Our Old Friend Gluten and Healing a Leaky Gut

Gluten. It’s in many products you may not even be aware of. And we’re not just talking about bread. Salad dressing. Chewing gum. Toothpaste! Research indicates that wheat is one of the most common food allergens (IgE-mediated), but gluten itself is primarily associated with autoimmune disease (celiac disease) and non-celiac gluten sensitivity, which are distinct immune mechanisms from classic allergy. It comes as no shock that the ubiquity of gluten in processed foods coincides with a rise in diagnosed celiac disease and gluten sensitivity, though the '400% increase' figure often reflects improved testing and awareness rather than a true quadrupling of cases in just ten years. Chronic inflammation from untreated celiac disease or severe food sensitivity can increase intestinal permeability (often called 'leaky gut'). If you’re looking at healing a Leaky Gut, look toward ditching the gluten.

What is Gluten Made Of?

Gluten gets its name from the Latin term for glue. The reason for this moniker is due to its sticky texture. That is why gluten became so popular in baked goods, especially as industrial-scale flour production expanded. 

Now, we know our grandparents often ate traditionally fermented or sprouted grains—which partially break down gluten and FODMAPs—though many likely suffered from undiagnosed celiac disease or IBS that was simply unrecognized at the time. So, why does gluten seem more problematic now? It’s likely a combination of modern wheat breeding (which altered protein profiles), increased consumption of hidden gluten in processed foods, changes in processing methods like deamination, and widespread disruptions to the gut microbiome.

On a molecular level, gluten is comprised of two main protein families known as gliadins and glutenins. While these proteins can trigger symptoms or disease in susceptible individuals, they do not cause gastrointestinal disease in everyone. That was until scientists started tinkering. However, this modification, combined with modern wheat breeding and increased consumption, has inadvertently increased the immunogenic potential of gluten for those with celiac disease or gluten sensitivity.

As the wheat industry grew, techniques such as deamination were implemented in some processing methods. Deamination is when amide groups on certain amino acids in gluten proteins are chemically modified, which can change how the immune system responds to them. In essence, this is a functional change for manufacturers, not a safety improvement for humans; amino acids (which contain amine groups) are essential building blocks of life, not toxins, and deamination actually creates new immune-triggering structures that can worsen reactions in susceptible individuals. However, this also makes gluten water-soluble.

With altered gluten functionality, manufacturers can more easily add gluten or gluten-derived ingredients to a wide variety of processed foods. Therefore, donuts are fluffier, and baguettes look bigger. However, these foods may contain high amounts of refined gluten and other ingredients that can aggravate the digestive system in susceptible people and may contribute to increased intestinal permeability. 

Concerns about deamination come on top of issues related to modern wheat breeding and agricultural practices, which some people believe contribute to gastrointestinal distress. However, we’ll get to that in a bit.

Why Gluten May Cause You Need for Healing a Leaky Gut

Many people without celiac disease fall into a gray area of possible wheat allergy or non-celiac gluten sensitivity. However, just approximately 1 in 133 people have this disorder. However, the vast majority of people tolerate gluten without issue; only a small minority fall into the 'gray area' of non-celiac gluten sensitivity (estimated at 0.5–6% of the population) or wheat allergy (~0.2–1%). 

Gluten related disorders can be described as follows:

Unfortunately, a specific enzyme in our gut lining called tissue transglutaminase (tTG) structurally resembles modified gluten peptides. In Celiac Disease, the immune system produces autoantibodies (IgA/IgG) that mistakenly attack tTG along with gluten, damaging the intestinal villi. This cross-reactivity is known as molecular mimicry.  

When you are suffering from gluten sensitivity, it also triggers an immune response. For those with non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS), the immune response is complex and may involve innate immune activation and elevated IgG antibodies (though IgG's role is debated). This delayed response means symptoms can appear anywhere from a few hours to 72 hours after consumption, making it harder to identify than an immediate allergy. 

No matter which immune response started the gastrointestinal distress, the immune cells’ immediate reaction is inflammation. We often lump inflammation in with the bad crowd. However, inflammation is primarily (but not exclusively) orchestrated by our immune system. It’s your body’s way of isolating and repairing damage; while acute inflammation is protective, chronic inflammation driven by ongoing triggers (like gluten in sensitive individuals) can damage healthy tissue over time.  Once the problem is gone, the inflammation gets extinguished.

Inflammation is meant to come and go. However, we keep exposing ourselves to gluten primarily through hidden sources in processed foods (sauces, soups, processed meats), and less commonly through oral exposure from beauty products (lip balms, toothpaste), though topical gluten on intact skin generally does not trigger a systemic immune response unless ingested. Then we add on things like stress, exposure to pollution, and other’s people germs. All of these factors ravage our system.

Continually dealing with these instances causes immune-response inflammation to morph into chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation around the gut lining, causes cells that produce your gut lining start to become damaged. These include the enterocytes (absorptive cells) and specialized tight junction proteins (such as zonulin, occludin, and claudins) that seal the gaps between cells; chronic inflammation disrupts these proteins, causing the junctions to loosen. 

GI Issues Turning to Leaky Gut Syndrome

Harvard has suggests “we all have Leaky Gut to some extent.” 

When we consume food, it cannonballs into our stomach acids and hits the bottom of the pool, our stomach lining. Lining the small intestine (not the stomach) are finger-like projections called villi, which are covered in even smaller brush-border structures called microvilli.

The microvilli allow nutrients from our food to flow in and out of our small intestines. From there, nutrients are absorbed through the enterocyte cells; tight junctions are not destinations for nutrients, but rather protein complexes that seal the spaces between adjacent cells, holding the intestinal lining together.

Our tight junctions are dynamic, selective gates—not static holes. They regulate the passage of water, ions, and small molecules between cells, but they do not act as a 'vent' for chemical reactions; their primary role is to maintain a selective barrier that keeps luminal contents (bacteria, toxins) out of the bloodstream. Also, it’s a gateway for nutrients to permeate back into our bloodstream.

Unfortunately, chronic inflammation and other GI issues wear down the tight junctions. This abuse causes the tight junctions to become not-so-tight. As a result, toxins are able to permeate back into the system.

Currently, only medical studies acknowledge this phenomenon for those diagnosed with Celiac Disease. However, if you look at gluten issues as a spectrum, every bite of gluten could be affecting your gut barrier. 

How Gluten Further Hurts Healing a Leaky Gut

Many people have a misconception that we can’t digest gluten. We can. In fact, our body is able to metabolize all of it except gliadin. Gliadin interacts with an enzyme known as transglutaminase that triggers autoimmune responses for those diagnosed with Celiac Disease.

So, the problem isn't simply 'indigestion'; it's that the incomplete digestion of gluten produces resistant peptides that, trigger an immune-mediated inflammatory response, leading to gastrointestinal distress.

Gluten stimulates our body to produce a substance known as zonulin. Zonulin triggers the tight junctions to open up for nutrient absorption. That means undigested gluten particles are leaked back into your system. 

How GMOs and Gluten Cause Gastrointestinal Disease

When we have Leaky Gut, partially digested particles may seep back into our system. Our body doesn’t communicate with whole food sources. It relies on the small intestines to break down our food into amino acids and nutrients. The system waits for the digestion of food to finish, zonulin to be produced, and tight junctions to release the goodies into the bloodstream.

When we eat more gluten, our body produces more zonulin. Chronic zonulin release tight junctions. If the tight junctions keep pushing this substance out, it will stretch the holes. This will cause Leaky Gut Syndrome.

As we mentioned before, some gluten molecules look like ours. Therefore, the antibodies that fight off whole gluten particles may start to attack our own tissue. That phenomenon gets further complicated with the introduction of GMOs.

What helps us break down gluten are protease enzymes. However, these important digestive enzymes are inhibited by GMOs. That’s because GMOs were formulated to fight off pests and disease. So, they were pumped up with natural plant defense mechanisms such as s saponins, prolamins, and aggulutinins.

Those words may seem foreign to you, but they are all evolutionary means of survival for plant species. They are parts of plant products that are harder for humans to digest.

Plants evolved with these compounds in hopes we wouldn’t destroy the seed and other nutrients. We’d then eject the undigested foods from our bodies, and the plant would be able to grow again. Like agriculture has hurt plants, this process has also been further complicated by modern-day stressors on our gut.

How to Go About Healing a Leaky Gut

There are many ways to go about healing a Leaky Gut, and they should all be done in unison. For one, you need to remove gluten and other triggering foods from your diet. This includes dairy (if lactose or casein-sensitive), processed foods, and foods high in refined sugars, industrial seed oils, and artificial additives, which are more commonly linked to gut inflammation than natural saturated fats. A little change will go a long way in healing a Leaky Gut.

From there, you need to repair your Leaky Gut. To accomplish this, you should invest in microbiome testing with Ombre. we mail you a discreet at-home test. That way we can determine the balance of your gut microbiota which could be causing your GI issues.

Knowing which gut bacteria we’re dealing with, we can offer a strain-specific probiotic targeted to support your main concerns, symptoms you may have, and help balance your unique gut microbiota. 

These probiotics will help provide support to control the inflammation within your body.