Brain gut hormone axis involved?
Studies show leaky brain syndrome can also cause a slowed metabolism and weight gain. The reasons how and why this can happen is not that difficult to understand. You see, the brain has always been in charge of the metabolism.
More and more functional medicine patients are becoming familiar with the notorious leaky gut syndrome. If you have leaky gut, chances are you have leaky brain too as similar mechanisms cause it.
The hypothalamus in your brain is in charge of balancing calories in and calories out. The hormones leptin and insulin regulate the hypothalamus. They send signals to the hypothalamus letting it know how much fat you have and how much fat you need to burn or store. If everything is working correctly, when your calorie intake increases, you will simply burn more calories. In this way, you’ll never become too heavy or too thin. In other words, your brain and hormones balance your weight at your setpoint weight
NEUROLOGICAL INFLAMMATION? HYPOTHALAMUS?
But when this syndrome causes neurological inflammation, these signals stop working. The hypothalamus either no longer receives these signals or it cannot read them correctly. The result is that it gives you more fat. Your brain and hormones now work to hold on to extra weight, and it doesn’t matter how little you eat or how hard you workout at the gym. If you do lose weight by cutting calories, you’ll gain all the weight back as soon as you go off that diet.
In other words, cutting-edge research proves neurological inflammation raises setpoint weight, making it nearly impossible to lose those extra pounds until you heal the inflammation.
A 2016 study in The Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry boldly declares neurological inflammation to be a likely cause of hormonal dysregulation leading to obesity. That’s not the only study linking neurological inflammation to an elevated setpoint weight and consequent weight gain.
WHAT IS A LEAKY BRAIN’S AFFECT ON MY PHYSICAL HEALTH?
Studies even show leaky brains affect physical health. Specifically, the neurological inflammation it causes leads to high blood pressure and insulin resistance that increases the risk for disease.
In fact, several studies have demonstrated that neurological inflammation leads to insulin resistance and other symptoms of metabolic syndrome, all of which increase the risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and kidney disease. (Metabolic syndrome has just recently emerged as a valid risk factor for kidney disease.)
But leaky brain does not just cause symptoms of metabolic syndrome. A review published in the Medical Hypotheses Journal found that leaky brain may contribute to chronic fatigue syndrome, a condition that causes extreme tiredness.
