Our immune system, gut microbiome balance & gut health are interconnected. We generally think that our gut health has a lot to do with our fight with cough & cold, however it is our immune system that strengthens our cold fighting ability. If you are struggling with recurring illness or seem to catch any bacteria around, probably there is something going on with your gut-immune connection. It is important to understand that supporting our immune system through the gut can improve our health & life. Your gut holds around 80% of your immune cells.
In order words, maintaining a healthy gut microbiome is much more than keeping your waistline in check. It improves our overall health.
Managing an ecosystem of trillions of bacteria that regulate & monitor cells responsible for the strength of your immune system is an important immunity boosting game plan.
The key aspect in improving & managing our overall health is nourishing diverse microbial species supporting our immune system. We generally assume that immune boosting supplements & foods that boost immunity improves circulating immune cells in our blood so that we are fully prepared to fight any pathogens & free radicals. This is partially true & only half the story.
Our microbial ecosystem works in tandem with our gut lining to orchestrate & improve our immunity. Before, we delve into how our gut helps in boosting our immune system, let us understand basics about our immune system.
There are two types of immune response:
- Innate response: First line of defence with focus on keeping the threats & pathogens out.
- Adaptive response: This is focussed & targeted immune responses which comes into action when innate response is unable to counter & contain the threat.
Innate immunity consists of both physical & chemical barriers such as skin, stomach acid, mucus membrane. General inflammatory cells are constantly on look out for threats & when they encounter one, they come into action to neutralise or destroy the foreign invaders. These cells also provide information for further adaptive immune responses.
Adaptive responses are highly complex & function to remember foreign invaders( who carry antigens) & can drive a specific response to destroy known pathogens. This response is regulated by lymphocytes( a white blood cell that is important for our immunity).
Antigens are generally toxic substances found in our body such as viruses, bacteria, parasites, venoms & even blood particles of other individuals. Antigenic load provided by our food plays an important role in shaping our community. In fact, our intestines encounter more antigens than any other part of our body.
We have discussed immune system at length in our earlier blog .
To understand how the immune system & gut are connected, let us discuss the mechanics of gut.
Our gut is home to around 100 million bacterias, is 5 metre in length & has a surface are of 32 square metres. Not to forget billions of beneficial microorganisms. Within this million base of microorganisms & large collagen tract, lies GALT, our largest immune organ in the body. GALT is used to describe lymph or immune tissues within our gut. These tissues are interwoven with arteries, veins & nerve fibres, all working together & creating a tight immune network.
Some tissues such as peyer’s patches, MLN & gut mucosal epithelium have a signalling effect, providing neural & immune feedback using our diet & microbiome to create generalised & threat specific immune cells. These immune cells so created are responsible for eliminating, controlling or signalling for threats.
Before we look into bacterial impact on our immune system, let us discuss antigenic load. As discussed above, antigen are substances that our immune cells can recognise. They can be a toxin, protein from food or fragment DNA from an eliminated microbial threat. The antigen triggers a cascade of inflammatory reactions based on whether it is something it has been seen before. Our immune army neutralises the invader. In this way our body interacts with all microbial species living in your gut. Bacterial species interact with one another to form a harmonious complex ecosystem of interactions based on genetic transfer, chemical properties & food availability. This is where the diversity & composition of our microbiome comes into play.
Certain bacterial populations support & improves health of gut lining & nutrient uptake more than others. Abundance of this population depends upon availability & consumption of favorable food sources. Short Chain Fatty Acids such as Butyrate are great examples of how bacterial nutrients processing impacts our immunity. Butyrate is not only used as an energy cell for our colon cells but also impacts our immune responses & prevents microbes from leaving the gut. You can find more about butyrate here
Basically when we feed bacterias with fibre, these bacteria support our gut health & immunity. This way, our microbiome supports our gut lining, immune system & creates white blood cell bank memory slowly building our immunity from birth through various bacteria, viruses & food we have been exposed to.
The way we came into this world has a huge impact on our gut health & immunity. Babies born naturally have different microbiome diversity as compared to those born via C-section. Vaginal birth produces microbiomes resembling that of mother’s gut bacteria whereas those born through C-section can be home to environmental bacteria from the hospital. Lack of beneficial bacteria in the early life has been linked to various diseases such as asthma, diabetes & allergies.This is further exacerbated by material antibiotic exposure whether breastfed or formula led fed. Even the antibiotic exposure in the womb may lead to decreased ability to fight infection as a child. Building a healthy microbiome at birth plays an important role in shaping our immunity & health.
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