Just like us humans being a reflection of our environment and what we eat, it’s exactly the same for our horses – you’ve all heard me banging on about it for long enough 😉. And when it comes to extending our health span, as in the number of healthy years we exist on this planet, it’s good to be aware of what we feed our beloved Ned, and this means also being aware of what their food itself 'consumes'. Bear with me – this will make sense in a mo … 

Our horses’ feedbowl diets have drastically changed in the last half-century, if not longer, because our agricultural system has moved from heirloom high-nutrient plants to a subsidised production of highly modified crops - corn, wheat, rice and soya, which directly reflect the health and quality of the conditions under which they’re grown. 

We now know that it’s not about the calories – it’s about the information that the nutrients in the food gives to the body. If the crops aren’t grown the right way, the nutrients don’t end up in what they absorb, and then they don’t end up in our horse – or us, for that matter. And when it comes to our horse feed, unless a brand is labelled ‘organic’ (meaning grown without chemical sprays and in healthy nourished soil), or if said feed contains refined, artificial, processed junk fillers, there’s going to be limited – if not pro-inflammatory and gut-damaging – information in that food that then becomes part of them. In our modern-day human diets alone, intensively farmed rice, wheat and corn account for 40-60% of our calories in the form of ultra-processed food. 

But – there’s some exciting new research from a recent clinical trial, carried out by a favourite of mine in The IFM, Dr Jeffrey Bland, who’s a nutritional biochemist by training and founder of a lovely company called Big Bold Health. This trial shows the incredibly positive impact of phytochemicals on immune system aging, and how to utilise the power of nature’s anti-aging wisdom through food. NB. Again, as per most of my IFM study blogs, it’s based on human studies, but again we can absolutely relate it to our horses.

It's only recently that science has started to uncover the mysteries of human aging, learning that harnessing the wisdom of nature may provide some important insights for longer, healthier lives. Immune system aging is now being evaluated with the help of plant genetics, cracking open the incredible world of phytochemicals, and how these plant compounds may be the key to avoiding and reversing chronic disease. The message is that there’s more to it than just the molecules of which the food is made up of. 

So what causes the immune system to become dysfunctional as we age, what causes the acceleration of inflammation, and how does it all connect to the aging of the body as a whole?

We are what we eat, and food is information for the body, full stop. And particularly, phytochemicals are the plant’s direct chemicals, and it’s now known that as food, these phytochemicals are massive bioregulators.

Now here’s a thought, and let's go back to those calories. Previous thinking was that nutrition was just that - calories, and we either ate too few, too many, or got it just right. And within those calories you had the three principle calorie contributors - protein, carbohydrate and fat. And then there were some accessory factors that were helpful to support metabolism to use those calories – we call them vitamins and minerals.

This was nutrition back in the day. But then when we started asking questions, and when the chemical composition of plant food was analysed, there was other stuff, but no-one knew what to do with it when it came to thinking of it as food for us. Food producers would say, “Nah, that other stuff is kind of pointless. We’ll take it out and throw it away. Maybe put it in pet food, but it’s not important for humans.” 

And what was this flotsam stuff? Phytochemicals, aka phytonutrients. Back in the old days, if you went to a traditional nutrition textbook that generations of nutrition experts were trained in, and checked how many pages in those huge textbooks mentioned ‘phytochemicals’, it would be a matter of a few pages. They were considered non-essential because back then secondary compounds weren’t known about, so weren’t even considered.

(Same for our vets and GPs - during their very extensive medical training, studying using food as medicine was/is virtually non-existent.)

Now, one of the most exciting singular geekisms that I’ve learned since training as a herbalist is that these compounds, these literally thousands and thousands of different plant-derived secondary metabolites that the genes of plants make for us, or rather for them actually – they all have a major purpose for the plant itself, and then when we eat them they’re also incredibly beneficial. They’re not just there because the plant didn’t have anything better to do with its time; they weren’t that bored that they thought, “Today I’m going to make glucosinolates (sulfur-containing phytochemicals which make cruciferous veggies like broccoli or cabbage so healthful), then tomorrow I’m going to make catechins because I like green tea.” 

No. The plant does this because it gives them a selective advantage based on their own individual immune systems. And these compounds that are found in plants, these secondary metabolites, are amazing agents that regulate the expression of genes at the executive centre of function (sorry, bit geeky there). But knowing this, you might very well ask the question, “What’s most important? The genes themselves, or the way they’re expressed?”

Well, that’s a difficult question to answer because they’re both pretty important. But if you don’t express your genes in the right way, you’re a mess. I mean, remember that every cell in your body contains the book of your life of all the chromosomes that allow your body’s DNA to be accurately copied with each and every cell division (and remember, there are trillions of different cell types in the body), which ensures that our inner workings proceed smoothly and efficiently.

So, how does this happen? How does a liver cell stay a liver cell when it has a message for a brain cell or a skin cell? It does so by regulatory elements that are directly tied to the phytochemicals in the diet as to how they actually function. And they’re not only regulators, or antioxidants or anti-inflammatories – they’re also signal transduction agents, which are incredibly important – they block bad signals in a cell which may produce cancer cells.

Science now knows that phytochemicals have purposeful action in specific cell activities, and in specific cell types, to regulate their function so that particular cell will do something in response to a signal. But - that signal could be a stress; it could be exposure to an antibiotic, or a foreign chemical, and so on. So, if you have a diet that’s rich in glucosinolates like sulforaphane (found in broccoli which suppresses cancer cells), then the liver cells pick up the message.

And what does it then do? Sorry - here we go: 🤓ScienceAlert!🤓 And very KPU-connected. It activates and upregulates the involvement with Phase 2 conjugation, which sounds horribly nerdy but if you’ve been supporting your horse as a KPU candidate and have read our KPU page, this will make perfect sense! (And why we're adding P5P - activated B6 - into their diet ...).

In simple terms, what it means is that the liver can biotransform toxins into a water-soluble excretable form for the kidneys to excrete, so playing a direct role in protecting the body against toxic agents that might create dysfunction. 

Pulling this together, what we all learned in school about phytochemicals, if you even studied it at all, is old news. And that’s the beauty of science. We like to think that the human body of knowledge is advancing to answer questions that previously we just glossed over and thought they weren't important, because we didn’t think we needed them so no one ever proved they’re useful. Until now 😉. Now we know that these molecules interact with our receptors, our cells, our hormones, our brain chemistry, our microbiome, our immune system … in so many different, fabulous, ways.

However, there’s also a conversation going on that with these compounds being the plants’ defence mechanisms, their pest deterrants, their immune system to fight off bad things - isn’t there a risk that if we consume them, we’re ingesting little poisons that we’re putting in our body that could potentially harm us?

I mean, there’s phytates – a plant’s primary protector for bacterial infections and insects; in the human diet it's thought phytates may affect the absorption of important nutrients such as zinc, iron, and calcium. Then there’s oxalates, which plants use to regulate their own internal mineral content and help defend against predators, yet if us humans eat them it's thought they can bind to minerals like calcium in the kidneys and form calcium oxalate kidney stones.

But … there’s also a school of thought that thinks that perhaps we're missing the fundamental point of what’s going on, so now we need to introduce a new word – hormesis; this is the theory that something that doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, a bit like exercise or fasting. And it’s thought that these phytochemicals are hormetic agents, and yes, these are compounds that may be a little bit irritating to the body, but that irritation, just like exercise or fasting or hot or cold therapy, may actually trigger a response to create a benefit. 

So, let's go back to those broccoli compounds – glucosinolates; they’re basically a signal to upregulate the body’s own enzymes for detoxification. And this is now thought to be incredibly important. This concept of hormesis - we have to differentiate between the mechanism of treating a disease with a drug (that may have significant side effects) and eating foods that have bioactivity ingredients in them. 

Plants as food have undergone the largest scientific study in the history of any living species. They have survived in their environments as a consequence of the process of natural selection, to hermetically contain substances that allow them to have an immune system to defend against some of the most hostile environments. For example, if you think about a corn plant out there every day with its arm stretched up to the baking sunshine with no protection ... seriously, that’s going to mean instant sunburn, so how does corn protect itself?

Well, rather cleverly it develops xanthophylls - molecules that protect photosynthetic organisms from the potentially toxic effects of light, and carotenoids - what give plants their vibrant pollinator attractants colours and antioxidants, but are also SPF compounds that prevent them from oxidative injury from ultraviolet light. And so they have these natural protectors at the right levesl to provide the optimal protection against their environments that they've been living in for hundreds of thousands of years. 

If you think about it, plants have had to survive in really hostile environments - bad soil, bad weather, baking sun, hard frosts, intense heat, bugs that want to eat them; they’ve had to develop by a natural evolution of hormetic compounds that make up their own immune system, which now, as it turns out, help us too. When we eat these plants that contain these hormetic defence immune substances, they transfer that immune principle to us. Which is now becoming the beginning of an extraordinary chapter in our modern-day way of life.

Another example, and there's a new foodie buzz going on out there – google it, it’s everywhere! Meet Himalayan tartary buckwheat. A 4,000-year-old domesticated crop that is some 50-times higher in immune-potentiating nutrients than common buckwheat. And why does it have that extraordinary power? Because it grew on the slopes of the Himalayas in extraordinarily bad soils that were high in aluminium. Which means … it has an aluminium-detoxifying gene. It’s frost-resistant, it’s drought-resistant, it’s-bug resistant, and it doesn’t require irrigation. You just throw it on the ground with decent soil and Boom, one crop of Himalaya tartary buckwheat, which by the way makes great pancakes 😉.

Thing is, it’s also been ignored for the last century of so because …  it has a flavour, and food labs don’t like naturally flavoured foot because they want to add sugar and fat and synthetic junk to sell it as a refined, artificial, processed foodstuff and make a profit …

Back to what causes the immune system to become dysfunctional as we age. What causes the acceleration of inflammation as we age, and how does that connect to the aging of our whole body? And how do we use plants to affect this?

So, the body responds to the experience of life which is then directly associated with biological aging. Plans and goals go to hell and back, stuff comes up, and that’s life. It happens and we have to be resilient. But how is resilience manifested in the body?

We’re talking mainly via three different cell types, three different tissues that are constantly sampling the outside world, 24/7/365:

• The nervous system.
• The mucosal tissues in the respiratory and gastrointestinal tract.
• The immune system.

They’re all cross-talking one to the other all the time,  and so when we start talking and thinking about, and feeling our life’s experience, this in-built information system picks up the bad news because there's always going to be some kind of trauma somewhere along the road.

The question is, how do we deal with the trauma? Does it stick and stay there irreversibly? And if it does, does it simply accumulate over a lifetime? Some people call these immune scars, and let’s face it, we’ve just had a big episode of immune scars called COVID. And probably the majority of people are carrying some legacy of what that virus left on their immune system that’s now permanently altered from that experience. So, is this a one-way street?

The good news is that No, nothing in life is a one-way street 😉. Where there’s damage, there’s repair – it’s called rejuvenation, and the body is capable of rejuvenating. Every-thing can be modulated by a reversible set of principles that’s in our physiology, but only if we give it the right tools to work from, otherwise we’ll be leaving it to the luck of the draw and we'll get worse as we grow older. 

And for the record, we're not just talking physiologically or metabolically damaged - it can be behaviourally damaged. It can be about feeling rejected, unloved, unappreciated. It’s a form of deficiency - not like a vitamin deficiency but a social support deficiency, and it leaves marks. All of these deficiencies collectively work together to create who we are and how our aging process manifest in our body.

So now let’s go further down the rabbit hole, with a little bit of the science of what’s happening to our immune system as we get older, which then causes it to generate more of this chronic inflammation that’s at the root of what we call inflammaging. And then how we combat this to change it and reverse the process.

🤓ScienceAlert!🤓 Okay, so there are these cell types that are associated with biological aging – they’re called SASP cells, which stands for the mouthful that is senescent-associated secretory phenotypes. So what does this mean in English? Zombie cells! Zombie cells that don’t die, and run around bring inflammation in their wake.

Here’s where feeling sad has an effect. These zombie cells’ genes are the same as other cells in the body, but they’re communicating a different message because they’ve been modulated by life's experiences to be shifted into an alarm state.

So, once we've got a zombie cell, does this mean that a zombie will live in your body forever? Good news again - No. Science only recently now knows that there are processes in the body - for which Nobel Prizes have been won – for this discovery. Rejuvenation is making them better. However - it doesn’t mean that you’ve completely eradicated aging because the clock still ticks, but it’s removing these accelerants of the process of chronic inflammation that’s associated with all the health issues that we commonly associate with the physiology of aging. 

Pulling this together, we know that these zombie cells accumulate as we get older, thanks to seeing more of life’s great tapestry of crap for longer, and meanwhile other things happen to our immune system which decreases our ability to fight infection and so on - the ever increasing ripple effect of increasing inflammation on one side, and a decreased ability to respond to threats on the other side. And yet there’s this fabulous concept called immuno-rejuvenation, and it’s all about particular unique phytochemicals (such as those in Himalayan tartary buckwheat) which have this remarkable ability to not only rejuvenate the immune system, but can actually turn back the biological age clock by (apparently) five to seven years.

Here’s how

When you think about a longevity diet, these are the foods that we should be thinking about if we’re going to focus on rejuvenating our immune system, reversing the hallmarks of aging, and reversing our biological age through food:

1. First up, and whether human or horse, low glycemic (foods that affect blood sugar/glucose level) and steering clear of processed foods.
2. Humans - eat the rainbow (and not foods that are coloured from synthetic food dyes!).  You’re going to get a whole different array of carotenoids and flavonoids and polyphenols and quercetin from a selection of rainbow coloured foods.
3. Horses and humans – think prebiotics! Always think of the rich diversity of prebiotic-rich fibre foods that are beneficial to the fibre-fermenting microbes in the large intestine (horse’s hindgut). 

Let’s nip back into the rainbow because we can’t just live on berries alone - there are a lot of different plants that can help activate our longevity pathways. There are those foods that provide maximum benefit because they provide protein, carbohydrate, good fats, and all the vitamins and minerals that we could live off. Then there are others that should be include in the diet that we wouldn’t necessarily consume as a major food stuff, i.e. cruciferous vegetables - cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, sprouts - a really important part of a complete diet. Nuts and seeds because they carry the germ seed of the germinating plant (but not peanuts because they’re a legume).

And then there are the controversial foods like soya. And I don’t mean GM soya - I’m talking about non-GM soya. Soya’s got a pretty bad reputation due to its GM connection, but non-GM soya has a whole remarkable portfolio of phytochemicals. Soya in its natural state and particularly cultured soy like tempeh, is an excellent protein food, in moderation.

So there we have it - food as medicine when it’s appropriately applied. The rather brilliant news is that there are now major business foundations (The Rockafella Foundation for one) who are independently funding multi-million studies on food as medicine, moving it more to regenerative agriculture. This is really starting to happen in an area where I can clearly remember when I even suggested food as medicine, I'd be ridiculed and laughed out of any conversation - DEFRA and the VMD still hold the reins very firmly on that one ...

The tide is turning - it’s so exciting to see these things starting to move forward, and who knows … maybe in time we’ll actually transform from a conventional pathology-focused pill-for-every-ill system, to a more natural health-focused culture, to help both us - and our horses - recover through chronic injury and illness, and even live longer 😉.