Whole Wheat May Improve Intestinal Wall Integrity

“Leaky gut” is now widely accepted as a contributor to many diseases. Scientists at Denmark’s National Food Institute and the Technical University of Denmark conducted a 12-week energy-restricted intervention with 70 postmenopausal women to observe the effect of a whole wheat diet (n=37) vs a refined wheat diet (n=33). Women who ate the whole wheat diet had significant increases in beneficial bifidobacteria, and an unexpected increase in “trans-epithelial resistance,” a measure of the permeability of the intestinal wall that shows a decrease in “leaky gut.”
European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2013 Dec; 67(12):1316-21. (Christensen et al.)