A Timeline on How Long Does It Take To Heal Your Gut

If you’re suffering from a leaky gut, then it’s most likely that the most common gastrointestinal symptoms associated with it will be hampering your everyday life.

But contrary to this, not experiencing any such symptoms isn’t a sign of a healthy gut either.

This study found that about 22% of people with gut issues might not experience any gastrointestinal symptoms until there’s significant damage to their small intestine. Well, this is why cleansing your gut is so important for overall health and well-being.

And if you’re already on your journey to gut lining repair, questions such as “How long does it take to heal your gut?” and “How can I recover my gut health fast?” must be popping into your head every now and then. If so, then you’re at the right place.

Here we’re going to discover how long it takes to heal the gut. But first, let’s start by understanding the importance of repairing a leaky gut.

Importance of Leaky Gut Repair

Leaky gut, also referred to as increased intestinal permeability, is a condition in which the gut lining is damaged (having holes or large cracks). This may result in bacteria, antigens, toxins, or partially digested food penetrating into the bloodstream.

Our gut includes over 4,000 square feet of the intestinal epithelial lining. This lining regulates what gets into our bloodstream. When damaged, this lining doesn’t function effectively as a barrier and may allow unwanted toxins into our bloodstream. This can lead to changes in the gut microbiota or trigger inflammation, further causing digestive or other issues.

Leaky gut or intestinal permeability defects are also associated with health problems such as:

Allergies
Depression
Fibromyalgia
Skin disorders
Chronic fatigue syndrome

The most common symptoms of a leaky gut include diarrhea, fatigue, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, gas, or bloating. However, the symptoms may vary depending on the underlying cause of the leaky gut, which might be celiac disease, IBD, IBS, etc.

An unhealthy gut is also often linked to issues such as type-2 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, weight gain, acid reflux, autoimmune conditions, arthritis, anxiety, heart disease, and cancer. Furthermore, a healthy immune system also depends on a healthy gut. The reason is, approximately 70-80% of immune tissue is located in the digestive system.

Thus, it’s incredibly important to repair a leaky gut or address an unhealthy gut for optimal health and well-being.

Factors for a Leaky Gut

In order to know “How long does gut lining take to heal” we first need to understand the factors for a leaky gut.

The time required for the healing may depend on how you’re approaching the issue. Meaning, how much do you care about factors such as diet or stress level management that may be contributing to the issue in the first place?

Diet

Often it’s advised by the doctors to avoid inflammatory foods that could negatively impact the gut flora. These foods include:

Alcohol
High-fat foods
Processed foods
High-sugar foods
Gluten or dairy (as they may trigger allergies for some)

People with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) are sometimes even recommended a low FODMAP diet (a diet low in fermentable carbs). This is supposed to help relieve leaky gut symptoms.

Thus, being serious about your diet and eliminating foods that trigger health issues is very important.

Healing Foods

Foods containing probiotics and prebiotics are known to promote healthy bacteria in the gut. Including bananas, kimchi, kefir, berries, and probiotic yogurt in your diet is highly beneficial for healing a leaky gut.

Increasing your intake of high-fiber foods and gut-healing foods rich in probiotics and prebiotics in your diet is very important to speed up recovery.

Gut Problem Severity

The time required to repair your gut is directly proportional to the severity of your gut problem. This means the more damage done, the more time to repair.

Bloody stool, abdominal swelling, severe pain, fever, persistent nausea, and vomiting are a few symptoms of severe damage. You must also seek immediate medical attention if you experience any such symptoms.

Stress

A 2017 study found that chronic stress harms gut bacteria, which can disrupt the effective functioning of the digestive system. Thus, getting proper sleep and avoiding any day-to-day stressors is significant in managing stress levels and in turn gut health.

Stages of General Gut Health

1 Month	Determining your own inflammatory foods.	There are foods that our bodies like and tolerate well. At the same time, there are foods that our bodies don’t like and tolerate well. Sometimes, we simply don’t have an idea of what foods our bodies dislike. Thus, determining your own inflammatory foods and eliminating them from your diet can help you make progress in as little as 30 days.
2 Months	A good starting point for resetting your gut health or noticing changes.	Thirty to sixty days is the period of initial healing, where some changes could be noticed. You might start experiencing a boost in energy, relief from stomach pain or joint pain, etc. that hints that your gut is healing. For some people with less damaged guts, this period might be enough to reset their gut health. On the contrary, for those with very poor gut health, this would just be a starting point—a good starting point though.
3-6 Months	For those with mild digestive issues to make progress.	This time span is enough for those with moderate digestive issues to make progress. For example, if birth control or antibiotic usage is the cause of your poor gut health, then three to six months should be enough to heal the damage.
1-2 Years	Average healing time for people on the GAPS diet who have moderate to severe gut issues.	For people whose gut health damage is somewhere between moderate and severe, one to two years is the average time required to have their gut health issues under control. Meanwhile, for those on the GAPS diet, which is a strict elimination diet, the average time required for healing the gut is about two years. This diet includes cutting foods such as grains, refined carbs, pasteurized dairy, starchy vegetables, etc.
After 2 Years	Recovery time for those with more severe gut issues.	Sometimes, for people with severe gut issues, the recovery time may even exceed two years. It seems like a long time, but sometimes it may be caused by one or multiple hindrances caused along the healing journey. For example, people may be hit by a stress bout, food poisoning, or other such issues, which may ruin their months-long progress and throw them off their protocol.
Lifetime Care	The maintenance that we all need to do.	If you think you’re free of gut health issues for a lifetime once you make a complete recovery, then you’re wrong. Your leaky gut may have been repaired entirely, but maintaining that good gut health is a lifelong journey. Eating non-so-healthy foods or other chronic factors might reverse all your progress and get you back to where you started. Thus, maintenance is very important. Including healing foods in your diet and avoiding unhealthy foods, along with eliminating stressors as much as possible, is part of the lifelong ongoing journey.

Frequently Asked Questions Relating to Leaky Gut

How Long Does It Take To Repopulate the Gut With Good Bacteria?

Taking proper measures to repopulate your gut with good bacteria might take somewhere between a month to six months. Having said that, the timeline may vary depending on the extent of damage caused, underlying issues, and one’s dedicated efforts to repopulate the bacteria.

In general, it takes a maximum of about half a year to rebuild a healthy microbiome provided that one adopts correct habits such as a healthy diet, proper sleeping habits, and stress management. In order to further maintain a healthy gut microbiome, one needs to continue these habits.

Here’s how you can heal a leaky gut fast.

How Do I Know My Gut Is Healing?

There are lab tests available to determine if your gut is healing. However, the improvement in your initial symptoms is the biggest tell-tale sign that your gut health is improving.

For example, if your irregular bowel movements start to regulate, your skin issues clear up, your food sensitivity goes away, or you’re getting rid of constant bouts of diarrhea/constipation, etc. All these are good signs indicating that your leaky gut is healing.

Conclusion

Having considered all of the above information, you might think that healing the gut is a time-consuming process. But much to your surprise, the gut can sometimes be healed in as little as two weeks, given you don’t have any chronic conditions like inflammation, autoimmunity, or any sort of food sensitivity.

The reason is that our gut-lining cells, also called enterocytes, regenerate constantly. This regeneration is so fast that a healthy individual gets a completely new gut lining in a matter of two to three weeks.

A dietary change can significantly cause changes in the activity of gut bacteria in as little as just two to three days. On the contrary, in the case of other health issues along with or associated with an unhealthy gut, it may contribute to slow progress.

Therefore, depending upon various factors as mentioned above, the healing time of your gut may vary from somewhere between six months to even as long as a year.

Using a good supplement like Optimal Healthy Gut Solution is another way to speed up recovery. Our supplement is specially formulated to provide digestive support and heal leaky gut syndrome.

A Timeline on How Long Does It Take To Heal Your Gut

Importance of Leaky Gut Repair

Factors for a Leaky Gut