Unhealthy food choices such as a fast food diet make the body’s defenses more aggressive in the long run, with the immune system reacting similar to a diet high in calories and fat as it would to a bacterial infection, and it continues to do so even long after having switched to a healthy diet with inflammation towards innate immune stimulation still being more pronounced. These long term changes may even be involved with the development and onset of diabetes and arteriosclerosis, as published in the journal Cell.
Scientists from the University of Bonn placed model mice on a Western diet and observed that the animals developed strong inflammatory responses throughout their bodies that were similar to as they would be after and infection with a dangerous bacteria. A Western diet is an unhealthy diet that is high in sugar and fat, and is low in fiber. Consuming the unhealthy diet led to increased levels of certain immune cells in the blood, especially monocytes and granulocytes, which is indication for an involvement of immune cell progenitors in bone marrow. In an attempt to better understand the findings bone marrow progenitors for immune cell types were isolated from the animals fed the Western diet or a control healthy diet, and a systematic analysis of their activation and function states were conducted by the scientists.
Genomic studies did succeed in showing that a large number of progenitor cells were activated by the Western diet, affecting the genes responsible for proliferation and maturation, according to Professor Joachim Schultze. Fast foods cause the body to quickly recruit a large army. When the animals were given their typical diet for another month the acute inflammation ceased, but the genetic reprogramming of the immune cells and their precursors that were switched on remained active.
The innate immune system has recently been discovered to have a form of memory, after infection the body’s defenses remain in an alarmed kind of state to make response happen more quickly to a new attack, referred to as innate immune training, in this study the process was not triggered by a bacterium it was triggered by an unhealthy fast food diet explains Professor Dr. Eicke Latz.
Blood cells from 120 subjects were examined, in some of which the innate immune system showed a strong training effect with evidence of the involvement of inflammasome, which are key intracellular signalling complexes with a role in recognizing harmful substances and other infectious agents releasing highly inflammatory messengers. Just how the NLRP3 inflammasome is able to recognize exposure to a Western diet type is still unknown.
The acute inflammatory response has long term consequences for the immune system’s responses, with the activation brought on by the Western diet changing the way in which the genetic information is packaged. Genetic material stored in DNA and every cell contains many DNA strands put together are around 2 meter long typically wrapped around certain proteins in the nucleus, many genes can’t be read as they’re too inaccessible, unhealthy eating causes some of these DNA to unwind. Which is similar to a piece of wool hanging out of a ball of wool, making it much easier to read this area of genetic material as long as the unwrapping remains active, scientists refer to this phenomena epigenetic changes, says Latz.
Acceleration of the development of vascular diseases or type 2 diabetes can be triggered by these inflammatory responses, thusly improper nutrition can have serious and dramatic negative consequences. Average life expectancy has had a steady increase in Western countries over the centuries, the trend is currently being broken for the first time in recent day, with individuals being born today on average will live shorter lives than that of their parents with added technology use and little exercise added with unhealthy diets being decisive roles in this. Foundations for a healthy diet need to become more prominent in upbringing and education to protect people from the temptations of the convenience of the food industry.
