Northern Nutritionals

Tag: diet

  • Inflammation

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    Karline Jensen
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    Inflammation can be triggered by microbes, foods, trauma, or toxins, but when the immune system is well-supported, the result is tolerance rather than over-reactivity.  Supporting Resolution Ginger and Boswellia can help with inflammation. Dietary fiber (50 grams/day) can help to move toxins out of the body and reduce the amount of toxins that are reabsorbed…

  • Yoga and Immune Balance

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    Karline Jensen
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    Regulatory T cells (Tregs) are central to immune tolerance, and it turns out a daily yoga practice is one way to support them. That finding — along with ideas about cytokines and immune balance — is central to my thinking on lifestyle recommendations. Yoga and the Treg/Th17 Balance in Rheumatoid Arthritis Gautam et al. (2023)…

  • Internet Filter Tests and Intestinal Permeability

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    Karline Jensen
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    I recently learned there’s a way to test an internet content filter to see how well it’s actually working. I know a good content filter matters — no teacher wants a student to hit something inappropriate while doing a Google search for class — but I’d never thought about testing the filter itself. I’d always…

  • Nightshade Sensitivity: The Immune Mechanism, and Interventions

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    Karline Jensen
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    Some people experience joint pain as an inflammatory reaction to nightshades like tomatoes and peppers. Understanding the immune pathway behind that reaction — and what separates a reactive response from a tolerant one — points toward some practical places to intervene. The Immune Pathway Behind Nightshade Sensitivity Nightshade proteins are transported across intestinal microfold cells,…

  • Food Allergies and Tolerance

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    Karline Jensen
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    Your immune system monitors everything that enters your body from the outside world, including food. Within the intestines, the default, healthy response to food is tolerance. But when someone has a food allergy, their immune system responds to that food more like it would to a bacteria or virus, treating it as a threat. That’s…

  • Chasing Easter Eggs: Explaining Chemotaxis (and Rosemary as an Immune System Modulator)

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    Karline Jensen
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    Teaching Immunology With an Easter Egg Hunt This is a story to explain the concept of chemotaxis. Neutrophils are a type of cell that can actually move around inside your body. They live in your blood vessels. And if you get a cut that lets germs (bacteria) in, the cells in your finger send out…

  • Mitochondrial Dysfunction and Type 2 Diabetes: Mechanisms, Markers, and Interventions

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    Karline Jensen
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    Type 2 diabetes can be assessed from the perspective of mitochondrial dysfunction as not just a side effect, but a factor in its progression. Symptoms like fatigue and difficulty concentrating can be a sign that mitochondria aren’t functioning properly, and that same underlying dysfunction may be feeding the disease process itself. When mitochondria are impaired,…

  • Supporting Mitochondrial Health: Urolithin A and Light Therapy

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    Karline Jensen
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    Two very different interventions — a gut-microbiome-derived postbiotic and a light-based therapy — offer an interesting look at how mitochondrial function can be supported through different mechanisms: clearing out damaged mitochondria on one hand, and directly powering the electron transport chain on the other. Urolithin A  Singh et al. (2022) ran a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled…

  • Assessing for Mitochondrial Dysfunction: A Lab-Based Approach

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    Karline Jensen
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    When a client’s symptoms point toward possible mitochondrial dysfunction, I like to start with labs they’re likely to already have on hand — a CBC and CMP — before moving on to more specialized testing. Here’s how I approach that process. Starting With the CMP From the comprehensive metabolic panel, I look at bicarbonate, albumin,…

  • Two Manifestations of Oxidative Stress: Cataracts and Steatotic Liver Disease

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    Karline Jensen
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    The following two examples — one on age-related cataracts, and one on Steatotic Liver Disease (SLD)  — both illustrate how cells try to compensate for oxidative stress, and what happens when those compensatory systems eventually fail. Oxidative Stress and Cataract Formation Huang et al. (2022) investigated how biliverdin reductase A protects lens epithelial cells from…