Gut Bacteria and MS

Dr.Terry Wahls - Tuesday, June 05, 2012

Your Gut and Autoimmune Disease Did you know that having the wrong the bacteria in your bowels will increase your risk of autoimmune disease? The mix of bacteria, yeasts, and parasites that we have depends directly upon the foods we eat. For thousands of generations, we ate leaves, roots, fish, and meat. It was only at the dawn of agriculture, a mere 10,000 years ago, that we began eating so much starch. It was only 300 years ago that we began eating sugar and only 75 years ago that we began eating high fructose corn syrup. Each change shifted the mix of the critters that live in and on us. Scientists are finding out that those critters have a major impact on our health. It turns out that if you have a starch- and sugar -loving mix of critters, you are more likely to have an autoimmune problem and a host of other health problems.     Leaky gut Syndrome and Multiple Sclerosis Posted on 15. Oct, 2012 by Fiona Chin in MS Diet Many people have heard of this mysterious condition called leaky gut syndrome and its potential link to autoimmune diseases, including Multiple Sclerosis. So how does Leaky gut Syndrome and Multiple Sclerosis occur and what things cause it to happen in the first place? Leaky gut Syndrome and Multiple Sclerosis are linked due to an increase in the permeability of the intestinal wall, meaning large and unbroken food particles can pass across into the blood steam before they have been properly broken down. These large food molecules are seen as foreign invaders to our immune system so like any good immune system it mounts an attack and makes antibodies to ‘remember’ when this invader comes back. If you think about it logically your digestive tract, like your skin and lungs is the only other organ in your body to come into direct contact with your external environment, through the food that you eat. You see your food comes into contact with the wall of your digestive tract so you want to hope that it protects you properly from all the things that would otherwise be toxic to other systems and organs in your body. Your digestive mucosa has to be able to absorb nutrients from your food, yet at the same time be strong enough to protect you from microbes, yeasts, parasites, poisons, and toxins. Thus your intestinal mucosal health is critical to the normal and healthy function and prevention of disease. Due to the complex nature of your gut, numerous defense mechanisms have had to evolve, including the protective role healthy bowel flora plays, sophisticated immune responses, and the tight junctions which are responsible for the regulation and passage of particles between your intestinal tract and your surround blood stream. When the intestinal barrier becomes compromised, in other words ‘leaky’ the passage of antigens, that would normally be denied access through healthy tight junction cells, pass through and into our blood stream. As a result many much needed and important processors in the body become disrupted. A disruption to these all important processors is the link to Leaky gut Syndrome and Multiple Sclerosis. Let me explain how… When large food particles are allowed to pass through our intestinal wall and into our blood stream before the complete process of digestion has taken place then an increased load is placed on our immune system. Our immune cells that are now exposed to intact antigens create antibodies to neutralize these antigens, which have been recognized as foreign invaders. Every time we consume these foreign invaders our immune system reacts. So what are some of the causes Leaky gut Syndrome and Multiple Sclerosis? There are numerous causes of leaky gut syndrome including the following: Stress Food Allergies Inflammation Noxious environmental toxins Microorganisms Wheat Coffee Highly refined carbohydrate diets Dairy Nonsteriodal anti-inflammatory drugs Antibiotics Prescription corticosteroids The problem with the causes that I listed above is that they alter the delicate balance of the all important gut flora in our intestines. Our gut flora is like the CEO of our immune system. Imagine nice little workers in crisp white shirts and suits, these are the type of people we want running our immune system. Now imagine a worker with sauce stains all over his shit, mustard stains down his front, grubby hands, and oh… he just burped in your face! This is the type of bowel flora who is now running your immune system. They don’t care if your cells react to foods they shouldn’t or if you start to attack your own tissues like myelin. So now that your immune system is busy attacking the food particles from the food that you eat, your immune system becomes over reactive and over time left unchecked becomes over active – like the immune systems of those with Multiple Sclerosis – over active to all the wrong things and under active to the important things. Our leaky guts take the attention of our immune system away from where we need it. On top of this many of the proteins in some of our commonly eaten foods, including dairy have structures that are very similar to the appearance of myelin. In our immune systems over activity and discombobulated state it mistakes our myelin sheath for some of these food complexes and starts to attack it. Of course this is a simplified and crude way of explaining how leaky gut Syndrome and Multiple Sclerosis may co exist. But to put it simply a leaky gut increases the load on the immune system, causing an over activity in the immunes response that may eventually lead to the attack on our myelin sheath. The health of our immune system is dependant upon a good and healthy functioning gut that in turn improves the health of the immune system. One of the first things we are taught as naturopaths is to treat the bowel first, or put another way, the bowel is often the cause of disease. Is it any wonder that conditions like MS that seems to be disease of the western and modern world must be linked to diet and stress?