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The mucosal layer in the small intestine degrades with age in rats, allowing digestive enzymes to slowly escape and leak into organs outside the intestine, including the liver, lung, heart, kidney and brain. As the enzymes are unable to distinguish tissues from food, they break down collagen and destroy many receptors on cell membranes, such as the insulin receptor which leads to type 2 diabetes. The researchers call this process autodigestion. Digestion requires powerful enzymes that are synthesized in the pancreas. They are delivered from the pancreas into the lumen of the small intestine, where they digest all the food...

New research has found a link between the important micronutrient zinc and a sensor protein in the gut in the prevention and management of a range of bowel conditions, such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Professor Christer Hogstrand investigated the role of zinc and a sensor named the Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor (AHR) that helps the body react to nutrients, drugs and toxic substances in the bowel. Mice fed a diet containing zinc and a chemical from cruciferous vegetables—such as broccoli—that stimulates the AHR were almost completely alleviated of IBD. In contrast, mice fed a zinc-deficient diet received no benefit from...

Research in people with heart disease risk factors has shown that consuming green tea extract for four weeks can reduce blood sugar levels and improve gut health by lowering inflammation and decreasing "leaky gut." Researchers said this is the first study assessing whether the health risks linked to the condition known as metabolic syndrome, which affects about one-third of Americans, may be diminished by green tea's anti-inflammatory benefits in the gut. In the new study, green tea extract also lowered blood sugar, or glucose, and decreased gut inflammation and permeability in healthy people—an unexpected finding. "What this tells us is...

“Our work demonstrates that the gut bacterial microbiome in chronic fatigue syndrome patients isn’t normal, perhaps leading to gastrointestinal and inflammatory symptoms in victims of the disease,” said Maureen Hanson, a professor of molecular biology and genetics at Cornell. “Furthermore, our detection of a biological abnormality provides further evidence against the ridiculous concept that the disease is psychological in origin.” In a study published this month in the journal Microbiome, Cornell University researchers looked at stool and blood samples of 48 people diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome (or more formally, myalgic encephalomyelitis) and at 39 healthy volunteers. They found two...

Norwegian scientists have discovered the cause of coeliac disease, the auto-immune disorder which causes gluten intolerance in about one in a hundred people Professor Ludvig Sollid and his team at the University of Oslo have discovered that coeliac sufferers have one of two defective human leukocyte antigens (HLAs) which cause the immune system to see gluten molecules as dangerous, triggering an immune response which causes severe inflammation and other symptoms. “When a person who has coeliac disease eats gluten, the immune system reacts to gluten as if it were a virus or a bacterium,” Sollid told Norway’s NRK. “It attacks...