Alessio Fasano

And all these antigens from our diets can be triggering leaky gut.

There's some great work by Alessio Fasano at MGH with this molecule zonulin and showing that when we eat things, and there are a number of foods which can trigger leaky gut, the major ones are gluten, alcohol non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs but i'm beginning to really believe that in many people there are a myriad of things which can trigger the release of this molecule called zonulin and when zonulin gets released all of these occlude in and adhere injunctions that bind the cells of the gut lining go back and they they fall apart the gut gets leaky and what do you think happens then all these antigens from the gut all this food matter all these signals just rain on the immune system.

And the immune system goes, oh my gosh, it just freaks out.

And we know this happens.

There's a great talk from Alessio Fasano that I've heard where he says that we can actually look at immune cells and we can look at markers on the immune cells and see where they originated.

And when we do studies with people who have multiple sclerosis, which is an autoimmune condition in the brain, we can see that those immune cells which are pulling the myelin sheath off the neurons in multiple sclerosis in the brain, where did they originate? They originated in the gut.

They originated in the gut.

I really want you to start asking, could my body or my child's body be giving me clues about what's actually happening underneath the surface? Okay, so let's talk about what could be happening underneath the surface, or in other words, root causes that might be contributing to alopecia.

Dr. Alessio Fasano's research, he's a leading immunologist.

He has made the connection that leaky gut is at the root of all chronic preventative disease, which includes all cancers, heart disease, metabolic disease, autoimmunity, including alopecia.

And there's more chronic preventative diseases, but...

after the birth of my daughter.

But what I can tell you is that when I started talking about leaky gut almost 20 years ago, no one other than perhaps those in functional medicine and Alessio Fasano, whose team has done the most research on leaky gut and intestinal permeability, these were the only people talking about it.

So when people were coming to see me, they were really, you know, deer in the headlight.

What are you talking about? There was no information out there.

And so we are going to see more and more GI doctors because now they have a prescription drug solution to this problem talking about this.

And so this is where I think you probably know and many of your practitioners know that what we see out in the research area and in clinical practice is often 10 to 20 years ahead of What ultimately gets into conventional practice, right? They have been researching.

I mean, when I was talking about leaky gut 15, 20 years ago, Alessio Fasano's team had already been researching this for 10 years.

So I was already sort of behind, you know, behind the eight ball when it came to this.

And when I say infections, these are latent infections, uh, such as herpes, Epstein-Barr, and of course COVID and long COVID, and then, um, relieve your stress and let go of trauma.

And so just, you know, we know, and we've known, uh, for many years now with the research of Alessio Fasano, the role of intestinal permeability or leaky gut in autoimmunity.

And so there's this, this thought process that you, you know, have to have a leaky gut, then perhaps there's a genetic pr- predisposition, although we know that there are a lot of people with autoimmunity now, as, as well as cancers, right, that are getting them that don't actually-

Mm-hmm

We also know-

Hmm

... again, through the work of Alessio Fasano, that i- in everybody, if you eat gluten, it creates a leaky gut.

Literally everybody.

Um, that's a good question, and there's actually, I think, lots of data, some in the animal world, you know, always less of it in the human world, that if you look at what disrupts our intestinal wall, our, you know, enterocytes, what leads to the leaking of lipopolysaccharides, bacterial products? It leads to the rise in a chemical called zonulin not everybody hears about, but, uh, Dr.

Alessio Fasano at Harvard has done so much amazing research on zonulin.

It's saturated fat.

And coconut oil is one of the worst.

the gateway to autoimmunity for sure.

Leaky gut, I've interviewed Alessio Fasano several times, who's the researcher that discovered zonulin.

And my first interview 15 years ago was, oh, I think this could also be the precipitous to cancer.

And then I interviewed him last year and he said, yes, we have the research to show this.

And then the gluten causes more gut disruption.

Dr. Alessio Fasano at Harvard has done the work on this.

Everybody, pretty much everybody who eats wheat, it causes some level of leaky gut.

It causes some disruption in the intestinal barrier.