John Arts Abundant Living www.johnarts.co.nz

Last week we saw how nutrients such as vitamins C, trace minerals including zinc and vitamin D are needed to help our immune system defend against pathogens, commonly bacterial and viral infections.

Our immune system though has many other functions, especially our self-repair systems when our body tissues are damaged by sickness or injury whether intentional through surgery or through accidental trauma.

The correct functioning of these immune defences are greatly influenced by nutrition and unfortunately our diets and food processing methods have created an environment where both unwanted inflammation and cancer cell proliferation can increase the risk of many diseases. The key nutrient in our cancer defences is vitamin D. This has the ability to trigger the death of cancer cells and possibly slow the rate of cancer cell proliferation.

When you have an infection or tissue injury from trauma, your body wants to create inflammation because it is hostile to infection and helps initiate healing. This is caused by a cocktail of different chemicals released by your immune (white blood cells) that increases blood flow, causing pain, redness, heat and swelling. Once inflammation is no longer needed it should in theory turn itself off to allow for the final stages of tissue repair.

The process of inflammation is hugely influenced by our diet, especially the types of fats.

The real culprits are the polyunsaturated vegetable oils that are increasingly hard to avoid. These include most cooking oils including soya, sunflower and grapeseed. Omega 6 triggers hormone like compounds called series 2 prostaglandins (PG2) to produce inflammatory chemicals. Omega 3 also produces prostaglandins but these are anti-inflammatory series 3 prostaglandins (PG3). The current thinking is that our ratio of Omega 6 to Omega 3 should be under 5:1 while most have over 10:1, which accounts for the epidemic of inflammatory diseases.

There are several other groups of inflammatory chemicals that can create havoc in the body and these include hyper-inflammatory cytokines that have exotic names such as tumor necrosis factor (TNF). Cytokines, like inflammatory prostaglandins are greatly affected by antioxidants and especially the potent flavanols. These are found on grape seeds and skins and in the bark and seeds of plants. The basis of any anti-inflammatory programme I create will include Omega 3 and both broad spectrum and targeted specific antioxidants. Give me a call if you need help. To join my weekly newsletter go to www.johnarts.co.nz and visit www.abundant.co.nz

John Arts is the founder of Abundant Health. To contact John, phone (local) 578 9051 or 0800 423 559.