Let’s talk about the gut-immune connection!
I think it’s important to understand that what we are eating can largely affect our immune system. About 80% of our immune system is actually housed in our gut. So how we are feeding our body can greatly affect how effective our immune system is.
Our digestive tract is a barrier. We have our microbiome, we have the lining of our digestive tract. The lining of the digestive tract is just one cell layer deep. What holds those cells together are proteins called tight junctions. What can happen is that when we have inflammation in the gut. Inflammation can be caused by eating the wrong foods, toxic loads in our digestive tract and that can damage those tight junctions. When you have damage to those tight junctions, we have these tiny holes in our digestive tract, so food that is not completely digested can end up in the bloodstream. Just on the other side of that single cell gut lining is our immune cells. These immune cells are trying to protect us. They will attack what shouldn’t be there and leave things that should be let into the body.
When we end up with holes in our digestive tract, we end up with food particles and toxins moving from the digestive tract directly into the bloodstream. This activates a whole immune response because your body is seeing those substances as foreign and this can exacerbate our immune system to over reacting.
We need to really understand that our digestive health directly can affect our immune system.
We need to be really good at eating the right foods, decreasing the toxic loads, we need to support those barriers – support the microbiome, we want a nice balance of the microbiome, and a lot of diversity in the types of microbes within the microbiome. We want to help the body to help up the lining of the digestive tract, to support the mucous membranes and support those tight junctions, so we don’t end up with holes in the digestive tract and by doing this we are supporting the proper function of the our immune system.
By understanding that this connection is so strong between the gut and the immune system and by healing the digestive tract and by making sure we are taking in the right nutrients in our digestive tract, we are effectively supporting our immune system.
People will often ask, how do I support my immune system? One of the best ways to support our immune system is to take care of our gut health.
