one life stressor away from crashing like a house of cards.
Let me illustrate…

Let’s say Shelly gets a head injury (concussion) in a car crash.
This is shown in research studies to immediately make your tight junctions loosen and leaky.
But let’s say she’s been eating right, avoiding antibiotics, and taking the right supplements.
So, her layer 4 gut defensins are working, her microbiome is diverse and healthy, and her mucus layers are thick…
She might only have to recover from her head injury (bad enough).
But luckily there’s not much lasting damage and she’s back to regular life in 6 weeks.

However, that is not the case for Kathy.
Kathy’s diet is “ok”, but she doesn’t eat fermented foods, doesn’t take the right supplements, and averages at least one cycle of antibiotics each year.
On top of that, Kathy is “stressed”. She’s a mom to 2 kids under 10, works a full 40-hour workweek, and doesn’t get enough sleep.
At the time she gets hit in the head, her gut defenses are already weak and her microbiome is dysbiotic.
So she doesn’t stand a chance when her tight junctions relax and her thin mucus layers fail.
Before this car wreck, she was “reasonably healthy”…on the surface.

But in reality, she was one stressor away from a breakdown.
Her head injury spirals out of control and she gets post-concussion syndrome. On top of that, she’s now constipated, in pain, her skin is breaking out, and she’s extra moody.
Why?
Because she’s lost her gut function which is now triggering her immune system and hormone system to go haywire.
Her recovery back to normal life could take 12 to 24 months and $10,000’s of dollars to fix in the integrative and functional medicine world.
Now, in this example, I used a head injury because I don’t think they get enough attention.

But this same scenario plays out for stressful life events like:

Moving
Losing a job
The death of a loved one

And smaller stressors that add up like:

A week of bad sleep
A viral or bacterial infection
Or sometimes just going on vacation and drinking the wrong water

The key here is that a resilient gut has all four of these layers working together.
A strong gut can weather the storm of these life events and not fully collapse like a house of cards.

This is Why Our Leaky Gut Fixing Has to Evolve
Kathy very well might still need L-glutamine. But her brain might be too activated and her gut too leaky to be able to tolerate it.
So like roughly 10% of L-glutamine users it will be converted to glutamate and cause all kinds of brain problems from the smallest doses.
Likewise, her “gut healing powders” and collagen may support her general health but the doses won’t be high enough to heal all 4 layers.
Not to mention when she tries to introduce probiotics she’s unlikely to respond favorably (or at all) until her gut ecosystem is more stable.
But luckily for her (and the rest of us)…

There’s a new tool in town that actually supports all 4 layers and is relatively non-reactive for most users.

Why Butyrate Works When Nothing Else Does…
Oral Butyrate is the one compound that supports all 4 Layers of Leaky Gut…
And is the ONLY substance that has been shown to support all 4 layers at once.
From the research, we know butyrate supplementation:

Increases tight junction regulation and health
Increases MUC2 expression to heal mucus layers
Modulates and increases microbiome diversity
Supports healthy gut-defense expression (sIGA levels)

All other supplements like probiotics, prebiotics, herbs, L-glutamine, curcumin…
None of them address all 4 layers at the same time.
It’s not to say they don’t help some people, or that they’re not needed…
In fact, I still use and love many of these products.
It’s just that they shouldn’t be the first thing introduced and they also may not even be needed.

Tributyrin-X is the supplement I designed to be the best thing ever to repair a leaky gut.
And for reasons I won’t go into here, I had to make it myself because all of the other tributyrin supplements on the market weren’t good enough.

The Results Have Exceeded Even My Expectations
I knew Tributyrin-X was going to be helpful for Leaky Gut, but I had no idea that we’d hear reports from customers claiming it improved their…