G.O.T. in the gut (spoilers included)
With one episode left in the Game of Thrones saga, I thought I’d share a throwback metaphor that I used when teaching grad students about gut bacteria, intestinal permeability, and autoimmunity during season 4.
This was particularly relevant during that season for the following reasons:
- The Crows and Wildlings were not getting along.
- The two groups were separated by the Wall.
- The White Walkers would inevitably be marching South to indiscriminately destroy all of humanity.
In the body, the Crows are the cells guarding the Wall, the Wall is our gut barrier, and the Wildlings are the gut bacteria that live beyond the Wall.
The Wall is semipermeable which means that there are access points that can open and close allowing travel across the Wall. This travel, at the Wall in GOT and in the gut, involves “Gate-guards” to limit such travel to certain individuals (substances).
In GOT, the status quo for 1,000 years was that the Crows guarded the wall and the Wildlings lived beyond the wall. This was understood and allowed for equilibrium (as much as one could hope for in GOT). The drama began when the Wildlings began approaching the Wall to escape the White Walkers.
In the gut, equilibrium is established and maintained when the tight junctions of the gut barrier keep our blood cells within the intestinal wall and the gut bacteria and other environmental substances beyond the wall only allowing the passage of nutrients and other beneficial substances. Problems occur in the gut when the equivalent of White Walkers are brought into the gut, beyond the Wall, and wage war on the Wildlings.
An example of this is consuming toxins or eating foods that inflame the gut barrier and therefore increase its permeability. This opening of the Guard-gates allows substances (Wildlings turned White Walkers) to breach the wall and enter the blood.
Like when that one dead guy got brought across the wall and then came to “life” before getting burnt by John Snow? The body recognizes these substances as “Other” and tags them for immunity so it can destroy them in the future if more “Others” make it across the wall. This is similar to the Crows learning that the White Walkers could be killed by fire after John burnt the one mentioned above.
The tension built in the show as John recognized that if the Crows and Wildlings didn’t work together, the White Walkers would kill the Wildlings and then the Crows would be dealing with even more White Walkers than before. (ie, Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth).
In the show, John (the brain) decides to bring the Wildlings across the Wall to prevent them from turning into White Walkers. This is like bringing gut bacteria into the blood to prevent gut dysbiosis — not a good idea.
How do the Crows respond when he brings the foreigners into their sacred territory? Just how the body responds in the case of autoimmunity, they kill John.
Obviously in the show, the story doesn’t end when John dies. We are all rooting for intermingling of the clans in preparation for the Great War. Alas, the takeaway from this rant is to avoid bringing White Walkers into the fold in the first place.
There are many Night Kings that we can destroy by removing them from our diet and environment.
Sugar, Gluten, Allergens, Alcohol, Glyphosate, Heavy metals, etc.
There are many Night Kings in the Standard American Diet. And like destroying the Night King in the show destroys all other White Walkers, removing these key inflammatory substances from our diet lessens our overall sensitivity to other inflammatory mediators. As the baseline threshold to inflammatory cascades rises, we are less vulnerable to the spike of a weak or even moderate trigger and therefore more resilient to the stresses of our environment.
We are each individuals with different sensitivities and exposure to triggers of varying potency and quantity. It took all of Westeros to combat the Dead and survive the night. It will take a village to overcome our modern society’s powerful inflammatory environment.
In the end, we decide where power resides.
Let’s choose wisely!