Things you didn’t know you needed to know about your gut health, immunity and inflammation
2025, 5 years on from 2020, and more than ever we are seeing the effects of the decisions that were made to health care that have altered the way the immune systems and our microbiome relate to each other, and the impacts this has on our ability to modulate inflammation.
A lot of our environment we live in daily is inflammatory, foods that we eat, strained relationships, overloaded working schedules, global instability, mental and emotional health management; you name it, right now it is present.
An explosion of health symptoms related to over-reactive immune responses are occurring. When I started out in my career 12 years ago I had never come across MAST Cell Activation syndrome; from what I am seeing I would say this “syndrome” has become a common dis-ease within the global population, as the body has become overstimulated with inflammatory reactions, and substances we ingest or the environmental factors around us are now triggering histamine reactions that would have otherwise not happened before. This cascade then permanently alters the population of microbes in our gut, leaving more inflammatory populations present to continue the cycle of inflammation.
The prevalence of lifestyle diseases becoming more aggressive and developing quicker in once “healthy” individuals is also massively on the rise. This is largely due to the protective shield of our immune system being tampered with and hitting a fast decline in function.
Key aspects to note and be aware of to start your journey of rebalancing your own system:
The gut holds a large percentage of immune cells within the lining of the gut wall. Thousands of lymph nodes are placed within the cell wall of the gut and dotted around the organs. The aim in a healthy immune system is to produce lymphocytes (immune cells), to remove pathogens and toxins from cells and transport them through our lymph vessels in the lymphatic system to be removed from the body via our excretion pathways. This is a healthy inflammatory response.
The Gut is constantly in a state of fluctuation with inflammation due to the large immune cell presence and microbiome, that has a role in protecting the body and its cellular processes from foreign invaders, via stimulating a healthy inflammatory response.
When inflammation outweighs the anti-inflammatory effects of the good bacteria of the microbiome such as being in a state of stress, we produce large amounts of stress hormones which have been shown to stimulate the growth of bad bacteria (Dysbiosis like SIBO) which produce toxins which breakdown our gut lining barrier. This promotes circulation of those toxins around the body, triggering immune responses such as in conditions like leaky gut syndrome.
This promotes inflammatory responses in the body, inflammation produces nitric oxide which stores in tissue as nitrates and causes further inflammation. High Nitrate concentrations cause bacterial growth to rise in inflammatory bacteria populations and decreases the populations of anti-inflammatory bacteria. The growth of the inflammatory bacteria colonies increases inflammation in the body due to the maintenance of high nitrate levels.
Therefore, the first step to treating gut dysbiosis and conditions like IBS and Leaky Gut is to first reduce the inflammation in the gut.
Interesting point to note: Studies have shown over the last few years that people who had covid vaccinations and long covid had higher populations of inflammatory gut bacteria exacerbating inflammation in the body, thus leading to overall longer overstimulated immune responses.
Overstimulated immune responses over extended time periods cause MAST CELL activation. Clients I have seen with this syndrome can be set off by a lot of things in the environment and can only tolerate eating 8-10 types of food without causing an intolerance or immune response.
Bottom line
Gut health in relation to inflammation modulation and immunity is going to be a big cornerstone of improving health outcomes as the new normal for the general population, not just in relation to lifestyle diseases. This needs to become a cornerstone of nutritional and stress management focus for healthier living for everyone.
