Dr Carrie Decker ND, explores some practical interventions and provides a brief overview on the role of your gut and the development and progression of psoriasis.

If you or a loved one has psoriasis, you probably are familiar with the struggles of waxing and waning symptoms of dry, flaking skin, possibly accompanied by itching and pain as the skin repeatedly cracks in regions, while it goes through various phases of healing and shedding. For some people the issue is rather mild, and only presents as a somewhat unsightly patch which may be uncomfortable for others to see as they may fear it is contagious.  For others, the pain and symptoms are more severe, and may be accompanied by arthritis (known as psoriatic arthritis), which causes progressive damage to the joints and often requires medications and management by a rheumatologist to prevent irreversible joint destruction.

When asked, what is the best diet to follow, there is normally a wide range of options provided. These are mostly based on contemporary patterns, ethical, religious, geographical and preference. However, whilst all dietary practices have aspects that are lauded over, one style of eating consistently supports general benefit to the consumer. That is the traditional Mediterranean diet (MD), defined as: A nutritionally recommended dietary pattern characterised by high-level intake of fruit, vegetables, legumes, nuts and minimally processed cereals, moderately high consumption of fish, low intake of saturated fat, meat and dairy products and regular, but moderate, consumption of alcohol. Unesco has recognised the Mediterranean diet (MD) as an intangible cultural heritage.

Antony Haynes explores the potential mechanisms and actions of arabinogalactans, specifically from the Larch tree.

The reason for choosing this topic is due to the clinical improvements that have been witnessed from its use by numerous patients of my own and of other practitioners.

Larch arabinogalactans will be referred to as “L.A.”.

(Source: jama.jamanetwork.com)

The relationship between the gut and the nervous system—which includes the brain, peripheral, immune and enteric nervous systems—has become a hot area of research over the last 20 years. There is a proposed ‘axis of emotion’ that is subject to a constant reciprocal exchange of information using neural, immune, endocrine, metabolic and emotional pathways.

A group studied the effects of apples in a mouse model to determine if there was a positive consequence in the changes related to bacterial communities and inflammation markers.[1]

Apples are rich in polyphenols, which provide antioxidant properties, mediation of cellular processes such as inflammation, and modulation of gut microbiota. In this study we compared genetically engineered apples with increased flavonoids [myeloblastis transcription factor 10 (MYB10)] with nontransformed apples from the same genotype, “Royal Gala” (RG), and a control diet with no apple.

A free to access paper published in the Netherlands Journal of Medicine in Feb 2015 explores the opportunities for health care management by understanding the role of the commensal organisms in the human gut, whilst there are many hundreds of papers published every month now on the microbiome and implications for care, there is still much to be learned.[1]

Old views are being changed rapidly and that throws up confusion and concern, indeed the clinical principles explored since Metchnikoff mainly by non conventional clinicians have obvious but inconsistent implications, and as we constantly discover subtle variations in composition and gene variances relating to the organisms that reside in and on us, the implications are that we need to develop some additional skills (knowledge) to really make this metabolic organ work with us.

The incidence of chronic illness, autoimmune disease and multiple conditions that manifest as inflammatory driven and functionally depleting states are exponentially rising, presenting clinicians with increasingly complicated cases to manage and resolve. Yet genetic drift alone cannot account for the rapid increase in incidence, and lifestyle and environmental pressures are recognised as strong candidates for cause and resolution.[1] Hence, it is increasingly rare that a single point of intervention of treatment or modality is adequate to mitigate risk or resolve problems of these illnesses and as such a multipoint approach is increasingly attractive and necessary.

Athletes, particularly those at the top of their profession appear to be are big winners when it comes to their gut microflora. A recent paper suggests that exercise has a direct effect on microbial composition and related gastrointestinal health. The article ‘Exercise and associated dietary extremes impact on gut microbial diversity’ was published in the international journal GUT.[1]

The relationship among the gut microbiota, exercise and related dietary changes has received much less attention. Loss of community richness/biodiversity has been demonstrated in obesity studies while increased diversity, which has been advocated to promote stability and improved ecosystem performance, is associated with increased health in certain populations. This has led to the suggestion that microbiota diversity could become a new biomarker for health status. It has been suggested that monitoring the gut microbiota annually to determine changes in the composition and stability could be sufficient to detect health status changes.

The microbiome is one of the most exciting discoveries of 21st century biomedicine, and scientific heavyweights as prominent as Craig Ventner, whose company sequenced the human genome, are now sequencing the microbiome. The microbiome is the ecological community of commensal, symbiotic, and pathogenic microorganisms that literally share our body space–the mass of trillions of microbes that live on and in your body. Most of them are in your large intestine, but they thrive in your mouth, on your skin, and even in your bloodstream. The human gut contains on average: 40,000 bacterial species, 9 million unique bacterial genes and 100 trillion microbial cells. These hundred trillion microbes render us a walking, breathing ecosystem–more microbe than man.

“Diet is a central issue when it comes to preserving our gastrointestinal health, because by eating and digesting we literally feed our gut microbiota, and thus influence its diversity and composition,” says the distinguished microbiota expert Professor Francisco Guarner (University Hospital Valld’Hebron, Barcelona, Spain).

If this balance is disturbed, it might result in a number of disorders, including functional bowel disorders, inflammatory bowel diseases and other immune mediated diseases, such as coeliac disease and certain allergies. Also, metabolic conditions, such as type 2 diabetes, and perhaps even behavioural disorders, such as autism and depression, can be linked to gut microbial imbalances. Although a disrupted microbial equilibrium can have many causes — infectious pathogens or use of antibiotics among them — the role of our daily food and lifestyle is crucial. Thus, the maintenance of our gastrointestinal health is to a considerable extent in our own hands.