Gut Health

Can You Stop Rheumatoid Arthritis with… Your Gut?

If you suffer from rheumatoid arthritis (RA), you know the terrible toll this disease takes on your joints and your life. 

Along with agonizing joint inflammation and crippling pain, patients with RA often

  • Struggle with physical activity
  • Can’t comfortably leave home
  • Often face financial troubles
  • Rely on potentially dangerous medications
  • Have trouble sleeping
  • Suffer from anxiety and depression

Moreover, rheumatoid arthritis is a progressive disease, meaning it normally gets worse over time.

You can enlist your body’s secret weapon – your gut microbiome – to turn things around. Rebalancing the gut microbiome can neutralize some of the biggest factors in RA… and help improve your quality of life.

The Rheumatoid Arthritis-Gut Microbiome Connection

It sounds kind of crazy that bacteria in your gut (your gut microbiome) can affect rheumatoid arthritis activity – but it’s true.

Your gut microbiome consists of trillions of bacteria, some beneficial (probiotics) and some harmful (pathogens). When your microbiome is in healthy balance, and probiotics outnumber pathogens, it keeps inflammation under control and calms down unwanted immune system reactions

When your gut microbiome falls into a state of dysbiosis, and pathogens outnumber probiotics, that can lead to a condition called toxic streaming… which sends inflammation and immune system responses spiraling out of control (which cause autoimmune diseases like RA).

Gut dysbiosis is a “hallmark” of rheumatoid arthritis.

When toxic streaming makes your immune system overreact and sends inflammation to attack your joints, it intensifies RA symptoms… especially throbbing pain… and keeps the disease on its destructive, progressive path.

Toxic Streaming Inflames Rheumatoid Arthritis

Toxic streaming starts with dysbiosis, when harmful bacteria produce toxins called lipopolysaccharides – also known as LPS toxins – that increases inflammation and damages the protective barrier between the gut and the bloodstream.

That protective gut barrier normally keeps food particles, pathogens, and LPS toxins safely inside your gut.  Plus, a healthy, balanced microbiome keeps LPS toxins in check – with fewer pathogens around to create LPS toxins, your body just eliminates them. But in dysbiosis, the bad bacteria create an overwhelming number of LPS toxins.

At the same time, those bad bacteria attack and weaken the gut barrier, letting LPS toxins escape into your bloodstream and cause toxic streaming.  Those LPS toxins circulate, causing inflammation and immune responses all over your body… including in your joints.

But getting your gut microbiome back in a healthy balance stops toxic streaming and gives your joints relief from the constant attacks.

The Benefits of a Balanced Gut Microbiome

Your gut microbiome has an enormous impact on your overall health.  When dysbiosis sets in, your gut transforms from a protector to a disease-enabler.

However, when your gut microbiome is in healthy balance, it protects your health – and your joints – in several important ways. These are just a few of the many benefits a healthy microbiome provides… and the ones most likely to ease rheumatoid arthritis symptoms. A balanced gut microbiome:

  1. stops toxic streaming so it can’t increase RA activity, inflammation, and joint destruction
  2. produces essential nutrients including vitamin K-2, which contributes to healthy bones and joints 
  3. produces short chain fatty acids (SCFAs), such as butyrate, which reduces inflammation in animal models of rheumatoid arthritis
  4. decreases immune system triggers that can lead to RA activity 
  5. reduces inflammation caused by LPS toxins 

Bottom line: Balancing your gut microbiome, and making sure that the good bacteria outnumber the bad, can help ease RA symptoms and slow – even stop – disease progression.

A Balanced Microbiome Brings RA Relief

The only way to stop toxic streaming is to rebalance your gut microbiome. And the only way to do that is with spore probiotics, special strains of beneficial bacteria with superior survival skills and clinically studied gut-healing abilities.

Spore probiotics arrive in the gut alive and ready to recondition your microbiome with beneficial bacteria. In fact, spore probiotics are the only type of probiotics that consistently and completely survive the harsh conditions (like heat and acid) in your digestive system so they can get to your intestines intact. Once there, these spores awaken into powerful probiotics that: 

  • wipe out bad bacteria
  • stop toxic streaming
  • help other beneficial bacteria survive and flourish
  • produce SCFAs and essential nutrients

Plus, scientists have begun to look into how spore probiotics – particularly one known as Bacillus coagulans – might benefit patients with rheumatoid arthritis.

In one recent pilot trial, researchers learned that spore probiotic B. coagulans helped relieve pain for rheumatoid arthritis patients. Within just 60 days, RA patients supplementing with B. coagulans saw:

  • significantly reduced pain scores
  • improved ability to walk 2 miles
  • decreased inflammation markers (included C-reactive protein, or CRP)
  • increased ability to participate in daily activities

Those results help confirm the important role that a healthy, balanced microbiome can play in improving quality of life for RA sufferers.

 Spore Probiotics Balance Your Gut… and Stop Toxic Streaming… So You Can Feel Better

You can count on spore probiotics to conquer toxic streaming and get its consequences under control. And one specific blend of spore probiotics has been shown in a clinical study to reduce LPS toxins by 42%, a crucial step in the battle against toxic streaming.

And you can find that same combination of spore probiotics in Just Thrive:

  • Bacillus coagulans, known for protecting gut health and calming inflammation
  • Bacillus clausii, known to resist damage from a variety of common antibiotics, keeping your microbiome populated with beneficial bacteria even during a course of antibiotics
  • Bacillus subtilis, known to produce more than a dozen defensive compounds that knock out bad bacteria so they can’t flood your system with LPS toxins 
  • Bacillus indicus HU36, known for its unique ability to produce antioxidants right in your digestive tract – where you body can really use them – that help keep toxins from damaging your cells

Get your microbiome back in balance – and improve your quality of life – with Just Thrive today.