Contributory factors to inflammation over time

1OUR FOOD CHOICES

To mount an immune response is a highly energy demanding job, we need a good supply of vitamins and minerals and balanced macronutrients: carbohydrate, fat, and protein. Excess sugar in the form of refi ned ‘package and promise’ foods types (my worst is breakfast cereals) should be avoided. Sugar both disrupts the diversity of our gut microbiome which plays a vital role in the art of immune tolerance and also high blood sugar unleashes destructive molecules that interfere with the body’s natural infection-control defences.

What to eat? Opt for real whole foods, especially vegetables and some fruit that are nutrient dense in polyphenols, active chemical compounds and vitamins and minerals which help protect cells from toxins and reduce infl ammation in your body and improve diversity of the gut microbiome. Spices are a great source of polyphenols too so include more garlic, ginger, turmeric and cinnamon.

Th ink about protein as the side dish, rather than the main event and choose from fatty fish, eggs, cheese, yoghurt, turkey, lamb and preferably organic beef and chicken.

If you drink alcohol, drink only in moderation: 2-3 glasses of wine a week or a couple of gin and tonics.

Regular exercise is one of the pillars of healthy living. Many conditions have infl ammation at their very core, and so pushing you further towards that infl ammatory threshold. 40 minutes of exercise to raise your heart rate four to five times a week is the goal.

The different microorganisms, particularly the bacteria within the gut lumen, are producing chemicals that act on the host. Eating in the way described above is the best way to promote diversity and immune tolerance.

Science tells us that a lot of good things happen in our brains while we sleep. Learning and memories are consolidated and waste is removed, among other things. New research shows for the fi rst time that important immune cells called microglia - which play an important role in reorganising the connections between nerve cells, fighting infections, and repairing damage - are also primarily active while we sleep. The fi ndings, which appear in the journal Nature Neuroscience, have implications for brain plasticity. Adults generally require seven to eight hours sleep a night and teens nine to ten hours a night.

When to eat? Eat two to three meals a day rather than snack and graze all day. Without even realising many of us are eating up to 16 hours a day. Leaving four to five hour gaps between meals or practicing eating in an eight-hour window during the day reduces unnecessary infl ammation. 2

Th is vitamin is so important for our immune system and overall health it’s being reclassified as a hormone! Vitamin D plays a key role in facilitating a balanced immune response - and helps to fight an infection like a virus. Although we do synthesise vitamin D ourselves - it’s quite a process and the conditions need to be right. In the UK, and at similar latitudes, summer midday sunlight contains enough UVB for vitamin D synthesis while the weaker sunlight of winter provides a negligible amount of vitamin D synthesis. So getting out in the sunshine is helpful but it does need to be the correct UVB.

There are some supplemental nutrients and medications that of course bridge a nutrient gap or block an infl ammatory pathway respectively which may be needed in some situations, but the overriding message here is that we cannot live a lifestyle of taking our built-in mechanisms for granted. It’s akin to fi lling up your prize sports car with diesel rather than unleaded petrol, and expect optional health and wellbeing to be the result! Look after yourselves and your immune resilience will take care of you well into your old age!