Have you ever had joint pain?
Where your joints feel stiff, tight, swollen… they get red, puffy or knobby and it hurts like hell to bend them, sometimes even to touch them….
If you’re dealing with joint pain, this may just change everything for you…
The solution to joint pain may be in the gut.
Let me explain why…
Think of the blood running through your veins like water through a river.
And the joints are like a delta in that river.
Deltas occur where a river joins with a more stagnant body of water and things like sediment, sludge, empty Coke cans tend to get build up there.
This happens because deltas, like joints, are areas of low circulation.
There’s very little blood flow to the joints so things in the blood tend to get trapped there, like cytokines, immune complexes and antibodies…
AND debris coming from the gut…
Like undigested food particles and microbial waste products.
Just as they sound, these are things you don’t want in the blood stream.
But they can “leak” out if there’s enhanced intestinal permeability (a.k.a. “leaky gut”).
“Leaky gut” is an increasingly common dynamic and one of the key factors that come together to create the perfect storm of autoimmunity (read more about the 4 factors here).
Leaky gut can be a key contributor to painful arthritis.
The gut is separated from the systemic body by a 1-cell thick lining of skin designed to have a tightly regulated level of permeability – just enough to allow nutrients into the blood stream and keep debris from the gut out.
Certain things increase this level of permeability though. Things like NSAIDs (Ibuprofen, aspirin, Aleve), oral birth control pills, antibiotics, steroids, heavy alcohol use, certain microbial overgrowths (eg. candida), toxin exposure, inflammation, stress, can all contribute a loosening of these tight junctions and an increased “leakiness.”
This is how most of food sensitivities develop. Food particles sneak past the gut lining and the immune system goes “hey, that’s not supposed to be there!” and tags it (makes an antibody to it).
Then every time you eat that food and it gets into the blood stream again, your immune system keeps responding with more antibodies. And there’s a stress response (cortisol) that comes with it.
These by products build up in the blood, they settle into these areas of low circulation (the joints) and that in itself attracts an immune response that feels like redness, swelling, inflammation.
And bam, you’ve got arthritis.
So what can we do about joint pain and leaky gut?
We work on stopping the flow of badness coming from the gut (very technical terminology, I know).
- We add in to crowd out potential food sensitivities in the diet.
- We reduce inflammation overall with diet, appropriate supplementation to fill nutrient gaps and relieve pain.
- We address any possible dysbiosis or microbial overgrowths that are perpetuating inflammation in the gut also making it leaky.
- We work on shifting the microbial environment in the gut to support gut healing.
- And finally we work on healing and sealing the gut to the appropriate level of permeability.
After this final phase, joint pain should be totally gone(!!!!).
Food sensitivities that develop secondary to leaky gut usually go away as well over time as the immune system “forgets” to react.
And with the gut healed, sealed, in balance and healthy, you’ve got the tolerance and resilience to eat the foods you like again.
Building back that tolerance and resilience is always my goal.
It takes time, but I’ve seen it happen again and again.
There is a solution to joint pain beyond Advil.
AND turns out the Advil most of us are taking to deal with the pain is only making it worse!
The solution is upstream…
When we go there, we can stop the flow of badness and your joints will recover.
Ready to get started?
Right now there are two ways to work with me:
- Book a Health Evaluation Session (90 minutes).In this 90-minute session we dig deep into what’s going on with your unique body. I review your complete health history and any labs ahead of time. We identify root cause dis-ease dynamics and get you started on your way to better health.
- Become a one-on-one coaching client.In this 3-month minimum individual coaching program, we combine a functional medicine approach with the support and accountability of health coaching so that you can get the roots of what’s causing your symptoms and implement a personalized plan to reverse them and get you back to feeling like yourself again.
Not sure which option is the best fit? Grab some time to chat with me here and let’s talk through it.
Here for ya,
The content in this post is for educational and informational purposes only and is not medical advice.
