Compassionate Nutrition & Immunity – Are We What we Eat?

 

For most of this year, we have been trying to avoid a pandemic around the covid19 virus. Many people have not been able to avoid it as it becomes more virulent while others who have been vaccinated hope to not experience too many symptoms if they do. Debates and discussions have been evident and for some people, relationships have gone their separate ways due to disagreement around the origins and effects of the virus. None of this constitutes a compassionate approach to dealing with the disease, which has somehow been overlooked. Some groups have identified their neglect, e.g. people who are already vulnerable or disabled while other groups in society have become more guarded or even defensive. As a community however the focus needs to be more on social capital and a social approach to compassionate care during a time that none of us has ever experienced before. Food insecurity and food poverty have also added to the complex web of poor pockets of immunity. With food swamps and food deserts adding to this problem, people are starting to realise that what we eat will have an influence on how our bodies respond to disease and distress.

Compassionate nutrition, narrative medicine and integrative medicine all have one thing in common here. All these new and emerging approaches to health and social care have identified that we must first look for individual differences rather than treating people as all the same.  Every person’s gut microbiome is different and it is here that our immune system is triggered into action and communicates with the brain when under threat. This is called the gut-brain axis and is more recently a leading part of nutrition research.

in a review by Osadchiy, Martin and Mayer, (2019) interesting findings from studies suggest that while the gut microbiome is in place before birth, the food we eat and the way we eat it during human development and beyond can have a significant influence upon both brain and gut health. As microbes escape into the bloodstream through a faulty or “leaky” gut they can then travel to the brain and enter the brain via the blood-brain barrier which can also leak. This leads to a constant feedback loop of low-grade inflammation throughout the body including the brain and other organs around the body. When we think about immunity now and in the future, we must therefore think about what fuel we are providing the body with to fight off infection and whether we are really providing access to compassionate nutrition or not.

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