One Risk Factor per week will be featured, as well as a look into how Great Smokies tests can best be used to help develop preventative treatment strategies against unhealthy aging. Attending one of the ACE Clinical Intensive programs in June will provide you with more in-depth information about the Risk Factors. The immune system is a complex molecular network with specific functions that defend the human host against invading organisms. When functioning properly, the immune system has the ability to resist almost all types of innate and acquired organisms. It also eliminates toxins that damage human tissue, developing extremely powerful specific immunity against individual invading antigens such as lethal bacteria, viruses, toxins, etc.
Food represents the largest antigenic challenge confronting the human immune system.
With the surface area greater than the area of a tennis court, the GI tract is the largest, most active immune-reacting surface in the body. Allergic reactions to food cause the immune system to synthesize and release reactive chemical agents, such as histamines, cytokines, lymphokines, and interferons. Because toxins can initiate a very similar set of reactions, food allergy and toxicity are considered intimately connected in a clinical sense. Increased total antigenic load, associated with food and environmental sensitivities, has been associated with a wide range of medical conditions affecting virtually every part of the body-from mildly uncomfortable symptoms such as indigestion and headaches, to severe illnesses such as inflammatory bowel disease, arthritis, and chronic infections. Even mood and behavior, including hyperactivity disorders in children, can be profoundly influenced by food allergies.