Why the Gut-Immune Axis is Critical for Health

Gut health is foundational to our overall well-being. In fact, you've probably heard that what happens in our gut has a profound impact on virtually every system of the body. It plays a central role in nutrient digestion, absorption, and waste elimination, ensuring our body receives everything it needs for daily functioning—while keeping out toxins, pathogens, and other antigens that may cause harm.

The gut is also home to trillions of microorganisms, known as the gut microbiota, which perform essential metabolic tasks, assist in the breakdown of complex foods, and produce critical vitamins.

In this video, I discuss the gut-immune axis, explain how it works and why it’s so important, and share some tips on how to support it with both diet and supplements.

I’ve come to believe that this is one of the most important places to focus our attention if we want to improve our health and extend our lifespan.

[C_ris_]

Thank you 🙏 😊so glad I found you and your information right before my diagnosis of a systemic autoimmune disease. I feel more confident in helping my condition with diet and lifestyle rather than medications my doctors suggested me to take. My diagnosis was in 2018 and I have managed without medication.

[maryabraham]

I am a new subscriber I have so many health problems I just saw your video today I hope this will help me thank you and God bless you🙏🏻🙏🏻

[Alexandra]

Thank you Doctor Kresser 💜🎉 following you since 2010.

[Devlini]

The healthiest diet is one that excludes all damaging, unhealthy, inflammatory foods and at the same time includes lots of high-quality, well-sourced, nutritious foods. Our body needs a specific quantity and ratio of nutrients to function properly and perform its metabolic functions. The vegan and carnivore diets, even though mainstream for many years, are both dietary extremes. A good diet that emphasizes nutrient density, digestibility, gut health, and at the same time excludes 99% of inflammatory, gut-irritating, and immunogenic/immunostimulatory foods is the Paleo diet. Even more so, the autoimmune Paleo (AIP) diet. AIP is primarily targeted towards autoimmune patients who want to reverse or manage autoimmune conditions naturally. Both Paleo and autoimmune Paleo (AIP) are ancestral diets that emphasize nutrient density and minimize food-induced inflammation. Chronic inflammatory diseases are a modern pandemic and diet plays a huge role. Archaeological evidence shows that our ancestors didn’t develop the chronic inflammatory diseases we witness today in our modern world. And neither do modern-day hunter-gatherers. Just consider the following:
• The Tsimané people in Bolivia have an 80 percent lower rate of atherosclerosis than people in the United States.
• In Tanzania, less than 2 percent of Hadza adults are overweight (compared to nearly two-thirds of American adults), and diabetes is virtually non-existent.
• The Maasai in Kenya do not develop cardiovascular disease, despite a diet based on red meat, blood, and milk (so much for the theory that saturated fat and cholesterol cause heart disease …).
What changed between then and now? It's quite simple. When we don’t live and eat in harmony with our physiology (and its limitations), a mismatch between our genes and the environment manifests which fuels the fire for chronic disease. Ancestral health and by extension an ancestral diet are the only solutions for this mismatch. 'The Simple AIP Handbook' by George Kelly is a nice read on the topic.

[PontoLyone]

My functional medicine doctor prescribed me NuMedica's ImmunoG PRP Colostrum Powder last year as part of my gut reset protocol. It's collected within 24 hours of birthing and contains 10g of Colostrum per serving. How does your Colostrum product compare to this? If you believe yours is a superior product, what makes it so?

[eatingRD]

Thoughts on immunoglobulins vs. colostrum?