In a healthy gut, the opportunists are limited and tightly controlled by the beneficial flora. But when beneficial flora is weakened and damaged, the opportunists get out of control. Each of these microbes are capable of causing various health problems. There are 500 different species of them found in the human gut. The best-known opportunist microbe is the fungus Candida albicans, which causes untold misery to millions of people especially because of antibiotics. After every course of antibiotics, Candida albicans is left without anything to control it, so it grows and thrives. Apart from antibiotics, it flourishes on sugar and processed carbohydrate diet which now dominate our eating habits.

Interestingly, many of these opportunistic bacteria, when in small numbers and under control, actually fulfill some beneficial functions in the gut, like taking part in the digestion of food, breaking down lipids and bile acids. But when out of control, some opportunists get access to the gut wall and damage its integrity making it “leaky”. Some have an ability to, due to their shape, to push apart the intestinal cells. Breaking down the integrity of the intestinal wall and allowing through substances which normally should not get through. Candida albicans has this ability. Its cells attach themselves to the gut lining, literally putting “roots” through it and making it “leaky”. Partially digested foods get through this leaky gut wall into the blood stream, where the immune system recognizes them as foreign and attacks them.

This is how food allergies or intolerances develop. What is happening is that foods do not get a chance to be digested properly before they are absorbed through the damaged gut wall.

When the gut wall is healed the allergies and intolerances disappear.

Some of these opportunists, when out of control, get through the gut wall barrier into the bloodstream and cause problems in the different organs in the body – the first being the digestive system. The most common result is Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), Crohne’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Other opportunists when out of control, start producing an excess of histamine coming in to the blood causing allergies, constantly low blood pressure, excessive production of body fluids, dysfunction of the hypothalamus with hormonal changes (PMS is a common result), emotional instability, sleep abnormalities, addictions and many others. An excess of histamine in the body is called histadelia. The condition is found by doctors in many people with depression, schizophrenia, addictions and autism. Other well studied amines which are produced by bacterial activity in the gut are know to cause cerebral depression with symptom of withdrawal, intellectual regression, behavioral and abnormal abnormalities.