Leaky gut occurs when gut cell tight junctions are compromised by an alkaline gut environment or unfavorable microbiota, allowing food particles to enter the bloodstream and trigger antibody formation.

“Leaky gut is when the conditions in the gut are too alkaline or the gut microbiota are off in the gut, meaning microbiota that like alkaline guts are living there. And those tight junctions can't function at that particular pH and you create little holes in that fence. And then what happens is when you ingest foods, some of those foods literally leak out of the gut and into the extracellular space and into the bloodstream. And because foods include proteins and antibodies react to proteins, what ends up happening in leaky gut, and the reason we talk about in auto-immune conditions is that you start developing antibodies to particular food proteins.”