Instincto and Immune System

The body has a veritable army, perfectly organized, of an entire defense system against pathogens, microbes and undesirable molecules. Why is it called the immune system? Because it guarantees the body’s immunity to external attacks.

Le Petit Robert gives the definition: immunity is the property possessed by an organism of being refractory to certain pathogenic agents. The oldest animals in the world already had an immune system, even organisms as rudimentary as starfish. In fact, this follows from the laws of evolution: each species must defend itself as best it can against any aggressor, microscopic as well as macroscopic.

The notion of immunity dates back to Chinese Antiquity. It established itself in Western medicine with the rediscovery of vaccination against smallpox, by Jenner in 1796 (Chinese doctors used residues of smallpox pustules to immunize the healthy, while Jenner had the idea of ​​starting from the pustules of cowpox, a form of smallpox contracted by cattle, hence the name vaccinia taken from vacca = cow in Latin). The understanding of infectious processes has benefited from the work of Pasteur, with the demonstration of bacteria, the rabies vaccine and the virus hypothesis.

At the end of the 19th century, we already distinguished between so-called cellular immunity, carried out by specialized blood cells capable of phagocytizing microbes, and humoral immunity, where specific proteins, or antibodies, attach to foreign bodies.

In the 20th century, we discovered anaphylaxis, a disproportionate reaction of the body to foreign substances, hence the search for desensitization methods against “allergies”, then we managed to isolate and classify the antibodies, called alpha-, beta-, or gamma globulin (they are in reality shaped like a Y and not a globe).

Antibodies are proteins synthesized by B lymphocytes, small white blood cells capable of recognizing a foreign molecule (either isolated or present on the membrane of a bacterium or a virus), then of manufacturing specific antibodies, a Y-shaped molecule whose small branches have a relief which allows them to attach to the targeted molecules.

The function of the antibodies is either to neutralize the foreign molecule or to call to the rescue the macrophages, large white blood cells responsible for cleaning up, so that they phagocytose (capture and digest) the microbe indicated by the antibody. This cleaning work goes hand in hand with an inflammatory process: tissue swelling, redness, sensitivity and even pain. With the electron microscope it is possible to directly visualize the destruction of bacteria by macrophages.

The crucial point in terms of nutrition is that antibodies are activated against molecules, most often proteins, either carried by microbes or circulating freely in the blood. We immediately see that molecules provided by food, if they are incompletely degraded by the digestion and assimilation mechanisms, can be recognized as foreign and trigger the formation and action of antibodies. There is thus an ecological balance between the molecules delivered by food and the immune system.

We may be surprised that this point, which arises from simple logic, was not explored in depth earlier by immunologists: this is certainly due to the taboo that has long reigned in medicine regarding the relationship between diet and diseases. The theory of the intestinal barrier, supposed to allow only completely degraded food molecules to pass through (therefore without antigenic properties), has long inhibited researchers: they could not take into consideration the penetration of disruptive molecules of food origin into the circulating masses, and this possibility remained taboo. The doctors and professors questioned on this subject in the early days of instinct all raised their hands to the sky: how can we forget that the intestinal barrier protects against any undesirable molecule.

The foundations of instinct allow us first to postulate that certain molecules denatured by culinary chemical reactions, or coming from foods foreign to man’s natural food palette, escape the enzymes of the assimilation system and pass into the circulating masses while retaining antigenic structures, such that the immune system recognizes them as foreign.

This postulate immediately brings us to the following scenarios:

Tolerance also allows food antigens to accumulate in the body. These foreign molecules, which do not enter the normal circuits of assimilation, can settle according to their affinities on this or that organ, in this or that type of tissue, on the cartilage of the joints, etc. If a factor occurs that triggers a break from tolerance, we immediately anticipate what can happen: the immune system, aka the lymphocytes, will attack the body’s own cells, which it will recognize as foreign to the body, since they carry antigens that are not part of the list of in-house molecules. This explains the relationships that we actually observe between diet and autoimmune diseases: the simple correction of dietary hygiene makes it possible to obtain remissions or significant reductions in symptoms. The process is even surprisingly rapid, which argues for a stimulating action of food antigens after exiting tolerance. It is also possible that the normal antigens of organ cells resemble food antigens, the autoimmune mechanism is then explained by a confusion of the immune system (this explanation finds confirmation in the fact that type 1 diabetes is caused by the absorption of cow’s milk by young children, certain bovine proteins resembling the membrane proteins of pancreatic cells responsible for secreting insulin: the immune system, excited by bovine proteins, then attacks the cells pancreatic, the body lacks insulin and symptoms of diabetes appear (hyperglycemia after meals or hypoglycemia on an empty stomach following lack of glucose reserves).

We thus see how the initial hypothesis of instinct (inadequacy of traditional food to the genetic data of the body, or genetic inadequacy of the body to the data of traditional food) makes it possible to trace the guidelines for immune anomalies responsible for serious, allergic, cancerous or autoimmune diseases. The concealment of the dietary problem by medicine can therefore explain the current inability to formulate clear explanations for these pathologies.