Three years ago Mark Crislip wrote about leaky gut syndrome for SBM. He said, “because of an almost complete lack of supporting basic science and few therapeutic clinical trials showing no effect, virtually no physician who has an understanding of the gastrointestinal physiology gives the disease credence.” Nothing has changed.
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The Myth: According to the proponents of leaky gut syndrome, bacteria and toxins enter the bloodstream through these defective tight junctions and wreak havoc throughout the body, causing bloating, gas, cramps, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), as well as fatigue, food sensitivities, joint pain, moodiness, irritability, sleeplessness, autism, and skin problems like eczema and psoriasis.
Debunked: This is all speculation, as scientific studies do not validate any of these claims.
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The same “leaky gut” ideas are now being applied to the brain, blaming all kinds of symptoms on substances leaking through a faulty blood-brain barrier (BBB).
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While there are documented defects in the BBB associated with some diseases, the concept of “leaky brain syndrome” appears to be a bogus diagnosis created by the functional medicine industry. It attributes all manner of symptoms to a leaky BBB, and claims a leaky brain is the cause of chronic neurodegenerative diseases. These ideas are not supported by acceptable scientific evidence: they rely on questionable evidence from animal and in vitro studies, speculations about basic science, and a lot of imagination.
Read full, original post: Leaky Brain, Leaky Gut: Are They Real?
