Mucosal Immunity: The Second Immune System You've Probably Never Heard About
Not only is your gut a "second brain," it also plays a critical role in your second immune system-- mucosal immunity-- and BALANCING immune response.
“Snot! Here’s to your health!”
The stuff that drips down your sinuses, and gets coughed up from our lungs, and lines your stomach, is not only a primary line of protection, but a critical immune system all by itself. Mucus is viewed mainly as nuisance to be ejected. But healthy mucus is pure gold when it comes to your immune ecosystem.
Working in conjunction with the gut and the lungs, mucus acts like an inside skin but also creates the critical educative, relaxation, and suppressive immune functions that allow us to get along with microbes and even create mutually beneficial relationships with them.
So how does mucus work with the gut and lungs to create this largely unrecognized but indispensable buffering function. Mucosal immunity, not only 1) creates unique antibodies— secretory IgA that meet airborne (and one assumes food-borne) microbes (per Dr. Paul Alexander), but also 2) informs and stimulates the SUPPRESSIVE capacity of immune response (per Dr. Robert Clancy), making possible a crucial BALANCE, much like the “feed and breed” relaxation of the parasympathetic nervous system counterbalances the “fight or flight” activation of the sympathetic nervous system.
According to Dr. Paul Alexander:
A fundamental mistake underlying the development of the COVID-19 vaccines was to neglect the functional distinction between the two major categories of antibodies which the body produces in order to protect itself from pathogenic microbes. The first category (secretory IgA) is produced by immune cells (lymphocytes) which are located directly underneath the mucous membranes that line the respiratory and intestinal tract. The antibodies produced by these lymphocytes are secreted through and to the surface of the mucous membranes.
These antibodies are thus on site to meet air-borne viruses, and they may be able to prevent viral binding and infection of the cells. The second category of antibodies (IgG and circulating IgA) occur in the bloodstream. These antibodies protect the internal organs of the body from infectious agents that try to spread via the bloodstream. Vaccines that are injected into the muscle – i.e., the interior of the body – will only induce IgG and circulating IgA, not secretory IgA.
Such antibodies cannot and will not effectively protect the mucous membranes from infection by SARS-CoV-2. Thus, the currently observed “breakthrough infections” among vaccinated individuals merely confirm the fundamental design flaws of the vaccines. Measurements of antibodies in the blood can never yield any information on the true status of immunity against infection of the respiratory tract. The inability of vaccine-induced antibodies to prevent coronavirus infections has been reported in recent scientific publications.
In the last few years much attention has been given to gut health, and how important it is to overall health. Books have been written recently about the stomach acting as a “second brain” ferrying signals to and from your body, much like your cerebrum. Add one VERY important new feature of the gut’s essential functions: The gut is a key player in mucosal immunity. In fact gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT) a component of mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT), comprises the vast majority of the overall immune system by weight— some 70%
According to Dr. Clancy, in this fascinating interview with Dr. John Campbell, the gut-lung-mucosal/lymphoid complex appears to be the learning mechanism of the body about what to fight and what to allow, as well as a primary mechanism for recognizing microbes and organizing, balancing, and determining immune response.
Dr. Robert Clancy:
The reality is that Covid infection, like influenza is an infection of the mucosal surface of the airways and if we're good we keep it there and and a very different type of immunology had to develop because all of a sudden you've got a situation where there's lots of bacteria lots of virus very different to inside the body which is completely sterile and so you have to have an adaptation of this mucosal immunology… the greatest difference between the mucosal immunology (and systemic/blood immunology) is that you need a mechanism of down regulation, of suppression, otherwise you'd blow up with inflammatory response to all these bacteria and viruses which we we now talk about as the microbiome…
Covid of course is an infection of that (mucosal) compartment [in pharynx, nasal, sinus, etc.] and the whole aim is to keep Covid there. If it starts leaking out down into the gas exchange part of the lung which recruits the systemic immune response that's when you get very sick… A pandemic for flu or the coronaviruses is essentially when one of these viruses learns how to get out of that mucosal compartment and gets down into the gas exchange apparatus recruiting what it doesn't want which is this systemic immune response…
When you get viruses and bacteria in the airways it gets dumped into the gut all the time we're swallowing a couple a cupful of secretions every day and not knowing about it. Normally it's only when you exceed that you start coughing… The factories that make the “generals,” the T cells and the B cells, for that mucosal immune system are in these little lymph nodes in the wall of the gut called Peyer’s Patches (PP)…
These are actually lymphoid tissue… like a lymph node and and so the virus comes down and is taken into these in the upper part of the small bowel and then the T cells and the B cells go and they've got little postage stamps saying, “Take me to the lungs,” and so it specifically comes back to the lung to do the protection and it generates the innate system... It's a slightly different innate system… and there's a lot of misinformation going around at the moment where people are saying, “Oh look in Covid, vaccines (are) destroying the innate system.” They completely forget the big picture that what the innate system is… depends on whether the generals telling it to become organized…
In other words, what we swallow, including microbes like SARS-CoV-2, “inform” and initiate a primary immune response that sets off and largely presides over both innate and acquired immunity. These insights from Drs. Alexander and Clancy have serious implications for our understanding of diet imbalances and intolerances, homeopathic science, allergies (including anaphylaxis, auto-immune reactions, and tolerance induction), inflammation (which is a major cause of diseases like cancer and aging), clotting, and antibody dependent (disease) enhancement (ADE), and fecal transplants (i.e. eating baby poop for health).
It turns out that “You are what you eat” extends even to our immune system, quite literally. A potential wealth of therapies have been and can further be develop to take advantage of this intelligent gut factory/control room. Dr. Clancy talked about ingesting certain microbes or allergens on purpose in deactivated form as a way to re-educate and balance over-the-top allergic or immune responses. This is the case with USC’s Tolerance Induction Program, a scientifically guided program of exposure to foods one is allergic to in order to induce immune tolerance (suppression or lessening or overactive, non-discriminating immune response) so that people can once again eat foods to which they were formerly allergic. The same principle applies in homeopathy, though more on an energetic level. You are “eating” a form of the very thing you are fighting, and it actually helps your system adjust intelligently. Fecal transplants, the ingesting feces (encased in capsules) from a healthy donor, works on a similar logic, to introduce a healthy flora and reset an imbalanced or diseased digestive system. Ingested probiotics are recommended for the same reason.
A good many chronic diseases and conditions are either explicitly caused by or significantly amplified by misdirected, non-discriminating, and over-active immune responses, including cancer, auto-immune disorders, antibody-dependent (disease) enhancement (ADE), and even thrombosis (abnormal clotting). It would be interesting and highly useful to develop a more comprehensive science of the MEDIATING, DE-ESCALATING, BALANCING, DISCERNING, and “RE-EDUCATING” mechanisms of the gut mucus system and its links to the lungs and to immunity and health in general.
All this new information about mucosal immunity and its key connection with gut and lung immune responses is vitally important because Big Pharma, appears to see only value and validity in doing an end-run around it’s critical operation. It’s vaccines aim almost exclusively at the production of jacked-up, adjuvant-driven systemic blood (vs. mucosal) antibodies. Big Pharma disregards both the inflammatory dangers of provoked systemic immune response and the necessity of a suppressive immune response that allows the body’s “fight” against so-called invaders to mellow into equilibrium once the initial challenge is engaged, learned from, and adapted to.
We must remember that neither our bodies nor our microbial hitchhikers want to die, and the best way to survive and thrive is to achieve detente between them. This can’t happen when our immune system is in a constant state of panic, defensiveness, and escalation (as it is with constant boosters) and never allowed to rest, restore, and find equilibrium.
It is time we respect, listen to, and learn from our guts. Science seems to be confirming with each passing day that the “lowly” gut has more and more to offer. It might be that that “feeling in our gut” is more than an emotion or instinct, but a deep wisdom, showing us the way to a happier, healthier, more balanced life.
Fascinating!
I have question Zeus. I was told that there is evidence that humans born from a C-section have a more fragile health and are more vulnerable to disease. One scientist hypothesized that a vaginal birth, because of the proximity of the rectum, may provide bacteria (and viruses?) that contribute to the immune system of the human. What do you think?
Thanks for sharing this fascinating work on mucosal immunology. Somewhere I read. . . maybe from you 🤷♀️ that infants put everything in their mouths and the immune system ‘learns’ how to deal with all the pathogens. They are SUPPOSED to be introduced via mouth mucosa, not intra-muscular shots. I worry about this with the current push for infant/child Covid vaccines.
I never realized that all that baby 👶🏼 snot was a goldmine!