Bone Broth for Leaky Gut Syndrome

I was sick and tired for years until I finally figured out what was going on. Now I'm sharing it with you. 

The amino acids found in bone broth can absolutely heal your leaky gut syndrome. More on that below.

But let's talk about what your gut is first.

Over 400 species, 100 trillion microorganisms and three pounds of bacteria in make up your digestive system.

This giant ecosystem helps you digest meals, regulate hormones, excrete toxins and produce vitamins and other healing compounds. Your gut is what keeps you healthy.

The microorganisms who reside in your gut are commonly referred to as microbes. The whole system is called your microbiome.

Before we being, I'll mention that the number one bone broth for leaky gut is made from Bluebird Provisions. You can try it and see for yourself. Read below to see why.

Toxins Cause Inflammation in Cell Walls

In a perfect world, we nourish our microbiome with micronutrients from the food we eat to help them proliferate and thrive. In turn, our microbiome helps us digest, produce vitamins and perform normal bodily functions.

Suffice it to say, your gut’s role in maintaining your health is important. As you’ll read below, when things go awry, gut issues are always involved. Beef and chicken bone broth have potent healing properties. They can be used in soups, rice and sauces or added to any dishes you're cooking.

Though we’ve made recent breakthroughs in understanding gut flora and its role in our health, we still know relatively little. There’s a ton of exciting studies going on as I write this -- many are predicting that gut research will dominate mainstream news over the next five years.

How do we get good gut health?

Here’s what we know. A healthy microbiome protects us from disease and infection, aids in digestion and absorption of food, regulates metabolism, produces hormones and much more. Woah!

You might be asking: what makes a healthy microbiome? Well that is a loaded question my friend. But I have good news for you!

This may be the only case where each of us are truly a special snowflake. We inherit a human genome from our parents, but each of the 100+ trillion microbes in our gut has it’s own genome as well.

Research tells us that a healthy functioning microbiome is comprised of a diverse range of bacteria or gut flora. For the purpose of this article, I’ll use both terms. Our microbiome changes throughout life for better or for worse based on lifestyle.

How Your Birth Affects Gut Health

Your birth affects gut health because of the good bacteria you are exposed to or not exposed to depending how you were born.

While you can directly change your gut flora through lifestyle choices, some things are out of your control with respect to your gut.

For example, C-section versus vaginal births directly impacts the development of your gut flora.

If you are born via C-section, you were not seeded with all the good bacteria found in your mother’s birth canal.

Your mother loves you very much and cares about your health more than you know. However, this effect cascades if you were fed formula instead of breast milk. Although in the last five years, baby formula quality has increased to where they are most likely safe.

As you can see, we’re feeding our gut flora throughout our life. The long term health implications are massive!

There’s evidence suggesting that autoimmune conditions (like rheumatoid arthritis, crohn's, type 1 diabetes, thyroid issues), depression and autism are all related to leaky gut syndrome and dysfunctional gut flora.

Obesity is also directly related.

Does my gut lining and bacteria make me fat?

Your gut bacteria extracts energy from the food you consume. Depending on the makeup of your gut flora, you’ll either be protected or predisposed toward obesity.

The composition of gut flora greatly differs between lean and obese people. Translation: your gut flora affects whether you’ll have an easy time keeping weight off or whether you gain weight by simply looking at a donut.

Research is directly linking gut bacteria and obesity. The thought is that the gut bacteria found in obese people is able to harvest more energy (or calories) from food. Crazy right? This harvesting effect is exacerbated by systemic inflammation.

Read this ultimate guide to Using Bone Broth to Lose Weight.

These same gut microbes can also impair glucose tolerance irrespective of whether they predispose you toward obesity. This is how gut dysbiosis or leaky gut leads to type 1 and type 2 diabetes.

The take home point is that if your microbiome is out of balance through lifestyle factors and a poor diet, you’ll store more fat than you would probably like to.

So what gives you a leaky gut?

You get a leaky gut because of our western lifestyle, which puts our gut at risk. Over time as stress increases and our repeated exposure harmful inputs adds up, leading to leaky gut.

Think of your microbiome as a garden. You have to constantly nourish it with the right inputs to ensure your gut stays happy.

Our gut naturally changes to adapt to the environment we place it in. So as we age, travel to new places or take drugs, the compositions of our gut changes.

Leaky Gut Syndrome Causes 

Leaky gut syndrome causes include stress, aspirin, antibiotics, inflammation, allergies, processed foods and plant fibers.

In some cases these can destroy all the hard work you and your gut have done in building the up the right bacteria.

• NSAIDs: aspirin, ibuprofen (think advil), acetaminophen and naproxen
• Antibiotics, birth control, antacids, steroids
• Chronic inflammation from infection
• Eating foods you may be allergic to, and perhaps not know it. This includes dairy, gluten, alcohol, among others
• Eating processed foods high in hydrogenated oils, seed oils and refined carbohydrates
• A lack of fermentable (plant) fibers in your diet

Antibiotics in particular can kill off much of the desirable bacteria in your gut. And unfortunately, this bacteria will not grow back on it’s own.

Remember that antibiotics not only come from your doctor, but also from eating low quality meat from factory farms. These farms pump your meat full of them to ward off infection when they’re raising these poor animals.

NSAIDs are still a silent gut killer, with many doctors prescribing them without even mentioning the effects they have on our guts.

I’ve seen it in all levels of sport from weekend warriors to Olympians popping advil to get through games.

The above cause states of dysbiosis in our gut. A lack of good gut floraleads to chronic inflammation which compromises the tight composition of our intestinal wall.

Without knowing it, we ask a lot of our poor gut. And there is no biological free lunch.

Looking for bone broth? Read our review of the top 6 bone broths you can buy.

Stress and Leaky Gut Syndrome

Stress and leaky gut are intimately connected. Of interest to us is how it leads to autoimmune disease. Let me explain.

Your gut has mucosal lining which is designed to protect you from infection.

In a perfect world, the cells that line your gut are tightly knit like a cotton shirt. But our guts rarely live in such harmony.

Stress, particularly from a lifestyle dominated by work, bad food and excessive exercise causes this lining to break down and become permeable. In case you’re keeping score at home, this is not a good thing.

Leaky gut syndrome is the result. Your gut becomes porous which leads to partially digested proteins leaking through your small intestine into your bloodstream.

Now your body freaks out because it sees these proteins in your blood as dangerous. Your body mounts an inflammatory immune response attacking them.

In the long term, this immune response can lead to a host of autoimmune conditions including celiac disease, rheumatoid arthritis and type 1 diabetes.

It’s important to note that your body treats all incoming stresses the same. Think of your day as a bucket, there is only a finite of amount you can take (or fill) before things start to break.

I repeat: your body does not differentiate stressors. Your daily workout, the anxiety you get thinking about tomorrow’s presentation, from your repeated diet attempts… it all fills your stress bucket.

Repeated stress causes inflammation in varying degrees. Sprinkle in some poor food choices and you have a recipe for leaky gut and the subsequent chronic inflammatory issues.

If you leave your body chronically inflamed for too long then autoimmunity will result.

So far we’ve talked about issues pertaining to gut function or lack thereof, but it’s important to point out that leaky gut is a tricky demon. Digestive issues are rarely the result of leaky gut.

It manifests itself in just about every chronic health issue including asthma, depression, autism, skin conditions like eczema or psoriasis, heart disease, among others. 

The Gut Brain Connection

The consensus among people smarter than myself is that we have a second brain residing in our gut.

If you’ve felt butterflies in your stomach, then I’m sure can personally attest to the importance of the gut in regulating mood and anxiety.

Mood disorders is of particular interest to me as I’ve experienced several bouts of depression.

Your gut directly affects your mood via the vagus nerve. This is the longest cranial nerve in your body. It travels from your brain down your neck and thorax into your gut.

The vagus nerve conducts unconscious body mechanisms like controlling your heart rate and the digestion of food.

Now that we know what connects our two brains, let’s talk about what goes on in the gut to influence our mood.

There are sheaths of neurons that line your intestine, these outnumber those in your spinal cord or peripheral nervous system.

Your gut also produces neurotransmitters, for example, 95% of our serotonin resides in the gut. Serotonin regulates mood, appetite, alertness and energy and is thought to be implicated in depression.

GABA is another neurotransmitter that makes it’s home in our gut. In fact, new research is finding that some of the bacteria in our gut depend on GABA. Meaning that nothing else makes this particular strain of bacteria grow!

Think of GABA as the chill pill -- it regulates anxiety and has a calming effect on us. Low levels of GABA are also directly linked to depression.

The cool thing is that GABA is now used to treat depression by directly restoring important gut bacteria.

How do I know if I have leaky gut syndrome?

As we’ve discussed above, if you’re chronically I'll then the chances are you have some form of leaky gut. If you’re not ill but want to know if your gut is out of sorts, there are a few signs.

If you routinely experience general fatigue, brain fog or get sick more (respiratory infections like asthma, bronchitis, sinus congestion, allergies) than usual then chances are you have some form of leaky gut.

In general, leaky gut and compromised gut flora come together, but not always. For example, you could argue that many of us have gut issues, with the potential for leaky gut. Things are never this easy and good information is hard to find.

What are the symptoms of leaky gut?

The symptoms of leaky gut include constipation, frequent diarrhea (or IBS, Chrohn’s, Colitis), a complete absence of gas (you don’t fart) and undigested fiber in your stool.

Also, if you routinely experience gut rot, bloating, gas or indigestion you may be suffering from leaky gut.

Now that you’ve read the laundry list, let’s talk about how to fix this stubborn brute.

Healing Leaky Gut With Bone Broth

Here’s how you can use healing bone broth to fix your leaky gut.

1. Drinking Chicken Bone Broth 

Look for a chicken version from non-gmo, pasture raised animals. Powder options are great for convenience and ease of use. Bluebird Provisions is the best brand of powder on the market in terms of nutrition and flavor.

2. Plan for Sleep

7-9 hours of sleep per night seems to be optimal for most. We’re talking about sleep, not time in bed. Basic sleep hygiene habits for a better nights sleep are:

• Avoid caffeine after 12pm. Caffeine containing things include soda, dark chocolate.
• Get outside and expose your eyes to daylight for 2-5 minutes upon waking. This starts your circadian clock and sets you up for a restful sleep when it is time for bed that evening.
• Avoid the stress and stimulation from your phone 1 hour before bed.
• Finish your last meal 3 hours before bed.

3. Fermentable / Soluble Fibers

Eat fermentable fibers from vegetable sources. Fermentable fiber sources from food are often overlooked as a supplement for healing leaky gut.

Vegetables are naturally high in fiber, and some of the most nutritious vegetables also contain soluble fibers that feed probiotics while they travel through your digestive tract. These substances include leeks, onions, garlic and asparagus.

4. Try a Probiotic

Consider taking a multi species, high quality probiotic. If you have leaky gut, you need to be careful with different strains. Some will likely help and some may hurt your gut. So be careful and speak to a doctor before doing so.

Introduce more fermented things into your diet: apple cider vinegar, sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha, kefir and yogurt (if you can tolerate dairy).

5. Consider a Healing Autoimmune Diet Protocol

Basically you avoid dairy, eggs, sweeteners, grains, nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant) and processed food. These components are known inflammation starters in the body, so they are best avoided. Learn more about the autoimmune diet.

6. Eat Glycine and Glutamine Containing Foods Like Gelatin

Glycine is the most powerful anti inflammatory amino acid there is. It is plentiful in bone broth, gelatin, collagen and some cuts of meat. It rebuilds your GI tract by laying down new tissue in your mucosal lining. Other foods with it are chicken wings, feet, pork skin and flank steak.

Many of the suggestions above are not sexy but they are incredibly important! Before you consider any fancy supplements or witch-doctor remedies, first make any lifestyle changes necessary that are sustainable to long term health.

These changes are geared toward managing stress. Only when we start to manage stress in our lives can we start to restore healthy gut flora and eventually rebuild the damaged intestinal lining of our leaky gut.

Remember the bucket analogy? Choose wisely what you fill your bucket with. When you know you’ll be bogged down with work, it’s probably not the best idea to start a new diet for beach season or train for a triathlon..

Bone Broth and Gut Health

Bone broth and gut health are forever linked because of the unique amino acids found in it. It is full of glycine, proline, glucosamine and glutamine. These four help heal your GI tract by forming new connective tissue. This tissue gradually heals the tiny holes in your gut, ensuring that you can properly digest food and get all the nutrients and minerals from it.

Learn more about bone broth for gut health.

Beyond Nutrition

Some other important things to consider about stress is our relationships. You need take steps to remedy any toxic relationships you have with people in your life.

Sometimes this means gradually removing yourself from these relationships. Only then can your body recover.

I personally don’t think you need to take a probiotic at all times. But if you’re going on antibiotics, take laxatives, get food poisoning or you know that you have leaky gut syndrome, it’s a good idea to introduce a quality probiotic.

How long should I take a probiotic?

It takes a few days to a few weeks for your gut flora to start restoring and building. A good rule (as gross as it sounds) is to let your poop guide you according to gut expert Konstantin Monastyrsky. Your stool should be light, moist and fluffy.

Still with me after that? Good!

You should also rotate your probiotic every few weeks to ensure that you’re re-populating your gut with diverse bacteria.

How does bone broth help heal leaky gut?

Bone broth contains the perfect blend of the right amino acids and proteoglycans to rebuild the damaged mucosal layer of your intestinal lining. Look for a Chicken Bone Broth Powder with 12 g of protein per serving.

Bone broth is high in glutamine and glycine. Both have been shown to help repair the cell wall in the guts of critically ill patients with intestinal permeability (science term for leaky gut).

Bone broth also contains glucosamine. Yes that same glucosamine that is found in expensive nutritional supplements for joint health.

Glucosamine directly helps rebuild the glycosaminoglycan (GAG) layer of your gut which has been implicated in Chrohn’s, rheumatoid arthritis and a host of other autoimmune diseases.

Leaky Gut Syndrome Summary

So there you have it, a lengthy primer on the importance of gut flora, your microbiome and leaky gut syndrome.

My goal is to get you to be more mindful with your daily choices -- everything is a tradeoff, and a lot of this is in our control. Don’t let someone tell you otherwise.

I’d love to hear if you’ve experienced any gut issues and how you’ve resolved them. Please leave a comment below.

What are the benefits of consuming bone broth for leaky gut?

The benefits of consuming bone broth for leaky gut are the following:

1. It has the right blend of amino acids and proteoglycans to rebuild the damaged mucosal layer of your GI tract.
2. It's high in glutamine and glycine: these two amino acids have been shown to help repair the cell wall of critically ill patients with leaky guts
3. It has glucosamine which rebuilds a the damaged layer of your GI system

Nutrition recipes and meals for leaky gut

You can make your own bone broth beverages for leaky gut. Here is my personal favorite recipe.

• 1-2 Cups Bone Broth
• Juice of 1/2 lemon
• ¼ Tsp turmeric (or fresh grated)
• 1 Tsp fresh grated ginger (or ¼ tsp dried)
• 1-2 Cloves minced garlic
• Pinch cayenne

Bone Broth Recipe for Leaky Gut

Here is a simple bone broth recipe for leaky gut.

1. Add bones / carcass / parts (lamb, duck are great too!) to a stock pot or slow cooker.
2. Add water until they're are covered (try 12 cups).
3. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat. You need a high temperature.
4. Skim foamy fat / scum that bubble up to the surface. Skim 2-3 times as needed over the first hour.
5. Simmer broth for 16 hours. Place lid on top overnight to minimize reduction.
6. Add vegetables and herbs for the few hours.
7. When cook time is done, remove solids from your pot using spider strainer. 
8. Strain through a fine mesh strainer / sieve 
9. Transfer jars / containers to the fridge to cool. 
10. Remove fat cap from your jars if desired. It works great for cooking.
11. Add salt to taste.

Store in the refrigerator for 3-4 days or in the freezer for 6 months. You can make it fish fish bones, but only simmer then for 1 hour or so.

This can be used for an Instant Pot, simply cook on high for 1.5 hours.

image credit: BALLENABLANCA

image credit: Healthily