Some of this microbial debris infiltrates the bloodstream. This phenomenon of endotoxemia, substantiated by Dr. Patrice Cani and French colleagues in 2007, provides the crucial missing link that explains how microbes living in the GI tract can cause, for instance, the skin rash of rosacea, the thyroid inflammation of Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, or the muscle and joint pain of fibromyalgia, effects far outside the GI tract itself.
