One thing becomes immediately clear.
Raw fermented vegetables just became the best possible choice as an
ongoing source of nutrition. Of course,
health departments everywhere will have no clue and demand that the product be
pasteurized for sale. However we now see
kimchee in stores refrigerated and certainly alive.
What we really need to do is go crazy and attempt a wide range of
possible vegetables. I am presently
enjoying fermented kale and that is far easier to eat. In fact we need to set aside our expectations
and go try everything. Carrots are
excellent as they nicely soften. If we
can do carrots, then turnips and parsnips are as easy. All members of the cabbage family as
well. Also do not be scared to leave
peel on. This will not work for potatoes
of course but then I am not actually sure.
The take home is that fermenting does essentially ‘cook’ the food and
leaves it slightly sour.
I have also learned to go light on the salt. Once fermented there will be no problem. After packing, the trick is to sprinkle lemon
juice or a little vinegar on top to block surface spoilage.
This represents a revolution in our understanding of foods we need in our
bodies.
May 24, 2014 | B
Sayer Ji,
A groundbreaking new
study published in Molecular
Nutrition & Food Research titled, “Interspecies communication between plant and mouse gut host
cells through edible plant derived exosome-like nanoparticles,” reveals a new way that food components ‘talk’ to animal cells
by regulating gene expression and conferring significant therapeutic effects.
With the recent discovery that non-coding microRNA’s in food are capable of
directly altering gene expression within human physiology,[1] this
new study further concretizes the notion that the age old aphorism ‘you are
what you eat’ is now consistent with cutting edge molecular biology.
Exosomes: The ‘Missing
Link’ In How Plants and Animal Cells Communicate and Collaborate
This is the first study
of its kind to look at the role of exosomes, small vesicles secreted by plant
and animal cells that participate in intercellular communication, in
interspecies (plant-animal) communication.
The study explained the
biological properties of exosomes as follows:
“Exosomes are produced by a variety of mammalian cells including
immune, epithelial, and tumor cells [11–15]. Exosomes play a role in
intercellular communication and can transport mRNA, miRNA, bioactive lipids,
and proteins between cells [16–19]. Upon contact, exosomes transfer molecules
that can render new properties and/or reprogram their recipient cells.”
While most of the
research on exosomes has focused on their role in pathological states such as
tumor promotion, they were recently found to play a key role in stimulating
regeneration within damaged cardiac tissue,[2] and
are known to be found in human breast milk, further underscoring how
irreplaceable it is vis-à-vis synthesized infant formula.[3]
The New Study
The investigators
isolated plant derived exosome-like nanoparticles (EPDENs) from ginger, carrot,
grape and grapefruit, and observed their behavior in mammalian cells (mice).
They chose these commonly
consumed edible fruits and vegetables because,
“It is well established that a plant-derived diet has great
influence on regulation of mammalian host cell homeostasis, in particular,
cells in the digestive system [1–3]. Deregulation of
plant-derived diet regulated host cell homeostasis leads to increased
susceptibility to infections, chronic inflammatory bowel diseases, and cancer
[4–10].
They noted, “the cellular
and molecular machinery regulating such interspecies mutualism between a
plant-derived diet and the mammalian gut is not fully defined.” Their new study
aimed to gain new insight into defining the mechanisms through which cross-kingdom
crosstalk occurs.
Plant Exosomes Affect
Mammalian Cells Intimately
After isolating and
characterizing exosome-like nanoparticles from all four edible plants, the
researchers discovered they possessed remarkable similarity in size and
structure to mammalian-derived exosomes. Furthermore, the study showed “that
these exosome-like nanoparticles are taken up by intestinal macrophages and
stem cells, and have biological effects on the recipient cells.”
The biological effects
were described as follows:
·
Ginger exosome-like
nanoparticles strongly induced heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) and IL-10 expressed in
macrophages, an indication of anti-inflammatory and antoxidant properties.
·
Fruit-derived
exosome-like nanoparticles including grape and grapefruit induced Wnt/TCF4
activation, which is a key component of the anti-inflammatory response
·
All tested foods
activated nuclear translocation of Nrf2, a key regulator of the HO1 gene, which
has an important role in anti-inflammation and antioxidation; ginger was found to
be most potent, followed by grapefruit, carrot and grape
Notably, EPDENs were
found to be resistant to gastric and intestinal enzymatic digestion, further
indicating they are capable of exerting significant biological effects by
escaping digestive degradation, which has also been found with lectins and microRNA’s within edible
foods.
The researchers discussed
their results:
“Our findings show that exosome-like nanoparticles are present
in edible fruits and vegetables and reveal a previously unrecognized strategy
by which plants communicate with mammalian cells via exosome-like nanoparticles
in the gut, and in particular intestinal macrophages and stem cells. We found
that edible plants contain large amounts of nanoparticles. Like mammalian
exosomes, further characterization of the plant nanoparticles led to
identifying them as exosome- like nanoparticles based on the nanoparticles
being com- posed of proteins, lipids, and miRNAs. EPDENs from different types
of plants have different biological effects on the recipient mammalian cells.
This finding opens up a new avenue to further study the molecular mechanisms
underlying how the plant kingdom crosstalks with mammalian cells such as
intestinal macrophages and stem cells via EPDENs. This information may provide
the molecular basis of using multiple plant-derived agents for better
therapeutic effect than any single plant-derived agent.”
They also offered that
their results may explain why those who consume a greater variety of edible
plants are healthier:
“It has been known for decades that people eating a variety of
edible plants daily are the recipients of many beneficial health effects when
compared to subjects that ingest fewer types of edible plants. Ingesting
EPDENs from a variety of fruits and vegetables daily would be expected to
provide greater beneficial effects for maintaining gut homeostasis than
ingesting EPDENs from single edible plant.”
Discussion: Deeper
Implications of the Study
As part of the
fascinating new fields of epigenetics and nutrigenomics, this new study’s
findings promise to expand the relevance of food in the practice of medicine
and the prevention of disease. We have crossed a critical threshold in the past
few decades where food can no longer considered simply as a source of caloric
content, minerals and vitamins, and building blocks for the body-machine. [Learn more by taking the author's E-Course] Rather, food carries very specific forms of biologically
meaningful information (literally ‘to put form into’), without which our
genetic and epigenetic infrastructure cannot function according to its
intelligent design.
The discovery of
plant-dervied exosome-mediated modulation of fundamental mammalian cellular
pathways, lends powerful support to the concept that ancestral nutritional
practices handed down for countless generations are critical in maintaining our
health. With the advent of the post-industrial diet, based largely on
‘food-like’ synthesized nutrition, and the novel introduction of grain-based
nutrition in only the past 500 generations, our present diet suffers from a
series of profoundly biological incompatible foods.
Millions of years of
co-evolutionary processes have generated a wide range of interspecies,
cross-kingdom co-dependencies. For instance, mammals and angiosperms (which
comprise about 250,000 species and include most of the flowering plants that
provide the modern world its diet) co-evolved for at least 200 million years
together, and are today two of the most dominant forms of life on the planet.
The very molecular and informational fabric of our bodies evolved to intimately
depend on the presence of various key food components in the human diet, and
the absence of others which may be detrimental to our health. Food components
like exosomes may be as important to our health as vitamins and other
classically defined ‘nutrients,’ and may even be more important in modulating a
wide range of complex genetic- and epigenetic-mediated cellular processes
within the body. This may also explain the mystery of how certain fruits,
such as pomegranate, have been found to replace the function of the mammalian ovary in an
ovariectomy induced models of premature aging. While pomegranate is one of nature’s most concentrated
source of bioidentical estrone, exosomes may be the ‘missing link’ as to how a
plant food can support complex hormonal processes within the animal body, along with exerting such a wide range of additional therapeutic health effects. This is all the more evidence with plants like turmeric, which
have over 600 health benefits and has been found
to modulate the expression of thousands of genes simultaneously.[4]
We believe that taken
together, the recent discoveries that 1) microRNA’s within foods like rice can
enter into our blood and tissue and regulate gene expression 2) that
double-stranded RNAs within a wide range
of commonly consumed foods have molecular homology with thousands of human RNAs (and are therefore capable of silencing them) 3)
that lectins also can directly activate nuclear machinery
within certain cells, the addition of exosome-mediated gene
modulation, lends further support to the concept that the quality and types of
food we consume carry as much relevance in terms of ‘biological destiny’ as the
DNA within our genome.
With exciting research
now available, the famous quote attributed to Thomas Edison rings truer today
than ever:
“The doctor of the future will give no medication, but will
interest his patients in the care of the human frame, diet and in the cause and
prevention of disease.”
References:
[1] Lin Zhang Exogenous plant MIR168a
specifically targets mammalian LDLRAP1: evidence of cross-kingdom regulation by
microRNA Cell Research (2012) 22:107–126.
doi:10.1038/cr.2011.158; published online 20 September 2011
[2] Ahmed Gamal-Eldin Ibrahim, Ke Cheng, Eduardo Marbán. Exosomes
as Critical Agents of Cardiac Regeneration Triggered by Cell Therapy. Stem Cell Reports, May 2014 DOI:10.1016/j.stemcr.2014.04.006
[3] Qi Zhou1, et al Immune-related MicroRNAs
are Abundant in Breast Milk Exosomes Int J Biol Sci 2012; 8(1):118-123. doi:10.7150/ijbs.8.118
[4] Sreenivasan S, Thirumalai K, Danda R, Krishnakumar
S. Effect of curcumin on miRNA expression in human Y79 retinoblastoma cells. Curr Eye Res. 2012
May;37(5):421-8. doi: 10.3109/02713683.2011.647224. PubMed PMID: 22510010.
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