What is the Link Between a Healthy Gut and Your Immune System?

The link between a healthy gut and your immune system is so powerful, we need to understand how one can help the other. Here I lay out the way they interact with each other and how to boost your immune system with your gut.

Why Do We Need an Immune System?

Our immune system is a system in our body that helps us fight inflammation. Why is that important? Because inflammation is now recognised as being the number one factor in all chronic diseases.

It all starts with a random (or not so much) inflammation. Initially, it is a good thing to have inflammation. Our body is alerted that something is out of balance so we need to tend to it. And our marvellous body does it automatically.

For example, when you physically hurt yourself, the skin will grow a scab to protect the wound. And gradually the skin will be as good as new. That’s because your immune system was solicited to fix the wound. Same for a cold, we have a minor attack and the fluids are here to heal, the fever is there to fight the undesirable invitees.

Inflammation is a normal response but when it becomes chronic (stays over time), our body is in a constant state of “attack”. And at some point, it will have to surrender.

It can impact our mental health and increase risks of developing an autoimmune disease. It can lead to diabetes, cancer, Alzheimers, heart attack, nothing too enchanting really.

So how do we create a healthy gut for our immune system?

What Influences Our Immune System?

Many factors have a role to play, from the moment of our birth. If you were born via natural birth, you benefited from the bacteria in your mum’s vaginal canal. Via caesarean, unfortunately you don’t get that.

The breast milk is also fabulous to build a healthy immune system so if you were fed on formula, you didn’t benefit from the natural prebiotics present in your mother’s milk.

But don’t worry if you didn’t have this as a child, there are other things that can help. Read on !

There is a kind of education of our immune system that is taking place in the first five years or so of our lives.

This education is made via our gut. We are constantly exposed to new foods, substances, environmental disruptions, germs.

And with 70% of our immune system residing in our gut, we understand that a healthy gut is essential for our immune system.

If you take medications regularly, sleep badly and have a poor diet, you’re not helping your gut. If you smoke, drink too much, take drugs, all this will impact negatively the bacteria in your gut, if not destroy it.

How Can You Cultivate a Healthy Gut For Your Immune System?

Environmental factors like being exposed to dirt, allergens, help us build up that resistance as a child. We’re better equipped later in life and are likely to have less reactions.

As an adult, you can include a lot of plants into your diet and that diversity will strengthen your gut bacteria. The fibre in the plants will colonise the bacteria in the gut and when it reaches the colon, do a great job at releasing immune-nourishing molecules.

Get dirty. Our highly sanitised lifestyles are doing the opposite of what we thought was good for us. We are less prepared for germs and bad bacteria to come into contact with us. Therefore, our immune system is overwhelmed when inflammation takes over.

The more we get in contact with mother nature by going to the park, gardening, being outside, the more the outside microbiome can cultivate our own microbiome.

Whenever possible, avoid antibiotics. Of course sometimes it will be necessary to use them. But they kill off all bacteria in your gut, good and bad. If you have to use them, make sure to replenish your gut bacteria after the treatment. You can do so with pro- and prebiotics, lots of plants and fermented foods.