Weston A Price and the link between diet & immunity

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) one-quarter of the earth's population is infected with tuberculosis (TB). Only 5-15% will become ill in their lifetime and spread the disease. TB is a bacterial infection and is now very treatable yet around 1.4 million die yearly from this disease.  This raises a few questions:

Why would this bacteria remain dormant in an individual?  

What could trigger TB to eventually grow out of control?

Could the same be true of other bacterial and even viral disease?

Back in the 1930s a dental researcher Weston A. Price suspected dental health and cavities were related to diet.  He traveled the world and studied indigenous cultures not yet exposed to the modern diet and compared their health to relatives and neighboring populations that had switched to modern diets high in white flour, sugar and canned foods.  He took over 15,000 photographs and slides. He noted huge differences in dental carries, facial growth, and susceptibility to illnesses, especially tuberculosis.  His observations were published in 1939 in his book "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration".

Price noted that TB was almost unheard of in villages eating their traditional diets. When relatives moved to towns and changed their diet many began suffering from TB with many families losing multiple members.  He noted that Alaskan children from isolated indigenous populations moved to a boarding school died from TB in large numbers.  In one school, Price was told by school administrators that over 60% of these children died from TB. These were clean and modern facilities for the time, so could not be blamed on bad air or a filthy environment.

Some populations that Price visited told him of treatments they had come up with to prevent or cure TB.  In both Australia and New Zealand, people would collect the fatty fledgling sea birds to feed their family.  These were called "mutton birds" and were widely touted as a cure.  Another population along the coast of Peru would feed the sick the milt from the male "angel fish", which was some kind of ray.  Both of these sources would have been full of fats high in omega-3 fatty acids.  These fats rich in omega-3 appear to naturally boost the immune system, reduce inflammation and seem to reset the immune response.

The TB bacteria was there all along but the modern diet made it grow out of control. The immune response is the killer. Cytokine storm is produced within your own body as part of an immune response. Reset your immune system with a diet that promotes healing.  The imbalance in nutrition seem to make fertile ground for TB and even today's virus to grow unchecked.

Current treatments for lung ailments often involve steroids. Steroids are used to suppress the immune response but also make you susceptible to secondary infections. These treatments have their place but why not instead work to put your immune system back on track.  

Why has the link with diet and immunity been ignored?  I could come up with all kinds of conspiracy theories involving the money made from processed food, medical and pharmaceutical industries but I suspect it's the emotional response we have to food.  Our bodies are hard wired to crave foods rich in sugar and fat. These cravings once gave us a survival advantage so we were able to put on weight and survive times of scarcity.  Eating is associated with comfort, family and social celebration. We initially feel good when eating foods that are quickly assimilated, even when they are devoid of vitamins and minerals our body needs.  The problem is that these addictive foods are no longer scarce and are available year round. Nobody wants to admit that the foods they enjoy and crave could be causing harm. 

What can we do?

• Increase omega-3 fatty acids in your diet.  An inexpensive source is sardines & mackerel.
• Intermittent fasting to induce more autophagy to decrease inflammation and recycle old tissues.
• Reduce carbohydrates and processed seed oils. Processed foods are a driver of metabolic disease.

1) https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosis 

2) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/544354.Nutrition_and_Physical_Degeneration