REPAIRVITE DIET – LEAKY GUT

Healing Leaky Gut

When the digestive tract mucosa is inflamed, the tight junctions of the intestinal mucosa are compromised as they become widened and permeable to large, undigested compounds, toxins, and bacteria. This is also known as “leaky gut.” The large compounds of undigested proteins that are absorbed are reacted against by the underlying intestinal immune system and promote exaggerated immune response. This creates a vicious cycle of further intestinal inflammation and greater loss of intestinal barrier integrity.

Therefore, as the intestinal tract becomes inflamed from diet, lifestyle, medications, and infections, it causes further intestinal inflammation, feeding this vicious cycle promoted by intestinal permeability. After the intestinal mucosa becomes damaged, the damaged cells become unable to properly digest food and produce the enzymes necessary for digestion. This leads to malnutrition, further intestinal inflammation, further permeability, the development of food sensitivities, bacteria and yeast overgrowths, and impaired intestinal immune integrity. These self-promoting cycles become difficult to unwind unless aggressive dietary, nutritional, and lifestyle strategies are employed.

Repairvite Diet

Take a deep breath, because if you’re a foodie like me, this is the part that is going to suck. I’ll go ahead and be Bad News Bear because as science shows, the worst offenders that your immune system probably has red flags about are your very favorites. Click here for a quick summary of what to eat and what not to eat!

Avoid:

• No Coffee (I know. I know)
• No Chocolate
• No Alcohol
• No Eggs (I know! What are you going to eat for breakfast!?!) There is a substance in eggs that can bind to proteins and swoop them right out of your leaking gut. This is why we avoid this otherwise perfectly perfect food
• No Dairy – This one is tough for this reason: no butter OR ghee as well as other milk products, but coconut oil works super well, as does bacon fat and olive oil.
• No Grains or Legumes – This includes gluten-­free grains, peas, and peanuts
• No Nightshades – Sorry, ketchup fans. This one’s for you. – Avoid white potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants, all peppers.
• No Nuts –  I know! This is probably your biggest snack food but the texture of them can inflame the GI lining.  Almond and cashew BUTTERS are okay to eat.
• No seeds –  There is some slight room for interpretation in this one, because the literature is not conclusive about needing to eliminate this. However, we have seen patients react to things that most people don’t, and you won’t know what you react to until you eliminate the substance long enough to be able to tell the difference.  Most people still do well on this with flax and chia seeds in their diets.
• Limit your sugar intake and high ­sugar fruits.
• No Fungi
• No Canned Foods or Processed Foods

What you CAN eat:

• LOTS of Vegetables and Fruit!
• Meats – fish, turkey, chicken, beef, lamb
• Bone broths ­ these have strong healing super­powers, they are full of collagen and minerals and other nutrients that give your gut what it needs to heal. Plus you can use it to cook meats and tasty greens
• Sauerkraut, kombucha ­ they help you replenish your stores of good bacteria and good yeast
• Enough good fats, nut butters are OK just not actual nuts.
• Coconut (ie coconut butter, coconut cream, coconut milk, coconut oil, unsweetened coconut flakes, unsweetened coconut yogurt)
• Noodles (ie brown shirataki yam noodles – sold in asian grocery stores)
• Misc: herbs and spices and things like apple cider vinegar, herbal teas, olive oil, olives

Click here for a 14 day sample diet and recipes 

***Adding Foods Back (Yay!) I would say that after about 3- 5 weeks of having strongly eliminated the offending foods, you can begin introducing foods slowly. There is a methodology for doing this, and it is important to stick to it so that we can tell what your body may be reacting to, and to give us an opportunity to give you some supportive treatment. If you go nuts (ha.) after 3-­5 weeks and just eat all the delicious things, you may actually damage your gut right away. Remember that insulting your body with lots of alcohol, sugar, etc, causes damage to the lining. Click here to Determine what foods you can and cannot tolerate post Repairvite! 

Here is a paleo blogger that is a good resource, we recommend that you sign up for her newsletter, and give her blog post a peek here or just got to TheCuriousCoconut.com and click around ­she has recipes from dinner rolls, to pizza crust and a no­mato sauce, to AIP friendly desserts. ­ I love the apple crisp!  Pinterest also has a Repairvite Recipe board.  Lots of great ideas there!

We strongly encourage you to build your week around meals that you look forward to and enjoy. There is also a good replacement for starches  –  Malanga, frozen yuca, tapioca, coconut flour and sweet potatoes. We’ve had a lot of malanga puree as a mashed potato replacement. The most critical piece of the puzzle is to plan ahead! Trust me, you can start off fine breakfast and lunch, but if you don’t have dinner prepped and your blood sugar crashed it’s easy to fall off the wagon and have to start over.