It’s becoming more and more well-known that most physical diseases originate in the gut due to the fact that an imbalance of your gut microbiota will interfere with with multiple metabolic processes and neural communication pathways.
One of the biggest links to this is that a large part of your immune system is housed in your gastrointestinal digestive tract (GIT).
Up to 70-80% of your immune cells are in your GIT, inclusive of innate immune cells (DCs, macrophages and innate lymphoid cells), adaptive immune cells (T cells, B cells and plasma cells), and intestinal epithelial cells.
The gut microbiota that resides in your gut is directly linked to the well-being of your immune system. They can provide essential benefits to your health by regulating immune homeostasis or they can cause immune dysregulation, leading to auto-immune disease.
When you have psychological stress in your external environment, this activates your hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis), which in simple terms means that your body goes into a state of a dominant sympathetic nervous system, or better known as your fight or flight response.
The overactive HPA axis leads to an imbalance of microbiota (dysbiosis) in your gut due to the release of stress hormones, inflammation and autonomic alterations.
Dysbiotic microbiota influences the immune system sitting around the gut lymphoid tissue which in turns promotes an inflammatory response that originates in the enteric nervous system (gut) and moves up the vagus nerve and all the way to the immune system in the brain known as the microglial cells.
When the microglia become proinflammatory, they promote neuroinflammation, which increases the risk of developing anxiety or depression.
Gut Microbiota and Auto-Immune Disease
Studies have linked certain gut microbes to auto-immune disease in which the immune system mistakenly attacks the body’s own tissue.
This can occur as a result of gut permeability (leaky gut), whereby the lining of the gut can become inflamed and therefore leading to a weakened mucosal lining in which large food particles and microbiota can prematurely leak through the intestinal walls.
The immune system doesn’t recognise these particles and perceives them as predators thus commencing an attack in order to protect the body from them.
This leads to a compromised immune system and may develop into an auto-immune condition.
Auto-immune conditions can be managed and treated in a naturopathic way. This includes the use of herbs, supplements and a range of strain specific probiotics.
However, these recommendations can vary from person to person as the make up of our individual gut microbiota can be quite vast and unique.
For this reason, I provided online consultations to assess your individual needs and give you the best treatment protocol suited to you.
Book your consultation here.