Immune System

Using Your Immune System to Stay Well. Tap the power of your immune system to avoid getting sick.

You and a friend step into a crowded area and immediately notice two people coughing and sneezing up a storm. Within a couple of days you come down with a bad cold, and blame it on that place you were. Yet your friend, exposed to the same germs at the same time, remains perfectly healthy.

What made the difference? The power of the immune system. It's a network that can help us avoid illness, or sometimes become the underlying reason we get sick. The strength of our immune system is what makes the difference between who gets sick and who doesn't. The one with the immune system functioning below base-line normal has an increased risk of getting sick.

But is there anything you can do to keep your immune system from dropping below par, or increase its activity if it does? Doctors say yes. And the secrets lie in understanding a bit about how the immune system works, and how your everyday life can stoke the fires of protection.

In simplest terms, the immune system is a balanced network of cells and organs that work together to defend you against disease. It blocks foreign proteins from getting into your body. If a few happen to sneak by your biological sentry, not to worry. With a powerful "search and destroy" task force, your body deploys a host of additional immune cell forces designed to hunt down these unwanted invaders and ultimately works to destroy them.

Fending Off Illnesses

This entire system is known as the 'humoral' response. It's your body's innate ability to manufacture antibodies that counter the infectious particle -- allowing your body to eradicate it.

Antibodies are proteins which can identify normal "self" cells verses foreign invading cells. They work as part of the immune system to destroy abnormal or foreign cells.

This, not only affects your ability to fend off common illnesses like colds, the flu, or a stomach virus, but it can also play a role in protecting you against catastrophic diseases like cancer or even heart disease.

Additionally, we also have a second protective response known as the "cell-mediated immune system." This immunity involves immune system cells, rather than proteins, which are "helper" or "killer" cells. The cells help our body create memory of past defense against disease protection.

Your body recognizes that pathogen again, and immediately calls up the memory of the previous infection and sets out to destroy the invader before the disease develops. This mechanism is also the biologic behind vaccines for illnesses such as measles, chicken pox, or hepatitis.

The concept of inoculating us against diseases is based on deliberately introducing a harmless amount of a pathogen so that our [immune] cells can react, learn, and remember how to produce antibodies enough to fight it.

What Affects Immunity

Much like soldiers who grow weary in battle, your immune cells can also lose some of their protective effects when your body is constantly battling poor health habits. As such, it's not surprising that doctors frequently recommend certain lifestyle changes as a way to optimize the function of your immune system.

The most important thing you can do for your immune system is to achieve lifestyle balance and adopt the fundamentals of healthy living. This will give your immune system what it needs to function at optimal capacity.

At the top of that balance list: reducing stress.

There is overwhelming evidence that stress, and the substances secreted by the body during stress, negatively impacts your ability to remain healthy. There are dozens, if not hundreds of studies attesting to how stress affects the body's ability to respond to infection.

The good news is that lowering your stress can help your body maintain both your physical and your emotional health.People who have less stress are simply healthier overall.

Sleep, Sex, and Working Out

Remember when Mom used to say that staying out too late would cause you to get sick? Mom was right! Experts say that not only does prolonged sleep deprivation wear down immune protection but getting adequate rest can help boost your defenses.

We don't know the exact mechanism by which sleep impacts immunity, but we do know that a lack of it prevents the body from repairing cells. And when we skip that important physiological step, we get sick more easily.

To help give your immune system an extra boost during cold and flu season, Charnetski says get seven to eight hours of sleep a night.

And if you can't sleep, try a little immune sex therapy. Having sex gives immunity a healthy boost of IGA (a protein from the immune system that helps fight infections, which plays a critical role in keeping pathogens from entering your body, and capturing those that do sneak in.

The key lies in the production of natural opioid peptides, happy little brain chemicals that are released during sex and in turn boost production of IGA.

But it's not just sex that can boost IGA. A loving touch can make a difference, too. Research published as early as the 1960s at the University of California at Berkeley showed that having a social support system, particularly if it involved frequent physical touching, such as hugs and handshakes, was more predictive of long life than age, medical status, or even smoking.

Nobody around to pat you on the back? moderate alcohol intake also releases the opioids and raises IGA levels. At the same time, if you drink too much you may find your immunity goes down. Ironically the same rule of "less is more" also applies to exercise.

Moderate exercise, like a brisk 30-minute walk three or four times a week, has been shown to increase your immunity to disease, while overtraining and working out too much will actually run down your immune system and make you more susceptible to illness.

Immune System Vitamin & Supplement Boosters

Super-Potent Mega-Multi Daily

Garlic

Vitamin E

Omega 3 Fish Oil

Carotene

Protein Drink Mix