I don’t need an excuse to encourage people to focus on their digestive and gut health – but I have one right now! In light of the COVID-19 outbreak and a potentially very busy flu season, it’s helpful to discuss why and how you can optimise your gut health and your “innate” immunity so that your body has the best opportunity to fight off infection.
How does your gut and digestive system relate to having a robust immune system?
Our bodies are quite vulnerable: Bacteria, Parasites and Viruses land on our skin, float in the air waiting for us to breathe them in and can be invisibly hanging out in your food and water, and on your hands, ready to make an entrance into your body through your mouth.
How do we stay mostly well living in an invisible toxic soup? Enter the ultimate superhero, your IMMUNE SYSTEM. What an amazingly complex system – it generally operates without you even being aware that it is neutralising a whole range of threats 24 hours a day.
The immune system begins as a barrier to external threats: your skin protects you by its structure and by the immune cells that live within the skin ready to pounce on any cheeky invaders. Your nose has the hairs and hair-like cilia that provide a physical barrier of entrance to your body. Your immune cells create a chemical barrier in the form of mucous in your nose and lungs that trap and neutralise potential dangers.
When you swallow it’s a whole new ballgame. There are many chemicals produced to destroy potentially harmful bacteria, viruses, parasites or other invaders that might come in with your food or water or from your hands. Most of the dangers that we experience come in through our mouth which makes it quite handy that about 80% of our immune system is in our gut.
A whole lot of talking
Justin & Erica Sonnenberg in their book “Gut reactions” outline that the complex interplay between the immune cells that live along our digestive tract, our immune system broadly and our microbiome are all factors that determine how our immune system responds to a threat. Our gut microbes are in constant communication with the part of our immune system located in our intestine. The communications between our microbes and our immune cells help our body to discriminate between harmless food particles and harmful bacteria that have made their way through the stomach. The communication does not stop here: our microbes are also communicating with our systemic immune system (that’s the immune system that circulates throughout your whole body).
Keep that barrier intact!
Our intestines should also provide a barrier to invading pathogens when the cells are held tightly together by “tight junctions”. This barrier helps to keep these pesky invaders within the “tube” that is the intestine - allowing the immune attack to remain there. The problem gets bigger if you have digestive issues and the very common problem of “leaky gut”. Leaky gut means those gut cells that should be held together by tight junctions separate or open up and invaders or food particles have access to our bloodstream - creating a new problem. This places an additional burden on your immune system as it is now mounting an immune response to invaders that should have been kept within the digestive tract.
Our immune system is highly mobile. Immune cells that are living in your intestine today may move into circulation and locate to new sites around your body. A T-Cell living in your intestine today may up and move to your lung tomorrow and it remembers its experiences with the microbes in your gut. An educated T-Cell can multiply into many cells and relocate throughout the body to inform various tissues and organs of impending danger. The immune cells in your gut are important sentinels coordinating an immune response from the gut throughout the whole body in preparation for a major scuffle. The mind boggles at the complexity!
Think about your gut microbes controlling the dial on your immune system dictating the sensitivity of the entire immune system response. Microbes in your gut can dictate how long a traveller’s diarrhoea may last or how bad your hay fever is this year
Unfortunately, microbes can also cause our immune system to be misdirected. When interactions between gut microbes and our immune system are less than ideal, our entire health can be negatively affected. This may result in an overly sensitive response where it’s not required which can be seen in the development of autoimmune conditions (which are on the rise). Leaky gut is observed as a precursor in the development of most autoimmune conditions.
A healthy gut is one that has functional tight junctions only allowing the substances that should cross over to get through the cell membranes, the small intestine is largely free of bacteria and the large intestine should be a host to a diverse population of beneficial microbes keeping potentially pathogenic bacteria in appropriate numbers, making lovely health-promoting chemicals and chewing up all the leftover bits of food that your small intestine cannot breakdown to maximise nutrient absorption.
LUCKILY immune-boosting takeaways happen to be the same as my everyday health tips (who would’ve thought?)
Eat real food. Could go into a stack of recommendations but avoid processed foods, processed oils (all seed oils except for olive oil and coconut) and vegetables from the dirty dozen (see a list here: https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/dirty-dozen.php). These fruit and vegetables have so much pesticide residue it’s impossible to wash off so avoid or buy organic or frozen organic.
Diet: eat lots of vegetables – they contain synergistic nutrients and compounds that cannot be replicated by any supplement. I LOVE supplements. You should see my kitchen benchtop. BUT food is first. You cannot supplement for a crappy diet and you cannot beat NATURE. Ideally, each meal should contain ½ of the plate in non-starchy vegetables, ¼ plate good quality protein and ¼ plate healthy carbs with a lovely splodge of healthy fats in there.
Sleep: your body needs sleep. There is no substitute for it and inadequate or unrestful sleep will weaken your immune system. Try and be in bed by 10/1030pm. Good sleep hygiene should be practised which means: no phones or TV’s in your bedroom. Ensure that it is really dark.
Nature: We need the Vitamin D that the sun helps to provide, and we need to get outdoors, breathe in deeply and take off our shoes. It is great for reducing stress.
Stress: weakens the immune system in many ways. It certainly contributes to being in a sympathetic state, meaning fight or flight, and you certainly can’t be repairing or fighting off invaders if you are busy running from a Tiger. Strategy 4 will help, ensuring that you are processing your worries with friends, family or a counsellor helps as does and meditation apps like Headspace or Calm
Relationship/Spiritual Life: Healthy Relationships, community and connection all contribute to feelings of wellbeing, happiness and peace. Regardless of what is happening in life, if your spiritual life is being attended to, and you have purpose and connection in your life, this will contribute to feelings of well being and calm. All of this is helpful for your immunity by keeping the sympathetic nervous system saved for when we need it: fight or flight.
Exercise: Awesome for your health and your immune system BUT: not too much. Overexercising can be taxing on your immune system. How much is too much? That depends on you. Listen to your body. I would suggest 3 hours per day 7 days a week is too much for the average person. The type of activity also determines the cost to your immune system: A 2-hour session of weight training is going to require a different repairing response compared with an hour of yoga or Pilates. Factor inadequate recovery and nutrition when planning exercise so that you don’t overtax your immune system.
Sounds too simple right? Yep, it does. But it’s true. Most of the lifestyle diseases that occupy most of our health resources are spent on preventable disease that is caused or contributed by numbers 1-7 not being attended to. Isn’t it fantastic that so much of your health is within your control? Any patient that books an appointment with me for more complex health challenges will always go through the above checklist before we move onto looking for anything more complicated – so save yourself some money and DIY. Attend to these areas. Ask your friends and family for honest feedback about their view on how you doing in all of the areas and if you are still having trouble or need help – book a time with me or your friendly Health Professional to discuss your concerns further.
For those who like to deep dive here are some reading suggestions:
Gut Reactions: Justin & Erica Sonnenberg
Healthy Gut Healthy you: Dr Michael Ruscio
The mind-gut connection: Dr Emeran Mayer
Gut Health & Probiotics: Jenny Tschiesche
Low tox life: Alexx Stuart
Recipe Books – remember to check your local library to see if they have these.
The Microbiome Cookbook: Pamela Ellgen
Supercharged Life: Lee Holmes
Women’s weekly: Everyday Powerfoods, Inner Health, The Mediterranean Diet
Sarah Wilson: Simplicious Flow
Pete Evans: The Gut Health Cookbook
Disclaimer: This advice and information is general in nature and is not meant to replace medical advice from a health professional regarding your health specifically. If you have any concerns about your own health, please consult your Doctor or a health professional to discuss further.