Читать книгу Anti-Inflammatory Diet For Dummies - Artemis Morris - Страница 20

A major forgotten part of the immune system is the digestive tract. In fact, 80 percent of your immune system is found there. The digestive tract contains the gut associated lymphoid tissue (GALT), a type of tissue that monitors and protects the body against pathogens (germs). There is a high concentration of GALT in the small intestine, where your food gets absorbed.

Due to oral tolerance, the GALT doesn’t respond to most foods you eat as foreign invaders. That’s why you don’t mount an immune system response to everything you eat. However, the GALT is the same part of the immune system that overreacts to food and mediates the hyperreactive immune response in food allergies, where the food is seen as an invader.

The intestines also offer a safe haven for beneficial bacteria, called the gut microbiome, which aid in digestion and occupy prime real estate so other, harmful microorganisms can’t move in. Dysbiosis is an imbalance of good and bad bacteria in the gut. Because many of its symptoms seem to be normal reactions to some foods, many people shrug off the condition. But if left untreated, it can turn into leaky gut syndrome, a major cause of disease.

Leaky gut syndrome is part of the mechanism that contributes to inflammation in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and thus, the rest of the body. Inflammation in the intestines disrupts the tight junctions, the glue that holds the cells of the intestines together in a self-contained tube. Most molecules are too big to fit through these junctions, so the only way for them to escape the intestines and enter the blood is to be ferried through the intestinal cells, from one side to the other. With inflammation, the junctions become too “leaky” and let things such as large food particles and bacteria out into the rest of the body, where the immune system can attack them (see Figure 1-1). In this way, leaky gut syndrome, also known as intestinal hyperpermeability, contributes to autoimmune disorders, joint pains, food allergies and sensitivities, neurodegenerative disease, and most chronic disease.

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FIGURE 1-1: With leaky gut syndrome, large particles can escape the digestive tract.