What Is Helicobacter Pylori (H. Pylori) Infection? Helicobacter pylori infection is a potentially deadly stomach disease characterized by chronic superficial inflammation and ulcerations in 100% of infected patients. This infection disrupts normal defense and repair…
Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) is an essential omega-3 fatty acid that is abundant in the brain, being crucial in brain structure. As such DHA is a key component of neuronal membranes together with arachidonic acid (a major opposing omega-6 fatty acid), making up 15-20% of the brain’s dry mass.
This polyunsaturated fatty acid is obtained from fish sources of food.
In healthy human volunteers, positron emission tomography (PET) has shown that the normal human brain consumes 4.6 mg/day of DHA.1
DHA is particularly concentrated in highly active membranes such as nerve synapses (junctions) and photoreceptors in the eye (retina).
Q: How much DHA is in the retina?
A: DHA makes up more than 30% of the retina.2
In other roles, DHA is an important building material for the eicosanoids, a large group of highly bioactive hormone-like substances including prostaglandins, leukotrienes, and thromboxanes that are involved in blood clotting, inflammation, and vasoconstriction.
DHA has been shown to increase insulin sensitivity as opposed to the opposite problem of insulin resistance, to improve muscle mass, and protect against non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.3
Egert et al. in a study of people aged 19 to 43 years with normal cholesterol showed that DHA intake significantly increased serum HDL (good) cholesterol. Also, DHA significantly decreased fasting serum triglycerides.4
EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) is an essential omega-3 fatty acid that is crucial for fetal brain and retina development and the child’s subsequent neurodevelopment among very many other activities in people of all ages.
Omega-3 fatty acids are polyunsaturated long chain fatty acids which must be obtained from animal foods since they do not occur in plants.
In all ages, EPA is essential for normal brain function.
Q: Why is EPA essential to the way the brain works?
A: EPA helps nerve cells in the brain to communicate with each other.
In pregnancy, EPA may also play a role in determining the length of gestation and in preventing perinatal depression in the mother.1 and is essential for normal growth in children.
EPA is important building material for the eicosanoids, a large group of highly bioactive hormone-like substances including prostaglandins, leukotrienes, and thromboxanes that are involved in blood clotting, inflammation, and vasoconstriction. Its many important functions are described below.
What Are Extraintestinal Lymphomas?E xtraintestinal lymphomas (non-Hodgkin’s) are malignancies that arise in peripheral lymphatic tissue outside the intestinal tract from B-cell and T-cell lymphocytes.
Q: What is peripheral lymphatic tissue?
A: Peripheral lymphatic tissue includes lymph vessels, lymph, lymph nodes, and lymphocytes.
Lymph vessels branch into all the tissues of the body, carrying lymph, a clear fluid that contains white blood cells, especially B-cell and T-cell lymphocytes.
Lymph vessels are connected to lymph nodes which are small, round masses of tissue that store white blood cells. They also trap and remove bacteria or other harmful substances that may be in the lymph. Groups of lymph nodes are found in the neck, underarms, chest, abdomen, and groin.
Ninety percent (90%) of extraintestinal lymphomas are B-cell type and ten percent (10%) are T-cell type. In this malignancy, lymph nodes are replaced by cancer cells. Some are more aggressive than others.
In 2010, there were an estimated 509,065 people living with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in the United States according to the National Cancer Institute.
Gastric ulcer is a painful stomach disorder characterized by an open sore involving the mucosa lining and deeper muscle layer of the stomach.
Gastric ulcer is associated with lymphocytic gastritis which is inflammation of the mucosal lining of the stomach. The thick mucosal lining normally protects the stomach from the erosive action of stomach acid.
Q: How do ulcers develop?
A: Ulcers develop if hydrochloric acid secreted by the gastric glands of the stomach for the purpose of digesting food damages the normally resistant mucosal walls of the stomach. In the reverse, ulcers may be accompanied by achlorhydria (insufficient acid production).
Damage occurs when there is a predisposing factor that alters the health of the mucosal lining. The most common cause is infection with a bacteria called h. pylori bacter, stress and chronic use of the pain relievers aspirin and non-steroidal drugs like ibuprofen.
Smoking tocacco and consuming alcohol aggravate an ulcer but do not cause it to develop.
The most common location for ulcer formation is along the stomach antrum which is the area of the stomach before the pylorus, the lower region that empties liquid stomach contents into the small intestine.
What Is Lymphocytic Gastritis?Lymphocytic gastritis is an inflammatory stomach disorder that is characterized by superficial inflammation of the stomach lining (mucosa) that mainly involves the gastric antrum in children.
Lymphocytic gastritis is defined by the recognition of more than 25 intraepithelial lymphocytes (IEL) per 100 surface epithelial cells lining the stomach wall.
Q: What are intraepithelial lymphocytes?
A: Intraepithelial lymphocytes in lymphocytic gastritis are a unique T-cell population of white blood cells that are interspersed between epithelial cells in the mucosa.
Vitamin E is not a single vitamin but naturally occurs as a fat-soluble vitamin family that consists of at least 8 distinct molecules.
These molecules include 4 tocopherols (alpha, beta, gamma, and delta) and 4 tocotrienols (alpha, beta, gamma, and delta).
Generally, tocotrienols are more active against chronic disease while tocopherols are more protective of the nervous system.
Vitamin E (for short) is a powerful antioxidant that protects cell membranes and other fat-soluble compounds from oxidative damage by free radicals (molecules that damage cells).
Q: How does vitamin E protect cells from oxidative damage by free radicals?
A: As an example, the oxidative damage to low density cholesterol (LDL – bad type) appears to lead to the deposition of cholesterol in the arterial wall (plaque formation) leading to atherosclerotic disease, commonly called hardening of the arteries.
Regarding inflammation, mast cells are activated by oxidized LDL which results in increased expression of inflammatory cytokines. This finding suggests that vitamin E antioxidant activity in reducing oxidation of LDL lipoprotein may also reduce mast cell activation. Mast cells reside near small blood vessels and, when activated, release potent mediators involved in allergy and inflammation.1
In neutralizing free radicals, vitamin E itself is oxidized (changed) to a free radical. Importantly, conversion of vitamin E back to the original form occurs by reaction with vitamin C. These two vital anti-oxidants go hand in hand.
Vitamin E is essential for normal cerebellar brain function (lower brain), peripheral nerve health and healthy skin.
Iron deficiency anemia is a blood cell disorder that is characterized by formation of small, pale red blood cells, causing tissue hypoxia. Hypoxia is the inability to meet the demands of the body for oxygen.
Q: Why do small, pale red blood cells cause tissue hypoxia?
A: Small, pale red blood cells (erythrocytes) cause tissue hypoxia because they are not able, as do normal erythrocytes, to pick up adequate oxygen from the lungs and carry it to cells that use oxygen.
Red blood cell production and function are dependent on a sufficient level of iron in the body and also the ability to use available iron to make hemoglobin in red blood cells.
Hemoglobin is a protein that binds oxygen in red blood cells to be carried by the bloodstream to cells throughout the body. In iron deficiency anemia, hemoglobin in females is below 12.5g/dl (normal range is 12.5 to 16g/dl) and in males it is below 13.5g/dl (normal range is 13.5 to 17.5g/dl).
Iron must be obtained from the diet, since the body cannot make it, but there are various factors that can interfere with absorption and use in the body, causing anemia. Iron absorption from the gut first requires ionization, or gaining a positive electrical charge, in the strongly acidic environment of stomach juice. Ionized iron, only, can be absorbed in the duodenum, which receives the acidic contents of the stomach before it is neutralized further along.
Dietary iron can be heme or non-heme depending on the food source. Heme iron obtained only from animal food sources is absorbed into the bloodstream by active transport across the brush border (microvilli) which cover the multitudinous villi of the small intestinal lining.
Non-heme iron obtained from plants must bind with apoprotein after entering the enterocyte (surface cell of small intestinal lining) to be ferried to the underlying basolateral membrane and exited by active transport into the bloodstream.
Frequently, chronic anemia due to iron deficiency is accompanied by increased platelets, and this thrombocytosis resolves with iron repletion (normal iron level). Conversely, in severe iron deficiency anemia, patients may have thrombocytopenia (low platelets), which also resolves with iron therapy.1
What Is Irritable Bowel Syndrome? I rritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a motility disorder without anatomic cause involving the entire gastrointestinal tract that is characterized by these four features: 1) Abdominal pain usually relieved by…
Vitamin D is the principle regulator of calcium homeostasis (balance) in the body. This “vitamin” is really a prohormone, meaning it acts like a hormone but is not. Vitamin D does, however, contain cholesterol in its molecular structure like steroid hormones.
The physiological importance of vitamin D encompasses much more than the regulation of bone metabolism although this is a mighty function.
Q: How does vitamin D regulate bone metabolism?
A: In regulation of bone metabolism, vitamin D works in three ways: 1) enables active absorption of calcium from the small intestine, 2) enhances reabsortion of calcium by the kidneys that would otherwise be excreted in urine, and 3) plays an active role in skeletal development and bone mineralization. Mineralization gives strength to living bone tissue.
Vitamin D interacts with receptors within cells to effect transcriptional changes in many cell types including those in gut, bone, breast, prostate, brain, skeletal muscle, and the immune system.1
In regards to the essential role of vitamin D in muscle tissue, it has been recently shown that vitamin D regulates both muscle function and structure of primary myofibers.2
Vitamin D is converted in the body to a molecule that is biologically active. The active form is 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D, usually referred to as vitamin D3. About 80% comes from sun exposure and the remaining from food.
Vitamin D3 is synthesized in the skin from 7-dehydrocholesterol via photochemical reactions requiring UV light (sunlight). That is, light that contains energy from the sun is incorporated into molecules of 7-dehydrocholesterol in the underlying dermis of skin to make this vitamin. This is why inadequate exposure to sunlight contributes to vitamin D deficiency.
Blood concentration of 25(OH)D is the best indicator of vitamin D status. It reflects vitamin D produced in the skin and that obtained from food and supplements and has a fairly long circulating half-life of 15 days.3