"Let Food Be Thy Medicine" or "How What I Eat Affects How I Feel"
What I Eat Really Affects How I Feel
I have had anaphylactic episodes. One of the episodes required a visit to the hospital emergency room. I have had a handful of minor episodes that did not result in a visit to a hospital—antibiotics caused two of the allergic reactions. I had a similar response to two different antibiotics that did not belong to the same class of antibiotics. I imagine that after learning that I was allergic to a particular antibiotic, the next time a doctor would prescribe an antibiotic, they would choose one from a different class.
I have deduced that the allergic reactions I have had have less to do with the class of antibiotics and more to do with what I was feeding myself. I have taken antibiotics twice in the last eighteen months or so. One time I started feeling the allergic reaction and reversed it through consuming complex carbohydrates (dietary fiber). The second time I took the (same) antibiotic, I prevented any antibiotic side-effects from consuming sufficient amounts and qualities of complex carbohydrates before I took the antibiotic.
Food, Health, Cause and Effect
It does not take much for me to understand the cause-and-effect scenario with food and health. There is no doubt that there are similarities between how exercise affects our health.
Exercise affects various aspects of health. There are multiple types of exercise that people do to accomplish their health goals. People consider triathletes or someone that regularly competes in marathons to have desirable fitness levels. Bodybuilders, sprinters, swimmers, and soccer players are also types of athletes that we associate with people with a higher than average fitness level. I would offer, though, when it comes to how our body and health are affected by diet choices, things are not as simple as you think. Just as fitness changes do not occur overnight, diet changes do not happen overnight.
I would say, first, that the body adapts well. For example, I was not too fond of spinach when I was a young child. My parents told me spinach was an acquired taste.
Before long, I started liking spinach. As I got older, I once read somewhere that it takes the average man between eight and ten minutes to run a mile. The first time I tried, I ran a mile in 9 minutes--I could not get more average than that. Within eighteen months, though, I was running a mile in six minutes. My mile-time improved as my body adapted over that year and a half. I am not sure how many months it was until I liked spinach, but somehow some adaptation took place.
The Body Is Good At Adapting
The body can adapt to food, and the body can adapt to exercise. The body's ability to adapt probably plays a significant role in how we often misunderstand our health. If adaptation is a part of evolution, then the health solutions should reflect how health profiles may vary over time. Running a mile in six minutes was impossible for me at one time in my life. In many ways, asking someone to adhere to a strict diet is very similar to asking someone to run a six-minute mile. Both goals can be accomplished by many, to varying degrees. There is no doubt, though, that achieving those goals will take time.
One of the questions I would like to answer has to do with aspects of the immune system that intersects with digestion.
"Let food be thy medicine," right? What if some foods are problematic for me to digest? Years ago, when I actively trained for triathlons (17-20 hours per week), I noticed an interesting reaction I had to milk. On days I did not exercise, I had issues digesting milk and milk products. I would get terrible stomach cramps. On days I exercised, though, I could drink milk experience any pain at all. It would appear that exercise has some effect on digestion. There was exciting research from 2017 about how exercise affects gut health (Monda, 2017). The study talks about how a more favorable microbial diversity is one of the benefits of exercise. The paper also suggests that there are types of exercise that can influence stool time, affecting the body's contact with pathogens.
Because I have had allergic reactions in the past and have overcome them, I have a reasonable skepticism to the "once allergic, always allergic" concept. Exercise plays a role in our gut flora, and there is probably evidence that shows how gut health plays a role in digestion. Conversely, it is perhaps easy to see how a poor diet might lead to poor gut health digestion. Putting these two ideas today, exercise coupled with a good diet are two things that lead to a healthy gut.
My Diet Changes Over Time
Since most of our immune cells are in our gut, I would imagine that many autoimmune diseases or allergic reactions are related to gut issues. Would this not explain why I am sometimes allergic to certain things, and sometimes I am not?
I have experienced allergic reactions from cats, dogs, milk, pollen and, shellfish. As I mentioned earlier, I have also had anaphylactic reactions to two different classes of antibiotics. While I do not plan on eating shellfish any time soon, I do not feel that I am allergic to shellfish. I have had pretty significant allergic reactions to all of the above. There have been times, though, where I would have next to no allergic response to any of them.
Preventing Anaphylaxis
So what can explain anaphylaxis? In response to allergens, our bodies produce inflammatory chemicals during anaphylactic shock. Perhaps, a better explanation will help us to realize ways to prevent it from happening. I was reading a paper that leads me to understand that macrophages play a role in the body's inflammatory response. If this is true, could a difficult-to-digest food substance be called an antigen? From what I have been learning, macrophages are immune cells that help the body eliminate pathogens. It seems that macrophages play a role in inflammation. However, I have come across research that outlines how our collective, shared understanding of what macrophages do is oversimplified. The paper suggests that macrophages are probably better described as substances that help the body maintain a healthy equilibrium (Mosser, 2021).
The fitness, health, and wellness strategies I have been able to implement are grounded in research. There are conclusions that I have come to that are not easily demonstrated through research, though. I mean, how might you explain how eating a diet rich in dietary fiber prevent anaphylaxis?
Context plays a prominent role in the success of fitness outcomes. Anyone who follows the steps I have taken to reverse specific allergic reactions might not achieve the same results.
Trial and error often end up filling in gaps where research is lacking. It is probably the randomness involved with trial and error that adds to humans' biodiversity from a fitness perspective. I find it is common to come across many oversimplifications similar to the view addressed in the 2021 paper by Mosser. While many aspects of human biology are universally fundamental, there is a significant variation from person to person. An oversimplification of a concept can often inhibit someone from being able to extract practical value from research.
I have found that in the end, it usually boils down to asking the right questions. Hmm. How does what I eat affect how I feel?
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References: Monda, V., Villano, I., Messina, A., Valenzano, A., Esposito, T., Moscatelli, F., Viggiano, A., Cibelli, G., Chieffi, S., Monda, M., & Messina, G. (2017). Exercise Modifies the Gut Microbiota with Positive Health Effects. Oxidative medicine and cellular longevity, 2017, 3831972. https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/3831972
Mosser, D.M., Hamidzadeh, K. & Goncalves, R. Macrophages and the maintenance of homeostasis. Cell Mol Immunol 18, 579–587 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41423-020-00541-3