Article Update, February 2020: Yale-Harvard Research Team Finds that the Nervous System is Key to Fighting Gut Infection.
Fascinating new research has come to light about the role the nervous system plays in healing gut infections.
Since up to 80% of of the immune system resides in the gut, experts have always presumed it was immune system that helped fight off intestinal foreign invaders. However, scientists have just discovered it’s actually nerve cells (not the immune cells) within the gut that produce the infection-fighting cytokines1!
This is an important discovery as it further validates the intimate relationship between our stress response, which is driven by the nervous system, and our gut health.
Read on to learn more about the science behind the stress-leaky-gut-syndrome connection and what you can do to safeguard your digestive health.
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When I first began writing and educating patients about Leaky Gut Syndrome and its connection to chronic disease (25+ years ago), it was not a well-known condition. I first wrote about it in The Detox Solution: The Missing Link to Radiant Health, Abundant Energy, Ideal Weight, and Peace of Mind. I had been observing it in patients for years and it made sense from a Traditional Chinese Medicine perspective. I was compelled to find current research on the subject. Thanks to pioneers such as one of my master teachers, Dr. Jeffrey Bland, the “father” of Functional Medicine, I was able to find information and solutions to help my patients.
In those days, the term “Leaky Gut” sounded like a humorous, made-up condition, the idea of a gut-brain connection was considered “out there”, and research on beneficial bacteria, candida overgrowth, and the microbiome was nearly non-existent. Although Chinese medicine had emphasized the gut-brain connection for thousands of years, these concepts were still emerging in the Western world.
Thankfully times have changed, and the very real condition of Leaky Gut Syndrome and the importance of the gut-brain connection have hit the mainstream.
But, despite all the information and research swirling around, one root cause of Leaky Gut has remained largely unrecognized.