How eating this kind of food triggers a hyperactive immune system

Did you know that an over-active immune system is the primary reason behind auto-immune diseases such as Rheumatoid Arthritis, Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, Celiac Disease, Psoriasis, Grave's Disease, and many more?

Did you also know that an over-active immune system contributes to Diabetes and atherosclerosis (inflammation in the lining of the arteries which causes heart disease)?

Did you know that an over-active immune system can cause weight gain by impacting insulin production and causing blood glucose to remain elevated?

Did you know that an over-active immune system actually weakens your ability to defend yourself against microbes?

Did you know that an over-active immune system can affect sleep and sexual activity?

So what causes an immune system to become over-active?

There are of course some medical and / or genetic conditions that can be the underlying cause.

However the majority of cases are caused by an external trigger, which can take the form of many things, including:

1. Environmental toxins (indoor & outdoor air quality, chemical beauty products, chemical cleaning products & detergents, etc)

2. Insufficient or bad quality sleep

3. Over-training (not giving your body enough recovery between training sessions)

4. Too much dieting: not giving your body the calories it needs

5. Eating too many pro-inflammatory foods. In fact, I wrote a whole article about which foods cause inflammation and which foods fight inflammation. You can find it here

Speaking of pro-inflammatory foods, a new study out of Germany looked at the effect of eating "junk food" on the immune system.

2 findings from the study were really interesting:

1. That eating "junk foods" causes the immune system to become over-active.

But more interestingly:

2. Eating junk food caused some epigenetic changes: these changed made the subject's immune system more sensitive in general. So even after they STOPPED eating junk food, the immune system went into over-active mode when exposed to external triggers.

This means that the highly inflammatory ingredients in junk food did not just do damage during the period of eating such foods, but caused long-term (potentially permanent) damage to the immune system.

The message is clear: stay away from junk food!

For a review of the study.

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