How to strengthen immune system

Good morning everyone,

What do you guys take to strengthen your immune systems? I'm in antibiotics but i wanna start taking stuff to support the immune system, I just don't know where to start. Thanx!!

I love your response , -P

Totally understand. I have to start taking better care of myself!

I'd add to overall health my typical supplement/vits recommendations.

Extra vitamin C
Extra Vitamin D3,K2

Turmeric (pills, and/or juicing)
NAC Alpha Lipoic acid (Liver health), Gluthatione, thistle Milk

Ensure Thyroid is within range (take Cytomel if needed etc)
Ensure adrenals are ok

The role of Binders are to remove toxins out of our system, which are a big help to an overwhelmed body!

Two other areas that help the immune system is to TRY, as best you can, to minimize things in your life that stress you out, make you nervous, or fearful.

Don't set yourself up for confrontations. For what can't be avoided, practice relaxation techniques - whatever works for you. Time out for yourself away from everything whether it's outside, in the bath, or a short drive by yourself.

Negative emotions just ruin everything!

And do what you can to get a good night's sleep in a comfortable bed.

physedgirl09 said...
What do you guys take to strengthen your immune systems? I'm in antibiotics but i wanna start taking stuff to support the immune system, I just don't know where to start. Thanx!!

You might be interested in my post about the upcoming Immune Defense Summit that will be presented online for FREE from July 24-31, 2017.

My view of the original question may differ from others, so it's just an opinion.

Our immune system suffers efficiency loss or a reduced capacity for two separate conditions: 1. Insufficient nutrients/products to make it function efficiently 2. Genetic down regulation to reduce immune function.

I'll discuss #2 first. Our body undergoes so much oxidative stress and reactive oxygen species when we are sick and have chronic inflammation that it just can't handle the overload of harmful compounds. Our body chooses the lesser of two evils and down regulates our immune response. You see it more with certain combination of pathogens, like Borrelia and Babesia or Borrelia and mycoplasma. When in this situation, if you increase your immune response, your oxidative stress levels will increase and be harmful. This is where the "low and slow" dosing of Lyme patients is helpful. It keeps oxidative stress slightly elevated but the body can still deal with it without having additional damage. If you don't remove the causing pathogens, you will never be able to advance your health back to where you were prior to infection. You can get better and function like a "normal" person, but with the pathogens there, I've never found an incidence where the body created epigenetic shifts back to what it was originally. It can happen but the pathogens must be at levels where they have insignificant effects on the body.

You see situation #2 in people with chronic infection or have had the disease for a long period of time. Situation #1 is different. It happens at onset of disease (I would say it is the cause) and progressively gets worse unless addressed. Our body had specific needs and when under the assault of constant infection, its needs increase. We do a poor job of giving our body what it needs because of our lifestyle at addressing these needs. Here is a list of some of the things our body gets low on when fighting infection and increasing these will help our immune response.

Zinc - probably one of the most important elements in our immune system. It is the tip of the spear. Zinc gets depleted as copper levels rise. You need to have adequate zinc levels for your immune system to function properly. Zinc deficiency along with Vitamin B6 deficiency can cause the condition of Pyroluria, which can cause nervousness, anxiety, depression, mood swings, and explosive anger. Does this sound familiar? Many of us go into and out of Pyroluria. Our diet often does not give us sufficient zinc and B6 to cope with our issues due to chronic infection. Eating a "normal" diet just isn't enough.

Copper - one of the most underrated elements of our immune system. Copper levels are greatly increased in the serum due to infection as it helps reduce pathogen levels. The zinc/copper ratio dictates our level of immune response and because copper is utilized so much to fight infection, its level often decreases over time because of insufficient intake. An increase in copper will reduce zinc levels and over time, the copper level drops and this reduces immune function. Is your serum copper level high or low? That is important for your physician to determine. If it's low, you need to supplement and too much can cause an issue due to situation #2 above.

Vitamin C - We know of its importance in our immune system but what do we do about it? We may supplement Vitamin C but do we use enough? Vit C is an acid and although we can tolerate very high doses, that may or may not be the best way to go. The science is still divided. For now, I say alter your diet to include foods high in Vit C. Suck the juice out of an orange, eat some kale, red peppers, or broccoli. This is important because as our inflammation rages on, our body continues to produce the molecules and products needed to fight inflammation. But it does have its limits. You wouldn't expect your car to run very fast all the time and not have to put more fuel in it. The fuel we need are polyphenols, flavins, and pterins. Those fancy words mean you need to eat a lot of raw plants, fruits, and vegetables. I saw Royal Jelly mentioned above. It's full of pterins and polyphenols. The bioflavinoids in oranges contain flavins and are most likely what Vit C such a good immune booster.

Boron - Boron is overlooked as something that helps immunity but without it, we wouldn't survive. Boron is unique in that it is in the periodic table with a row of metals but it isn't a metal. This makes it extremely important as a co-factor in many reactions. It affects thyroid function, estrogen metabolism, magnesium levels, and calcium deposition in the bones. Since we as Lymies need magnesium, increasing boron levels is the way to increase magnesium levels. That is why many thyroid patients don't respond like they should to magnesium supplementation. Increase their boron and their magnesium levels go up and helps with the thyroid. Many of us don't eat enough foods high in boron.

Glutathione - the number one antioxidant in our body. The more you make, the better off you are, but there are limits. Cancer patients are hypermethylators and that is a major hurdle. Too much methylation and you'll down regulate your CBS enzyme which alters transsulfuration. This increase will eventually deplete your molybdenum and Vit B6 (P5P). What to take from this is that you need sufficient molybdenum and Vit B6 in your diet to help overcome this pathway issue. (If you have it.) Once again, Vit B6 and molybdenum can increase problems so low doses with a slow increase. Eating foods high in these are even better. Too much taurine can be an issue but so can too little taurine. Schizophrenics have too much, depressed or anxious people have too little. Vision issues occur with too little taurine. All of these things are made in the process of making glutathione. If you have problems along this path, you aren't making enough glutathione. It's a complicated pathway and I don't do a good job explaining it so don't worry if you don't understand. Just look at what you are eating every day and ask yourself if it has the nutrients in it that you need. Google is your friend.

There are only a few of the many nutrients that will improve your immune system. Magnesium and Vitamin D weren't discussed but they also play roles and need to be increased. Eating is the key.

I edited this because I forgot to mention manganese. Without adequate manganese levels, dysbiosis will occur. Borrelia robs us of our manganese which alters our GI flora. We need to increase our manganese levels so that the environment of our GI tract can support lactobacillus. Without enough lactobacillus, everything goes wrong. If you want to recover from Lyme, get your lactobacillus and bifodobacterium levels back to where they need to be and keep them there. They're easy to get back, they are difficult to keep them up because of the manganese issues.

Post Edited (Georgia Hunter) : 7/18/2017 2:51:24 AM (GMT-6)

Things that significantly helped me be functional without knowing that I have Lyme and without treating Lyme directly -

Iodine - makes big difference, important for immune, gut function, gut lining/leaky gut, works against pathogens. Thyroid, cellular energy. 5 to 10mg/day
Protein - if you have gut issues, long term infections and then the liver is too busy to maintain AAs. I took all individual AAs, it helped the immune a lot. Full AA profile is needed for making cells, immune components, anti bodies, enzymes.
Vit C
Vit B Com, Vit D, Vit E
Vit A, cod liver oil. A lot of it needed for immune, it is the immune signaling molecule. Gut lining.
Minerals - boron, zinc, Mg, Mn, Ca, K, Cr, Se
Good fats and phospholipids

Post Edited (newuser22) : 7/18/2017 6:43:32 PM (GMT-6)

All good input! Sleep is critical!

AWESOME, as usual, GH.

"...nervousness, anxiety, depression, mood swings, and explosive anger. Does this sound familiar?" ---have you been reading my diary?

I can handle the physical symptoms. But it's the neuro-psycho sx like these (and many others) that bring me to my knees. It's one thing to feel miserable. It's another, entirely, to feel like you're losing your mind, losing control, losing the battle.

-p

P, I absolutely agree with your post!!!!!!!

1. How did you finally decide which "diet" (or, "eating style," if you like) was right for you?

2. Do you feel certain foods are universally "good" or "bad"? (e.g. grains, eggs, nightshades, etc.)

3. Is there a preferred way to test for nutrient status? (e.g. blood tests, hair analysis, intracellular testing)

There are some great answers in this thread.

Question #1: Trial and error. I looked at the chemical contents/nutrients in the food and matched that to my symptoms the best I could. Knowing that substrates/catalysts of the reactions are often the rate limiting step, I made sure I was eating sufficient amounts of magnesium, boron, tryptophan, zinc, manganese, copper, etc. Keeping a daily food log, I directly attributed what I ate to how I felt, good or bad. The bad feelings had to be accessed as a problem, if they were because of a herx, or because of an activity like exercise, flying, crying, etc. A pattern soon developed that was somewhat predictable. I studied each component of the food and exactly what it was doing physiologically. I tried varying the amounts of certain nutrients to see what would happen. I juiced, I ate vegan, I ate vegetarian, I had been eating high protein, I fasted, I tried just about everything I could think of and each method provided information that I would correlate back to the nutrients.

Question #2: I think we are all different and don't have any one food I would say is the best. I feel the antioxidant foods can be the most beneficial and that plants provide more essential building blocks to help us heal than anything. But if you don't have the bacterial flora to digest them, you could have problems jumping into a plant based diet as your oxidative stress will increase. If I had to pick one diet to single out as my favorite, it would be the Wahls Diet but since I don't/won't/can't eat seaweed, I'll just eat a modified version.
A good place to start is www.nutritionfacts.org Sign up for the email alert and you'll get a video every day or two and they are based on facts.

The reason the physicians or clinicians don't know about the specific things I often write about is because it is just too vast of a subject. I've studied molecular biology, cellular biology, chemistry, epigenetics, microbology, nutrition, and health for years and just about every week, someone on here writes something that I have to go research because I don't know about it. My recommendations come from experience but they can change as I continuously gather more data.

Question #3: I don't know if there is a preferred way, I used urinalysis from Doctor's Data to give info on toxic metals, essential elements, and amino acid levels. I know hair testing can be variable and I've never done any RBC testing. I would think RBC testing would be the most accurate but is it? I'm still low on certain nutrients. I think we all are and part of aging is the loss of some of these nutrients. How much did your sickness age you? I know mine aged me much faster than I had been aging.

What Georgia is saying sounds like most of the KPU protocol supplements.

Dr. K. says most lyme patients suffer from pyroluria that is why.


Something else missing in this excellent thread:

- raise of cell membrane potential: or there can't be good intake of nutrition and expelling of toxins.

Providing negative ions to the body was the best boosting I ever got (through my violet ray).

PEMFs are said to do that even better. High voltage (magnetism) boosts the ATP in the mitochondria.
Scott Forsgren has an article called

The Missing Link to Optimal Health: recharge your life with Pulsed Electromagnetic Field Therapy

http://www.betterhealthguy.com/images/stories/PDF/PHA/2012_01.pdf

It explains what PEMFs do. It is impressive.

Dr. Pawluk also thinks it can help lyme patients.
PEMF helps reducing inflammation, improving circulation, reducing pain and improve value of other treatments.

Dr. Oz talks about that pain reduction with PEMFs.

Copy paste from dr. Pawluk:

One of the most important aspects of the use of PEMFs for Lyme disease management is to be able to uncover or expose the forms of the Lyme organism that hideout in the cell, hidden from detection by the natural immune system.

Antibiotics have not been found very useful for attacking these hidden forms.

PEMFs help to open cell membrane channels, allowing nutrients better access to the inside of the cell and also helping the cell to eliminate waste better.

By balancing the energy of the cell membrane, the cell will be healthier and more resistant to the hidden forms of the Lyme disease in the cell.

Lyme disease in the brain, called neuro-borreliosis, is especially challenging to treat.

Many medical treatments and nutritional approaches do not access the hidden Lyme organisms in brain tissue, due to not be able to get through the blood brain barrier.


PEMFs have been shown to increase the diffuse-ability of the blood brain barrier, allowing better access of treatments, supplements, herbs and nutrients into the interior of the brain’s nerve cells.

If one is able to endure a little exercise, I've heard that a rebounder (mini trampoline) is good for the lymphatic system.

Post Edited (The Dude Abides) : 7/20/2017 12:45:30 AM (GMT-6)