Becoming Bulletproof

Dolors & Sense

by Sanford Rose

KISSIMMEE Florida—(Weekly Hubris)—7/11/11—There are no guarantees, but we have a much better chance with a vest made from a fabric of certain cytokines.

Let’s recapitulate. Evolution engineered us for life through the reproductive years. Anything beyond those years was a mere lagniappe.

The principal threat to life in the early years was, and probably still is, infection.

So, evolution endowed us with cytokines—a set of cellular messengers that are quick to mobilize immunological agents.

We inflame very fast.

Inflammation is good when you’re young. It enables you to destroy invading pathogens.

But that which is good when you’re young can be bad when you’re old.

Nature, fixated on reproduction, had less regard for protecting those who managed to survive well beyond the reproductive years.

Those cytokines that fought pathogens with acute needed inflammation in our youth elicited low-level, chronic, unwanted inflammatory responses in our maturity.

Such responses are grouped under the heading of “metabolic syndrome.”

Read: insulin resistance, atherosclerosis, hypertension, colon carcinoma, and Alzheimer’s Disease—all of which are caused by persistent inflammation traceable to the perverse antics of cytokines and their macrophagic adjuvants.

The principal cytokines are tumor necrosis factor alpha, interleukin-1, and interleukin-6. They are found or “expressed” in most areas of the body, but seem to have a particular predilection for fat tissue.

But nature, averse to being predictable, has back-flipped a tad. It is not completely indifferent to the needs of the mature.

Consider interleukin-6. When secreted in fat tissue, it inflames. But when secreted in skeletal muscle tissue, it switches roles and becomes an anti-inflammatory. It starts fighting metabolic syndrome. It wages war on TNF-alpha and IL-1.

What’s more, once called upon by muscular activity, interleukin-6 recruits the aid of interleukin-10. That worthy, in absolutely no doubt as to its function, is an unambiguous inflammation fighter—probably the most dedicated in the body.

The obvious moral of this recital is that if we behaves as nature originally engineered us—beings who had to keep flexing their skeletal muscles vigorously in order to survive—we can achieve a reasonable balance of pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines and thus head off the scourge of our time (and, by the way, the leading consumer of our health-care dollars) —the dreaded metabolic syndrome.

Anyone for the weight bench?