I Have a Leaky What?
By Dr. Renae Norton
People often ask me how I got interested in “Food Pollution.”, a term that I coined nearly 20 years ago. It all started when I began my research on this book decades ago into the catastrophic health problems plaguing Americans. I simply could not believe what I was seeing. The notion that the U.S. food supply was knowingly and willingly polluted to increase profits for Big Farming, Big Food, and Big Pharma was mind bending. But that was what was happening.
I could see what it was costing us as a nation in terms of health and what it was costing us on an individual basis in terms of human suffering. I was in a unique position to notice these problems. As a psychologist treating specific eating disorders (ED) and obesity, I was seeing dramatic changes in the complications that my ED and obese patients were displaying. These “new” complications among my patients were posing a threat to their recovery. If I couldn’t get a handle on what was happening to them, and why, I might not be able to help them.
In addition, I was personally experiencing several health issues that threatened to rob me of my independence and my livelihood and I had family members facing similar problems. As a result, I was highly motivated to understand what was driving the problems both professionally as well as personally.
The shift in the types of complications I was seeing in a population that I had been treating for many years focused primarily on gut issues and skyrocketing anxiety. I was an early adopter when it came to the use of the term “leaky gut”, a condition that occurs when holes are created in the lining of the gut by toxic substances like pesticides, alcohol or bad fats.
What I ultimately discovered was that you cannot have an autoimmune disease without having a leaky gut. I’m not even sure that I really understood what autoimmune diseases were back then, but I know now that that was a big part of what I was seeing in my ED patients; symptoms of Alopecia Areata, Urticaria, Psoriasis, Systemic Sclerorderma, Renaud’s, Lupus, MS, Vitiligo, and Thyroid diseases like Hashimoto’s and Grave’s Disease were all accompanied by the bloating caused by leaky gut syndrome (LGS.) All of these conditions require a leaky gut.
As to the unusually high levels of anxiety, it turns out that 90% of the body’s serotonin resides in the gut. Serotonin is the neurotransmitter that regulates mood. If we lose most of it due to a leaky gut, anxiety is going to be a problem. In addition, if we have a leaky gut, we may also have a leaky brain, which means, you guessed it, more anxiety. This is important in the context of ED’s, in as much as I view an eating disorder, such as anorexia, as an anxiety disorder with a focus, i.e. to lose weight.
Finally, I was seeing an uptick in uncontrolled weight gain and many inflammatory conditions, such as arthritis and/or chronic illnesses, affecting people who were still very young.
At first, I thought it was just my ED population that was having these problems. But a year or so after I started researching in earnest, I realized that the problems my ED patients were having were also reflected in the population at large. I was fascinated by what I was finding because it turned out that we were drastically less healthy and were aging very poorly compared to other wealthy nations around the world. This is how it all began and what started me down the path of ‘identifying’ “Food Pollution” and “Food Pollution Disorder”, (FPD). I developed a model to depict FPD.
A good model is robust; meaning it accurately explains or predicts outcomes for, in this case, diseases that are food related. Let me know what you think or if you are suffering from FPD, If so call me at 513-205-6543. I’m Dr. Renae Norton, I’m a Wellness researcher, writer and coach and I can help 🙂
