In recent years, there seems to be a growing epidemic of people suffering from chronic digestive and autoimmune diseases. Food intolerances or sensitivities may be at the root of the problem. Most people, including doctors, have little idea how the foods they eat can contribute to their chronic illness, fatigue, and digestive symptoms.
However, there are many clues in the medical literature and in the general public’s experience as to how foods are causing and/or contributing to the current epidemic of chronic diseases and autoimmune diseases. There are several diets that are used by many people with varying success in improving their health despite a general lack of strong scientific evidence for their effectiveness. One of the clues to the cause and relief of food-induced illness may lie in proteins known as lectins that are present in all foods.
Animal and plant food sources contain complex proteins known as lectins. These proteins often have the ability to bind to sugars or carbohydrates on the surface of human cells. Some of these proteins can cause clumping of human red blood cells, a process called agglutination. The agglutination process occurs when someone receives the wrong type of blood during a blood transfusion. In fact, the specific red blood cell agglutination for each person or group of people is the basis for blood type tests. There is some data that blood types may influence how people respond to certain foods, although a blood type-specific diet seems to have been disproved. The binding or binding of certain dietary lectins can initiate a variety of cell-specific effects. These reactions can mimic hormones or cause changes in cells. This is called molecular mimicry.
Most plants contain lectins, some of which are toxic, inflammatory, or both. Many of these plant and dairy lectins are resistant to cooking and digestive enzymes. Cereal lectins, for example, are quite resistant to human digestion but well suited to ruminants such as cattle that have multi-chambered stomachs. Therefore, lectins are present in our food and are often resistant to our digestion and some have been scientifically shown to have significant GI toxicity in humans. Others have been shown to be beneficial and perhaps even protective against cancer. Either way, plant and animal proteins are foreign proteins to the body and are treated by digestion and our immune systems in a positive or negative way.
The human digestive system was created to handle a variety of animal and plant proteins through the process of digestion and elimination. Some plant and animal proteins or lectins are severely toxic to humans and cannot be eaten without causing death, such as those found in castor beans and some mushrooms. Other foods must be prepared before they are safe to eat. Preparations may include peeling, long soaking, and cooking like beans. Other foods may be poorly tolerated due to genetic predisposition or underlying pre-existing food allergy or intolerance. Others are tolerated to some degree or amount, but not in large amounts or frequently. People who are intolerant to lactose, the milk sugar, due to an inherited or acquired deficiency of the enzyme lactase, can tolerate small amounts but may have severe bloating, gas, abdominal pain, and cramps with explosive diarrhea when large amounts are ingested of foods containing lactose. Foods can become intolerable for some people after their immune system changes or the intestine is otherwise injured.
Of the dietary lectins, grain/cereal lectins; dairy lectins; and plant lectins (especially peanut lectin and soy lectin) are most commonly associated with reports of aggravation of inflammatory and digestive diseases in the body and improvement of those diseases and/or symptoms when avoided. Recent research by Loren Cordain, Ph.D., has suggested that these lectins may effectively serve as a “Trojan horse” that allows intact or nearly intact foreign proteins to invade our natural gut defenses and enter behind the lines to cause damage far beyond intestine, commonly in the joints, brain, and skin of affected individuals. Once the gut is damaged and the defense system is broken, the result is what some refer to as “leaky gut.” Additionally, many people who develop “leaky gut” not only have intestinal symptoms such as bloating, gas, diarrhea, and abdominal pain, but also other symptoms beyond the gut or extra-intestinal symptoms. Commonly affected areas are the brain or peripheral nerves, skin, joints, and various glands in the body. With the continuous exposure of the intestine to these toxic food lectins, there is a persistent stimulation of the body’s defense mechanism in a dysfunctional way, that is, an autoimmune disease.
The wrong types or levels of good and bad bacteria in the gut, or gut dysbiosis, can contribute to this process of abnormal stimulation of the immune system. Research supports the strong possibility that such stimulation may be enhanced by the bacteria’s interaction with food lectins. Some believe this can further worsen intestinal injuries and autoimmune diseases. This latter concept is gaining acceptance and recognition by clinicians in a form as hygiene theory. It is speculated that our gut bacteria have been altered by increased hygiene and overuse of antibiotics and that this phenomenon may be playing a role in the rising incidence of autoimmune diseases such as diabetes, arthritis and chronic intestinal diseases such as Crohn’s disease and irritability. bowel syndrome.
However, lectins as a cause are largely ignored in the US, although the field of lectinology and the role of lectins in disease is more accepted internationally. Avoiding certain dietary lectins may be helpful in achieving health and healing from chronic intestinal injury. Curing a “leaky gut” and avoiding ongoing abnormal stimulation of the immune system by toxic food lectins and bacteria in the gut is the basis of ongoing research and the likely success of several popular diets, such as the paleo diet, the specific carbohydrate diet and gluten. -Casein free/free diet. More research is needed in this exciting but often neglected area. The Food Doc, LLC maintains a website http://www.thefooddoc.com that will provide physician-written information on food intolerances, sensitivities and allergies, including lectin, gluten, casein intolerance and lactose, with dietary guidance that will appear soon. future an online symptom assessment and diet diary.
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