In these times of novel coronavirus it is important we understand how we need to restore our immune system to its old hunter-gatherer status in our new mod con times!
By Tara Narayan
THESE days we hear a lot about the immune system and how we are constantly negating it by our crass lifestyles of plenty with little application of rationality and common sense! We are our own worst enemies or so it would seem if we study what and how we drink, eat, behave, generally speaking like we’re drunk with whatever wealth, power and connections we claim. Needless to say much of it is to the detriment of our happiness and wellbeing naturally. Funny, the truth is while happiness and health are connected wealth and health need not be!
What has all this to do with the immune system? It’ll dawn on you by and by that only if we do the right thing we may be happy, not pretend happy but real happy. What do you know about your immune system? That it keeps us alive and kicking even while various members of mainstream medicine take liberties with whatever ails us – if doctors were not sure in the knowledge that your immune system is alive and kicking and (not what is called compromised by our lifestyles and inherited genes) they wouldn’t take half the chances they take in surgeries and prescriptions which suppress symptoms of a host of diseases infectious or chronic or acute….our immune system is what saves us most every time we fall sick, more sick, even when terminal. But there are conditions attached.
Our immune system is the most complex system of them all fed as it by gross and subtle chemistry of mind, body, heart and soul, at micro and macro levels. Why do you think we are constantly advised to boost our immune system in normal and diseased state – quite simply because yes, the dietary changes or lifestyle changes we make can aid in rectifying whatever is bothering us and in preventing us from being fit and fine fettle as its said.
LYMPHATIC SYSTEM
IN AN article I was reading in the much respected American “Well Being Journal” recently, our lymphatic system plays a key role in keeping our immune system working. The lymphatic system, as Dr Morton Walker says in his book Jumping for Health’ is the “metabolic garbage can of the body, it rids you of toxins, such as dead and cancerous cells, nitrogenous wastes, fat, infectious viruses, heavy metals, and other material cast off by the cells.”
Lymphatic fluid is the clear liquid that contains the body’s T-cells and B-cells, or cells that help the immune system ward off disease. It is reasoned that lack of exercise and even restrictive clothing (for example, tight bras for women and briefs for men) lead to constriction of the lymph system or allow it to lag and become clogged.
Our body beautiful is meant or has evolved to live in ways which help its cells metabolize, clean and renew, and when we exercise we facilitate the lymph system to pump and drain out body waste. Linda Brooks in her bookRebounding for Health’ says that the cardiovascular hydraulic system of the body benefits even if we jump around now and again! Her book is about the efficacy of jumping on a rebounder ( trampoline in some countries), “Lymph is moved like hydraulic pressure system…the lymph tubes are filled with one-way valves that only open up, or allow drainage toward the center of the body. When pressure below the valve is greater than above (as when you are moving downward on a rebounder) the valves are forced open so the fluid can flow.”
There are only three ways for the lymph system to “pump” and cleanse: exercise, which helps muscular contraction, massage (via movement) of the musculature or tissues it serves to get it to pump back into the pulmonary circulation, and gravitational pressure with its resultant internal massage. Needless to say in the preventive healthcare advanced countries of the west today workouts include rebounding. It is prescribed for post-surgery cancer patients. Rebounding flushes the lymph, the toxic substances that the body is always rounding up from its normal processes, such as food wastes and environmental pollutants, before they can form new waste by-products.’
What is now called the “health bounce” has caught fire with young and seniors alike for it is easy to do once you get the hang of it. You simply bounce and it is gentle enough to stimulate the immune and cardiovascular system. Linda Brooks, who studied with Al Carter, the `Father of Reboundology’ writes about clients in her rebounding workshops who healed from cancerous tumors by adding rebounding sessions of 2-3 minutes of each hour in the day. Of course these cancer patients were also guided into changing their diets to make them predominantly vegetable and fruit filled and this helped them purify the lymph system and healthy fats. They also drank only pure water which helped flush toxins and they learned how to be positive at all times!
But gently exercising is just one way to help your immune stay in good condition. There are a host of other factors which bankrupt it enough to go on starvation mode…when we don’t drink and eat right and all our nutritional parameters are at an all-time low. It is said today that every disease is the result of some deficiency or another in our biological system! Factors like food and additive allergies play a role, as does heavy metal toxicity and other environmental toxins, also low protein-high carbohydrate (including sugar) diets, mineral imbalances, essential fatty acid and phospholipid deficiencies, amino acid deficiencies, thyroid disorders, B vitamin deficiency and so on.
If life is about the quality of our air, earth and water, and spaces externally and internally, then all you have to do is study the pathetic scenarios of today which are fed by over-population, economic wrap-ups, cheek-by-jowl urban overgrowth …plus, the overwhelming imbibing and overfeeding on industrial junk drinks and foods. So much so an undernourished immune system is left with little choice but to succumb the moment bacterial or viral infections enter the body and sickness moves from chronic to acute or acute to chronic depending on how mainstream medicine deals with your symptoms on a diminishing returns principle. It is no longer news that the prescribed drugs of mainstream medicine come with side-effects and take a slow toll on what was once body beautiful.
Truly, it is said that if we want a strong immune system we have to gradually return to the basics of nutrition and exercise and yes, also shun the plethora of vaccines which are forced on juniors and seniors and which compromise health vis-à-vis the big picture. There is a huge movement which now nails the pharma industry for forcing too many vaccines on the human immune system which is the original Big Brother of internal healthcare, innumerable complaints say that vaccines contain mercury, a toxin that has been linked to neurodevelopmental and behavioral disorders in children. I must add that so contentious has the vaccines issue become that the jury is still out on it — nobody is willing to nail it 100 percent backed with facts and figures.
A movement to wean healthy children away from too many vaccines has been having a tough time in the countries of the West. There should be no forced vaccinations, say many parents, it should be voluntary and not state-enforced. Vaccines should be an option and vaccination programs must not be driven by pharma giants with clout at the very top echelons of political power. With the current coronavirus pandemic many critical issues are being unmasked and put on the table for analysis and consensus, vaccines are one such issue.
Many alternate medicine schools say no more vaccines, please, because the process of acquired or adaptive immunity is the basis of vaccination (very simply it’s like telling your our immune system you’re no good, get lost or something like that). But our immune system has evolved over millions of years for good reasons and comprises is a vast array of specialized cells to combat abnormally growing cells. Some of these are B-cells, white blood cells that produce antibodies, T-cells, lymphocytes that mature in the thymus gland which are involved in cellular mediated immunity and which communicate with or “turn on” other disease fighting cells, monocytes and macrophages which produce immunity to certain bacteria and viruses and play an important role in immunity.
The human immune system is incredibly complex and its optimal functioning is dependent on many factors, including normal activity of hormones, enzymes, and nutrients in the body. In treating any disease be it infectious or not the main goal should be to enhance the functioning of the immune system, since it is within this system that the battles are fought.
I’m quoting all this courtesy an article on what is called the Gerson Therapy, which is a nutrition-based, systemic approach to healing cancer. Why cancer alone, take any other disease plaguing the human body, be it the coronavirus pandemic, the virus of which one is increasingly told these days is a diabolically created virus in a China laboratory for biological warfare! True or not, this still has to be proved.
GERSON THERAPY
TO stay with Gerson therapy here the basic premise is that when any disease is present because of aberrant functioning at cellular level, the sodium/potassium balance of the cells changes, causing edema of the cells. Sodium enters and potassium is depleted, and cellular edema is believed to be the inciting factor making things worse. Read up Gerson therapy, it is worth it, it boasts a 30 to 40% cure rate for terminally ill patients, it was developed by Max Gerson, a German physician born in 1881, who cured his own migraine headaches with diet and, in the latter stage of his career, applied a dietary regimen to cancer and published his book, “A Cancer Therapy: Results of Fifty Cases.”
In a nutshell the Gerson therapy is based on fresh raw juices, vegetarian meals, sodium restriction, potassium supplementation, extreme fat restriction, periodic and temporary protein restriction, high vitamin, high mineral, fluid rich, high micronutrient…and much more. It’s to do with boosting a compromised or immune-suppressed immune system! Our immune system today is seeking liberation from the kind of industrial lifestyles we are living or trapped in and they have a vice-like grip on us today courtesy a gamut of factors — which have turned our civilization into a killer rather than a life-giving, healing civilization.
What are the parts of the immune system?
