Dr. Datis Kharrazian

Really, when we get to chronic illness, there's individuality.

Some people may not have any problems with seeds, and some people have significant problems with seeds.

But the processing of seed oils, for sure itself, is most likely the main issue, not so much the food source itself.

But yes, I would say you probably want to limit those.

If you get natural oils, olive oil...

You know, avocado oil is better than sea oils for sure.

Yeah, there's definitely a relationship between leaky gut and leaky brain that are out there.

And we've actually published a paper, I think we published a paper, International Molecular Science, where we looked at some associations between people that have Crohn's and ulcerative colitis.

We measured markers for intestinal permeability and we found really, really high associations there.

and risk factors for them also having leaky brain.

There's different proteins that show up with leaky brain.

They're, you know, not to get too technical, just like S100B aquaporin protein antibodies, but you can measure proteins in a laboratory setting in a research study to determine if someone has some kind of barrier compromise.

But for the most part, there's some relationship specifically to a protein called zonulin.

Zonulin is a messenger protein that opens up the tight junctions of the intestinal tract.

And they also open up the tight junctions in the brain.

So the signaling mechanisms and the molecules that open up the tight junctions in the blood-brain barrier are identical to the gut barrier and also identical to the lung barrier.

So usually when there are inflammatory mechanisms or things that increase zonulin level elevation, like people have celiac disease, when they get exposure to gluten, there's an increase of zonulin.

Zonulin is going to open up all the barriers.

It's going to open up the blood-brain barrier, the gut barrier, the lung barrier.

Defensive and physiologically, zonulin is there to open up barriers so we can get rid of a pathogen or get rid of a substance that's in our gut or in our lung barrier or in our brain.