Balance of important intestinal bacteria
Is it the ``taste of the bag'' of processed foods in a closed system, or the ``taste of the bag'' in an open system of handmade food?
Harmful effects of eating processed foods produced in closed systems on a daily basis. Kawahara believes that one of these is the increase in allergic diseases such as asthma, atopic dermatitis, and allergic rhinitis.
If you continue to eat fast food that is high in fat and low in dietary fiber, not only the number but also the types of intestinal bacteria will drastically decrease in just one week, and the intestinal flora, which can be compared to a flower garden, will become more diverse. It is known that they are lost and turn into deserts.
Extensive use of antibiotics also damages intestinal bacteria.
It is said that when intestinal bacteria become scarce and become desert due to these factors, immune cells go out of control and attack normal cells, making it easier to cause various symptoms such as obesity and allergic diseases.
For this reason, it is said that the balance of intestinal bacteria is important, and Dr. Kawahara
In addition, we believe that microorganisms that are common in the soil and air, not living microorganisms but microorganisms that exist as decomposed products, enhance human immune function and help maintain health. .
Mongolia with few allergies
In 1989, a historic event occurred that later led to the unification of Germany. The fall of the Berlin Wall.
After unification, an epidemiological study was conducted to compare the occurrence of allergic diseases in the former West Germany and the former East Germany.
At first, it was thought that there would be more people suffering from allergic diseases in the former East Germany, which had poor sanitary conditions, than in the former West Germany, which was a developed country, but in reality, the opposite was true; the number of patients was higher in the former West Germany. I did.
Furthermore, it was found that children of farmers who raised livestock had fewer allergic diseases.
For example, in Mongolia, one of the countries with the lowest incidence of allergic diseases, nomads raise livestock and use dried livestock dung for fuel.
In the former East Germany and Mongolia, people lived in environments where they had close and abundant contact with microorganisms and their decomposed products.
Traditional miso strengthens natural immunity
In the same year as the fall of the Berlin Wall, the ``hygiene hypothesis'' was announced, which states that allergic diseases will increase if the sanitary environment improves and people become less susceptible to infectious diseases.
Subsequently, Nobel Prize-winning research revealed the mechanism of innate immunity in which a substance called LPS (lipopolysaccharide), a decomposed product of microorganisms, sends signals to the human body's mucous membranes and suppresses immune cells from going out of control. .
LPS, also known as the "immune vitamin," is abundant in traditional fermented foods such as miso, and Kawahara believes that it has contributed to maintaining the health of Japanese people.
"Fermented foods such as miso and pickles contain decomposed products of microorganisms, and by eating them, Japanese people may have been able to balance their immune cells."
Of course, our hands also contain many microorganisms and LPS. What's more, the types of microorganisms differ from person to person, and even the right and left hands of the same person are different.
It's hard to realize what kind of microorganisms are on your hands because you can't see them with the naked eye, but Mr. Kawahara remembers the taste of miso musubi, which was simply raw miso spread over cold rice when he was a child. Ta.
As a child, he wondered, ``Why do the rice balls made by my grandmother and the ones made by my mother taste different?'' This may have been due to the difference in the types of microorganisms in the palms of the grandmother who held the rice ball and her mother.
