The Immune System Is Key
Unlike your other organs, your immune system is everywhere in your body and is designed to protect you from illness. If your immune system is strong and flexible and your nutrient status is good, it puts you in a strong position to combat passing infections.
But when things go wrong, your immune system can trigger a cascade of inflammatory events that keeps you chronically sick and inflamed. This leaves you vulnerable to infections. Knowing how to identify and undo this inflammatory cascade requires an immune roadmap that cuts through the complexity of the laundry list of symptoms and can put you back on the road to recovery.
Tracking the inflammatory trail
The cascade of inflammatory events goes as follows. Chronic inflammation drives down the parts of the immune system known as the T helper1 cells and innate immune cells. This increases a person’s susceptibility to viral, bacterial, fungal infections and helps bring about a state of intestinal bacterial imbalance (gut dysbiosis). All of this drives more inflammation.
As Th1 and innate immunity go down, the T helper 2 cells increase. These drive hollow space infections in the body (sinus, gut, lung, urinary tract etc.) and allergic reactions. Excess Th2 immune response also drives an increased Th17 immune response which is capable of triggering autoimmunity i.e. friendly fire on one’s own tissues. Examples of this are Multiple Sclerosis and Rheumatoid Arthritis. Excessive Th2 and Th17 responses drive further inflammation.
Micro-managing doesn’t work
People with so much inflammation in their bodies come with a laundry list of symptoms - their digestion feels bad, their hormones feel imbalanced, they have neurological symptoms like brain fog and fatigue. Using a sea-faring analogy, they are headed for the rocks and it doesn’t take much extra stress to shipwreck them. It can all seem pretty complex, and this is why micro-managing symptoms (handling symptoms one at a time i.e. gut first etc.) without addressing the underlying immunology doesn’t really work. However, if you have a roadmap of the underlying immune biology, you can cut through the complexity and start to turn things around.
Lab tests for the immune system
Lab testing is the backbone of Functional and Nutritional Medicine and takes the guesswork out of cases. Some of the key lab tests that give me vital clues to what is going on are:
Tests for viral and bacterial load: Specific infection tests such as Epstein Barr Virus (EBV), Coxsackievirus, CMV, HSV 1&2, HHV-6, Parvovirus, strep infections, Lyme, Bartonella, Candida, Aspergillus (mould), Mycoplasma and others.
Natural Killer cell status: Tests for specific components of the immune system that deal with viral and bacterial infections - T cells CD3 +, CD57+ Natural Killer cells, NK cells CD 56+
CBC with differential white blood cell count: Neutrophils above 68% may suggest Th-17 mediated neutrophil increase, Lymphocytes above 40% suggests increased T and B cell activity, Monocytes above 11% suggests increased monocyte activity, Eosinophils above 2% suggests a Th-2 mediated basophil increase, Basophils above 1% suggests a Th-2 mediated basophil increase.
Labs which can indicate acute reactions: hsCRP, ferritin.
Inflammatory markers: ESR (sedimentation rate), hsCRP, TGF beta, TNF alpha, homocysteine.
The solution: targeted immune support
Once we can see what is actually going on, we can then begin to address the immune deficiencies and excesses with specific targeted nutritional support and start to steer the ship away from the rocks. The goal is to reduce the severity and frequency of inflammatory flares and put the patient in control of managing any flares in the future.
There are specialised immune support supplements made by a company called Pure Encapsulations in the US that can help head you away from the rocks. However, obtaining these is difficult for many UK patients so I am currently sourcing UK immune supporting ingredients that will do a similar job to the US immune modulating formulations.
If you would like to check your immune status or you are simply not feeling as well as you should be, please email me on goodhealthclinic@outlook.com. I look forward to hearing from you.