The surface area of your gut (gastrointestinal tract) is roughly 150 times greater than the area of the skin covering your body. The average person eats approximately twenty-five tons of food over his or her lifetime. Those food choices affect your gut in good and bad ways. The foods we eat may contain the following toxins that can destroy your immune system:
● Preservatives
● Animal hormones
● Antibiotics
● Artificial colors
● Artificial flavors
● Pesticides
● Many more toxic chemicals
The immune system has to make instantaneous decisions whether to accept or attack the molecular structures as they pass through the intestines.
The foods you choose to eat can enhance the lining of your intestinal tract; or, they can irritate it, or even damage it. There is a lot of literature on gluten (the protein in wheat, rye, and barley) and the term ‘leaky gut’. In essence, gluten causes exponential growth of zonulin.
Zonulin is a protein in the lining of your intestinal tract. It creates tiny holes in the intestinal wall. These tiny holes allow nutrients to pass through the immune system and into the bloodstream. However, in the presence of gluten, zonulin creates much larger holes in the walls of your intestinal lining. This allows the contents of your gut to spill into your bloodstream. This can be very dangerous to your health – both mental and physical.
Proteins make up twenty percent of our bodies. They are involved in nearly every biological process (transport and storage of nutrients, healing, repairing tissues, removal of wastes, etc.). Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. There are twenty-two amino acids in the human body. Our bodies use twenty of them to create proteins and to maintain a strong immune system.
Proteins primarily come from meat and dairy products. The body needs eight essential amino acids (they body cannot create them – they must come from the foods we eat). Two amino acids (glutamine and arginine) are given to some patients as part of a nutritional therapy before surgery. One might ask if vegetarians can get all the required amino acids from their diet. The answer is yes. They can. More on diet and the immune system shortly.