Inflammation – Dietary Causes

Systemic inflammation results from the immune system’s response to an outside stimulus (I’ll get more into the causes of inflammation momentarily). A cascade of chemical reactions take place and results in immune cells such as neutrophils and macrophages releasing cytokines and other pro-inflammatory compounds into tissues. In the case of wounds or injury, this is a desirable response as it aids in the healing process, but an excess of these inflammatory compounds leads to systemic inflammation in uninjured areas of the body. Chronic low grade inflammation can in turn cause a variety of conditions including Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, heart disease, stroke, arthritis, chronic pain, and many diseases ending in –itis such as bronchiolitis, pancreatitis, meningitis, bronchitis and many others (1). People have also reported the decrease in symptoms such as body aches, headaches, bloating, and other random side effects when systemic inflammation is decreased.

There are a number of causes for systemic inflammation including drug overuse, a diet rich in omega-6 fatty acids, free radical damage from oxidants (hence our need for antioxidants), infections, injury, allergies, autoimmune diseases, asthma, diabetes, obesity, and consuming foods that are difficult to digest (2, 4). I’m not going into detail about all of the aforementioned causes, but there are a few that I think are particularly important in my line of work, so I’ll focus on those.

Causes of Inflammation

Autoimmune Response

Amazingly enough, 80-85% of our immunity exists within our gut wall (3). Without necessary gut flora your immune response is disrupted in two major ways. For starters, you’re unable to properly digest and assimilate vitamins, minerals, amino acids (proteins), and fats, which means you just don’t have the nourishment to support a healthy immune system. This means that even people with extremely healthful diets can become malnourished due to the lack of healthy biota. Furthermore, your ability to produce working immune cells such as lymphocytes, IgA, phagocytes, interferons, cytokines and a number of other cells is also a function of a healthy gut flora. The lack of healthy gut flora therefore results in an improper immune response, which for some people can be overactive or impaired. Such is the case with autoimmune disorders. There’s certainly more to it than that, but I’m trying to keep it short and sweet for the purposes of your sanity. 

Omega-6 Fatty Acids

Omega-6’s work in tandem with omega-3’s, but the problem is that our diet is entirely too rich in omega-6’s (mostly because of our consumption of junky oils, conventionally produced meat, and processed foods), which throws off the balance and in turn, makes us inflamed. Consuming omega 6’s such as those found in corn, safflower, sunflower, grapeseed, soy, peanut and vegetable oils results in the formation of arachidonic acid (AA), which then forms pro-inflammatory eicosanoids. As I mentioned previously, the inflammation response is beneficial for injury, but not on a daily basis. I should also note that not all eicosaniods are bad, but they are when formed from AA, which is formed from Omega-6 fatty acids.

When you take advil and other NSAIDS, you are actually blocking the enzyme that stimulates the production of eicosanoids from AA, thus you will have fewer bad eicosanoids floating around to make you inflamed. However, advil and many of the other anti-inflammatory drugs are unable to pass through the blood-brain barrier, which means you can still have some hefty inflammatory damage in the brain (1). Furthermore, NSAIDs also block the body’s own anti-inflammatory mechanism (5) meaning that you’re not allowing your body the chance to heal itself.

In contrast, Omega-3 fatty acids are anti-inflammatory. The Omega-6, Omega-3 system is made to work in tandem, but we overload our system with the Omega-6’s, preventing the Omega-3’s from doing their anti-inflammatory work. 

Sugar

The America Diet is extremely high in sugar. The American Heart Association recommends consuming no more than 6 tsp of added sugar for women and 9 tsp of added sugar for men every day (6), but our consumption is far beyond that. Sugar is problematic for inflammation in two ways. First, sugar actually stimulates our immune cells to produce pro-inflammatory cytokines (7). Second, sugar feeds bad bacteria and yeasts in the gut, which can result in an improperly balance gut biota. And as we learned early, an overabundance of undesirable yeast and bacteria in the gut can impair the immune system. 

Toxins

I won’t go into too much detail here other than to state that we live in a chemical-laden world and these chemicals can be toxic to our precious gut microbiota. In the same way that pesticides are harmful to pests and humans, they’re also harmful to bacteria and yeasts. Humans are exposed to large amounts of toxins through food, personal care products, cleaning products, clothing fabrics, off-gassing of household goods, fragrances, air pollution and a whole slew of other sources. I’d also like to point out that we tend to forget that our skin is the largest organ in our body – anything you place on your skin (lotions, cosmetics, sunscreens, etc.) is absorbed into your body and can directly effect the health of your gut, thus impacting your immune system and resulting in systemic inflammation. 

Carrying Excess Body Fat

This is a classic example of whether the chicken or the egg came first. Either way, excess body fat causes inflammation and inflammation causes excess body fat – the two go hand in hand. Systemic, unnecessary inflammation causes fat cells to expand and become stressed, which results in incomplete or disrupted metabolic pathways in the mitochondria, the cell’s energy producers (4). When these metabolic pathways are disrupted, the result is the formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). ROS can bounce around the body causing cellular damage that leads to further inflammation. Fat helps to protect the body from ROS by allowing the cellular damage to take place in fat cells rather than more important cells such as heart or lung tissues. Thus, the body accumulates fat in order to protect itself from inflammation, but the excess fat also acts as a source of inflammation as it expands. Excess fat can further cause inflammation through its ability to up-regulate genes associated with the inflammatory response (4). 

Individual Food Sensitivities

Food sensitivities are different than allergies in the way in which our body responds to these particular foods. However, the foods that people are most often sensitive to are also common allergens, but it’s possible to be sensitive to almost anything as I’ll demonstrate in the following discussions of wheat, lactose and fructose. These are certainly not the only foods to which people can be sensitive, but they’re some of the most common.

Wheat and Gluten

Celiac disease is the ultimate example of a food intolerance. When exposed to gluten, a person with celiac disease will experience extremely bad inflammation in the gut, which damages the villi (I blogged about how digestion works and the role of the villi in this previous post). As the villi become degraded, the cells forming the gut lining actually begin to separate causing leaky gut syndrome, which enables undigested food particles to pass through the lining of the gut into the blood stream where they don’t belong. The body recognizes these foreign food particles in the same way that it would recognize a virus or other foreign invader, which causes an immune response, thus causing further inflammation. 

Celiac disease is the extreme version of a gluten sensitivity, but people with a more mild sensitivity can experience bloating, headaches, fatigue, unexplained body aches and a variety of other side effects. Regardless, these are all signs that inflammation is happening in the body. I also think it’s important to note that a temporary sensitivity (to gluten or any other food) can be developed after a night of heavy drinking, being overly stressed, or after a round of antibiotics (8). 

Lactose 

Lactose intolerance usually manifests itself as flatulence, cramping, diarrhea, stomachache and other symptoms of IBS. It occurs when people lack the necessary enzyme to digest lactose – the sugar found in dairy. In fact, it’s estimated that 75% of the population develops lactose intolerance overtime because the gene producing lactase – the enzyme responsible for digesting lactose – begins to turn itself off as people age (8). 

Lactose intolerance is slightly different than a gluten intolerance in that the undigested lactose actually moves through the digestive tract into the large intestines rather than leaking out through the gut to illicit an immune response (8). Once in the large intestines, the undigested lactose becomes food for bacteria. So, even without having the proper enzymes to digest lactose, most people who are lactose intolerant are able to withstand some lactose consumption below a certain threshold. If one consumes too much lactose, the bacteria are unable to digest the load and it’s at that point that you would experience discomfort accompanied by inflammation in the gut. 

Fructose

Despite the fact that many people are unaware of this type of intolerance, fructose intolerance is actually one of the most common intolerances. Fructose is a form of sugar found in fruit, honey and a variety of other specific plant foods. However, the problem is more of a malabsorption issue rather than a true intolerance. The issue is that some people possess a low number of GLUT5 transporters in the gut, which are responsible for absorbing fructose in the small intestines (8). As these transporters become saturated, the excess fructose is unable to be absorbed, moves its way into the large intestines where it is uncomfortably digested by microbes. Hence, people with fructose intolerance experience diarrhea, stomachaches, and flatulence. Fructose intolerance can even lead to depression due to an imbalance in gut microbiota and an associated lack of serotonin production (8). 

You can compare this scenario to a small parking lot for a busy store. Let’s say there are only 10 parking spots, but 20 cars want in. 10 of those cars can be accommodated, but the other 10 will have to go elsewhere. This means that again (like a lactose intolerance) there’s a threshold at which fructose-containing foods can be consumed without an issue. I should also point out that the real problem isn’t that we’re eating entirely too much fruit, but that we’re eating entirely too much food with added sugar (think: high fructose corn syrup). 

In Summary…

Systemic inflammation can be caused by a number of factors including an unwarranted immune response, over consumption of omega 6 fatty acids, sugar, toxins, excess body weight, and individual food sensitivities. Much can be done to reduce inflammation in the body through dietary choices, but more on that later…

References

1. Sears, Barry. The Omega Rx Zone: The Miracle of the New High-Dose Fish Oil. New York: Harpertorch, 2002.
2. Balch, Phyllis. Prescription for Nutritional Healing, 5th Edition. New York: Penguin Group, 2004. 
3. Campbell-McBride, Natasha. Gut and Psychology Syndrome: Natural Treatment for Autism, Dyspraxia, A.D.D., Dyslexia, A.D.H.D., Depression, Schizophrenia. Cambridge, U.K.: Medinform Publishing, 2010. 
4. www.ChrisKresser.com, “How Inflamation Makes You Fat and Diabetic and Vice Versa“
5. Pitchford, Paul. Healing with Whole Foods: Asian traditions and modern nutrition, 3rd edition. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
6. American Heart Association. “Added Sugar“
7. www.Arthritis.org
8. Enders, Julia. Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ. Canada: Greystone Books, 2015.