The devastating effects of fast food foods on health

Effects of fast food

The devastating effects of fast food foods on health

Unhealthy food, rich in fat and many calories, causes an immune system reaction similar to that of a bacterial infection, researchers at the University of Bonn have discovered.

The immune system reacts to a fat-rich diet with many calories similar to a bacterial infection. This is demonstrated by a recent study conducted by the University of Bonn, quoted by Science Daily.

Unhealthy foods seem to make the body's immune system more aggressive in the long run. Even long after switching to a healthy diet, innate immune system inflammation persists. These long-term changes can lead to arteriosclerosis and diabetes, diseases related to Western food consumption. The results will be published in Cell magazine.

The mice were fed a "Western diet"

Scientists have fed for a month a group of mice with the so-called "Western diet": high in fat, high in sugar and low in fiber. Animals have therefore developed a strong inflammatory response throughout the body, almost as after infection with dangerous bacteria. "The unhealthy diet has led to an unexpected increase in the number of immune cells in the blood of mice, especially granulocytes and monocytes.

This indicated involvement of immune progenitor cells in the bone marrow (the progenitor cells act as a body repair system replacing the destroyed adult tissues), "added Anette Christ, a postdoctoral researcher at the University Immunity Institute of Bonn. To better understand these unexpected discoveries, bone marrow progenitor cells for large types of immune cells were isolated in mice fed a Western diet or a healthy control diet, and systematic analysis of their function and status activation.

The effects of fast food on immunity

"Genomic studies have shown, in fact, that the Western diet has activated a large number of genes in progenitor cells. The affected genes included those responsible for proliferation and maturation, "explains Professor Dr. Joachim Schultze of the Life & Medical Sciences Institute (LIMES) at the University of Bonn and the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE). Thus, fast food foods make the body quickly recruit a huge and powerful army. When researchers gave rodents a typical cereal diet for another four weeks, the acute inflammation disappeared. What did not vanish was the hereditary reconstructing of resistant cells and their forerunners: even after these a month, a significant number of the qualities that had been begun during the cheap food stage were as yet dynamic.

The fast-food sensor in immune cells

Only recently found that the innate immune system has a form of memory, "explains Professor Dr. Eicke Latz, director of the Institute of Immunity at the University of Bonn and scientist at DZNE. "After an infection, the body's defense remains in a state of alarm so that it can respond more quickly to a new attack," he says. Experts call this "innate immune training". In mice, this process was not triggered by a bacterium, but by an unhealthy diet. Scientists have succeeded in identifying the "fast-food sensor" responsible in immune cells. They examined the blood cells from 120 subjects. In some subjects, the innate immune system has shown a particularly strong preparation effect. In these subjects, researchers have found genetic evidence about the involvement of an intracellular signaling system that recognizes infectious agents and other harmful substances.

Long-term effects

Curiously, notwithstanding the intense fiery reaction, it additionally has long haul ramifications for resistant framework reactions: Activation through the Western eating routine changes the manner in which hereditary data is bundled. The genetic material is stored in DNA and each cell contains several DNA strands, which together are approximately two meters long. However, they are typically wrapped around certain proteins in the nucleus, and so many genes in DNA can not be read because they are simply too inaccessible. Unhealthy food makes some of these pieces of DNA usually hidden away, like a loop that comes out of a wool ball. This area of genetic material can then be read much easier as long as this temporary "stripping" remains active. Consequently, the immune system reacts even to small stimuli with stronger inflammatory responses.

Dramatic consequences for health

These inflammatory responses can, in turn, accelerate the development of vascular disease or type 2 diabetes. For arteriosclerosis, for example, typical vascular deposits, the plaques consist mostly of lipids and immune cells. Inflammatory response directly contributes to their growth because newly activated immune cells migrate constantly into the walls of the damaged vessels. When the plaque is too large, they can explode, causing the formation of blood clots that are carried by the blood and can cause blockages in the blood vessels.

Stroke or heart attack

Wrong nutrition can have dramatic consequences. In recent centuries, average life expectancy has steadily increased in Western countries. The trend is currently broken for the first time: people born today will live shorter lives than their parents. Unhealthy diets and little exercise may play a decisive role in this. "These findings, therefore, have important social importance," Latz explains. "The fundamentals of healthy eating should become a more prominent part of education than at present. Only in this way can we immunize children at an early stage against the temptation of the food industry. Children can choose what they eat every day. We should allow them to make informed decisions about their eating habits, "the researcher says, according to Adevarul.