Steps We Can Take to Improve Our Immune Systems – Introduction
This article introduces an upcoming ten-part series on the immune system. Here is the main thesis of the series: Problems relating to our immune systems, such as infection, allergies, autoimmune disease, and cancer, are mostly caused by our lifestyle and the environment we create for ourselves. We have considerable control over both of these factors, and we should therefore feel empowered to take action to improve our health and that of our immune system.
Introduction
Consider the following two paradigms of disease causation and health. One, the germ theory of disease commonly associated with Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch, posits that specific germs cause specific diseases. For example, the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis causes the disease tuberculosis and poliovirus causes poliomyelitis. The foundation of germ theory, and the way scientists tried to rigorously prove a particular germ caused a particular disease, was a set of criteria known as Koch’s postulates:
- The microorganism must be found in all organisms suffering from the disease, but not in healthy organisms.
- The microorganism must be isolated from a diseased organism and grown in pure culture.
- The cultured microorganism should cause disease when introduced into a healthy organism.
- The microorganism must be reisolated from the inoculated, diseased experimental host and identified as being identical to the original specific causative agent.
Even though these benchmarks are now outdated and somewhat inaccurate since our understanding of disease has advanced, they still continue to greatly influence the way doctors and researchers think about infectious disease. The germ theory paradigm focuses on pathology and illness, and thus seeks to remove whatever is causing problems in the system so that it can be healthy again. Germ theory is the dominant paradigm in medicine today, and modern physicians use antibiotics, antifungals, antivirals, tumor removal surgery, radiation and chemotherapy to kill cancer cells, and other methods to destroy or eradicate substances from the body.
Another paradigm of disease causation and health is the terrain theory of Pierre Jacques Antoine Béchamp, which posits that germs can only cause disease when one’s internal environment provides the right conditions for that germ to flourish. It focuses on trying to create a bodily environment inhospitable to opportunistic pathogens. It assumes that given optimal conditions, humans tend towards health and vitality.
In the debate between Pasteur and Béchamp during the mid-19th century, germ theory won decisively and Béchamp has been relegated to the scientific dustbin. Germ theory has the benefit that it makes sense and is intuitive. It is easy to imagine certain tiny organisms infiltrating your lungs, multiplying, and causing irritation that makes you cough, for example. Since the mid-1850s, scientists have poured huge amounts of money, time, and effort into conducting vast numbers of experiments trying to find disease-causing pathogens and ways to destroy them. Germ theory became the dominant paradigm of disease causation for a reason. It is supported by common sense, scientific studies, and the fact that antibiotics are mostly effective in treating acute infections. This path has obviously helped many people survive otherwise gruesome diseases in the last two centuries.
But I do not believe all aspects of terrain theory need to be cast away and ridiculed. Germ theory is not perfect. It does not describe the whole story and I think that many of Béchamp’s ideas also make intuitive sense and fill in the gaps left by germ theory. For example, antibiotics are losing their effectiveness and antibiotic resistant bacteria is on the rise, creating dangerous hospital environments that are breeding grounds for these dangerous superbugs. Antibiotic use also damages one’s microbiome, which, given the ever-increasing recent understanding of its many functions, seems likely to cause unintended health problems. Germ theory also does not explain why infection with poliovirus is asymptomatic for the vast majority of cases, why there are around two billion people worldwide infected with M. tuberculosis that never present with active tuberculosis, and why your friend never gets sick when the rest of the office is coming down with the flu.
Germ theory has one other important disadvantage compared with terrain theory: it tends to promote a feeling of individual powerlessness and fear. We are at the mercy of the dangerous outside environment. We desperately sanitize our hands, wear SARS masks, and avoid shaking hands with sick people because if we come into contact with the pathogen, then we believe we will get sick. Terrain theory, on the other hand, assumes that germs have always been out there and that they will always be out there. But it gives us power. If we can create an environment inside our bodies that is more inhospitable to illness, then we have less of a chance of catching that cold or flu, and a greater chance at a speedy recovery if we do. And this feeling of empowerment helps our cause, because feeling powerless actually harms our health.
So how do we cultivate a healthy internal environment and an immune system that reacts properly to outside and inside germs? How do we avoid the minor signs of immune dysfunction like frequent colds and flu or mild seasonal/food allergies? And the more severe issues that appear as the vast array of autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, Crohn’s disease, multiple sclerosis, type I diabetes, psoriasis, or Hashimoto’s thyroiditis? And can we avoid the most severe immune problem of all, cancer? The statistics are horrific: 32 million Americans suffer from food allergies, 50 million suffer from autoimmune diseases, 40% will get a cancer diagnosis in their lifetimes, and 20% of Americans will die of cancer.
But you don’t have to become a statistic. I write this series to empower you to take action for your health. You have the power to support your immune system! You are not at the mercy of your genetics or environment exposures!
Modern science still has much to discover about the intricacies of the immune system; a magic pill to optimize or heal one’s immune system seems unlikely to be developed in the near future (or ever). But we do have scientific studies that offer glimpses of what lifestyle choices and environmental factors seem to help or hurt our immunity. We can also look back to the lifestyles of our ancestors who did not experience any autoimmune diseases, allergies, or cancer. And we can draw from our own common sense and intuition about our bodies. From this perspective, I offer these ten ways to support our immune systems. Each topic will be a separate article in this ten-part series. Check back for links to each article.
-
Food
-
Sleep
-
Exercise
-
Friends and Family
-
Vitamin D and Sun Exposure
-
Meditation and Mindset
-
Other Nutrients and Supplements
-
Time-Restricted-Eating
-
Childbirth and Breastfeeding
-
Sauna Use
References and Further Reading:
Zumla A, Maeurer M. Host-Directed Therapies for Tackling Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis: Learning From the Pasteur-Bechamp Debates. Clin Infect Dis 2015 Nov 1, 61(9):1432-8. doi: 10.1093/cid/civ631.
Harvard Health Publishing. How to boost your immune system. Harvard Med. Sch. Sept 2014. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/how-to-boost-your-immune-system.
Teng MWL, et al. Immune-mediated dormancy: an equilibrium with cancer. J. Leukoc Biol 2008, 84: 988-993. https://doi.org/10.1189/jlb.1107774.
Seeman M, Lewis S. Powerlessness, health and mortality: a longitudinal study of older men and mature women. Soc Sci Med 1995 Aug;41(4):517-25.
Wallerstein N. Powerlessness, empowerment, and health: implications for health promotion programs. Am J Health Promot 1992 Jan-Feb;6(3):197-205.
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/antibiotic-resistance
Langdon A, Crook N, Dantas G. The effects of antibiotics on the microbiome throughout development and alternative approaches for therapeutic modulation. Genome Med 2016; 8(1):39. doi:10.1186/s13073-016-0294-z
Struelens MJ. The epidemiology of antimicrobial resistance in hospital acquired infections: problems and possible solutions. BMJ 1998, 317 (7159):652–654. doi:10.1136/bmj.317.7159.652.
Stewardson AJ, Huttner B, Harbarth S. At least it won’t hurt: the personal risks of antibiotic exposure. Curr Opin Pharmacol 2011 Oct;11(5):446-52. doi: 10.1016/j.coph.2011.06.011.
Mehndiratta MM, Mehndiratta P, Pande R. Poliomyelitis: historical facts, epidemiology, and current challenges in eradication. Neurohospitalist 2014;4(4):223–229. doi:10.1177/1941874414533352.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-19th-century-crank-who-tried-to-tell-us-about-the-microbiome/