A Nonagenarian’s View of Dietary Impacts on Cellular Immunology

Abstract

Descriptions of immune functions and diets often use oversimplified terms that lead to misunderstandings plus expectations that conflict with reality. “ Unexpected events are a clear marker for the frontier of knowledge and a new opportunity to learn” [1]. Terms like lipid, fluidity, unsaturated, essential, lipoprotein, receptor, immune and inflammatory have many unmentioned components and attributes that may be either causal mediators or associated epiphenomena in heath disorders. Including neglected details can help investigators design dietary interventions with observed consequences that fit their expectations. Over the years, new evidence and explicit terminology allow expected outcomes for interventions to fit reality. A recent review, “ Lipid nutrition: ‘In silico’ studies and undeveloped experiments ” [1], describes some aspects of fatty acid chemistry and nutrition with important consequences on chronic immune-inflammatory processes. The review points to long-known details of lipid-protein interactions which younger colleagues can consider as they develop new experiments to gather evidence on how food choices might prevent healthy physiology from drifting into pathophysiology.