MEDICINE | IMMUNITY
Forever Safe? Immunity and Immune System Balance - Securing Defenses through Nutrition
For a long time, immune system memory was a mystery. We now know your immune system possesses a long memory of every encounter with pathogens.
Mark Zuleger-Thyss
Immunity & Nutrition
Nutrition is the basis of life - both in preventing and protecting against diseases. Our immune system remembers pathogens for a surprisingly long time. How integral is nutrition to a healthy immune system?
Securing Immune Defences
In their 1994 book, “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space,” Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan sought to take a poetic and holistic view of Earth – making it something more than a tiny speck of dirt.
“On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, [and] every human being whoever was, lived out their lives,”
Sagan and Druyan described.
The book showed us our breathtakingly beautiful and fragile world, urging us to take care of our home and ourselves. It nudged us to view our planet as more than a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. Instead, Earth is constantly transforming, and many events exhibiting a plethora of life are occurring far beyond the scope of observation from the vastness of space.
More than lakes, rivers, clouds – and people and animals, the Earth is its own entity, complete and whole. Our planet currently houses 8.1 billion people, but there’s more to this aliveness than human bodies. Plants, trees, oceans, fish, birds, and weather exist there, making Earth a dynamic, rotating ball of fire and ice.
Seen from a distance, you would not guess the Earth has both a biome and a Virome—lots of moving parts. This makes the Western medicine idea of avoiding germs like the plague laughable.
Sadly, this has been the driving force behind efforts to find new and more effective ways to prevent the assault of dangerous bugs.
Immunity | Extreme Diversity Forged Throughout Evolutionary History
Like the complexities of our planet, so too exists extreme diversity in the human immune system. This diversity provides a potent shield against opportunistic pathogens.
All living organisms are living under stresses imposed by their surrounding environments. They must adapt to these stressors to live and survive. At the forefront of this adaptation is a defence system – immunity - the most ancient cognitive apparatus with memory function, and indeed, it is present in all living organisms.
At present, Western medicine (biomedicine) is a scientific system. It uses observation of static states and analysis of single factors to understand the human body in states of health and disease.
The immune system serves more than just to “defend” against disease. It was designed to interact with microbes and cleanse the body of aged, dying blood cells and bacteria.
Immunology is the branch of biology that studies how the body is designed to protect itself from agents of disease called pathogens. The primary role of our immune system is to recognize pathogens and parasites and destroy them.
This fantastic system battles disease in a manner so complex and intricate that even the most gifted imagination could not envision such incredible functions.
Allowing Yourself to get Dirty is Essential for Human Life
“You must eat a peck of dirt before you die.”
Famous eighteenth-century proverb
Germs are immune stimulants; they challenge you to be prepared. If you are a bit of a germaphobe and you actively make it a policy to avoid germs, good luck with that! Germs are everywhere!
Side-stepping germs is like trying to dodge soccer fans of the 1950 Brazil vs. Uruguay World Cup Final if they had all run out to congratulate the winning team. It would be unbearable to manoeuvre the playing field amid 200,000 enthusiastic fans—you would likely get knocked to the ground.
Viruses are another type of invader. They are everywhere, a part of us, and they are just trying to survive. Viruses are in the body and everywhere in the environment. Your body is brimming with them—380 trillion, more than the stars in the universe.
Viruses must infect a living bacterial, animal, or plant cell to survive and replicate. Once they slip into your body, they come to life, hijacking your cells, and setting up shop, all for a purpose—to advance their life cycle. With or without murderous intentions, viruses need you as their host to inhabit so they can survive.
Trying to avoid viruses, microbes, and pathogens is as unreasonable as dodging a soccer kick to the groin. You must simply adapt to the world of your surroundings and all the people and germs in it! This is what your immune system does for you: adapt and protect.
Like the complexities of our planet, so too is there an extreme diversity making up the human immune system. This diversity provides a potent defence against opportunistic pathogens.
Diet, Nutrition, and Lifestyle Changes
Many medical experts have emphasized diet and lifestyle as the primary means to achieve health. Lifestyle changes involve ongoing awareness of how you live and a conscious commitment to specific health-promoting behaviors, such as regular exercise, proper diet, adequate sleep, and responsible levels of alcohol, caffeine, and drug consumption.
A healthy lifestyle requires ongoing attention to five areas of optimal health: physical, emotional, spiritual, social, and intellectual. We now know this to be a holistic approach to health and well-being.
The immune system is the body's way of protecting itself from infection and disease; it fights everything from cold and flu viruses to severe conditions such as cancer.
Our immune systems are complex and influenced by many factors. Vaccines, such as the flu vaccine, build immunity against specific diseases.
The Gut, The Immune System, and Microbial Infection
The immune system is a complex network of organs, cells, and proteins that defend the body against infection while protecting the body's own cells. This system has the extraordinary capacity to discriminate between its own cells, the cells of the body, and foreign components we can call 'non-self.' It records every microbe it has ever defeated, in types of white blood cells (B-lymphocytes and T-lymphocytes) known as memory cells.
The nature of the immune system empowers it to recognize and destroy the microbe quickly if it enters the body again before it can multiply and make you feel sick.
Some infections, like the flu and the common cold, must be fought many times because so many viruses or strains of the same type can cause these illnesses. Catching a cold or flu from one virus does not give you immunity against the others.
The mechanisms in the gut include immune system activation, gut structure alterations, and the resultant inflammation.
"If all viruses suddenly disappeared, the world would be a wonderful place for about a day and a half, and then we'd all die."
~ Tony Goldberg, PhD, Professor Epidemiology
Components of the Immune System
The main parts of the immune system are:
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white blood cells
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antibodies
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lymphatic system
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spleen
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bone marrow
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thymus.
The Concept of an Immune-Boosting Diet: Fact or Fiction?
The concept that one can "boost" immunity is popular. Although the only evidence-based approach to this is vaccination, the average person is exposed to a wide range of information on how to do so, especially on the internet.
The composition and quantity of food we eat shape the trajectory of immune responses by regulating nutrient availability. Nutrition also impacts the immune system indirectly by controlling the composition and function of the microbiota, which, in turn, further calibrates host immunity. Eating enough nutrients as part of a varied diet is required for the health and function of all cells, including immune cells.
Specific dietary patterns may better prepare the body for microbial attacks and excess inflammation, but individual foods are unlikely to offer the exceptional protection one might seek.
The body's immune response relies on specific amounts of micronutrients.
Examples of nutrients identified as critical for the growth and function of immune cells include vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc, selenium, iron, and high protein (including the amino acid glutamine). These are primarily found in a variety of plant and animal foods.
Do Vitamin or Herbal Supplements Help?
A deficiency of single nutrients can alter the body's immune response. Studies have found that deficiencies in zinc, selenium, iron, copper, folic acid, and vitamins A, B6, C, D, and E, can alter immune responses.
These nutrients help the immune system in several ways:
- Working as an antioxidant to protect healthy cells.
- Supporting growth and activity of immune cells.
- Producing antibodies.
Epidemiological studies find that those who are poorly nourished are at greater risk of bacterial, viral, and other infections.
Summary
Nutrition is integral to a healthy immune system. Medical experts have emphasized diet and lifestyle as the primary means to achieve health.
The immune system has a long memory of every encounter with pathogens, and nutrition is integral to a healthy immune system. it is a system with a complex network of organs, cells, and proteins that defend the body against infection while protecting the body's own cells.
Over time, our immunity developed extreme diversity, which provided a potent shield against opportunistic pathogens. The human immune system was designed to interact with microbes and cleanse the body of aged, dying blood cells and bacteria.
The immune system is the body's way of protecting itself from infection and disease; it fights everything from cold and flu viruses to severe conditions such as cancer.
Western medicine uses observation of static states and analysis of single factors to understand the human body in states of health and disease. Eastern ideas of interpreting the health of the body have taken hold in the West, and more and more people are beginning to understand and adopt a more holistic view of using alternate forms of healthcare.
Germs are immune stimulants and avoiding them is virtually impossible. Viruses are everywhere in our environment and in our bodies, too. They use us as hosts, simply trying to survive and carry out their lifecycles.
To avoid germs, people must be conscious of their lifestyle, exercise, and be responsible for their health.
Follow Nature ... wherever She may lead You!
© 2024, Mark Zuleger-Thyss | Garden of Healing, LLC
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