Suddenly our immune system has become important since COVID-19 struck. We have been finding quick fix solutions to boost our immunity ranging from supplements to ready-to-eat so called healthy foods.
However, we all have misunderstood how to improve our immunity.
Let us decode how our immune system works & why quick fix solutions are a disaster in making.
Go back a few decades when we were threatened by infectious diseases & we were told to improve our immunity. Human immune response helps to manage & control a plethora of tasks- the most important one fighting & fending off pathogens. AND we did the biggest disaster of mankind- we assumed bacteria living in our gut are harmful & to strengthen our immune system we started taking a lot of drugs, medication & solutions that killed bacteria inside our body, specifically inside our gut. We did this at the cost of our own peril & started suffering from various chronic diseases.
The most surprising part is that 70% of immune cells are around our gut lining. This essentially means that these immune cells & microbes living in our gut interact with each other & in fact help each other. By killing these bacteria in our gut, we are actually breaking the communication between our microbes & immune cells, exposing us to system wide chronic inflammation & host of life threatening diseases.
As such, the latest microbial science shows a beneficial & symbiotic relationship between our gut microbiome, the food we eat & our immune system. It is now the time to educate & empower ourselves about how improving our gut health is the best food forward to strengthen our immunity.
We are living around the ecosystem of microorganisms. In Fact our bodies are far from a microorganisms free environment. As such our body is a warehouse for trillions of microorganisms that help us maintain our homeostasis & immunostatis often by interacting with our immune cells & training these immune cells. This communication & coaching are said to impact autoimmunity, cancer, inflammation & our susceptibility to infections.
Microbes living in our gut help in orchestrating these communications. Depending upon the health of our gut, our immune system can be strong & resilient or overactive or underactive, exposing us to a host of metabolic, digestive & neurological health issues. The best way to strengthen our immune system is not to have some unworthy supplements or fad diets but nurturing our gut ecosystem. As such there is a symbiotic relationship between our diet & gut microbiome & by modifying what we eat, we can actually keep our gut in good health. The best strategy to do this is to learn how to use it as a preventative medicine. However this does not mean having a diet which your best friend, your neighbor, colleague or your gym buddy is following. There is no one solution-fits-all-dietary-routine. Each individual requires a unique nutrition depending upon age, genetics, how they are born, how they are fed as an infant, stress levels, sleeping & exercise patterns, environment, lifestyle choices & most important composition of living in their gut. Our solutions decode your biological functions, talk with microbes in your gut & provide personalised dietary recommendations based on what your microbes are hungry for. Therefore your diet would be different from that of your colleague but the end goal remains the same- optimizing/balancing your unique gut microbiome.
Your gut microbiome tells you how efficiently a job it is doing based on what you are feeding them. If your gut microbiome is imbalanced or is dysfunctional, it can do your body harm even while doing normal tasks. However, if kept in the right condition & fed properly with the food they are hungry for, these microbes in your gut perform all work efficiently & seamlessly without causing any risk. In this way your microbiome works in a perfect way without harming your intestinal lining. This gut lining is more important as it acts as a barrier & keeps your microbes in a safe house without giving them an opportunity to leave gut & rent out place in other organs & places such as pancreas & blood.
However when our gut is unhealthy & constantly releasing harmful gases that are causing inflammation, gut lining can be compromised which makes these microbes move to other organs. As they build their settlement at other organs- they secrete chemicals & metabolites that can lead to inflammatory reactions & damage the tissues, thereby leading to host of chronic ailments. One of the most important functions of gut lining is it plays an important role in managing & regulating our immune system in times of infection since 70% of immune cell are found near the gut lining.
Many beneficial & commensal microbes help to maintain health of our gut lining by metabolising fibre, resistant starch & carbs to produce butyrate that acts as healthy food for our gut lining cells & strengthens them to fight with pathogens for space. When our gut microbiome has healthy butyrate production, it helps our intestinal lining to stay strong. In return our gut lining protects these commensal bacteria against the attack of pathogen microbes. In Fact our immune cells can be so clever that they can sense & recognise peptides outside of beneficial bacteria that signals to immune cells that they are safe & not foreign invaders. This is one of the great ways microbes in our gut help immune cells fight pathogens AND when they are diverse & have a huge population, they kick out these pathogens for space who look out special space attached to our gut lining cells. With diverse gut microbiome, these pathogens are left with very few spaces to settle
When it comes to viruses, they are susceptible to infections too! & employ distinctive ways to keep themselves & their environment healthy. When the population of these microbes are diverse & strong, it facilitates easy communication between different microbes when they sense a viral pathogen. This communication is referred to a quorum sensing which reflects their behavior & helps them to react faster for their own immune defense/response. Once they respond they retain “memories” of their viral defense mechanisms in their genetic code, passing on their immunity to future generations. This results in healthy commensal populations that are less likely to be wiped out from viruses, impacting the health of our gut.
The most fascinating part is these microbes also impact viruses that affect us. For instance some viruses such as influenza enter our lungs & require response from our immune system. Faster the recognition of virus, quickly our immune system responds & it can act to fend off viruses. Our gut microbiome helps adaptive immune system response to fight diseases by enabling our immune system to produce antibodies.
To sum up, how our immune system responds to various attacks & infections caused by pathogens & viruses depends upon what food we choose to feed our gut microbiome that improves our gut health.
We, at Genefitletics, help you decode health of your gut microbiome by sequencing your gut & analysing the activities they perform to provide you personalised dietary & lifestyle recommendations that can improve your gut microbial diversity & facilitate quick immune system responses to fend off pathogens & keep chronic diseases at bay. For more details, sign up for a free discovery call here.
