At the end of this month, I’ll be heading to Arizona for more functional medicine training counted toward my certification. It seems to be the perfect time of year to learn more about immune health and get to sunnier wealthier, don’t you think (1-3)? 🙂

As many of my wonderful clients know, this time will serve as this year’s educational Mecca for me, or, as I affectionately refer to it, my “geek-fest.” It is a place where I will be among the top practitioners in functional medicine, the rock stars of integrative medicine. I will be with my “peeps” who love knowledge like I do and think that learning how the Krebs cycle relates to chronic fatigue is fun! In fact, I won’t even see one single raised eyebrow when I join the group in a standing ovation for the presenters. The reason for our rise, you ask? Probably due to Dr. Geniuses’ breakdown of how a biochemical pathway interacts with one’s genetic individuality. The body is amazing, and every time I attend one of these conferences, I am reinforced in my naturopathic belief of its innate healing power.

Therefore, to spread my excitement on learning the intricate details of our body’s defense system, I will dedicate this blog to this beautiful component of our health. First, let’s discuss how important it is in every aspect of health.

There seems to be a lot of confusion on the way our protection and repair mechanisms interact with overall wellness. Many people think that a strong immune system is measured by how often they get sick. If they go through a flu season without a party of viruses, bacteria, or other multi-legged critters taking residence in their body, they may feel falsely confident in their defensive power.

However, one may not get sick by critters not just because their immune system is superman-like, but it may be because it is busy over-responding to other issues in their body. This can get to the point where it attacks its own tissues in an attempt to overcompensate from a body stressor. For example, it is estimated that over 23 million Americans have autoimmune diseases. There are now 100 different classified autoimmune diseases, and 40 more suspected (1).

Or, on the other hand, people may consider sniffles on occasion to be normal and find comfort that their immune system is strong if it is clear of migrating cancer cells. They may not consider that their low functioning thyroid or high blood pressure is also related to an immune imbalance in their body. For instance, in a previous blog, I discussed the process of inflammation and how it contributes to disease processes if it goes on unchecked. This can create widespread effects throughout the whole body.

In fact, latent viruses or bacterial infections that were not effectively dealt with early in life can get revived in adulthood and cause havoc. These long term residing and unwelcome microbes have even been linked to heart disease and cancer. For example, chronic mouth inflammation has been linked to inflammation in the joints (RA) and cardiovascular disease (4-5).  Furthermore, a recent study showed that those who had shingles in their past had a higher risk of stroke incidence later in life (6).

Due to the increasing epidemic of these chronic diseases in such a sort time span, it is clear that genetics isn’t responsible for our immune system going awry and not being able to effectively manage unwelcome triggers. In fact, genetics is said to be less than 50% of responsible for the autoimmune disease rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and for cancer (1,7). In other words, genetics may increase someone’s risk for a disease, but it does not determine if the disease will manifest.

Therefore, our environment must also play a role. Now, more and more chemicals are being added into our world at a daunting pace (8) to co-exist with our already genetically probed and pesticide ridden foods. These chemicals are found in our water, or off-gassing from our mattress, carpets, and cars. Recently, even our own communication devices are now being found to zap our brains with free radicals.

Furthermore, how can we forget the effect of our increasingly stressful lifestyles? Stress can mediate every biochemical pathway in our body favorably or unfavorably, affecting many aspects such as inflammation, hormonal balance, digestive health, and blood sugar. With stress to add on top of the synthetic chemicals that women are exposed to, it’s easy to see why many women in the United States are on thyroid medications for burnt-out thyroid glands. However, did you know the most common cause of low thyroid is actually an immune disorder called Hashimoto’s thyroiditis (9)?  In this disease the immune system becomes so overactive due to a long-standing trigger and begins attacking its own tissue, the thyroid gland.

Conventionally, the approach is to kill the critters, stop the inflammation, shut off the immune response, and replace the hormone. However, whereas pharmacology focuses on the downstream consequences of the disease, functional and naturopathic medicine work upstream to address the underlying causes and triggers that contributed to and resulted in the dysfunction (1-3). This means, although a person may initially need a medication to quench an overwhelming infection or inflammatory process, learning to modulate what caused the immune system to break down is paramount to truly healing verses controlling symptoms.

This is why I am so excited to learn more tools and study the individual variances in what can contribute to immune issues in different people. It’s evident there is no panacea medicine. If there was, we would all be healthy. The true panacea is in loving our body into health with wellness lifestyle choices. If we do this, we can make our bodies non-hospitable to unwelcome critters or overwhelming inflammation.

So, have heart. I’ve provided links in this blog that will give you healthy solutions and lifestyle modifications that you can do to empower yourself back to health. I also wrote a short blog on the prescription of happiness at Saratoga.com to leave you smiling.

References:

(1) Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM). Functional Medicine Advanced Practice Modules (APMs): Immune. January 31st-February 2nd 2014.

(2) Robert Rountree, MD. Immune Dysfunction and Inflammation: A Primary Mechanism of Illness. Applying Functional Medicine in Clinical Practice. Minneapolis, MN. September 2013. Institute for Functional Medicine. functionalmedicine.org

(3) Dan Lukaczer, ND. Food Allergy, Hypersensitivity, and Intolerances: Diagnosis and Treatment. Applying Functional Medicine in ClinicalApplying Functional Medicine in Clinical Practice. Minneapolis, MN. September 2013. Institute for Functional Medicine. functionalmedicine.org

(4) Adams, C. Arthritis Linked to Gingivitis Bacteria.GreenMedInfo.com. May 19, 2013.

(5) Adams, C. Cognitive Decline Linked to Periodontal Disease. GreenMedInfo.com. May 4, 2013.

(6) Science Daily. Shingles Linked to Increased Risk of Stroke in Young Adults. sciencedaily.com. Jan. 2, 2014.

(7) Frank C. Arnett, MD & Shervin Assassi, MD. Hereditary and Arthritis.Reviewed by the American College of Rheumatology Communications and Marketing Committee. Reviewed May 2013.

(8) Lee S. Banned chemicals replaced by worrisome ones, UCSF study shows. San Francisco Chronicle. January 15, 2014.

(9) Anca Staii, Sarah Mirocha, Kristina Todorova-Koteva, Simone Glinberg, & Juan C Jaume. Hashimoto thyroiditis is more frequent than expected when diagnosed by cytology which uncovers a pre-clinical state. Thyroid Research 2010, 3:11  doi:10.1186/1756-6614-3-11