A friend of mine went for acupuncture. I asked her to ask the technician if there was anything they could do for me and the RA. She came back and said he told her RA is the result of "Leaky Gut". What the heck??? Anyone heard this too? I've done a google on it but it doesn't really seem like a real medical cause with a real treatment. Oh geesh, why do I feel like I'm setting myself up for a koko assault?
There have been a few people her that have posted about leaky gut syndrome and how it led to ra. I think there is some basis to it. Not a whole lot of docs recognize leaky gut syndrome tho and it can be hard to get treated properly. I've heard quite a bit about leaky gut, as it was a theory I came across soon
after my DX, and also some APers really go by it. Even if it's all balogna,
treating it has helped some people get their RA under control or into
remission, so who cares if the theory is correct or not, as long as it works?
I think you know the answer to that
'The worst symptom is the formation of antibodies. Sometimes these leak across and look similar to antigens on our own tissues. Consequently, when an antibody is made to attack it, it also attacks our tissue. This is probably how autoimmune disease start.'
It's not really a recognised as a medical condition. Many alternative therapies recognise it and blame it on many conditions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaky_gut_syndrome
Pammy,
Many legitimate research has come out and stated quite emphatically that 70% of all auto-immune diseases start in the gut. Please consider going to Google images and looking up leaky gut and seeing some of the pictures of common yeast breaking through the intestinal walls. Your 'intact' intestines are supposed to be a barrier between contaminated foods (parasites, toxins etc.) and your bloodstream. If, however, you have a breach in the integrity of your stomach and intestines, things that were supposed to be harmlessly expelled from your body did not get expelled. They had to go somewhere.
I've seen cutting edge research on the use of stem cells to repair intestinal damage for kids born with Tay Sachs? I can't remember - the disease where the lungs continually fill with fluid. And when reading that, the researcher mentioned his research had ramifications for AI diseases....
I personally did not believe the stomach/AI connection when I tried the gluten free diet and it did not work for me. But, since we moved and I'd been forced to eat out every day for 6 weeks - I can now say with certainty that there IS a connection between diet and how our diseases progress.
The problem is our bodies are different and what works for you may not work for me. Gluten was not my trigger. But I'd bet the farm now the anti-candida diet would have cut my pre-AP pain in half. A 70% chance that changing a patient's diet may help them - that's nothing to scoff about.
:-)
Pip
This is so interesting to me and i am sure to many others.I was diagnosed with leaky gut as a teenager . I will look into this.
Pip if you notice I never said it wasn't legitimate. I said that it wasn't recognised by a lot of mainstream practitioners, which is the truth. I even posted relavent information on leaky gut. Maybe I worded the last sentence wrongly in saying that many alternative therapists BLAME things on leaky gut. I do believe it is responsible for various things. I guess I should have said that alternative therapists atribute several conditions to leaky gut.This thread has served as a good reminder to me to watch my diet. It's so time consuming shopping and chopping and cooking all the time! But I guess I have to do it. I posted on another thread about how sugar is my Waterloo. I'm pretty good about it when I feel terrible but as soon as I feel a bit better I start eating worse and getting into the sugar. For someone on continual antibiotics that's just asking for trouble!Pammy -
I guess I should have worded that better, too. I think I've just had some sort of diet epiphany and have realized in the midst of it all that the Alternative Doc's are totally as unwilling to look at (some) traditional Western Med as the Western Med docs are unwilling to look at Alternative. Both are blind to the middle - the melding of the 2. There's a new type of medicine coming up - Interative Medicine - that's trying to blend the 2 - but most of these guys are so booked up you can't get in for a year. A lot of good that does us.
GoGo -
My diet epiphany was the sugar/yeast connection. Please be really diet conscious, especially at the 3 month mark. :-)
Pip
My acupuncturist told me about leaky gut and said it is reponsible for many