To heal your leaky gut there are certain foods you should avoid eating and other foods that you should eat more of or should start eating. In this post I will explain which foods to remove.

The most important food to remove from your diet are gluten-containing foods.

There is a lot of 'noise' around gluten and whether or not you should remove them from your diet. Because you have Endometriosis, removing gluten from your diet is an important strategy.

Let me explain why.

There is a strong connection between autoimmune diseases (where your immune system starts attacking healthy organs and tissues instead of bacteria and viruses) and Endometriosis. Women with Endometriosis have been found to have an immune response to gluten similar to people with Coeliac Disease.

The immune response to gluten creates a vicious circle which makes the reaction worse over time:

• The gluten weakens the connections between the cells in the lining of your gut.
• Contents of your gut can then 'leak' through.
• Your immune system classifies these leaked particles as invaders and produces antibodies to fight them off.
• Which leads to inflammation of the gut.
• The inflammation further weakens the gut lining.
• Etc.

In a study done in 2012, where patients with painful Endometriosis were put on a gluten-free diet for 12 months, 75% of patients saw a clear improvement in pain after 12 months. They also noticed improvements in physical functioning, general health perception, vitality, social functioning, and mental health. The other 25% saw no change, and nobody reported that their symptoms had worsened.

As with many autoimmune-like diseases (Endometriosis has not yet been formally classified as an auto-immune disease), we are not completely clear on why the immune system goes crazy. But we do have good evidence that removing gluten from your diet can improve your symptoms!

Another important food to remove is dairy. The protein in dairy (so not the lactose – going lactose-free is not going to help you at all) causes the same issues as gluten.

The third type of food to remove is soy and oestrogen producing foods. Although Endometriosis is not caused by an excess of oestrogen (one of the two female hormones), women with Endometriosis do have higher levels of oestrogen and the endometrial tissue outside the uterus reacts to oestrogen levels in the same way as the endometrial tissue in your uterus: it sheds and bleeds. So, it makes sense to avoid adding more oestrogen to your system.

And the final type of food to remove from your diet are processed foods.  Anything that comes in a packet contains not only lots of sugar and salt, but many additives that our digestive systems simply can’t process. Even people who don’t have a leaky gut who eat a lot of processed foods are affected. Processed foods cause irritation, inflammation and worsen your leaky gut.

If all of this is making your feel overwhelmed and you’re not sure where to start to heal your leaky gut, my program “12 Weeks to Eat Your Way to Less Pain” provides you with a step-by-step process, meal plans and recipes to help you heal your leaky gut and reduce your Endo symptoms.