Poison and the Blood Brain Barrier

The Blood-Brain Barrier, or BBB, is a single-layered lattice of cells joined together by tight junctions that keep most substances out and allow few substances into the brain.Toxic substances typically kept out include heavy metals, pesticides, germs, plastics as well as damaging proteins while substances allowed in are oxygen, hormones, and nutrients.  Your bbb has tight junctions that become loose or broken with a protein called zonulin. Zonulin also breaks down the protective layer of your intestinal wall creating leaky gut.  Zonulin is increased in the body due to glyphosate (an herbicide found in our food from Roundup made by Monsanto).  To find out what foods contain glyphosate go to Detox Project website. Zonulin is also made in response to eating wheat.  With too much zonulin the bbb leaks letting toxins come into the brain causing damage and inflammation on the brain.  In other words, a Leaky Brain is an Inflamed Brain.

What are the Signs and Symptoms of a Leaky Brain?

Leaky Brain manifests as multiple signs and symptoms, so pay attention to these as opposed to ignoring them:

ADD/ADHD/Autism spectrum disorders

Brain fog or difficulty concentrating

Chronic fatigue that does not improve with rest or sleep

Headaches or migraines that come on suddenly, become worse with standing, and grow more severe as the day progresses

Memory loss or another cognitive decline which may lead to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease

Mood disorders, particularly anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia

Peripheral neuropathy 

Seizures

It is important not to ignore these signs and symptoms because those living with Leaky Brain are at an increased risk of developing neurological or psychiatric conditions. 

What Causes Leaky Brain?

The profound connection between the brain and the gut cannot be underestimated as research repeatedly confirms that microbes living in the gut affect the brain both positively and negatively.

In fact, the stomach and small intestine contain a lining similar to the blood-brain barrier which also keeps harmful substances from entering the gut.

Therefore, many of the same factors that cause a leaky gut—poor gut health, unhealthy diet, food intolerances, food sensitivities, toxins and infections—can also create a leaky brain. For more information on Leaky gut listen to my podcast #13 Digestion Leaky Gut and Lectins.

Studies from Harvard show that wheat creates leaky gut because it contains  a protein called gliadin, which increases the zonulin.  Again it’s this Zonulin that weakens the tight junctions of the gut lining and BBB thereby contributing to leaky gut and leaky brain.

Five causes of Leaky Brain:

1.Gut Dysbiosis (infections)

2.Leaky Gut

3.Autoimmune Disease

4.Mental Health Conditions

5.Stress & Vagus Nerve Dysfunction

All five of these categories have inflammation as a basis for the problem, yet they become even more problematic in the following disease states:

Bacterial infections deteriorate the BBB allowing bacteria into the brain where they do not belong.

Mold toxins trigger inflammation, promote oxidative damage in the brain, and disrupt the BBB.

Excess glutamate overstimulates nerves causing the BBB to breakdown increasing permeability to potentially harmful agents.

High blood sugar and diabetes represent dramatic changes in blood sugar which produce oxidative stress and inflammation

Elevated homocysteine, seen in individuals living with heart disease, autoimmune disease, cancer, and neurodegenerative disease or those who survive a stroke, changes tight junction function and prevents the BBB from functioning properly.

Obesity increase oxidative damage and deprive the brain of oxygen.

Low quality sleep interrupts the sleep-wake cycle interrupting the uptake of nutrients and offload of toxins while increasing inflammation.

While it is more obvious that leaky brain causes inflammation which then drives mental health conditions, it is less known that mental health conditions can also drive inflammation and leaky brain.  The contributing factors could be:

The Brain-Gut Axis: The Vagus Nerve Connection

The brainstem connects to the vagus nerve, which in turn connects to all the digestive organs. The brain sends signals through the vagus nerve to the organs. The organs also send signals through the vagus nerve to the brain.

The vagus nerve initiates many important digestive functions such as stomach acid secretion, enzyme production, gallbladder function and intestinal motility.

If there is poor brain communication to the vagus nerve there can be many negative effects including:

Chronic inflammation

Poor digestion

Leaky gut

Inflamed brain

How to Reverse and Heal a Leaky Brain – Stop, Start, and Seek

Treating a leaky brain starts by healing a leaky gut. This involves eliminating all the causative factors of leaky gut and leaky brain and then adding dietary and lifestyle factors that support brain health.

Following these steps will lower inflammation in the body and brain, maximize the transport of oxygen, glucose, and other nutrients into the brain, facilitate better removal of toxins out of the brain, reduce oxidative stress, and help rebuild tight junctions to restore the integrity of the BBB.

STOP:

Consuming gluten and foods that you cannot tolerate including sugar and processed foods in meals

Ignoring stress

Allowing bacterial and viral infections to fester before getting treatment

Drinking alcohol in excess

Exposure to environmental toxins in air, water and food

Eating nonorganic food that contains glyphosate

START:

Detoxifying the body of pesticides,  and heavy metals

Taking in probiotic foods to keep the gut balanced

Eating essential fatty acids, which are vital for the brain, including avocado, coconut oil, flaxseed, hemp seed, oily fish, pumpkin seeds, and walnuts

Reducing inflammation through the diet  - Listen to our podcast on Chronic Inflammation

Making quality sleep a priority

Reducing psychological and emotional stress through exercise, meditation, journaling

SEEK:

Figure out what supplements you need to take to help repair the BBB including:

Acetyl L-Carnitine, Alpha-Lipoic Acid, Alpha-GPC, Angelica (Dong Quai) Extracts, Astragalus, Astaxanthin, Apigenin, B12-B6-Folate Mix, Berberine, Bitter Melon, Butyrate, Catechins, Chlorogenic-Acid, Citicoline, Collagen, Curcumin, Vitamin D3, Fish Oil, Ginseng, Licorice, Luteolin, Lycopene, Myoinositol, Magnesium, Melatonin, Methylene Blue, Olive Leaf Extract, Oxaloacetate, Parthenolide (Feverfew), Progesterone, Pterostilbene, Resveratrol, Rosmarinic Acid, Shilajit, Selenium, Sulforaphane, Ursolic Acid

There's lots of different supplements for support so it's best to get muscle tested for your exact nutritional support. 

Having Trouble Losing Weight? Learn About Weight Loss Resistance.

Have you every tried to lose weight and you are doing all the right things and the scale isn’t budging?  Or you have lost weight but now you have plateaued and working out harder isn’t making a difference? I have just read and researched this weekend about something called Weight Loss Resistance and it was like the light bulb going off in my head.  I couldn’t wait to sit down and write about it.  I do enjoy writing but usually I can wait so excitement has gotten the best of me!

I have helped people lose weight for over 11 years now and while most are successful there are the stubborn few that despite eating well, exercising and supporting their body with the right nutrition through whole food supplements that don’t lose weight like expected.  I have seen it take time due to the adrenals being burnt out.  In these situations the first step is to rebuild the adrenals so the body can then drop the weight.  To learn more read The Truth About Weight Loss.

But in Weight Loss Resistance the body has this underlining inflammation that needs to be addressed for the body to let go of the fat.  You still have to watch what you eat and exercise too. But overcoming Weight Loss Resistance makes those changes work like they’re supposed to. And it makes them stick too.

Once you kill your own Weight Loss Resistance, you’ll never struggle to lose weight again. You’ll never feel like your own body is against you.

 

Scientists gathered together a group of 16,616 men and non-pregnant women. They set out to conduct the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. In this experiment they found that overweight people had more of a certain destructive protein in their blood than the thinner people.

This was true for both men and women. And it was true for both young and old too. If one of the subjects was overweight or obese, they tested for higher levels of this harmful protein called C-Reactive Protein, or CRP for short. Excess CRP in the blood indicates one thing: low level systemic inflammation which you will see later doesn’t let the body lose weight. Often CRP is found in people with diseases like gout, arthritis, and lupus. Since these are inflammatory diseases, you’d expect elevated CRP levels. But it was a shock to find the same kind of low-level chronic inflammation in people who had no other issues than some extra weight!

Having this low-level chronic inflammation creates stress on the blood-brain barrier.  The barrier is there to let good things from the blood go in and keep bad stuff out.  The blood pumping through your body right now has nutrients in it. It has oxygen in it. And often it has toxins and bad bacteria too. That’s why we have a blood-brain barrier and it works really well unless you’re overweight! This is because CRP breaks down the blood-brain barrier slightly. It eats tiny holes in the barrier, allowing some of the bad stuff in.  In other words, elevated CRP causes a toxic brain.

Now these are small holes. But they’re big enough to let toxic bacteria get in and damage the brain.  It’s not like brain damage that ruins your memory or harms your thinking ability. But overtime, it’s just as harmful. This bad bacteria that leaks into your brain inflames a gland in the brain called the hypothalamus.  The hypothalamus connects the brain with the hormones by sending out hormone signals that control a variety of metabolic functions like the energy output of your body and nutrient metabolism.  But when your hypothalamus is inflamed, it doesn’t work so well. When it misfires it doesn’t get the signals from the body about how much leptin the body has which is the cause of Weight Loss Resistance.  Leptin is inside every one of our fat cells. The more fat cells we have, the more leptin we have. As we gain weight, our fat cells get bigger. And the bigger our fat cells the more leptin we produce then too. 

Leptin is supposed to signal your brain to put the brakes on your food intake. It’s the hormone that’s supposed to drive us to maintain a healthy weight. Except, as you’ve just learned, when the hypothalamus is inflamed, this pathway malfunctions.  It doesn’t see all the leptin. So, it puts your body in ‘starvation mode.’ And it instructs you to eat more food so you can produce more leptin. This malfunction explains why many overweight people don’t have an ‘off switch’ when it comes to eating and overeating becomes a problem.  Your body is caught in starvation mode, even when you’re clearly not starving.  And no matter how hard you try, your hypothalamus will always be working against you … thinking you’re starving … instructing you to eat more.

So how do we get the CRP level down to heal the blood brain barrier?  We heal this by getting rid of the inflammation.  There are a lot of reasons for inflammation in the body.  It could be our diet.  The most inflammatory foods are white refined sugar, coffee, and alcohol.  It could be heavy metals or chemicals that our body is having trouble detoxing.  It could be immune stressors in the body that the immune system can’t handle like bad bacteria, old viruses, fungus, mold or parasites.  This is why we muscle test for these things in the office.  The whole point of health in the office is to detox the body and with the right nutrition the body can heal.  So besides getting checked for what toxins you have, what is the right nutrition? 

Curcumin (which is found in turmeric spice) has been proven over and over again in clinical studies spanning more than 50 years to be a powerful anti-inflammatory.  In fact, it is the strongest anti-inflammatory I know and it’s been shown to be more powerful than many harmful medications that we take every day. But that doesn’t mean you should be rushing out to the grocery store to buy turmeric. If you’re going to sprinkle turmeric on your food or drink golden milk it will help but if you are going to take a turmeric supplement, you have to make sure it contains curcumin. And it should contain at least 60% curcumin.

So if you are having trouble losing weight at your next visit let’s test what toxins may be causing inflammation and then test curcumin and other natural anti-inflammatory supplements and reverse Weight Loss Resistance!