ecoyear

SUMMARY OF THE IMMUNE SYSTEM

 It is a truly awesome, amazingly complicated phenomenon, with two systems (the innate and acquired systems), and dozens of different cells that turn each other on and off and cause each other to make new proteins and behave in new ways. I think one way to make it understandable without having to get an advanced degree is to talk about its main functions:

 1.     recognize intruder

2.     get a response going

3.     destroy intruder

4.     damage control

5.     cleanup crew

 TO EXPAND ON THE ABOVE:

1.     Recognize intruder

It’s important to know what is dangerous (a bacteria that could kill you, such as some of the dangerous pneumonia strains), what is not dangerous (ragweed pollen for example, or peanut butter), and what is a part of your own body – in some illnesses, the immune system attacks your own body cells.

 Too much or too little immune response starts here: too little and you might get overcome by a dangerous bacteria; you may also fail to detect and destroy cancer cells. Too much means you overreact to something that’s not dangerous, or attack some of your own body cells.

 2.     The cells that do the recognizing need to communicate with the cells that get the response activated. This usually happens by direct contact. In turn, the activated cells broadcast a general body call to action by manufacturing and secreting pro-inflammatory mediators. There are several types of pathways for this: one is the classical allergic response: sneezing, itching, hives, runny nose. But there are other responses too. With viruses, for example, you get a whole body feeling of being ill: temperature, tired, achy, irritable or gloomy.

 3.     Activated immune cells in your body attack intruders in a variety of ways. Some of them eat up germs. Some actually throw bleach at them. The cells also call more troops to the site. Blood vessels are made to become leaky so immune system cells can get into the area where the infection is and make contact with the intruder. This is why an infected site swells up, like your skin, or your nasal mucosa. Damage occurs because attack chemicals cause injury to our cells too. Here you start to get the sense that if there wasn’t a system to put the lid on this, it would eventually chew you up.

 4.     But there is a suppressor system. It gets under way as soon as the actual immune response begins. The suppressor cells secrete specific chemicals that slow down the activation from step 2. What is interesting is that some bacteria that normally live in our gut can also make this same chemical. This is another place food and toxins can have an influence. If you’re eating very little fiber and you don’t have enough of this bacteria, any intruder can cause too much of an immune response. Also if you’re eating the wrong fats, it pushes forward the formation of chemicals that stimulate more immune response. One way to slow this down is by balancing the omega6:omega3 ratio of food. Another way is by slowing down the enzymes that turn fatty acids into pro-inflammatory molecules.

 5.     The cleanup crew restores the body to its previous healthy state. This involves tissue repair and shutting down the process. Note that repair tends to occur while you sleep. Memory of this encounter stays with the immune system, so the next encounter will be fought off more efficiently. Very importantly, you need anti-oxidants in your system, because one of the major chemicals released in this process are “reactive oxygen species” that cause direct chemical damage inside your cells. ROS also cause additional inflammation. Anti-oxidants and detoxifiers are responsible for “quenching” the ROS and getting them out of the body.

 You get the sense that the ideal immune response is like a surgical strike: specifically targeted, and precisely calculated to disable the intruder without collateral damage. For this, you need a finely tuned immune system.

WHERE THIS SYSTEM BREAKS DOWN

The illnesses that appear to be increasing significantly in recent years have important immune components:

 1.     Allergies are overreactions to non-dangerous intruders; so two things happen here. First the recognition system is making a mistake; second, the immune activation is not being shut down fast enough. Very different chemicals sometimes look alike. Some parts of bacteria can look just like molecules inside your joints. Parts of GM corn look just like dust mite allergen. There’s a lot of opportunities for the immune system to be get us into trouble.

 2.     Chronic diseases, such as atherosclerosis, appear to be the result of ongoing immune system activation. Cholesterol deposits in the blood vessel walls isn’t really dangerous without inflammation. When you have immune system activation within the deposits, however, the inflamed cholesterol plaques can swell and rupture and throw off a clot that causes a heart attack or stroke.

 3.     Depending on your genetics, your body might be overreacting to specific molecules in the food. In some cases these molecules are caused by cooking methods. For some people, the yummy brown substance that appears when you cook foods a certain way, called “advanced glycation end-products”, sets up an immune reaction. Boiling and steaming tends to be safer in this sense, than stir-frying and roasting, and in turn they are safer than barbecueing and broiling.

 4.     Chronic diseases seem to be connected to each other. For example, one important predictor of survival for a heart attack patient is the presence or absence of depression. On one level this seems obvious – depressed people can have a weaker will to live, and so they die after their heart attack. But how does this work, and what does this tell us about inflammation, toxins, and food? Depressed individuals have more inflammation – some of this “depression” is actually the gloomy effect of the pro-inflammatory mediators.

 5.     To prove this, they actually injected some of these mediators into normal volunteers. They all started feeling achy, tired, discouraged and gloomy. It was hard to tell some of them apart from depressed people. The conclusion is that certain foods, and certain conditions like gum disease, can fan the flames of an ongoing inflammatory response that could sink you into a depression. Or at the very least, your diet can add to your troubles and make you unresponsive to therapy or Prozac.

 6.     Another way this could happen is if you eat foods like GMOs or too much sugar, and/or are exposed to toxins that make the intestines leaky. Bt, for example, is a pesticide we use to kill caterpillars by giving them a very leaky gut. GM corn contains a gene that causes the corn to make its own Bt. However, this means that when you eat the corn, you also eat large amounts of Bt. I know, humans are not caterpillars. However, research shows that Bt from GM corn causes leaky gut in mammals. The danger is that large molecules from food (casein, gluten) can then enter the bloodstream and set up an intruder alert. This alert is either the type that gives you hives and itching, in which case the situation is easily recognized as an allergic reaction. But if the response, instead is fatigue, muscle aches and general irritability, you will only get puzzled looks from your doctor, a guess that maybe you are fighting off a virus, and a recommendation to lower the stress in your life.

 7.     We are getting both more food allergy (like anaphylaxis to peanuts) and food intolerance (people who don’t feel good after eating normal things like wheat flour, corn or soy). There is a short list of the foods that cause trouble in 90% of the cases where there is trouble: dairy, eggs, wheat, soy, fish, shellfish, nuts.

 8.     The food you eat “talks” to your DNA. Changing your diet, according to one experiment by Dean Ornish (in Sausalito), within 2 months, causes a change in the expression of at least 200 genes. Within 2 months of eating whole, organic food, chosen for its rich content of nutrients, you are essentially a new person. In another experiment, GM food fed to mice caused altered gene expression of more than 400 genes. Whole different mice. Mind you, Monsanto does not allow anyone to use their products for experiments. So these experiments are done on other GM corn. Why is this DNA issue relevant? Well, when we say “activated immune cells”, we mean immune cells that are expressing their DNA differently than before. So much of what happens to us happens through regulation of gene expression.

 9.     Dr. Ornish and others also claim that most cases of breast cancer and prostate cancer are diseases of inflammation. Changes in the immune system would be involved in the formation of these cancers.

 10.  Many claim that ADHD and diseases on the autistic spectrum also relate to the immune system. There have been autopsies of autistic children who die as passengers in cars, for example. A Harvard pathologist examined some of these brains and described inflammation within brain structures. In other words, they contained immune system cells that seemed to be trying to fight something off. With ADHD, 60% of the kids, according to a recent study from Sweden, responded with significant behavioral improvement to a diet as outlined above. The hope, in my mind, would be that you could take out the foods that cause problems, repair the gut, remove the conditions that caused leaky gut in the first place, then return to a full diet.

SPECIFIC FOOD ISSUES

Remember the definition of a toxin: something that enters the body and causes harm.

 1.     Artificial toxins

These include manufactured chemicals for food coloring, flavoring, preservatives, stabilizers, pesticides and herbicides. There is a very long list on the Center for Science in the Public Interest website also available as an iPhone app (http://www.cspinet.org/reports/chemcuisine.htm).  A pet peeve for me is “natural flavor” on the ingredient list: most processed foods do not bother to extract flavors from actual produce. The word “natural flavor” means that it tastes like something natural. It does not mean there is an extract from a natural food in there. “Caramel color” is another tricky one. CSPI lists it as carcinogenic. Artificial colors and pesticides cause hyperactivity in children, one within minutes, the other developmentally.

 2.     Natural toxins

In the setting of increased intestinal permeability, a variety of normal molecules from food can become toxins. This is because large proteins tend to set off an immune response. These proteins would normally be stuck in the intestine long enough to be broken down into smaller molecules. Small molecules just don’t trigger this type of thing, so our intestinal cells are supposed to have a tough barrier. Toxins and certain foods make this barrier leaky. You can suspect you have leaky gut if it seems like many foods cause problems. Many doctors have never heard of this - they just need to do more updating. It’s normal for research to take 20-30 years to make its way into clinical practice. Just google “pubmed intestinal permeability name of favorite disease, like asthma, eczema, fibromyalgia, etc…” and see what you can find.

 3.     Poisons

Mercury in fish; arsenic in chicken (from chicken feed disinfectant); Some chemicals, which are lethal in high doses, were thought to be safe enough in small amounts. However, now we are finding out that in small amounts, they just have more subtle, but no less devastating, effects.

 4.     “Too much” toxins

In large amounts, fructose, which is normally found in fruit, causes insulin resistance, problems with cholesterol and triglycerides, and inflammation.

 5.     Overbred food

Through systematic breeding, wheat has lost 40% of protein content in the last 60-70 years, and has too much gluten, because that makes for light white bread. Apples are also much higher in sugar; in colonial times, they were used only for hard cider (Johnny Appleseed was responsible for quite a few alcoholics). Even tomatoes (according to the canning literature) are higher in sugar now than just a couple of generations ago. I would say that is also true of carrots, peas and corn (looking through gardening catalogs, it seems like many of the seeds are called things like “super sweet” etc…) Produce is bred for shelf life, yield and cost-efficiency. Breeding for taste also doesn’t guarantee nutrition, though there’s some evidence that tastier produce has more phytonutrients. Maybe breeding for color would best correlate with nutrition.

 6.     Depleted soils

We don’t even know what is in healthy soil and plants. For proper immune function you need magnesium, zinc, copper, selenium, manganese, and so on… There are 8,000 phytonutrients in plants. The combinations may be key. It’s crazy to even think about relying on vitamin supplements. I like to hedge my bets and I do both, but if I had to pick only one, I would choose to rely on healthy food, grown on well-cared for soil. Some studies show that plants grown with extra nitrogen, for example from synthetic fertilizers, end up with lower levels of some nutrients. It’s like raising kids – they love you when you feed them a cookie, but if you do it every day, for every meal, you end up with problems. Produce grown with pesticides also tend to have lower levels of some nutrients, because they haven’t had the “stimulus” – I guess when they get munched on, they turn on the protection factors.

 7.     Nutrient and amino acid absorption

Certain medications, and also stressful states, and even what you think about when you are eating influence nutrient absorption. It’s overwhelming, but it’s also very hopeful and restores a sense of control to the individual.

 8.     Bacteria, viruses, molds, yeasts

 9.     Artificial food

To me genetic modification does go a step beyond breeding. Plants will go ahead and use the DNA we inject in ways we can’t control. While the DNA is supposed to be a template, it doesn’t actually work flawlessly. As these genes are inserted, mistakes are made. There are several examples of deadly GMO foods that “almost” made it to market, and one example where a GMO-made supplement killed 100 people in Japan. Also, patenting food is very dangerous. Can you imagine Monsanto taking control of the food supply? Don’t we have safeguards against monopoly? Monopoly over lipstick is one thing, but over the food supply?

 Besides, GM food has been shown to be dangerous to the immune system in several important studies. Several of Monsanto’s own studies were obtained by court order, re-analyzed and found to indicate unacceptable risk of harm. And Monsanto isn’t content to patent a product or two – they take over control of key crops: corn, alfalfa, soybeans – even cash crops like cotton. This is not reasonable. And anyone who thinks the FDA is looking into this should know that the lawyer for Monsanto actually developed the regulations on GMO food at the FDA, then became FDA assistant director, and now is the food safety czar for the Obama administration.

 Finally, they do something very strange when they sue farmers for growing GM crops, just because the wind carried the pollen over to a farmer’s field. It’s a serious problem when you can be prosecuted for not preventing what is unpreventable. With the approval of GM alfalfa, it may become impossible to grow organic alfalfa, in which case no milk will be organic, as almost all cows are fed alfalfa. Of course we know the organic industry has been a thorn in the side of agribusiness, but how is it that our right to choose is being taken away?

 WHAT YOUR FOOD SHOULD DO FOR YOU

Given the way this system works, and how the intestine is such a large place of contact with the outside world, it stands to reason that food becomes a most important reason for diseases of immunity, either too active, or not active enough.

 1.     First, we need the right building blocks

The building blocks for our body structures come mainly from food. Some of the molecules can be made in the human body, but many can’t. They are called “essential” – either fatty acids, amino acids, or vitamins and minerals. We have to eat enough essential nutrients to be healthy. We have to absorb what we eat. Also, if we eat too many calories, we produce too much oxidation, and this in itself causes an overactive immune state.

 2.     The process of building must proceed correctly

Building is done by enzymes, which are proteins the body builds using the code in the DNA. Many of them need vitamins or minerals as “co-factors”, or helpers. Without them, the chemical reactions occur too slowly or not at all. These include magnesium, copper, zinc, selenium, iron, manganese, sulfur, and many more. It’s daunting to realize that we need all of these to function optimally. Severe vitamin deficiency causes “deficiency diseases” like scurvy, within weeks. Mild deficiencies are now thought to cause “long-latency diseases”, that manifest after a few decades. Unfortunately, there are few reliable tests for the function of these co-factors. It’s not enough to measure them in the blood or urine. They go to work inside cells – and we don’t have a lot of affordable, well-studied intracellular tests. The solution ends up being to provide most people with a good diet +/- a multivitamin supplement.

 3.     Friendly bacteria must be kept happy

These are ancient beings that live on fiber, vitamins and minerals, and that do poorly when soaked in sugar and strange processed chemicals. In turn, they are intimately involved in every building, repair, regulation and detoxification process within our bodies. Bad bacteria can play a number of tricks, such as make “psychoactive” substances! At the very least, an unhappy gut environment causes inflammation, and when pro-inflammatory mediator levels rise, you get a tired, itchy, grumpy, gloomy human.

 4.     The intestinal surface must be kept intact.

We depend on it to keep out toxins and molecules that would be recognized as “dangerous strangers” by our immune system. You can repair leaky gut with a combination of diet, targeted herbs and nutrients.

 5.     The diet must be rich in anti-oxidants

We should focus on a daily abundance of anti-oxidants and phytonutrients. Oxidation is a normal by-product of energy metabolism, but it causes cell damage and needs to be addressed. At the same time, plants offer combinations of nutrients that detoxify and are generally involved in hundreds of processes throughout the body.

MORE GENERAL HEALTH RECOMMENDATIONS

1.     The whole body must be conducive to health

Naturopaths believe that you don’t fight disease: you create the conditions under which the body can find its way back to health. You need to look at all the systems. For example, hormonal imbalance such as estrogen excess causes inflammation. Think about all the substances we hear about as being estrogen mimics (BPA, but also all the other plastics, as it turns out; Teflon, Stainmaster, flame retardants, pesticides).

 2.     Several nutrients work together

We tend to believe that we are fairly healthy, so at any given time, any problem must be due to a single deficiency. This is incorrect. In most adults, a combination of deficiencies is usually at the root of problems. Any attempt to improve immunity will have to involve a comprehensive approach. Otherwise, what you get is a different imbalance. One of my teachers, Dr. Alex Vasquez, has a minimum 5 part intervention: DIET, omega-3 fatty acids, vitamins/minerals, vitamin D, probiotics. Each of these support the other 4. Adding only omega-3 fatty acids, for example, will cause a problem if your diet is based on refined carbohydrates. Antioxidants pass toxic molecules from one to the other down a chain. If any of them is deficient, the entire system will not work correctly. Vitamin D gets special status because most people need large doses and you need to keep track of the situation with blood tests.

 3.     Another whole body issue you need to address is stress.

Under stress conditions, the body is protein-deficient because it is busy making pro-inflammatory mediators. So many of these mediators are made that muscle must be broken down to supply amino acids if there aren’t enough in the diet. On the other hand, too much protein in the diet is bad too. The solution is to reduce stress, by reducing external circumstances but also by directly convincing the body to dial down its stress response. Exercise, yoga, participation in like-minded groups are just a couple of ways this is done.

 4.     If the above isn’t enough, you can address specific targets

Some people have sluggish immune cells, or unstable mast cells, or too few white blood cells. These can be addressed directly with herbs or medications. This is a last resort, though, and sometimes hopefully a temporary issue.

PRACTICAL TIPS

We can avoid the vast majority of GM foods. Basically we have to eat non-processed food, and we can’t eat anything prepared by someone we don’t know – we have to know where all the ingredients came from. I guarantee you will be healthier for it.

 Before you reject the notion out of hand, consider this:

1.     Fruit, nuts, berries, and many vegetables are essentially fast food. You can grab some instead of chips or crackers, or pastries.

 2.     Studies show that cooking from scratch actually involves something like 10 minutes extra compared to heating up a TV dinner. We can brainstorm solutions audience members have come up with.

 3.     Problems come up more when you are on the go, or traveling, or the babysitter has to feed the kids – but you don’t have to be perfect. The difference you get from changing 80%, or even 60% of your diet will be worth the effort.

 4.     Cost-wise, it is likely that buying produce and fruit will result in savings over the cost of processed food like cereal, deli lunch, crackers, desserts. You pay more per nutrient when you eat processed food. There will be a period of adaptation where you long for the crunch of your favorite processed food, but it’s not long until you start to look forward to a daily salad lunch. Your kids may have to rely on too few foods at first, but little by little they get used to seeing green and orange things on their plates and eventually eat them. They will still pine for brownies and ice cream, but will also get excited when you bring strawberries and peaches home from the market.

 5.     Honestly, it is hard to give up certain foods. Pies, French fries, tomato sauce, ice cream, macaroni and cheese – these are the yummy foods that take time to make, and that you will have to find creative ways to work around – either you begin to spend a lot more time in food preparation, or you give them up entirely, or you make exceptions. In the case of most healthy food, it’s not so hard to find alternatives that are organic and made with healthy ingredients.

 This is not a reason to avoid getting started. By loading your shopping cart with fruit, colorful vegetables, nuts, berries, seeds and healthy meats, you quickly transform your family’s diet. By adding daily exercise and time with friends, you lower your stress level so that dietary change no longer seems overwhelming. Honestly, I also think that my daily multivitamin gives me the energy to spend more time in the kitchen. It could be placebo, but if it works, I won’t knock it!

 So what if it takes two years? One day, you look at a box of processed snack food and you start to think: Is cottonseed oil really edible? That’s a lot of sodium, no? What is the unpronounceable stuff? I think I’m better off getting some apples and yogurt. That’s when you remember that 200+ of your genes have been altered by your healthy habits, and you’re no longer the person who couldn’t resist Cheezits.

TIPS FOR IMPROVING IMMUNE FUNCTION

DETOXIFICATION:  “CLEAN UP” AFTER THE IMMUNE SYSTEM DOES ITS JOB

10 HABITS OF THE MASTER DETOXIFIER

1.     Avoid toxins – we hope to give people convenient ways to do this.

2.     Exercise – works on many levels to return the body to an anabolic state

3.     Stress reduction, lots of it – most powerful technique is deep breathing: five deep belly breaths lasting 5 seconds, repeat 5 times per day. Yoga, dancing, friends, singing, hobbies, journaling, meditation, prayer, psychotherapy, support groups. Building community is huge here, as well as finding something that keeps you engaged – the sort of work volunteers do at groups like MOMAS provides that outlet for us!

4.     Stress avoidance – this becomes a way of life; opting out of the rat race; considering stress in making decisions, doing less; simplicity parenting

5.     Foods that encourage Phase II; one or two daily for everyone; more if you are working to overcome health issues. See list below.

6.     Fiber – crucial for binding toxins, and for feeding healthy bacteria; this means plants.

7.     More foods that encourage healthy bacteria – yogurt with probiotics, fermented foods; puer tea; raw milk and cheese likely also contain probiotics.

8.     Diet low in sugar, white flour, processed foods – the effects of a bad diet are multiple. Basically it results in a fright mode, or catabolic state.

9.     Diet low in foods that encourage inflammation; See notes below – definitely avoid: corn oil, soybean oil, factory meats including fish.

10.  Whatever it takes to keep the body’s elimination going smoothly: 8 glasses of water, regular bowel movements, sweating.

The food list: Garlic, onions, rosemary, green tea, flaxseed, turmeric, berries, cruciferous vegetables (especially broccoli sprouts and watercress), folate and B vitamins, chlorella. Eggs are an important source of sulfur for supporting Phase II.

SUPPORT A HEALTHY AND BALANCED IMMUNE SYSTEM

PREFER

Non-gluten grains: brown rice, millet, quinoa, amaranth, tapioca, buckwheat

Fruits and vegetables (whole, not juiced)

Fish (small amounts, given our overfished oceans and rivers)

Healthy meats (100% grass fed beef, well-raised pork, rabbit, chicken) and eggs

Legumes: peas, beans, lentils

Nuts and seeds (except peanuts and pistachios – they can be inflammatory)

Preferred oils: olive, flaxseed, expeller-pressed sunflower, sesame, walnut, pumpkin, almond

Cayenne, rosemary, oregano, turmeric, ginger, purple grapes, thyme, onions, apples, tea

Cinnamon, cumin, garlic, dill, oregano, parsley, coriander, tarragon

Honey: local, dark (wildflower), unpasteurized; don’t heat it.

AVOID:
Any form of wheat, oats, spelt, rye, kamut, barley and products containing gluten

Shellfish (shrimp to clams), sweeteners (except honey); dried fruit sometimes too sweet as well.

BE AWARE:

There’s controversy around animal fats; Weston-Price foundation recommends fish and grass-fed animal products, encourages cooking with bacon grease, and eating full-fat animal products. However, they also recommend lots of broths made from bones, fermented foods, fermented cod liver oil and special butter oils made from animals eating special fast-growing grass. They could be right…

Other sources recommend limiting animal products because of the risk of contamination by heavy metals and other toxins, and because they are rich in omega-6 fats.

 As we won’t ever understand all the intricacies of this system, please make your own decision based on values and careful consideration.