Shifting The Immune Biology
There is a pandemic within a pandemic which has been with us for some years. It is a pandemic of chronic disease occasioned by chemical-rich processed foods, increased toxins and poor lifestyle choices. These factors make people much more vulnerable to any other pandemic. And right at the top of the class in any pandemic is the immune system.
Most things in Functional Medicine relate back to the immune system. Shifting a dysfunctional immune biology can help you gain more control over your health. The different components of the immune system we are most interested in are known as: innate immunity, Th1, Th2 and Th 17 cells. Th stands for T helper as it relates to cells.
The Immune Orchestra
Picture your immune system like an orchestra. Its parts interact and are affected by each other. If you keep eating the wrong foods, are exposed to toxins, are under chronic stress, or habitually make the wrong lifestyle choices, you will generate chronic inflammation. When inflamed, you lose your innate immune response. Now your infectious burden can increase. When inflamed, you also lose your Th1 cell status. Likewise, high stress chemistry also loses you your Th1 status. When you lose your Th1 immune response, your infectious burden further expands and your dysbiotic (imbalanced gut bacteria) burden also expands. And because Th1 and innate immunity prop each other up, when you lose one, you tend to lose both.
Th1/Th2 Polarity
When you lose Th1 status, your Th2 immune status goes up. This is known as Th1/Th2 polarity. Excess Th2 immune response promotes allergic reactions and dysfunction in the hollow spaces of the body like asthma, sinusitis, urinary tract, lung and intestinal infections. When you lose Th1 and Th2 goes up, you are now going to be making more Th17 cells. These are the cells that drive autoimmune conditions. This is where your immune system gets tricked into attacking the tissues of its own body. In latter years, we have seen an epidemic of autoimmune diseases - Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Multiple Sclerosis, ALS, autoimmune encephalitis (brain inflammation) and more. This self-tissue damage creates even more inflammation which drives a series of self-perpetuating inflammatory loops.
The Typical Laundry List
Most people who come to see me have a typical laundry list of things of things that need fixing:
Food sensitivities
Leaky gut
Chronic infections
Chronic fatigue
Gut bacterial imbalance
Poor digestion
Brain fog
Hormone imbalance
Aches and pains
Chronic stress
Inflammation from each of the above feeds the immune dysfunction which drives even more inflammation. Some people have an infection-inflammation loop and others have an infection-inflammation-self-tissue damage loop going on.
Look at the Roadmap
How do we break these inflammatory loops? By looking at the roadmap of the underlying immune biology, shifting the biology with the right nutritional tools and thereby addressing the Th1/Th2 polarity. Adjunct assistant professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Dr. Sam Yanuck, has produced some fantastic teaching tools for practitioners to cut through the complexity of this immune biology. Dr. Yanuck is a functional immunologist who works with natural medicines and has formulated specific nutrient combinations to modulate the different parts of the immune system. Getting this immune support in place as the first step of a recovery programme gives the person a better chance of making lasting improvements.
Sustainable improvement in chronic complex conditions is impossible when you micromanage symptoms, such as only attending to food allergy, gut dysfunction etc. without addressing underlying immune polarity. That way you will always get a chronic condition. The right time to address the unique factors on a person’s case i.e. the laundry list of symptoms is when the immune support is in place.
Immune Questionnaire
Dr Yanuck’s immune questionnaire is a useful tool as it highlights which areas of the immune system need most support. Continuing the orchestra analogy, the questionnaire helps me to see which instruments are playing too loud and need quietening down and which instruments are playing too softly and need waking up. I now ask people to complete this questionnaire each time they come to see me as the changing picture indicates the improvements they are making.
If you would like to find out more about your immune biology and do the questionnaire, please email me on goodhealthclinic@outlook.com