Month: March 2020

Your Immune System is Not Alone in Facing Viral Infections.

We are not as helpless in fighting viral infections as we would first suppose, because the ecosystem that is our body, has a lot of support and adaptive responses working alongside our immune system. Let me explain.

‘Our immune system is not our bodies only line of defence.’

What if I told you that the human body is literally covered in and chock full of trillions of microbes producing various immune supportive compounds twenty four hours a day, seven days a week and that these organisms are responding to your bodily ecosystem, (including bacterial, viral and fungal infections and foreign organisms), on a continual basis.

The current estimate is that 43% of the cells in your body are human and the rest is made up of microbes, also known as the microbiota, that are capable of altering your gene expression, your immune function and even of producing anti-viral compounds and natural anti-biotics such as bacteriocins. Talking in terms of genes, we have approximately 20,000 that make up the human genome, (essentially an instruction manual on how to build a human body), but we contain between 2-20 million microbial genes, which affect how our body works in ways that are really rather remarkable. We essentially carry two genomes, (two instruction manuals), one is for how to build a human body and the other is the genetic material of our microbiota, known as our microbiome. This microbiome is a complex DNA instruction manual for building microbial cells and how they augment our system to create one complex ecosystem.

Our microbiota produce natural immune supportive compounds and are capable of rapid adaptation, but we don’t yet have enough information to confidently suggest how they may help our immune systems fight infections such as the common cold, the flu and other viruses. So for now it would be wise to utilise a pragmatic and reasonable approach. If you knew that you could make choices that supported your microbiome instead of damaging it, wouldn’t it make sense to do so?

I became fascinated with the microbiome over ten years ago when I had a personal experience of using microbes to improve my families health. As a Healthcare Professional I was shocked that nobody was talking about this back then, but things are now changing….rapidly.

The conversations about the importance of our microbiome are being had the world over and leading scientists and medical professionals are all hot on the heels of this paradigm shifting level of understanding.

The microbiome have many functions and it is interesting to note that some bacteria appear to exert anti-viral activity through various mechanisms, including direct interaction, production of inhibitory metabolites and regulation of the immune system(1). Lactic acid bacteria as an example produce bacteriocins that have been shown to display antiviral activity(1),(2),(3) as have myxobacteria that inhabit our gut as well as the soil, tree bark, oceans and even the desert(4).

There are countless examples of micro-organisms displaying anti-viral activity in the scientific literature, but the problem we have on relying on this data is that no-one knows how any one individuals unique microbiome will respond in any given scenario.The workings of the ecosystem that is the human body are complex beyond our comprehension and we would do well to see that we keep it in as harmonious a state as possible.

With so much still to discover about the workings of our bodies, a dose of humility is sometimes life’s best medicine.

It is for this reason that we must allow ourselves to be humbled by the intelligent design of nature, for we will never know enough to be as ignorant as we currently are in being led solely by science and not considering the intelligence of natural design within its correct context. Science provides useful sign posts, but if the reason we use science is to progress and evolve, then we must also accept that we will always need to work alongside nature and not attempt to separate our understanding from it.

How our bodies respond to viral infections, will be impacted by our unique biology, including our microbiome and many other yet to be confirmed factors. It is also entirely possible that our microbiome could turn out to be one of a number of factors, in explaining the large deviation in symptomatic responses and predisposition to contraction of, various viral infections, including novel ones.

It is now our job to ensure we support our immune systems by being as robust and resilient as possible. There are many ways we can do that, but taking care of our microbiome is a great place to start.

Every time you eat/drink processed foods and beverages containing chemical residues, preservatives, sweeteners, additives, stabilisers, added sugars, etc you can potentially damage your bodies delicately balanced ecosystem and all the little microbes that call it home. It requires no jump in scientific discoveries to work out that compounds added to food that are designed to stop the growth of, or kill bacteria, or cause imbalanced growth of specific species, are going to have a detrimental impact on the balance of microbes that make up a healthy bodily ecosystem. So it follows that leaving these processed foods out of our diet is essential in supporting our microbiome to support us.

With that being said, eating an unprocessed, varied diet, grown or reared the way nature intended on healthy soils, within healthy ecosystems is the most respectful and harmonious lifestyle approach we can recommend.

I hope this article has allowed you to see how our immune system does not fight any infection alone and we have way more support than we might think.

Let’s be grateful for and look after nature’s ecosystems and the resilience that is created through their complexity within and without our own bodies, they may just help us all get through challenging times in ways we have yet to understand.

I hope you enjoyed this article, please help us spread the word by sharing

Teri Clayton

References

1. Antiviral potential of lactic acid bacteria and their bacteriocins. Al Kassaa I1, Hober D, Hamze M, Chihib NE, Drider D. 2014, Probiotics and antimicrobial compounds, pp. Dec 6(3-4)177-85.
2. Bacteriocins and Bacteriophages: Therapeutic Weapons for Gastrointestinal Diseases? Loris Riccardo Lopetuso, Maria Ernestina Giorgio, Angela Saviano, Franco Scaldaferri, Antonio Gasbarrini,and Giovanni Cammarota, s.l. : International Journal of Molecular Science, 2019, Vol. 20. 10.3390.ijms20010183 .
3. A novel eukaryotic cell culture model to study antiviral activity of potential probiotic bacteria. Tanja Botića, Trine Danø,´Klingbergb Hana, Weingartlc, Avrelija Cencičad, s.l. : International Journal of Food Microbiology, 2007, Vol. 115.
4. Antiviral Compounds from Myxobacteria. Stadler, Lucky S. Mulwa and Marc, s.l. : Microorganisms, 2018, Vol. 6.