Digestive Wellness: Strengthen the Immune System and Prevent Disease Through Healthy Digestion, Fourth Edition (25 page)

Vitamin A:
Vitamin A is an essential nutrient for mucous membranes. Vitamin A is a two-edged sword, so monitor serum retinol levels and/or get your vitamin A from carotenoids, which can be converted into vitamin A in most, but not all, people. Plant foods that are rich sources of carotenoids are all green, yellow, and orange vegetables. Take 5,000 IU daily of preformed vitamin A and up to 25,000 IU carotenoids daily.

Vitamin C:
With its strong antioxidant properties, vitamin C binds viruses and toxins to chelate them out of the body. Take 500 to 10,000 mg or more daily.

Deglycyrrhized licorice:
Licorice root has many health-enhancing properties. It’s soothing to the mucous membranes of the digestive tract, and chewable licorice can help reduce inflammation and pain. It promotes healing of mucous membranes by stimulating production of prostaglandins that promote healing and cell proliferation. It also has antibiotic and antioxidant properties. Use only deglycerrhized licorice; whole licorice root can raise blood pressure levels and lower potassium levels. Take two tablets between meals as needed up to four times daily.

Antioxidant support:
Once the intestinal tract has been damaged, free radicals are often produced in quantities too large for the body to process. This causes inflammation and irritation, which exacerbate a leaky gut. So try eating antioxidant-rich foods like beans, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. Increasing use of antioxidant nutrients such as vitamin E, selenium, N-acetyl cysteine, superoxide dismutase (SOD), zinc (especially carnosine), manganese, copper, coenzyme Q10, lipoic acid, and vitamin C can help quench the free-radical fire.

Phosphatidylcholine:
Research indicates that phosphatidylcholine helps to reduce intestinal permeability. Phosphatidylcholine is found in the mucous gel of the intestinal lumen and protects the GI tract. Take 2,000 to 4,000 mg daily.

As you can see, increased intestinal permeability (leaky gut) can underlie many different health conditions and contribute to ill health. Taking the steps mentioned here can help renew your health, yet this is an often overlooked factor in medicine today.

“Within these regions battles rage; populations rise and fall; affected just as we are by local environmental conditions, industry thrives and constant defense is exercised against interlopers and dangerous aliens who may enter unannounced; colonists roam and settle—some permanently, some only briefly, in general we have in miniature many of terrestrial life’s vicissitudes, problems and solutions.”

—Natasha Trenev and Leo Chaitow,
Probiotics

We live in a great symbiotic harmony with bacteria. Our soils are filled with them. They thrive in our waters, in the hottest places on earth, below the seas, and in the air. On a personal level, bacteria comprise 10 percent of our dry body weight. Their story is one of wonder and the creation of life. They terraformed our planet and created oxygen in the air we breathe. They were the very first “world wide web” and were the first self-propelled beings on this planet. They are the initial substance of life, and without them plants and animals could not survive.

You have 10 times more bacteria in your gut than you have cells in your body. And those bacteria comprise 99 percent of the DNA in your body. If only 1 percent of our DNA is human, and 99 percent is alien, you have to ask the question, who hosts whom? These bacteria are called your microbiota and live in your digestive tract, skin, eyes, airways, blood, mouth, and vagina. You have billions of microbes in your mouth, many billions in your small intestine, and hundreds of trillions in your large intestine (half of the colon’s volume). Each day, you produce several ounces of these microbes and eliminate several ounces in stool.

The microbiota function much like an organ, and they act as a major part of the immune system. They protect us from microbial and parasitic diseases, influence the effects of drugs, affect whether we are fat or thin, affect our nutritional status and overall health, and contribute to our rate of aging.

Your microbiota is like a fingerprint; yours probably isn’t exactly like anyone else’s. The Microbiome Project is trying to determine whether there is a “core” balance that is common to all of us and what effects it might have on health. The microbiota of modern humans has been influenced by what we eat as well as our climate, and it differs from that of our ancestors, who traveled less and ate a more homogeneous diet. Medications, chemicals, C-section births, breast-feeding versus bottle-feeding, stress, diet, and lifestyle all affect the balance if these gut bacteria. Bacterial infections, antibiotics use, high stress levels, excessive alcohol intake, poor diet, and a number of other factors can disrupt the delicate balance of beneficial bacteria in our gut. Often, disease-producing bacteria and fungi will proliferate, causing symptoms such as diarrhea, bloating, and gas. If left unchecked, they can contribute to long-term conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome.

After the Human Genome Project discovered that we have fewer genes than fruit flies or carrots, the Human Microbiome Project (
www.nihroadmap.nih.gov/hmp
/) was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study what types of microbes inhabit our digestive system and what’s normal. Bacteria “talk” to each other, and when there are enough of them, they turn on to become harmful. This is called “quorum sensing.” It’s like waiting until you amass enough troops to actually be effective before you try to scale the castle wall. It’s believed that the cross talk between our genes and our bacteria runs our metabolism and modulates our immune system. Researchers for the Human Microbiome Project are exploring how microbes affect our metabolism, immune system, nutritional intake, and development and how they communicate with our genes and each other. All very cool!

You have somewhere between 500 and 1,000 types of bacteria in your digestive system, each type having hundreds of different strains. Although genetic research has discovered 40,000 different bacteria in the GI of different people so far, 80 to 90 percent of these are from two bacterial families or phyla. Bacteriodetes includes Bacteroides and Prevotella; the Firmicutes family includes Clostridium, Enterococcus, Lactobacillus, and Raminococcus. The next most common phylum is Actino-bacteria, which includes Bifidobacteria, followed by Proteobacteria such as H. pylori and Escherichia (E. coli is an example of Escherichia). They have coevolved with humans; they come in in cultured and fermented food, from putting our fingers in our mouths, through being born, and other events. They weigh several pounds and have the same metabolic capacity as your liver. Some are permanent residents; others are just passing through.

Collectively these bacteria are called commensals, which means they are the normal bacteria in your gut. There is much yet to be learned about the benefits of commensal microbes that live within us. We are really at the edge of a frontier. In addition to commensal bacteria you have probiotic bacteria, or probiotics, which are beneficial to you, as well as pathogenic or disease-causing bacteria. You also have fungi and possibly some parasites in your microbiota.

Microbes that make us sick are called pathogens. These can cause acute or chronic illness. Some bacteria are extremely virulent and cause sudden and violent illness. Our body reacts to virulent bacteria, such as salmonella, with diarrhea, fever, loss of appetite, and vomiting. The body screams, “Get this stuff out of me!” and attempts to rapidly flush or starve it out. Most disease-causing microbes thrive at human body temperature, while fever kills them by overheating them. Some produce toxins that are more inflammatory than the bacteria.

Bacteria that cause chronic illness are generally weak organisms of low virulence. They are often found in small quantities in all of us and have been assumed to be harmless. But when given the opportunity to thrive, they can and do cause illness.

Until birth, we receive predigested food from our mothers, and our digestive tract is sterile. The trip down the birth canal then initiates us into the world of microbes that thrive everywhere. Babies are subsequently exposed to bacteria in breast milk and formula and when sucking on nipples, fingers, and toes. With every breath and touch, bacteria flock to an infant’s skin and mucous membranes. In no time, every conceivable space in the colon is occupied by microbes. Within the first few days of life, colonization of E. coli and streptococcus occurs. Within a week of birth, bifido bacteria, bacteroides, and clostridium are established in bottle-fed babies. Breast-fed infants have increased numbers of lactobacillus and bifidobacteria species. As babies begin eating solid foods, they begin developing a balance of microbes that are more like adults.

The first two years of life are critical for our long-term immune responses. It’s when we set up our lifelong microbiota fingerprint. Bacterial colonization patterns set up in infancy continue to prevail throughout our lifetime—and the foods and drugs to which we expose our children dramatically affect this delicate balance. The balance of these microbes change dynamically depending on the mother’s microbes, place of delivery, whether there was a vaginal or C-section birth, whether the baby came to full term or was premature, hygiene (which when excessive can disrupt
normal balance), use of antibiotics, having siblings or not, whether a baby is breastfed or bottle-fed, and the foods that are eaten. This process normally happens in a predictable way, and, once established, the colonies flourish.