Is Exercise Causing Your Leaky Gut?

When considering a healthy lifestyle, exercise is often a component of that.  The details of “what is healthy exercise” tends to be the real debate.  When prescribing exercise to a patient, the goal is always to have exercise induce healthy signaling to cells in order to enhance normal metabolism, detoxification, and hormone production.  We want this healthy signaling to happen while performing movement that is low risk because movement that may promote damaging signals or cause injury is counter-intuitive to the health agenda at hand.  This is an easier article to write if the focus is simply hormone production and low risk movement patterns.  It becomes more tricky when you start considering how exercise may be contributing to intestinal permeability, aka leaky gut.  If you are unfamiliar with this term, check out a prior article I wrote on what it is and how it happens here.

When you perform high intensity workouts or exercise for long durations, you actually induce intestinal permeability.  The fact that this happens can also be an argument to justify shorter durations and longer recovery times.  If we are thinking in general, it is probably not the best idea to be doing vigorous workouts on a daily basis because over-exercising is a real thing!  Not only can it begin to have a catabolic effect, induce cortisol issues, and create real fatigue issues, it can cause leaky gut.  Leaky gut is the precursor to autoimmune diseases and should not be taken lightly. This is also a part of exercise-induced immune suppression.  That’s right.  You actually have a period of time after exercise where your immune system is suppressed.  So, if you are a person that wants to train at an elite level and stay healthy while maintaining a normal intestinal lining, what do you do?

  1. Eat a diet free from foods that can contribute to intestinal damage such as wheat, processed foods, sugars, and commercial dairy products.
  2. Stay away from alcohol when in high training seasons.  Alcohol contributes to leaky gut.
  3. Get adequate rest and sleep for recovery.
  4. Don’t overtrain.
  5. Take supplements that will keep your immune system up:
    1. Beta-glucans are a yeast-derived products that prime neutrophils (immune cells) to act quickly and efficiently if you get an infection. Look for those containing “Wellmune”
    2. Colostrum is a product that contains antibodies to give the body a donated immune system in addition to growth factors that stimulate healing of the gut lining.

When athletes take colostrum during peak training season, they have virtually no sign of leaky gut in comparison to their counterparts that don’t take colostrum.  A recent study was just published on the topic, and it really is remarkable.  When we think about why colostrum can provide such a service to the intestine, we need to think about nature’s original intention.  Colostrum is the first milk produced for baby.  Every baby is born with leaky gut (this is normal for an infant!) but it’s colostrum and mother’s milk that provides the immune factors such as antibodies in addition to the growth factors that will ultimately create a normally developed intestinal lining.  In a bubble, this lining would never encounter processed food, antibiotics, excessive workouts, etc.  But we live in 2017 and people have so many damaging things happening in everyday life.

If you are an athlete that doesn’t want your exercise regime to cause damage to the intestines that will ultimately hurt the immune system, consider taking colostrum.  It’s a classic story that any athlete will tell you: inevitably, game day rolls around and that’s when you get sick!  Either that or it’s often during peak training season.  I wouldn’t want to train all year for something and then get sick right before competition!  We can use these types of discoveries to leverage food to our advantage in addition to knowing how to adjust lifestyle habits like exercise frequency. On a side note: there have been Olympic teams known to take colostrum because of the factors that enhance performance without it being a growth hormone type product.  So, there could be some performance benefits in addition to health benefits!

If you are interested in all the recent study details, click here!

If you are interested in protecting your intestines and immune system without changing your training schedule, check out my fullscript dispensary for Wholemune (beta-glucans) and IgG Protect (colostrum).  Many functional medicine doctors and chiropractors will have these products, too!


Autoimmunity and Exercise (Part VII)

At this point in the autoimmune series, you can understand why I was reluctant to write an article in the first place! It is so complex, complicated, and multifaceted. So, if I were going to touch on another lifestyle change someone can easily implement, it would be exercise. Unfortunately, exercise is one category where you can have too much of a good thing, especially if you suffer from autoimmunity. There is a point where movement is healthy, beneficial, and will IMPROVE your immune system. On the flip side, if someone’s system is under extreme demand, their adrenals are shot, and they are often stressed, you can easily overdo it. Then the question becomes, what types of exercise are best, and how much.
Exercise is very closely related to your adrenals and the production of cortisol. Cortisol is a steroidal hormone that helps you keep up with stress and is important in the fight or flight response. These spikes in cortisol production should be short-lived and not chronic by any means. However, many of us live stressful, hectic lives and some add tons of exercise on top of it. This is a recipe for adrenal fatigue, and if you want to read more on that, click here.  The more intense you exercise, the more cortisol you release.  This disrupts something we call the HPA axis, which is important in regulating hormones and the immune system.   The types of exercise that stimulate the HPA Axis disruption the most are chronic cardio and and high intensity exercise.  That means that if you have an autoimmune disease, you may be doing more damage than good if you try to run marathons (or any long distance) or Crossfit.  It doesn’t mean you can’t participate in these workouts, but it does mean you need to be smart about it!  Resistance training does not have the same effect on cortisol if it is practiced alone.  This means that weight lifting or body weight movements at lower intensities may be a great option for those with autoimmunity or adrenal fatigue! If you decide to participate in physical activity that is too strenuous for your body to keep up with the cortisol production, guess what, you can CAUSE LEAKY GUT.  We talked about how leaky gut is how this whole thing got started in the first place!  It’s a classic case of too much of a good thing.  Balance is key and more doesn’t always mean better.

As far as how exercise affects the immune system, it can cause a huge inflammatory response.  Any exercise someone does at more intensity that usual for longer than usual, is mobilizing neutrophils and natural killer cells.  This type of exercise also stimulates phagocytosis and increases the production of inflammatory compounds.  In studies, we see that following acute exercise,  the number of T and B cells (immune cells) drop below the levels they were BEFORE every working out.  This quickly recovers if someone has adequate recovery time.  However, if there isn’t sufficient days between these types of workouts, then it is common for athletes to get sick!

Now we understand that we may need to back off the intensity, how often should we be working out if we have an autoimmune condition?  I like to say High Intensity work should not be done more than 2 times a week.  That would include intervals, Crossfit, intense cardio.  You should leave at least 2 days between those sessions for proper cellular repair and recovery.  In between, yoga, walking, leisurely biking are all amazing, repairing options.  You can also add some resistance training  like weight lifting or body weight movements like squats, push ups, pull ups, etc to the mix.  The key here is to keep your heart rate down when you are avoiding high intensity.  This may mean doing less initially which seems counter-intuitive because we all want to look good naked. However, chronic cardio and too much high intensity activity are driving your adrenals into the ground.  Once that happens, your body will begin taking building blocks from hormone production in order to try to keep up with cortisol production.  It doesn’t care how fertile you are, heavy your periods are, or how horny you are if it is trying to survive a flight or flight experience! As far as our genetics are concerned, stressful situations are life and death.  That is why de-stressing is so important.

If you have cut out gluten, upped your fat soluble vitamins, addressed you stomach acid, and quit taking miscellaneous medications, this could be your next step in the equation.  Exercise should be a positive challenge to the body.  If overdone, it most definitely acts in the opposite direction.  Choose something FUN.  I like group classes because community makes every second fun for me.  I really enjoy sports. Join a sports club.  Take family walks.  Movement does not have to be a dreaded to-do on the endless list.  It should and could be something you ENJOY and LOOK FORWARD TO!  If you haven’t found that type of movement yet, then keep searching.  Different strokes for different folks.  The more you can do outside, the better, too.


Exercise: No Play, No Gain

This is another post based on the speakers I attended at Paleo(fx) in Austin.  There were a few speakers that focused specifically on exercise, and I’ll be touching on the more complex theory behind Mark Sisson’s talk, but for now, this is all about a reality check for trainer, Darryl Edwards.  I really connected with his story because, like most of us, I have fallen out of love with exercise at points in my life.  Most people who are active will get really pumped at some point about a new sport, a new workout routine, a new fitness regime.  They will go all in, 110%, cult-syle.  To be honest, I did this with Crossfit!  I loved the competitive feel of the workouts, the opportunity to push my limits, an entire community of people doing what I was already doing alone (functional movement), and the new-ness of it all.  After a couple years, I fell out of love.  Not because anything had changed.  Nothing had changed but my own pressure around it.  I wanted to keep getting better, I was getting more competitive, I started placing expectation around my performance.  At the same time, I wasn’t focusing enough on fueling and recovery, which meant instead of building, I was breaking down. This environment I created around my workout was forcing me to dread going to the gym! I took a little time off, but never gave it up completely.  I just needed a moment to breathe, to redefine what mattered to me, to be realistic about what I wanted out of it, and to allow it to be fun again.  It could only be fun for me if I dropped my performance expectation and focused on the real goal, which was “funning” with awesome people to maintain my functional abilities.

Darryl also fell out of love with exercise…and he was a trainer.  Ooops.  What now?  As he sat on the couch one day, he wrote a letter to exercise.  His letter mimicked that of a breakup letter to a lover.  He related it to the cycle of a relationship and even though I couldn’t take notes verbatim that quickly, here is the gist:

Exercise,

We started off so strong.  I fell in love with you almost immediately.  I looked forward everyday to spending time with you!  I told everyone I ran into about you, how much fun we were having, how great you were.  As the weeks went on, I started to resent you.  You kept demanding more and more from me.  You were taking all my time.  You were keeping me from things I enjoyed in life.  No matter what I did or how hard I pushed, I was never good enough. I’m sorry to say that it all began to wear on me.  I have strayed.  I have been seduced.  I have fallen out of love with you.  You no longer provide me with those feelings of strength, self-worth, and joy.  I am breaking up with you, and I have found another.  She calls me daily and I have decided to give in to her.  You may know her, for she has stolen many of your other lovers, her name is Couch.

Exercise starts so rewarding, you feel invigorated, you tell everyone about it…until one day it becomes too demanding.  It keeps expecting more from you, it doesn’t feel as good.  You may break up or be seduced by your couch.  How do you fall back in love?  Play.

Having fun is the only way exercise remains enjoyable.  For some people, its engaging in a sport, some love dancing, some love being on a team.  I feel as though in adulthood, groups are great because exercise, activity, and movement are always more fun with you are doing it with other people!  It quickly turns into just another childhood night after school when you ask mom if you can go play.  Create fun in your exercise, and you will be must more apt to continue to move.  That is why I never left Crossfit; I love the people.  It never feels like a chore when I show up to Crossfit Michiana and see the faces of all my peeps.  Some days we are team members working with each other in a workout, other times we are fresh and excited about some friendly competition, and other days we are all “just there.”  Maybe the days we were “just there” weren’t our best performances, but we all left feeling better than before we walked in.  We probably laughed, joked, and for a short moment, forgot about the stresses of the day.  Find your play.  Make it fun.  Exercise for our body is as essential as water.  It’s a daily requirement in some shape or form.  It creates the environment around your genes and encourages healthy genetic expression.  We were meant for movement, and it might as well be called “play.”

Darryl runs a website : primalplay.com