Environmental factors like food, medications, and toxins can disrupt the gut barrier.

“These tightly regulated connections between the cells could be influenced by molecules that come from food. They could influence by molecules that come from the microbes. And once this regulation is disrupted, then leaky gut occurs. A second part of the barrier is the mucus layer that overlays these lining epithelial cells, and the mucus layer in the gut is exceedingly important in separating the bacteria and the food molecules from physically attaching to our human side, to the epithelial cells. And it is increasingly shown that the generation and the preservation of this protective mucus is also regulated by a number of bacterial and environmental factors such as medications, toxins, and food components.”