What is inflammation?

Inflammation, the physical and biochemical changes in a body, are triggered in response to some tissue damage or intrusion of a foreign organism. The changes begin immediately after an intruder is detected and spread comprehensively to meet the perceived threat.

Inflammation is actually a protective response and is designed to neutralize and remove the invader and repair the damage caused directly by the invader and indirectly in any ensuing conflict. However, the changes that constitute inflammation are metabolically demanding and potentially destructive. While an acute inflammatory response should ideally not last longer than 9–10 days, factors including exposure to toxins, pollutants as well as unhealthy food and dietary habits may prolong the duration, which overtime may lead to latent or chronic inflammation.

Chronic inflammation

Chronic inflammation often begins with the same cellular response, but morphs into a lingering state that persists for months or years when the immune system response fails to eliminate the problem. Alternatively, the inflammation may stay active even after the initial threat has been eliminated. In other cases, low-level inflammation becomes activated even when there is no apparent injury or disease. Unchecked, the immune system prompts white blood cells to attack nearby healthy tissues and organs, setting up a chronic inflammatory process that plays a central role in some of the most challenging diseases of our time, including rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, asthma, and even Alzheimer’s. Chronic inflammatory diseases are the most significant cause of death in the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) ranks chronic diseases as the greatest threat to human health. Worldwide, 3 of 5 people die due to chronic inflammatory diseases like stroke, chronic respiratory diseases, heart disorders, cancer, obesity, and diabetes.

What can cause chronic inflammation?

• Failure of eliminating the agent causing an acute inflammation such as infectious organisms including Mycobacterium tuberculosis, protozoa, fungi, and other parasites that can resist host defenses and remain in the tissue for an extended period.
• Exposure to a low level of a particular irritant or foreign materials that cannot be eliminated by enzymatic breakdown or phagocytosis in the body including substances or industrial chemicals that can be inhaled over a long period, for example, silica dust.
• An autoimmune disorder in which the immune system is sensitized to the normal component of the body and attacks healthy tissue giving rise to diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).
• Inflammatory and biochemical inducers are causing oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction such as increased production of free radical molecules, advanced glycation end products (AGEs), uric acid (urate) crystals, oxidized lipoproteins, homocysteine, and others.

Inflammatory foods

You might not be aware how some foods that you children are fond of are actually triggering inflammatory response in their bodies. Here is a list of foods that children should avoid to have a healthy gut.

Processed whole grains make for an unhealthy food. Processing stripped of grains such as wheat of the wheat germ and bran layer (which are a form of dietary fiber) as well as essential vitamins and minerals. At the same time, chemicals are added to improve the shelf-life of the product, which further adds to the harmful effect. Consumption of high levels of refined grains increases one’s risk of abdominal fat, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and overall mortality. Research shows that increase your intake of whole grain can reverse this trend.

It has been postulated that dietary sugar consumption contributes to increased inflammatory processes in humans. Central to the potentially relevant mechanisms is the fact that dietary sugar promotes de novo synthesis of free fatty acids (FFA) in the liver, which according to the lipotoxicity theory, would produce FFA metabolites that may trigger inflammatory processes and reactive oxygen species (ROS) formation. Processed sugars go by many names, including fructose, sucrose, galactose, lactose, glucose, maltose, and, worst of all, high-fructose corn syrup.

Packaged food, sausages, spreads, cold drinks and others Western diet is known to cause a permanent loss of bacteria important to microbiome function and possibly induce inheritable metabolic changes via the epigenome. In sum, the environment created in the gut by ultra-processed foods could be an evolutionarily unique selection ground for microbes with behaviors that promote diverse forms of inflammation-related disease.

Trans fats create inflammation, which is linked to heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and other chronic conditions. They contribute to insulin resistance, which increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Even small amounts of trans fats can harm health: for every 2% of calories from trans fat consumed daily, the risk of heart disease rises by 23%. Another source of unhealthy saturated fat, palm oil is extensively used in processed food industry for frying and baking. Usage of palm oil is associated with inflammatory response in our body.

Food additives like dietary emulsifiers, which are chemically similar to detergents, are added to many processed foods to improve texture and extend shelf life. Studies found that consumption of dietary emulsifiers for 9 weeks may lead to chronic, low-grade intestinal inflammation and impaired glucose metabolism.

Animal studies show that excess salt intake can affect the innate immune system. High salt diets promote tissue inflammation and exacerbate autoimmune disease in mice.

Healing foods

Eating for a healthy gut.

Fermented foods are preserved using an age-old process that not only boosts the food's shelf life and nutritional value but can give your body a dose of healthful probiotics — live micro-organisms crucial to good digestion and minimizing gut inflammation. Fermented foods such as idli and dahi were described as early as 700 BC. Foods like idlis, dosas, buttermilk, wadas, kadhi dahi (curd), vinegar, soy sauce, pickles, yoghurt , kimchi and kamboocha are all examples of fermented foods.

Do you know your kitchen houses some amazing anti-inflammatory foods. Spices including cardamom, chili peppers, cinnamon, cumin, garlic, ginger and turmeric in particular are known to contain potent antioxidants that may help ease inflammation.

whole grain products contained phytochemicals, like polyphenols, that can exert anti-inflammatory effects by possibly offsetting the effect of gluten and wheat germ agglutinin.

Chronic inflammation in children

According to the 2016 Global Nutrition Report, 159 million children have stunted growth worldwide, reflecting a rate of reduction that is far lower than the targets set by the World Health Assembly. The data suggest that, notwithstanding the leading infectious disease–associated deaths, iron deficiency anemia was the leading cause of years lived with disability among children and adolescents, affecting 619 million children in 2013.

Evidence continues to mount that enteric infections and enteric or systemic inflammation in early childhood or prenatally can impair growth and development and perhaps even increase later life associations with obesity, metabolic syndrome or cardiovascular disease.

Infection can impair growth and undernutrition can greatly worsen infection burdens and their growth impairment, documenting a potential “vicious cycle” with such enteric pathogens as cryptosporidium or enteroaggregative Escherichia coli.

Problems associated with chronic inflammation

For digestion and absorption purposes, mammals have developed a very complicated and highly specialized gastrointestinal system maintained by the mucosal barrier. However, apart from absorbable nutrients, the intestinal mucosa also faces tremendous exterior antigens, including food antigens, commensal bacteria, pathogens, and toxins. Thus, a specialized barrier function is required to block the entry of diverse exterior antigens while absorbing nutrients. Impressively, in the intestine, the front line of this barrier is maintained by only a single layer of specialized epithelial cells that are linked together by tight junction (TJ) proteins.

Many other factors aid in support of this barrier including mucins, antimicrobial molecules, immunoglobulins, and cytokines. If any abnormalities such as inflammation occur among these factors, the intestinal permeability may increase, which is termed a “leaky gut.”

A large variety of exogenous substances colonize the gut lumen, such as microorganisms, toxins, and antigens. Without an intact and properly functioning intestinal barrier, these substances can penetrate the tissues beneath the intestinal epithelial lining, diffuse into blood and lymphatic circulations, and disrupt tissue homeostasis. Multiple diseases may arise or be exacerbated due to a leaky gut, including autoimmune diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, celiac disease, autoimmune hepatitis, type 1 diabetes (T1D), multiple sclerosis, and systemic lupus erythematosus.

Malabsorption and child health

Parents might be feeding their child well and providing him or her with all the vital nutrients required for his or her proper growth and development but all these efforts are futile if the child’s bodies are not absorbing those nutrients. Confused?

Please note eating a healthy food is not enough. Your child’s body needs to absorb those nutrients from food. Let me explain this to you in detail. A balanced diet with sufficient essential nutritional elements is critical for maintaining a healthy body. Both nutritional excess and deficiency are associated with disease. The gastrointestinal (GI) track takes in food and water, digests the food, extracts the nutrients and expels undigested/unabsorbed material as waste. But, inflammation from different problem may disrupt this normal body function, thereby leading to malabsorption.

Several medical conditions can interfere with that process including infections from bacteria, viruses, or parasites can damage your intestinal wall so that digested substances can’t get through. Some of the other causes of malabsorption include cystic fibrosis and other diseases that affect the pancreas and different food allergies.

If the child’s body isn’t getting the vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients it needs to stay strong and thrive, you could have serious complications. When it’s not treated, malabsorption syndrome might lead to:

• Greater chance of infections
• Osteoporosis (low bone density), which increases risk of bone fractures
• Slower growth and weight gain in children

Certain nutrients, such as vitamin A and zinc, are vital for a healthy immune system and proper growth. If the body isn’t absorbing these and other important vitamins and minerals, a child’s health can suffer.

Malabsorption can be a dangerous condition but the good news is it can diagnosed with initial screening and tests including stool test, lactose hydrogen breath test, sweat test, biopsy of small intestine and endoscopy.

Micronutrients that are low in today’s child diet due to malabsorption

Food allergies

Allergy is a hypersensitivity disorder of the immune system of the human body. Allergic reactions occur when a person’s immune system reacts abnormally to normally harmless substances, present in the environment. According to a recent BBC report, children across the world are far more likely than ever before to develop food allergies. The rise in allergies in recent decades has been particularly noticeable in the West. Food allergy now affects about 7% of children in the UK and 9% of those in Australia, for example. Across Europe, 2% of adults have food allergies.

While any food can cause an adverse reaction, eight types of food account for about 90 percent of all reactions that are Eggs, Milk, Peanuts, Tree nuts, Fish, Shellfish, Wheat and Soy.

• Vomiting and/or stomach cramps
• Hives
• Shortness of breath
• Wheezing
• Repetitive cough
• Shock or circulatory collapse
• Tight, hoarse throat; trouble swallowing
• Swelling of the tongue, affecting the ability to talk or breathe
• Weak pulse
• Pale or blue coloring of skin
• Dizziness or feeling faint
• Anaphylaxis, a potentially life-threatening reaction that can impair breathing and send the body into shock; reactions may simultaneously affect different parts of the body But food allergies can be diagnosed and managed. To make a diagnosis, allergists ask detailed questions about your medical history and your symptoms. Be prepared to answer questions about:
• What and how much you ate
• How long it took for symptoms to develop
• What symptoms you experienced and how long they lasted.

After taking your history, your allergist may order skin tests and/or blood tests, which indicate whether food-specific immunoglobulin E (IgE) antibodies are present in your body.

Gluten is a protein found in many grains, including wheat, barley and rye. It's common in foods such as bread, pasta, pizza and cereal. Gluten provides no essential nutrients. People with celiac disease have an immune reaction that is triggered by eating gluten. They develop inflammation and damage in their intestinal tracts and other parts of the body when they eat foods containing gluten. A gluten-free diet is necessary to eliminate the inflammation, as well as the symptoms.

After eating or drinking something containing lactose, the digested food passes from your stomach into your small intestine. The lactase in your small intestine should break lactose down into sugars called glucose and galactose, which are then absorbed into your bloodstream. If there's not enough lactase, the unabsorbed lactose moves through your digestive system to your colon (large intestine). Bacteria in the colon break down the lactose, producing fatty acids and gases like carbon dioxide, hydrogen and methane. The breakdown of the lactose in the colon, and the resulting acids and gases that are produced, cause the symptoms of lactose intolerance, such as flatulence and bloating.

An elimination diet involves removing foods from your diet that you suspect your body can't tolerate well. The foods are later reintroduced, one at a time, while you look for symptoms that show a reaction. It only lasts 5–6 weeks and is used to help those with a sensitive gut, food intolerance or food allergy identify which foods are contributing to their symptoms. In that way, an elimination diet may alleviate symptoms like bloating, gas, diarrhea, constipation and nausea.