Practical steps to improving the balance of the immune system. Moving a TH2 skewed allergic type immune system towards the TH1 and rebalancing the system. There are a number of dietary and lifestyle factors that we will explore and can be employed to help with this rebalance.
I. Correcting faulty digestion
II. Increasing the omega-3 (n-3) fats and reducing the omega-6 (n-6) fats.
III. Boost glutathione and antioxidant levels.
IV. Check for low stomach hydrochloric acid..
V. Supplement lactic acid bacteria , or Probiotics, into the bowels
VI. Supplementing with vitamins and minerals, and herbs which compensate for the nutrient imbalances that result from the Th2 dominance.
VII. Increase intake of monounsaturated fats like those found in olive oil , hazelnut oil and nuts in general.
VIII. Reduce the numbers of yeasts , internally and externally from the body.
IX. Expose yourself to UVA, but with caution.
X. Increase exercise.
XI. Control stress and the stress induced adrenal overload.
XII. Improve skin barrier function.
XIII. Immunotherapy.
XIV Low dose steroids.
XV The Future
I. Correcting faulty digestion
If you don't digest adequate nutrients eventually you will get disease. It is as simple as that. Working out exactly what to eat to achieve the goal of total nutrition is far more complex, especially in a modern world surrounded by food that for the most hardly bears any resemblance to its unprocessed natural state, and a faulty under-nourishing diet can lead to the immune system being compromised and the state of the gut itself being impaired leading to the vicious cycle of more malnourishment. An impaired gut can lead to absorption of partially digested and unusable proteins and other food particles that increases IgE production .
The main aim to attempt to clean up our diets is to try and eliminate all processed food. Think of it as if you were a hunter in the wilderness only armed with a spear, what would you gather to eat ? Well, you could certainly gather all the non-poisonous plants, berries, fruits , mushrooms, vegetables. You could also hunt and kill animals. You could trap large animals. There would be no simple refined sugars, there would be no cakes, pastries, cereals, fizzy drinks, coffee, instant meals, TV dinners, frozen food, canned food, bread and unless you were brave enough to milk a wild beast, you would have no dairy products. So it would be a diet mainly consisting of meat, including organ meat like liver, kidney, brains etc, fruit , berries, vegetables and nuts. 'Yech !' You say. You may, but that is essentially what we developed to eat for 1.2 millions years of our ancestry. Our genes are still programmed for this type of diet. It is only very recently that we have become junk food addicts , and that is exactly what it is, an addiction. This junk food contains hardly any nutrients and so it never satisfies your hunger properly and so you keep eating more and more. You have to try and break this cycle and go back to a more natural way of eating. This alone will improve your health and in time you will get 'addicted' to this nutritious diet. Here are the main points that if followed will go a long way to cleaning up a bad and inadequate diet :
a. Eliminating white sugar and glucose and all processed foods containing these.
b. Eliminating trans-fatty acids found in most heated and processed vegetable oils (soy, canola, safflower, corn and sunflower) that are high in omega-6 (n-6) fatty acids (linoleic) and food products made with them (i.e. french fries and potato chips). Vegetable oils high in linoleic trans-fatty acids stimulate IL-6 and depress delayed type hypersensitivity (DTH) thus weakening CD8 Killer-T cell activity. The trans-fatty acids are twisted out of their normal 'cis' shape and produce cell membranes that are porous and vulnerable to viral infections. Increase your intake of omega-3 fish oils to be not less than 25% of your omega-6 intake, and preferably 1 unit of omega-3 for every unit of omega-6. Omega-3 suppresses the cytokines thought to be responsible for atopic allergies. It also dampens the cortisol overload and adrenal stress. Cod Liver Oil, 1 tablespoon per day for adults, and half that for children, should be taken per day.
c. Restrict alcohol. Alcohol depletes nutrients, including glutathione, and raises oxidation damage.
d. Check for and resolve any lack of hydrochloric acid in the bowel. In one study of 106 patients it was shown that 26% atopics have zero hydrochloric acid , 49% have lower than normal levels, and only 26% have normal levels. The main effect of low HCL is decreased digestion of minerals and overgrowth of gut pathogens, both of which have been shown to be prevelant in atopics, especially in those with eczema of the head and neck ie seborrheic eczema.
e. It is probably worthwhile to include a pancreatic enzyme supplement with each meal to aid the digestion.
f. Reduce or eliminate foods with high oxidation levels eg. Fried foods, neat polyunsaturated oils, highly processed foods, foods that are spoiled.
g. Eliminate foods with preservatives, non-natural chemical additives.
h. Eliminate or cut down on glutinous grains (wheat, barley, rye, oats) and dairy.
i. Supplement with turmeric, the yellow Indian spice often used in curries. Turmeric opens the chloride channels in the cells and gets mucous moving. Stagnant mucous is a complication in atopics, probably because they share the cystic fibrosis gene to some extent, and stagnant mucous harbours infection and this in turn causes inflammation. Also, turmeric directly inhibits leukotrienes. Leukotriene inhibitors are the newest asthma and eczema drugs that show some promise with few know side-effects, and they work by inhibiting the lipo-oxygenase pathway that forms leakotrienes. Turmeric also acts in the same way, and is very safe. 2 teaspoons per day in water should be taken consistently. Ginger powder, which has similar effects, should also be taken daily in the same dose.
There is a school of thought that says the reason for large increase in atopy in modern cities is as a result of a bad diet combined with stress cause by pollution. In any case this may be just due to bad nutrition but there may also be a relationship to your ancestral heritage, ie. What part of the world did your ancestors mainly come from ? The problem of allergic diseases has become more and more pressing in recent years, owing to a broad prevalence and constant morbidity growth in whole world, especially in high latitude regions. The further north you go the more you will likely get allergies. If you live in a city that will make it even more likely.
It has been proposed from studies on allergic disorders in migrants to northern territories are an indication of the exhaustion of the organism's reserve abilities and are mainly connected with disorders of the function of the gastrointestinal tract and liver, which are stipulated by extreme climate-geophysical conditions of the north including industrial contamination with pollutants. The stomach and digestion are being recognised as being a key , if not THE key to allergy.
Mal-absorption of nutrients appears to be a problem in Atopy.
In infants with severe atopy scores of height and weight in was significantly lower than those of mild and moderate atopics , is suggested that there is an impaired physical growth due to malnutrition because of malabsorption.
It has also been proposed that macromolecular absorption of food and microbial antigens being enhanced in the intestine under pathological conditions may well be the cause of such diseases as food allergy, coeliac disease, Crohn's disease, atopic eczema, etc. This results in food and allergic microbial particles permeating through the gut and entering the blood stream which causes an immune reaction and the symptoms of atopic disease. Constant inflammation and immune overload deplete the body of free radical fighting antioxidants. Free radicals are reactive oxygen ions that are destructive to health and antioxidants are required to neutralize them.
Ionescu et al. have shown that there is small bowel dys- biosis and subtle malabsorption phenomena in the majority of atopics studied. Antifungal and antimicrobial therapy has shown to be effective in the treatment of atopy. Dysbiosis is a disruption of the ever present bowel bacteria where pathogenic or harmful bacteria and yeasts gain predominance over the 'good' bacteria and the resulting imbalance has many adverse implications for health. It is important to create the appropriate conditions in the gut that will promote the growth of good bacteria.
Merely killing off the pathogens will not suffice, if a lasting solution is to be obtained. The correct food and environment , especially the correct PH or acidity of the gut needs to be established. Refined carbohydrates, sugars and other nutritionally empty foods will do nothing to help. In fact, food requires nutrients from the stores in the body to be digested and nutritionally empty foods contribute nothing in return to replenish and contribute further to these stores. More will be discussed later about this topic. Bowel dysbiosis may lead to inflammation of the pancreas causing a reduction in the exceretion of digestive enzymes , thus compounding the problem of malabsorption.
There is a distinct profile of nutrients associated with atopy. Some nutrients, as expected, are below normal in the blood , while some are above normal. It would be the aim of any therapy to correct this imbalance with nutrient supplementation and correcting of the underlying dysbiosis and malabsorption.
Some studies have proposed that there is a subtle celiac condition in atopics. Celiac disease is caused by an intolerance to gluten in wheat, oats , barley and rye and causes the villae, hair like fingers in the lining in the stomach, to atrophy and impede nutrient absorption. One study that reviewed the literature claims that this association is false. It may be worthwhile , however to test the atopic patient for a period by withdrawing glutenous grains and observing if there is an improvement in symptoms. In any case, whether they cause a celiac situation in atopics or not, glutenous grains contain substances called phytates which when passing through the body attract and bind metal minerals such as iron, zinc and calcium and leach them or remove them from the body. Atopics, already low in zinc and usually anaemic or low in iron, cannot afford this. It is therefore best to avoid all grains , at least at the start when you are attempting to improve your atopic symptoms.
Fats in the diet is always controversial and much research is aimed at this and the findings seem to change every day. One day it is no fats, the next it is some fats but not others, and then that changes and so on. One thing that is now almost universally agreed on is that hydrogenated or trans-fats are bad for health.
Trans-fats are unnatural fats that are manufactured by taking unsaturated fats or fats without a full complement of hydrogen bonds and forcing hydrogen bonds onto them until they are filled with hydrogen bonds. This has the effect of making the fat stable at room temperature and thus it will not go rancid in storage. However, the digestion has not evolved to cope with this artificial creation and it has been widely shown to cause disease. Trans-fats lurk in the most unlikely foods and are almost ubiquitous. They are mainly found in margarines and processed shelf foods , pastries, and convenience snacks. Various names containing the words 'hydrogenated' or 'trans' are used for them and you need to read the labels to ferret them out. If you are not sure and the food contains vegetable oil or fat in any form and is not refrigerated , then it is very likely that the vegetable oil is hydrogenated.
There is some evidence that fats from fish, especially cold water fish such as mackeral, salmon and sardines are beneficial to move the Th2 response toward the Th1 and dampen allergic and inflammatory conditions. Vegetable fats that are non-hydrogenated such as sunflower, safflower, and all the nut oils do the opposite and are pro-inflammatory and should be minimized in atopics. Some studies out of Japan where they revert atopic patients to a more traditional diet of fish and rice have shown good improvement in symptoms after 6 months. The Japanese suffer disproportionately with atopic disease, and as many as 1 in 3 children have symptoms. This is probably due to the stark and abrupt recent change in diet from a traditional fish based diet to a junk-food, fast-food diet.
Tipping the balance between protein and carbohydrate food intake , in favour of protein will tip the body's hormone production in favour of glucagon rather than insulin. A glucagons bias will favour anti-inflammatory prostaglandin production , while insulin will favour inflammatory prostaglandins. Combination of high blood insulin concentration with functional disorders of the digestive system increases the allergy frequency. Prostaglandins are produced from unsaturated fatty acids, vegetable and fish oils, and regulate the inflammation response.
Correcting faulty digestion involves avoiding the offending allergic foods, usually grains, eggs and soy products. However, it may be better to first correct the underlying dysbiosis and malabsorption before you start removing foods, since the food allergy may not be due to the food per se, but to the unbalanced conditions in the gut.
Other measures to improve the digestion involve supplementing with nutrients , improving the antioxidant profile by supplementing, taking hydrochloric acid with meals, taking pancreatic digestive enzymes, eating probiotic bacteria products, restoring Ph from alkaline to acid, reducing stress and the resulting adrenal overload. Each of these are discussed more fully in later chapters.
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2. [Disordered permeability of the gastrointestinal tract barrier for macromolecules and the possibilities for its experimental dietetic correction]Gmoshinskii IV, Mazo VK.
3. Atopy and coeliac disease: bias or true relation? Greco L, De Seta L, D'Adamo G, Baldassarre C, Mayer M, Siani P, Lojodice D.
4. Metabolism, endocrine status, and allergy in the extreme north. Hasnulin PV, Seliatitskaya VG.
5. Ionescu G, Kiehl R, Ona L, Schuler R. Abnormal fecal microflora and malabsorption phenomena in atopic eczema patients. J Adv Med 1990;
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