The first question that needs to be queried a bit more is what is an efficient immune system. ?
The answer is inflammation. That’s right... Inflammation process is what lets us know the immune system is actually working. Most of us are trained to stop this process as fast as possible. We have been trained that acute illness is a bad thing. That childhood diseases and germs should not exist. Those disease processes are how the human immune system trains to survive the future. It is not a process that can be bypassed without consequences.
The immune system is in place to defend the body from invaders.
How does that happen? By regulating the body temperature. The body temperature is used to incite a defense. We call that a fever. This defense is also called acute inflammation. More details how that works later.
A high fever is the bodies’ ONLY defense from a foreign invader.
No fever = no defense.
The inflammation is responsible for recruiting neutrophils, macrophages, scavengers to eat up the pathogens (Invader)
Resolution of inflammation – this is what happens when the immune system is efficient. The tissue goes back to homeostasis following a high fever. This is the highest level of health. The higher the fever and more complete recovery the greater the level of health and the most efficient immune response.
If a high fever is not reached and it is cut off at the pass there is no resolution and no homeostasis, as a result chronic inflammation is the end result. This is where much of the world resides. And most are unclear why they do not heal completely and feel bad much of the time..!!!
Science and medicine is clear. The general population is not. Science and medicine researches and writes a lot of papers on this particular topic often. Realizing that the inability to produce high fever is an indicator of health. Or more to the point – lack of health.
Each step is necessary.
Each day I will cover a bit more to help understanding be a little more manageable in learning how the levels of health are determined.
Tomorrow we will discuss the factors that determine an efficient inflammatory response or reaction.
98.6* is normal human body temperature.. you are not special subcategory of human if your temperature is chronically higher or lower.. you are working on your future health.. higher and you have a chronic issue and lower you have had a chronic issue for some time.. consider addressing it.. NOW.. while you have the health to do so..
As we learn about the levels of health we have to start with understanding how the immune system works.. And realizing that all the steps in an immune reaction are necessary.
So what determines an efficient reaction?
1. Genetics /hereditary- the general understanding is that healthy parents beget healthy children and that health passed in that form is a person’s potential for health. (we know that sometimes children are born without health- that is the exception not the rule) like intelligence - health has limiting qualities that one is born with. That comes from genetics as well as the health the mother provided during pregnancy. Babies are not automatic - in spite of common beliefs and they cannot be manufactured in a lab without consequences . You cannot fool mother nature - still..
There are many things that then spoil that health potential (excluding accidents) such as lifestyle choices including but not limited to diet, exercise, daily habits, drugs and alcohol use etc.
2. Psychological stress- this stress impacts the HPA access (Hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenal)- all of these glands dictate emotional state. That emotional state then impacts lifestyle choices. Its a vicious cycle for most.
3. Past disease treatments- this is past and present medications used to treat, anesthesia as well as over antibiotic use (it is not unusual for people to take antibiotics yearly or more.)
(Antibiotics result in chronic or acute fungal infection, allergies, abnormal infection responses, MS, IBS to name a few).. The balance of the flora in the body is destroyed over and over.. And then excess probiotics are taken which adds to the mismanagement because the wrong cultures are frequently added creating hormonal mismanagement.
Recovering gut flora is more than taking probiotics.
The other common drugs are worldwide known as paracetamol (acetaminophen) we know it in the United States as Tylenol, Ibuprofen (Advil), Naproxen (Aleve). All used to suppress pain and fever. All impacting the long term immune response not to mention adding to overall kidney and liver damage. Daily use is not that uncommon.
The immune system functions on a spectrum not just a single ranking of health placement.
Reduced immune efficiency - This position is called no effect or NO AIR (acute inflammatory response). That means the person’s system is too weak to mount an acute response, or gives wrong response. We see this with most autoimmune patients (the common phrase is a flair) that is a phrase of a damaged immune system response.
These people generally present with no fever during infection or a low fever - their system is chronically weak. They are always in a state of hypothermia.. That’s the people that say my temperature runs low all the time– usually 97.somethihng*.. or "if I get a 99* fever I am really sick"
This lowering of body temperature and loss of acute fever response is slow and people are unaware it’s not normal or that it is becoming a marker for their future health challenges.- These are the same people that are struggling with COVID recover.. we will talk about that later.. they are the cytokine storm people.
If an acute fever cannot be allowed or created there is no resolution to inflammation and that process then becomes chronic inflammation. With each infection (cold, flu etc) the inflammatory response is reset to a lower and lower standard making the immune function less and less efficient. Making recovery harder and harder with each inflammatory event.
More in the next post.. stay tuned..
Much of the order of this information is from the writings of Prof. George Vithoulkas
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