Autoimmunity: Overview

Autoimmunity, that dreaded word. The term which describes health conditions where our own immune system mistakes our own cells and organs for foreign invaders and mounts an attack to destroy them (auto = εαυτός, meaning "self", in Greek; thus autoimmunity = immunity against the self).

Autoimmune diseases include, but aren not limited to:

• Arthritis: The immune system attacks the joints.
• Type 1 Diabetes: The immune system attacks the pancreas - the organ that produces insulin.
• Multiple sclerosis: The immune system damages the nervous system.
• Inflammatory Bowel Disease: This term includes conditions such as Crohn's and Ulcerative colitis.
• Skin conditions: Such as eczema and psoriasis, where the immune system attacks the skin.
• Thyroid diseases: Such as Grave's and Hashimoto's disease.

See also, Figure 1.

Figure 1 (modified from (2)): Autoimmune diseases can affect your body from head to toe - literally.

In fact, since the 1960s, more than 100 distinct autoimmune disorders have been identified, and the list keeps growing steadily (1), with autoimmune disorders becoming more and more common. Case in point, in the United States an estimated 1 in 10 people suffers from some type of autoimmune disease - with women 8 times more likely than men to develop such diseases.

There are several risk factors that predispose someone to autoimmunity, some modifiable, others not (modifiable = mod, non-modifiable = non-mod, below):

• Certain viral infections (non-mod).
• An imbalanced microbiome (mod).
• A person's sex (as mentioned above, women are more likely to develop autoimmunity) (non-mod).
• Genetics (non-mod).
• Already having one autoimmune condition increases the odds of developing another one (non-mod).
• Exposure to chemicals and toxins (mod).
• Smoking (mod).
• Nutrition (mod).
• Other health conditions (e.g. obesity) (some mod, others non-mod).

As you can see, while we can't change our genes or sex, we can meaningfully influence many risk factors - particularly those linked to diet and lifestyle.

Autoimmune disorders can be debilitating and can severely interfere with normal daily living. Some of their common symptoms are, for example, fatigue, dizziness or lightheadedness, low-grade fever, muscle or joint aches, swelling, trouble concentrating, numbness and tingling at the extremities, hair loss, skin rashes... the list goes on and on. Thankfully, however, there are simple measures one can take to both lower the risk of developing, and for managing an ongoing, autoimmune disease (even send it to remission).

Olive oil and Autoimmunity: Insights from Modern Research

It is perhaps of no surprise that nutrition is an influencing factor on autoimmune disorders. We are what we eat, or so the saying goes; the question is, what can we eat which "isn't autoimmunity?" We look for insights, as usual, from the populations that eat the healthiest diets in the world: the Mediterraneans.

Researchers have found that the Mediterranean peoples - or demographics that follow the Mediterranean diet - have a decreased prevalence of autoimmune disorders (3). The reasons are multifactorial but a primary force behind this epidemiological observation is consumption of olive oil. Frequent extra virgin olive oil consumption - which forms the foundation of the Mediterranean diet - is tremendously beneficial due to its potent polyphenols (3).

Polyphenols form the epicenter of modern nutritional health research, and they are trending for good reason. They are potent antioxidants with record-breaking oxygen radical absorbance capacities (ORACs). But not only do they serve to put an end to furious free-radical destruction cycles - which themselves drive the chronic inflammation associated with autoimmunity - they also act to dampen the immune system's inflammatory pathways directly. 

Good quality (high-phenolic, extra virgin) olive oil is loaded with these potent compounds - with estimates of some olive oils containing about 30 different bioactive polyphenols. And, researchers suggest that it is exactly these polyphenols that target and suppress autoimmunity, providing support against diseases of a varied range: from Inflammatory Bowel Disease to Lupus, arthritis, skin conditions, and more.  

References

1) https://www.niaid.nih.gov/diseases-conditions/autoimmune-diseases

2) https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21624-autoimmune-diseases 

3) Aparicio-Soto M, Sánchez-Hidalgo M, Rosillo MÁ, Castejón ML, Alarcón-de-la-Lastra C. Extra virgin olive oil: a key functional food for prevention of immune-inflammatory diseases. Food Funct. 2016 Nov 9;7(11):4492-4505. doi: 10.1039/c6fo01094f. PMID: 27783083.