{"id":13976,"date":"2020-09-10T20:57:40","date_gmt":"2020-09-11T00:57:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=13976"},"modified":"2020-09-10T20:57:43","modified_gmt":"2020-09-11T00:57:43","slug":"meaning-of-lectins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/meaning-of-lectins\/","title":{"rendered":"Meaning of Lectins: Plant Defense and Human Toxin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What is the meaning of lectins? How do you define lectin? What is the role of lectins?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lectins are large proteins and you can find them in a variety of plant and animal sources. They are a toxin produced by plants as a defense mechanism against predators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more about the meaning of lectins for plants and those who eat them. You will learn to define lectin and the risk of consuming it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Meaning of Lectins for Plants<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Lectins are large proteins contained in the seeds, grains, skins, rinds, and leaves of most plants, as well as in the meat, milk, and eggs of grain- and soy-fed chickens, cows, pigs, and seafood. The meaning of lectins for plants is to allow species to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just as animals developed defenses against their predators (e.g. skunks spray their attackers and gazelles outrun many predators), plants developed their own methods of protecting their offspring\u2014their seeds\u2014to ensure their species carry on. <\/strong>One method is to produce toxins\u2014including lectins, meaning they poison, paralyze, or disorient predators or make the plant difficult to digest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The meaning of lectins varies for the type of predator. While lectins may be powerful enough to knock out bugs, humans have a size advantage\u2014but that doesn\u2019t mean we\u2019re immune. We have a massive number of cells, which makes the meaning of lectins and their damaging effects may not be seen until lectins have compounded for years<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lectins contribute to health problems including weight gain, inflammation, joint pain, diabetes, and autoimmune diseases<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Define Lectins’ Meaning for Humans<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Lectins have several harmful effects in your body.\u00a0Here’s how you define lectins:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Lectins can create gaps in your intestinal wall barrier.<\/li>
  2. Lectins that breach your intestinal wall trigger an attack from your immune system, causing inflammation<\/strong>.<\/li>
  3. Lectins\u2014sometimes called \u201csticky proteins\u201d\u2014bind to sugar molecules in your body and interrupt the communication between cells.<\/li>
  4. Lectins mimic certain hormones, fooling the body into taking unnecessary actions like storing fat and attacking certain cells. <\/li>
  5. Lectins help viruses and bacteria attach to their intended targets, so that people who are particularly sensitive to lectins are more susceptible to viral and bacterial infections. <\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Humans have developed a four-pronged protection from plants\u2019 toxins, including lectins. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    1. Your saliva and the mucus in your nose contain sugars, which lectins naturally bind to. Those sugars are meant to trap the lectins before they reach your digestive system. <\/li>
    2. Your stomach acid also digests certain\u2014but not all\u2014lectin proteins. <\/li>
    3. The natural bacteria in your mouth and gut help consume lectins before they can interfere with your cells and create gaps in your intestinal wall barrier. <\/strong><\/li>
    4. An additional layer of mucus that lines your intestines acts as a final line of defense to trap lectins and prevent them from interfering with your intestinal wall. <\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

      Although this system is designed to protect us from the harmful effects of lectins, if we consume too many lectins, they can overwhelm our natural defenses.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

      The Human Diet Is Overloaded With Lectins<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

      For millennia, humans\u2019 immune systems have adapted to their changing diet, but relatively recently, humans\u2019 diets have changed drastically and exposed our gut bacteria to new compounds that it hasn\u2019t yet evolved to tolerate<\/strong>, making the meaning of lectins more pronounced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      There are four factors in how we define lectins that brought about this major change.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      1. The Agricultural Revolution<\/a> not only introduced grain and beans into the human diet for the first time, but it also made them the primary food source; this was a shift from a diet of mainly leaves, tubers (like sweet potatoes), and some animal fat and proteins.<\/li>
      2. A mutation in Northern European cows caused them to produce a different kind of protein in their milk, called casein A-1; during digestion, casein A-1 turns into a protein similar to lectin that causes your immune system to attack your pancreas.<\/li>
      3. When Europeans landed in the Americas, they brought foreign food from the New World back with them that people in Europe, Asia, and Africa had never before been exposed to and, thus, hadn\u2019t adapted to tolerate. These included