Adding a daily serving of green leafy vegetables to your diet may be a simple way to help promote brain health,” said study author Martha Clare Morris, a nutritional epidemiologist at Rush.

“There continues to be sharp increases in the percentage of people with dementia as the oldest age groups continue to grow in number. Effective strategies to prevent dementia are critically needed, as previously noted. Here Rose Lidell, Food.news, reflects on eating leafy greens study:

According to a study, eating cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower and kale can help boost the immune system’s ability to fight intestinal pathogens.

The researchers who conducted the study hope that their findings can be used to help people with inflammatory bowel diseases.

AhR and external pollutants

The protein aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) helps protect humans from external pollutants, toxins and pathogens at barrier sites in the body like the skin, lungs and gut.

While studying the role of AhR in the gut, researchers at the Francis Crick Institute discovered that Cyp1a1, another protein, regulates immunity in the gut by providing feedback on AhR signaling. Cyp1a1 degrades AhR ligands, the molecules that activate AhR.

But too much Cyp1a1 can deplete AhR ligands altogether and make you more susceptible to bacteria like pathogenic E. coli. It might also be involved in the development of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

Dr. Brigitta Stockinger, who led the study, explained that AhR deficiency is linked to various problems for the intestinal barrier. This is because the immune cells that protect humans from trillions of intestinal bacteria and incoming intestinal pathogens require signals through AhR for their survival.

Molecules that activate AhR can come from your diet and your intestinal bacteria. The activation of AhR then turns on enzymes like Cyp1a1. Normally, these enzymes degrade the molecules that originally activated AhR and turn it back off.

For the study, the researchers used mice with overactive Cyp1a1. This depleted AhR ligands and resulted in fewer immune cells that depend on AhR ligands.

Compared to normal healthy mice, those with overactive Cyp1a1 were unable to fight off an infection with Citrobacter bacteria, the mouse version of human pathogenic E. coli bacteria.”

Read More … Article Source: https://www.food.news/2022-03-24-study-leafy-greens-help-boost-immunity-recipes.html

If you would like to learn other solutions to help control your health … click here?