Do you suffer from ongoing or recurring health challenges? Do they include frequent bacterial or viral infections, chronic fatigue, food allergies/sensitivities, severe digestive difficulties, chronic pain, or brain fog? These are some of the more common signs and symptoms of a compromised immune system. The good news is that multiple lifestyle changes can go a long way to addressing the symptoms and even curbing the progression of associated diseases.
Your Immune System
Your body’s immune system is a network that defends it against attacks from viruses (such as colds, flu, and COVID-19) and foreign invaders (pathogens like bacteria, parasites, and fungi). When functioning properly, your white blood cells, proteins, tissues, and organs (spleen, bone marrow, and thymus gland) guard against acute or chronic contagious infections and diseases resulting from those attacks. When your immune system is stimulated, it responds to antigens (the unique subparts of various pathogens) by producing either cells to attack them directly or special proteins (antibodies), which attach to the antigens to, in turn, attract cells that engulf and destroy them.
Your immune system can also malfunction by attacking healthy tissue by creating antibodies. An autoimmune disease (AID) can develop with attendant inflammation and cell destruction.
The broad autoimmune spectrum ranges from diseases with a clear autoimmune component to those suspected to be autoimmune. The more well-known diseases on this spectrum include type 1 diabetes, psoriasis, multiple sclerosis (MS), celiac disease, chronic Lyme disease, restless leg syndrome, Crohn’s disease, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, and Parkinson’s disease (considered partly autoimmune). The incidence of these 140+ identified conditions appears to be increasing, yet their exact causes are largely unknown, and their diagnosis can take years. Researchers have determined that those with a single autoimmune condition are more likely to develop others than those without an AID.
Traditional Medicine: For Crisis, Not Long-Term Optimal Wellness
Has your doctor ever recommended multiple courses of antibiotics or anti-inflammatory drugs that didn’t resolve your health problem? Traditional medicine certainly has a place in crisis management, but conventional physicians have limited drugs in their toolbox to address ailments. Those medications are primarily designed to address symptoms rather than optimize long-term wellness. Fortunately, a natural approach offers a broader selection of time-tested ways to prevent and support compromised immunity.
Some Lifestyle Factors That Can Protect You
All unhealthy lifestyle choices burden the immune system. If you suspect you have a weakened immune system, there some steps you can take today to help strengthen it. If you have been diagnosed with an AID or suspect you have a condition on the AID spectrum, it’s important to see a specialist for a diagnosis and avoid stimulating your immune system’s attack on your body.
Eat a Healthy Diet
While each person has different dietary needs, following certain basic nutritional guidelines can greatly increase the body’s ability to avoid and combat immune challenges. It is generally wise to avoid (or at least greatly minimize) inflammation-inducing saturated, hydrogenated, and trans fats (beef, pork, lamb, duck), gluten, dairy, GMOs, caffeine, alcohol, MSG, dyes, and chemical additives, and especially sugar/simple carbohydrates, all of which impair white blood cell function.
A healthy diet should generally include plenty of filtered water and primarily unprocessed, high-vibration, whole foods without labels and ingredients you can’t pronounce. Barring allergies/food sensitivities or a health condition that calls for a different approach, your diet should include high-omega3 wild fish, organic chicken/turkey/eggs, protein powder to supplement inadequate protein intake, limited amounts of whole organic grains, and as many colorful organic raw foods as possible.
Manage Your Stress, Anxiety, and Depression
Chronic stress, which can cause and exacerbate anxiety and depression, is a leading cause of immune compromise. Researchers recognize two kinds of stress. It is well accepted that unmanageable physicochemical stress, from environmental factors like food/nutrition, toxins, metabolic disorders, infections, and inflammation, can cause disease states or even fatality.
It is also known that long-term chronic psychological stress leads to persistently high cortisol and corticosteroid levels, which in turn cause resistance to cortisol and impaired anti-inflammatory effects on the immune system. These effects can result in chronic infection, chronic inflammatory AIDs, and even cancers. According to Michael Murray, ND, the more significant the stressor, the greater the impact on immunity, and negative emotions suppress immune function while positive emotions enhance it.
Stress reduction techniques include belief and mindset management, raising your vibration (for example, through meditation and deep breathing, and focusing on gratitude, love, generosity, and positive thoughts), journaling, spending time in nature and with animals, yoga, and working with an energy healer or therapist.
Other Critical Lifestyle Steps
While much more can be said about the importance of healthy lifestyle choices to your immunity, limited space permits only a listing of some additional factors to address in your daily life:
- Manage your weight, especially by staying active, to prevent obesity and metabolic syndrome characterized by chronic inflammation.
- Improve your sleep to enhance your white blood cells’ ability to destroy pathogen-infected cells.
- Limit exposure to environmental toxins, including EMFs from electronic devices, radiation, and prescription drugs, to inhibit the production of cell-damaging free radicals.
- Eliminate self-sabotaging habits.
- Consider taking some of the supplements mentioned below.
Take Immune-Enhancing Dietary Supplements
Food can do a lot, but for many, food alone can’t do enough. Space allows for a brief overview of just a few of the numerous natural remedies available to protect the immune system.
- Beta-Glucan: Beta-glucan is a carbohydrate that naturally occurs in the cell walls of yeast, medicinal mushrooms, and bacteria. Beta-glucan stimulates white blood cell and natural killer (NK) cell activity.
- Black Elderberry (Sambucus nigra): This herb, safe for children, is shown to have anti-inflammatory, antiviral, antiflu, antioxidant, and anticancer properties.
- Curcumin from Turmeric: Used for over 3000 years in traditional Indian medicine (Ayurveda), this spice extract combats inflammation and cellular oxidation, twin causes of most illnesses. Extensive trials have shown that it has therapeutic applications against inflammation, infection (including H. pylori bacteria), lifestyle-related diseases, and neurological disorders, with potential activity against diabetes, allergies, arthritis, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, and other chronic illnesses.
- OPCs: According to renowned researcher Richard Passwater, PhD, oligomeric proanthocyanidins are a powerful bioflavonoid family of antioxidants that combat free radicals. Provided in abundance by standardized French maritime pine bark (pycnogenol), red wine, and grape seed extracts, they can boost immunity, ease allergy symptoms, and reduce inflammation, the effects of stress, and the risk of cancer and more than sixty other diseases.
- Oregano Oil Extract: This herb combats bacteria, fungi, viruses, and parasites. Products standardized for the highest levels of carvacrol, with high antioxidant activity, have proven most effective, particularly against Candida albicans (yeast), Staphylococcus aureus, E. coli, and Salmonella.
- Probiotics: Your digestive system contains 70–80% of all your body’s immune cells, so a strong immune system begins with healthy digestion. Antibiotics, prednisone, oral contraceptives, and cortisol-generating stress, among other factors, can cause flora imbalances in the digestive tract. Extensive research supports the efficacy of a wide variety of probiotic strains, and many have targeted functions. Each person requires a different combination and potency, depending on their health concern.
- Quercetin: This flavonoid (a plant-made chemical with antioxidant activity) is found in numerous plants (apples, berries, Brassica vegetables, onions/shallots, tea, certain kinds of honey, tomatoes, seeds, and nuts). Studies have proven it is anticarcinogenic, anti-inflammatory, antiviral, and active against fat oxidation, platelet aggregation, and capillary permeability.
- Thymus Glandular Extract (usually bovine): The health of the thymus gland largely determines that of the immune system. It is active only through puberty, then begins to shrink slowly. By age 50, only 1/16 of the thymus gland remains to support health. Its production and release of the hormone thymosin stimulates white blood cell production. It also releases other hormones that regulate other immune functions. Studies have shown that thymus extract functions as a thymus gland substitute, particularly against respiratory and other infections, asthma/hay fever, and food allergies (with an elimination diet).
- Vitamin C: This water-soluble antioxidant suppresses oxidative stress to protect proteins and fats from free radical damage. This process increases the life span of immune cells, reduces infection-related cell damage, and may also help to prevent the onset of infections. According to Dr. Linus Pauling, the foremost authority on vitamin C, it can decrease the risk of getting certain cancers by 75%.
- Vitamin D-3: Vitamin D deficiency is associated with increased autoimmunity and susceptibility to infection. According to the Institute of Medicine, serum levels greater than or equal to 50 nmol/L are sufficient for 97.5% of the population. Concentrations over 125 nmol/L are associated with potential adverse effects.
- Zinc: Zinc is essential for many cellular functions, including immune support. Zinc gluconate lozenges have been shown to reduce the duration and severity of the common cold, ideally when used at symptom onset.
While acute and chronic health conditions can certainly call for physician intervention, the lifestyle choices and natural remedies mentioned here are time-honored and well-studied approaches to enhancing and maintaining immunity.
If you’re concerned about your immune system, please reach out for guidance through vitathenawellness.com, or text EMPOWERME to 202.270.5612.
Submitted by Erika Dworkin, BCHN (Board Certified in Holistic Nutrition®), Wellness Guide and former owner of the Manchester Parkade Health Shoppe in Manchester, CT (www.cthealthshop.com), which operated for 65 years. To read more about this topic, contact Erika to get a copy of her chapter in the 25 practitioners’ collaborative book, The Energy Medicine Solution: Mind Blowing Results to Live Your Extraordinary Life.
All statements in this article are practice- or scientific evidence-based, and references are available upon request. The statements in this article have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration, are for educational purposes only, and are not intended to take the place of a physician’s advice.
Erika is available for nutrition consultations and to speak to groups, in person or via Telehealth or Zoom. She can be contacted by phone at 860.646.8178 or by email at: [email protected]. Office Hours By Request. Visit: www.vitathenawellness.com to contact Erika for a Complimentary 20-Minute Wellness Assessment.