Gut Hyperpermeability and Autoimmunity By: Julie Beck, DC, MS CSCS The following article is not endorsed and/or supported by The American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine. The purposes of this publication do not imply endorsement and/or support of any author, company or theme related to this article.
Medicine has a long history of establishing a standard or viewpoint and then being resistant to changing it. The landscape is evolving, however, and a good example is our growing understanding of the mechanisms and drivers of autoimmunity. Equally as dynamic is our understanding of a condition that has now been associated with autoimmunity: leaky gut syndrome or intestinal hyper-permeability.
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Hashimoto’s thyroiditis or Graves’ disease can be diagnosed.
To date, the American Autoimmune
Related Diseases Association (AARDA), a non-profit organization with the mission to raise awareness about autoimmune diseases, estimates that1 more than one hundred different autoimmune
diseases have been identified, with an
additional forty plus illnesses suspected to have an autoimmune component.
Remember, an autoimmune disease occurs when our immune system produces antibodies whose job is to attack what the immune system has tagged as foreign invaders. This is a wonderful survival mechanism when that foreign invader is a pathogen that could harm us. In autoimmune diseases, however, it is our own tissues that are being attacked, leading to dysfunction, deterioration and even destruction of the targeted tissues.
And in case you think that leaky gut
If the antibodies target and attack the thyroid, for example,
in many well-respected gastroenterology
syndrome is only understood by integrative and functional medicine practitioners,
think again. The well-respected researcher Alessio Fasano, MD of Massachusetts
General Hospital in Boston has brought
the concept of intestinal permeability as an initiating driver in the pathogenesis of autoimmune disorders to the
forefront of conventional medicine’s
consciousness with his published research and immunology journals.2
ANTI-AGING MEDICAL NEWS | FALL 2020
