Foods That Cause Disease, But Have Become Domesticated Part II

Lectins: These are proteins which have a high affinity to bind towards sugars. They have a protective role against predators, by essentially being a toxin once ingested. These proteins trigger problems in our gut which can eventually lead to a leaky gut and other potential conditions like irritable bowel syndrome, and coeliac disease.

Several ways in which these proteins cause problems:

• ·         Resist being broken down by our intestinal digestive enzymes, as a defensive mechanism for preventing the predator to absorb any of the nutrients, hence making predators avoid eating these foods. The main concern here is the initial gut inflammation that occurs by having undigested proteins in the gut.

• ·         Our mucosal lining in the intestines is composed of connective tissue in which have a protective role to constantly repair damage of our lining. Lectins have a high moieties towards specific sugar marker found in our gut like N-Acetylglucosamine. By binding onto this molecule, causes cellular ‘clumping’, which mechanically damages the structural integrity that protects our mucosal lining.

• ·         In genetically predisposed individuals towards coeliac disease, our lining contains a protein called Zonulin, which regulates permeability of tight junctions in our digestive tract. Predisposed individuals have higher levels of this protein, and lectins have the coding to open these junctions and cause paracellular absorption of lectin fragments, causing further inflammatory responses.

  

• ·         We have another enzyme called tissue transglutaminase that contains sugar markers on the surface of the enzyme. This particular enzymes role is healing the mucosal lining by attaching amino acids for repair and reconstruction. When lectins ‘clump’ onto the enzyme, it deactivates the normal functioning of the enzyme, which triggers an autoimmune reaction by a way of molecular mimicry. The large foreign substance is causing too much havoc, our immune system wants to destroy it, while at the same time damaging our normal enzyme transglutaminase, since it now recognizes it as a foreign substance, or in other terms, autoantigen.