Immune System Understanding

Welcome!  This is my first episode recorded w/video spontaneously in my living room from my blog post, Wonderfully Complex Immune System.  Join me today as I unfold the immune system in the complexity it holds for us.  Learn how it works with an actual team of specialized cells.  How can become more immune to harmful invaders, making Conscious Choices for better Health?  Ever wonder what's going on within your body?  What are the key nutrients needed to support your immunity?

I will definitely be creating future episodes on the Immune System & all involved not mentioned in this podcast, like our Gut Health, which plays a key role as Well-hint, hint(:

References~

Encyclopedia of Nutrition & Good Health, Robert A. Ronzio, PhD, CNS, FAIC
Blog Post:
https://consciouschoicesforall.com/blog-conscious-wellbeing/https/consciouschoicesforallcom/blog-page-immune-system
Entire video presentation:
https://youtu.be/uj6u03d6UVI?si=UrkMCXuH-ILAqawc

Thank You All so very much for listening today!  I genuinely hope you learned something & I invite you to join me each week, so you never miss a conscious wellness beat!  This podcast holds a special place in my heart, dedicated to my evolution here, my passionate mission to spread more consciousness for the much needed wellness on Earth.  Come join me as a guest as well, let’s collaborate making change for future generations.. 

Thank you so much for joining me today! I strongly Believe that we are all Connected and want to Share our gifts with One another. Remember how amazing you are, Never Give Up, We can help and Support each other along this Crazy Journey...I'm going to keep Sharing what I can with all of You, just wish I could do more each day, Life is passing by too quickly! This podcast is new and will be ever-evolving & improving as long as possible...Please share this with others who could benefit from this information(:

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https://consciouschoicesforall.com/

https://www.youtube.com/@belovehealing/videos

https://www.instagram.com/consciouswellbeing/

https://www.tiktok.com/@beluv73

https://poshmark.com/closet/belove73

Transcript

1:02

Hello and welcome everybody. I had to test my mic out a few times there. I am using dscr today to record and I probably will pause here in a moment just to make sure it sounds right. Anyways, welcome. We are going to talk about our wonderfully complex immune system. Yes, it's very complex and this will be another episode where I might get a little technical talking about the body and there might be a lot of words. Maybe you've heard, maybe you haven't heard. So if you're interested in how your body works and how your immune system works with the different kinds of cells, then please listen. This is interesting stuff and it's very important. Don't you think? It's good to know your body and know what's going on and how to support it. So I'm going to first share with you a little bit about my story with my immune system. When I was a kid in my childhood was when I first got to really know my immune system. I had no idea probably at the time that it was even called an immune system. I don't know. I don't remember learning in school and really caring much, but I do feel like there was something deep down in me that knew that it was like there was this string kind of pulling me in this direction that I ended up going into and I think back and I can just kind of tell that it was subtly tugging at me, but I was literally clueless and had nobody in my life, no mentors, no family that were helping me that really knew anything about health. But when I was in middle school, I was brought on by so many germs that my body struggled with countless memories, missing school, Kaiser appointments, which included the overuse of antibiotics. Endless testing without any real answers faded into my late teen years. I knew deep down my intuition that I was talking about here that this had to change. So that was probably what this deep down feeling was that something needed to change. Over the past 30 years of being an adult woman and raising my own four children, I've been passionately learning anything I could both from hands-on experience and studying holistic alternatives to healing methods for healing the body. Much of this is either indirectly or directly dealing with the complexity of the human immune system or I may refer to as the is. I am grateful to have found relief after years of searching for remedies that really do work. I even think about now that my immune system, sometimes I'm like, wow, it's really working and I'm so grateful because I can remember most of my life actually, I'm not that old yet, so most of my life I really have had some sort of struggle with my immune system and my health, and I'm not saying that I have no health issues at all whatsoever because there are still things that I need to work on, but my immune system was one of the main things that stemmed from my childhood into my adulthood, twenties and thirties, still trying to fix it and find answers that really worked. And my white blood cells were always tested on the low side since I was a kid, but now they aren't. I don't really get my blood tested that much anymore. I hate needles, but I know that my immune system's working for me. I know I found the things that work. I rarely get sick anymore. There's so many illnesses that I had to overcome and have healing crises to work through my body trying to recognize what to do and to find the support that it needed. So I'm so grateful for that and that's why I want to share this with you. Now, the complexity of the immune system is something that I of course didn't always know about and even as I wrote this blog and I'm doing this podcast, I am still learning. There's just so much to know and it's fascinating to me and a lot of this is stuff I learned in school like 15, 20 years ago that now I'm like, oh yeah, okay, I remember this. And it's a lot to remember and my brain honestly is one of those that doesn't remember every single detail. So this is a really good refresher. So now I'm on a mission to share this information with anyone needing assistance and becoming a healthier version of self. Our immune systems are definitely complex since there are various factors that affect how it functions. These factors include the mental, physical bodies as well as our spiritual health can also play a role. I will not be getting into spirituality on this podcast, but I'm a spiritual person myself. At some point I will share how I personally, my personal spiritual journey came about because I was not raised that way either and it was interesting how I found my spiritual side, but that's a whole nother podcast and I would love to share that sometime, but this is not about that. I will discuss mostly the physical aspect of the body, a little bit about how your emotional wellbeing can help as well. Let's first discuss the physical body's role. What is the immune system and how it becomes imbalanced? The immune system is an elaborately designed, finely tuned defense system of the body that scavenges destroys and counters the negative effects from viruses, bacteria, yeast, and foreign substances that invade our tissues, cells and blood and damn it. I wish that there weren't so many of these things in our environment. It's interesting just to think that there's this balance that has to be made in everything and that anyway, there's a lot of stuff out there that our body deals with, and this system recognizes itself as either self and non-self objects that are not part of its body, so it knows what's already part, what's within what's part of itself, and then it knows the foreign invaders, the things that are not supposed to be there. It also has a memory that remembers previous invaders responding rapidly when they appear when imbalance AKA healthy, the immune system destroys foreign elements without causing symptoms, but an imbalance will set the stage for symptoms and disease to arise. The foreign substances and unhealthy microorganisms, bad bacteria, viruses, et cetera, may not be recognized or destroyed, resulting in chronic infection. Worse off cancer and AIDS and other more chronic conditions that the immune system deals with. And an imbalanced is can also start attacking the body's own tissues, creating autoimmune diseases, which there are so many now. It's definitely on the rise, it's epidemic. Autoimmune diseases used to be a thing 20 years ago that there's just a few of them and it was like this complex thing that doctors didn't know how to deal with and you'd really have to find a specialist. Doctors didn't want to recognize it. They probably still don't, A lot of them don't know what to do, but at least now they're accepting that there is autoimmunity and I think it's just really a mystery though of how to deal with it, and it's one of those things that yeah, you just don't want to go there. So your body can also over respond to common substances becoming sensitive or hypersensitive creating allergies such as food allergies and whatnot. So that's an over response of your immune system. So your immune system has a team, okay, it works as a team with all of its parts. There are two branches of the immune system, cellular immunity and humoral immunity. Cellular depends on the active participation of different types of cells. Macrophages are cells that engulf or eat foreign invaders like viruses and bacteria or bad bacteria. I like to say these specialized cells live throughout the body in our spleen, liver, lymph, spinal cord, brain and connective tissues. Lymphocytes are an important type of white blood cell and T cells are highly specialized lymphocytes that attack viruses, tumors, foreign cells helping to regulate the immune system. They work with the B cells, which produce defense proteins called antibodies. In a perfect typical scenario, macrophages will first engulf the foreign matter called an antigen for display on the cell surface. Certain T cells acting like generals read the antigen stimulating production of specialized killer cells that act like the foot soldiers to destroy the abnormal cells, aka foreign materials. The different types of immune cells communicate with each other via protein messengers called lymph kines or lymphocy. For example, the macrophages produce a lymphocy called interleukin one to activate T helper cells, which in turn produce interleukin two that stimulate the production of the killer T cells. These helper T cells also produce gamma interferon, which activates killer T cells as well. This is definitely some awesomely complex teamwork. Then there are the mast cells. Okay, I know this is a lot. I know it's a lot of technicalities, but this is what's happening in your body with your cells and your immune system. Okay, so just try to keep up. It's just a little bit more here. The mast cells, okay, they are a type of T-cell that live on our tissues and fight localized infection. They destroy foreign invaders on contact and release things like histamine and certain lymph kines that trigger inflammatory responses like inflammation to protect the tissues that are being attacked. Other responses from this process can be symptoms like runny nose, itchiness, redness and sneezing. That's all happening from what your mast cells are doing. Lymph kines, they also trigger our phagocytes that prompt the macrophages, the cleanup crew. So the phagocytes are like the cleanup crew for the innate immune system, removing the debris, pathogens and dead neutrophils after an inflammatory process. Then the other part of the immune system known as the humoral immunity pertaining to the blood and lymph. This part relies on cells to release defensive antibodies into the bloodstream to fight infection. The B cells originate from our bone marrow, so that's interesting. It's like B cells bone, okay, so just know that they're coming from our bone. The marrow, they're a type of lymphocyte specialized plasma cell that produces antibodies when exposed to invaders. The T-cell helpers stimulate B-cell proliferation, maturation and antibody production. Another type of T-cell are the T-cell suppressors, which geared down an overactive immune response turning off B cell production. These are crucial for turning off an immune response attack and autoimmune reactions. So the immunity response relies vastly upon our memory of the T and the B cells working together in the bloodstream signaling for red alerts or emergencies that they can act upon and multiply rapidly when they have a foreign encounter from an antigen that they remember. So what does our immune system need? Our immune systems require a rich array of nutrients including proteins, fatty acids, vitamins and minerals to properly function junk food diets lacking nutrients, healthy fats, and too many calories lead to malnutrition and ultimately a weakened immune system. Supplements can definitely help boost the immune system, especially in elderly individuals who are lacking healthy calories. Malnourishment has really become an epidemic with so many people lacking key nutrients, even low levels of certain nutrients will lower our immune function. I'm just going to give a quick example. Vitamin D, the RDA, the recommended daily allowance that we've all heard about. That's on pretty much every nutritional package information on the back of whatever you're buying. Pretty sure it's what's on. Anything we eat definitely on all of our supplements, vitamins and such. That was set up first in 1943 as a guideline for how much of what nutrient Americans need by a committee established by the United States National Academy of Sciences in order to investigate issues of nutrition that might affect natural defense. So this is like post World War II stuff. That's when it all started. The RDA since these recommendations, it's been revised a few times since, but not in the past 20 years, okay? It's been over 20 years now since there's been any revision to it. Things have changed in 20 years. Okay? That's two decades. Some of you might only be 20 years old, okay? The RDA has not been revised, believe me. I've worked in supplements for a very, very long time and you need more than the fucking RDA amounts, okay? That is a base, that is a baseline that RDA baseline will help you to not drop dead basically maybe, but it's not going to prevent illness, okay? It's not a therapeutic dose. We all need to have more. I can tell you that's the absolute bare minimum of what the body really needs with all the constant stresses that most of us are facing. So what do we really need? If we really want or need a healthier immune system, then in this day and age, we must be thinking way beyond the RDA levels. Superfood nutrients has been the wave of the future for quite a while. Now, this is because these foods offer significant amount of nutrients, especially much needed antioxidants that ward off illness by protecting ourselves from oxidative damage, okay? They do that plus they have way more nutrients than typical other fruits and vegetables do. So I'm not going to go into all the super foods right now, but for an example, spirulina, acai, there's certain berries, even blueberries are considered superfood. Coconut is a super food, okay? So for instance, vitamin C has been proven to lower immunity, right? I think we all know this. So this key nutrient is a vitamin and an antioxidant, and vitamin CI think has it's hundreds, okay? I don't remember if it's 250 or 500 different things that it does for the body, but it's super crucial and there's really not enough in our food. Some super foods have higher amounts like KA kmu is a berry that's super high in vitamin C, and that is a good form of vitamin C if you want to take a natural form from a whole food. So it's definitely a superfood. Adequate amounts increased increase TNB cell productivity and protect our cells from reactive chemicals while vitamin E enhances both humoral and cell mediated immunity. E deficiency contributes to reduced T cell production, killer T cells and macrophage production. The mineral selenium works with vitamin E to stimulate immune response to infection. Together, they help protect against cancers. Selenium increases T helper cells increasing antibody production, as well as being a co-factor to the body's master antioxidant glutathione, which neutralizes lipid peroxides that can damage our immune cells. So there are many, many important nutrients that support our wonderfully complex immune system, and I'm not going to go into detail about all of them, but some of them that have some kind of key role that they play in our immune system that I'm going to mention are B vitamins such as folic acid or B nine, B six, pantothenic acid, which is B five, iron, magnesium, vitamin A and vitamin D, and the minerals, zinc and copper. Those are all vitamins and minerals that have a key role that help your immune system, that support your immune system. Now, the RDA levels that are in your multi are probably very low of these. That's why a lot of us are getting enough iron. I mean, there are some women that aren't, and really you should just up your leafy greens. I wouldn't suggest eating too much spinach. There's complications with that and kale as well, but something like chlorella, spirulina, a super food, barley grass juice powder, things like that that have a lot rich in greens, even Irish moss. Those are all really good forms of iron in a lot of other minerals. But having a good B complex that you take besides your multi or I mean honestly, I don't even take a multi, I just take all my stuff separately, but B vitamins are super important. Magnesium is super important to take separately. Vitamin A, vitamin D, E, and C, those are all ones it's safe to take separately. Then you're getting a higher amount. If you got to think in a multivitamin, you're only getting little bits. They can only put so much in one pill or two pills that you take a day of a multi. It's like you're getting micro doses of each thing. Also, zinc is an important thing to have extra on hand. It's really, really good. It was great during covid. It was proven to really help people get better quicker. So I'm not going to go into any further detail. We can talk more on specific individual nutrients and other podcasts. If you have a suggestion of anything, please let me know that you want to hear more about. I'm definitely going to be discussing magnesium and vitamin D on future podcasts. Those are two of my favorites. Wellbeing of our state of mind and emotions that feed our mental health also play a key role in how the immune system functions when we are stressed out or depressed, immune function becomes compromised. Depression causes a drop in interleukin production. Interleukins are the specialized proteins that help regulate immune system and help activate cancer killing lymphocytes. Negative activity in the brain can alter immunity as well as hormone production. In turn, hormones affect our nervous system, wills, everything working together, it's all connected. For example, any perceived stressors that trigger a fight or flight response in the brain, elevating adrenal hormones like cortisol. Prolonged or repeated stress has an effect on the immune system. Decreasing immune response to foreign invaders. Stress whether physical or emotional can alter hormone output and immune responses. Higher levels increase the risk of illness and injury in the following year, and unfortunately can shorten the lifespan. This is proven research. Okay, I'm going to put my reference on this in the show notes, but this is not a brand new anything, brand new. This is something that's been known for a while. So managing our emotional health is essential and supported by a balanced diet and regular physical exercise. Moderate exercise has been shown to activate the production of endorphin hormones. Our body's own opiate chemicals that produce feelings of joy, reduce inflammation and pain bolster parts of the immune system. Studies show that interleukin and interferon both help the body to respond to infection and injury. These substances of the immune system are increased after moderate exercise killer T cell activity is also amplified. Strenuous exercise may have an opposing effect, though decreasing efficiency of the immune system temporarily increasing the production of adrenal stress. Hormones ill health. AKA illness or disease is the opposite of wellness. Wellness is the state of homeostasis where all body systems are functioning at a normal limit. Illness sets in when the body becomes imbalanced. Changing away from a healthy state. An imbalanced immune system affects the brain and the brain alters immunity and hormone production. Remember, elevated adrenal hormones from chronic stress will affect immune system, decreasing immune response to foreign invaders. Health history can have a profound effect on predisposition to illnesses, meaning if you had a prior injury deficiency that maybe you came in with into this life with even or a chronic illness that you've developed are then more prone to subsequent issues later on. For example, arthritis may start in an area where we had an injury. Gut health is compromised after use of antibiotics. Every living being has a unique constitutional makeup biochemically unique that we reincarnated here with. Okay, I do iridology readings. That's the study of the iris of the eye where you can see every part of the body inside and out within your iris that's surrounding the pupil. Okay? That part, the color that makes up around the pupil, and it's very fascinating work and I wish I could practice it more. It's quite amazing. Anyways, you can see the body's constitution. Each person has different fibers and how they present themselves in the iris will show you if that person's constitution is either strong or maybe it's weak. I actually have a weaker constitution that I came probably into this life with for whatever reason. Actually it makes sense because it's possible. I don't really know this data, but for myself, my constitution is weaker and I have been one of those people that has had to fight fucking really hard going through a lot, moving 30 times in 30 years, and I feel like that's why I feel so much older than I am is because of everything I've had to go through in this life. And maybe that has something to do with my constitution as well. It's fascinating. Anyway, I'm trying to be a warrior. I'm trying to keep going and just do the work that I'm here to do. So then maybe my next life will be easier. I don't know. Anyways, so we each have a unique constitutional makeup that we came into this life. All right? The differences in our ancestral genes environments, toxic exposures, nutritional statuses, medical histories are all influential factors to our health and wellbeing. Although neither our genetic family history or the previous medical influence cannot be altered, we can change the present state of our health by what lifestyle choices we make. And yes, this is difficult. It's more difficult for some of us than others. A lot of us want to make excuses that organic food is too much or whatever, but honestly, I've never been financially wealthy in my life. I don't own a home. I've, like I said, moved 30 times in 30 years. So I'm a struggling Californian and that's been on the border of being homeless practically. But I fight to keep a roof over my head. I fight to keep organic food on the table. I do whatever I have to do. It's not easy, but I know what makes me feel good. And if I don't feel good, if I'm sick all the time, that's not going to help me to be able to work, to get anything done, to be happy at all in this life. So I mean, I learned at a very young age that I had to change whatever I was doing, how I was raised, because if I didn't, I mean, I think about I would probably be dead by now. I really honestly feel like I would've succumbeded to some chronic disease. I can't imagine that I would even still be here if I didn't change my diet many, many years ago. So with that said, prevention is always best, most cost effective in the long run because we all know that medical bills will take you down and that our system here in America is not just, and that we pay way too much for healthcare. I don't even have insurance right now. As a matter of fact, I've had it on and off and I really should probably get it again because of my age, and it's probably just irresponsible not to have it in case something happens. But I haven't had it for several months now, and I do need to get it. I am being very vulnerable right now speaking about this, but medical bills are so expensive. I mean, we know that if something happens or if you have to have a surgery, heaven forbid, God forbid, whatever you want to say, that that's going to cost thousands and thousands of dollars. We're going to get harassed by the companies trying to bill us for that. Our insurance is only going to cover a certain portion of it and we're going to be stuck with the rest. So prevention is what we need to think about here. So when you think about it that way, it's like spending a few more dollars on food, which really it's not that much more, okay? Even if it is more. I really have argued with some, and I'm not convinced that organic food does cost more, but if you want to say it does fine, even if it was 10% more, then you know how much it's going to cost you When you're putting toxins in your body and you're sick and you get sicker and sicker as you get older, and then you have to spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to then get rid of an illness when you're older. I'm a huge advocate of just prevention. It's going to be most cost effective in the long run. Growing this awareness by learning ways to stay healthy or healthier at least will go a long way in your future. This will also empower you to take control of your own health, making conscious sustainable choices for you and your family. Sounds like a solution to me. I live by this every day, preventative healthcare for longevity. My history of experience speaks loud and clear. I'm not saying I'm perfect and I don't have any unhealthy habits. I definitely do, and it's a daily awareness practice and even a struggle at times. I wasn't raised with healthy habits around me. I had to grow away from what was not serving my own health, and eventually the health of my children in adequate nutrition, which is really any lacking nutrients, will eventually lead to a lowered body defense against disease. The best strategy to avoid chronic illness must be to consume adequate nutrition. The simplest way to achieve this is by consuming an organically grown whole foods diet. That's the most affordable way to do it because you're not necessarily adding supplements if you can afford to add supplements all the better. So that's the best way to get started with your transformation if you're ready, sometimes it may take a while for your body to adjust, cleanse, and rebuild, but the body knows how and was created to be resilient, especially with the right foods. Herbs are medicine, but herbs are also food loaded with nutrients for health and healing. Please reference the healthy strong immunity blog and podcast that I will put a link in the show notes for further immune building supplements like herbs and fungi to help support your immune system. There are endless ways that we can build our immunity for prevention and fighting off invaders as needed. Have confidence that deep down your immune system was designed to help you prevent illness, warding off infections, curing illness, and repairing injury. If you are a health conscious, being focusing on these four lifestyle aspects will go so far in maintaining health and preventing illnesses. Number one, eat healthy, organically grown whole foods. Number two, moderate daily exercise or at least four to five times a week. Moderate is even just walking at a good pace for 30 minutes. So if you're somebody that walks a lot, that's great. Riding a bike, swim, these are all pretty free activities. Number three, minimizing toxic exposures in your home and external environments. Examples of toxic exposures are cleaning products. There's no reason to use toxic chemicals to clean your house. There's really no reason. I haven't done it for so long, probably almost 25, 30 years. I have not used toxins to clean my home. And I even had a professional cleaning business for a couple of years. Back in the day, it was called Earth-Friendly housekeeping, and many people thought I did a great job cleaning their home with natural products. It can be done, and it is so much better for your health. Just think of your cells and your body. Just think of those cells trying to do what they need to do and not being overloaded because we are breathing in toxins. And that is one thing that is hard for us to avoid when we're in our home. If we can afford to get a good air purifier and make our air that we're breathing inside our home healthier, that's awesome if you can do that. But mostly, most of us cannot avoid the toxins that we're breathing, whether it's inside our homes or outside of our homes. Even me, I am somewhat being a hypocrite. Like I said, I'm not perfect because I'm looking at my fire or my wood stove, and some people are like, oh, having a wood stove that's so toxic. That's like, yeah, I'm burning wood. That's natural, right? But it's also putting off some kind of chemical that is not healthy for me to be breathing in, or if I breathe in the ash from it or whatever. I know it's one of the things I do that's just not the best thing I could be doing for my health. But I also don't want to give pg e all my money. So if I can get wood from a friend's property and burn wood to warm my house rather than running my heater all day long and giving a big corporation money and burning fossil fuels to get that energy, I'd rather do that. But I'm compromising, I'm sure my health too, by breathing some of the stuff that's coming from that. Number four, practice a positive mindset. This is a daily activity that is not easy, and this is one of the hardest things actually can be to do, is to keep positive. Some people, like my dad, he, as far as most people can tell, is such a positive person. He's still living at 76 years old, but in so many other ways, his body is not healthy. He's got diabetes, got heart disease, he's way overweight. He doesn't eat well, he doesn't exercise, but he has a positive mind, and that I can just tell is the one thing that he has really going for him, not just the one thing. I mean, he's got friends and he has a partner and he has people around him that love him, but he's always had a positive mindset. He's not a negative person, and that's probably why he has so many friends and he somehow maintains his health in spite of everything else. So I'd love to discuss all of these things more with you. Please DM me. Please give me a five star written review. 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