The Real Dirt About
Immune System Health
What Doctors Don’t Tell You

Throughout history, there have always been those who have had exceptionally strong Immune System Health. They have survived epidemics, cared for the ill and been right in the thick of things; some did not even become ill at all.

Nurses and doctors, for instance, are exposed to an incredible array of illnesses on a regular basis. Yet most stay surprisingly

healthy. We’ll never have the exact formula for Immune System Health, because every individual is unique, but we CAN say that keeping our immune system in peak condition is absolutely vital to prevent illness.

The current wisdom is that if we keep ourselves clean, have good Handwashing and don’t let ourselves get exposed to illnesses then we will stay healthy. This wisdom is based on Louis Pasteur’s ‘germ theory’.

‘Germ Theory’ says that germs are the cause of disease. This theory was taken up by the medical establishment at the time and it is generally what we believe today. It sounds sensible and it’s quantifiable. There is a disease, we find a pathogen and Voila, we proved that the pathogen was the cause of the disease, right?

Well, maybe. That’s really only part of the equation. That's like saying that seeds are the "cause" of plants. While true, it doesn't tell the story of soil conditions, water, nutrients, etc.

"Illnesses, hover constantly above us, their
seed blown by the winds, but they do not set
in the terrain unless the terrain
is ready to receive them."

-Claude Bernard

At the exact time that Pasteur was promoting the germ theory, another Frenchman, Claude Bernard was promoting the “Milieu Interior” or Biological Terrain theory. Bernard postulated that the internal environment of the body was what decided whether or not we remained healthy or became ill. An unhealthy body invited pathogens to grow, while they were unable to grow in a balanced and healthy environment.

Pasteur ‘won’ the debate and the Biological Terrain theory fell into obscurity – to our detriment.Ever since, Western Medicine has been developing techniques and medications to kill pathogens and eliminate symptoms; it has mostly ignored the environment that contributes to immune system health.

"If I could live my life over again, I would
devote it to proving that germs seek their
natural habitat, diseased tissues, rather
than being the cause of disease."
---R. Virchown (popularly reputed as
father of the "germ theory")

Germ Theory and Western Medicine tends to ask, “What disease does this person have? This approach doesn’t take the unique needs of individuals into account.

By contrast, Biological Terrain Theory asks, “What kind of person has this disease?”. Immune System Health is individualized and seen as the KEY to preventing and treating illness.

Our immune systems are designed to be strong and active.

If you liken the Immune System to an army, it needs to be challenged, drilled and have emergencies thrown at it to keep it at the top of its game. With adequate rest, nutrition and exercise, an army trained regularly will dispatch threats efficiently and be able to recognize what are NOT threats and ignore them.

If an army were to sit around without doing drills or training, it would soon become fat and lazy. It would not be able to eliminate real threats efficiently and would overreact at the smallest provocation. Our immune system health relies on a complex mechanism that greatly resembles armed troops in an ongoing war with invaders. The more that it gets to know the invaders’ ‘tricks’ and the more fighting practice it gets, the better it becomes at doing its job.

“This work points to the importance of host nutrition
in not only optimizing the host immune response,
but also in preventing viral mutations
which could increase the viral pathogenicity.
Antioxidants and Viral Infections:
Host Immune Response and Viral Pathogenicity

But we have been taught to keep away from germs and all will be well. We have eliminated many of the acute infectious diseases of our time: smallpox, typhoid, polio. But something is missing because at the same time, hospitals are filled to capacity and chronic illness is epidemic. We can keep believing in germ theory and in western medicine’s answer that medication and surgery will fix everything, but look where it’s got us.

In the US alone:

• More than 1500 people per day are expected to die of cancer

• 1 in 4 people has either asthma or allergies

• 94,360 people developed a severe MRSA infection in 2005

• 8 % of the US has an autoimmune disease

• 20.8 million people, 7% of the population, have diabetes

Why are these diseases so prevalent?

The reasons are varied and there are no cut and dried answers as to why these illnesses are on the rise. Some of these diseases have a genetic component. But for the most part, they are a result of lowered immune system health; the Biological Terrain has been ignored. Western Medicine doesn't even seem to be INTERESTED in finding out how people and their

immune systems interact. For instance, in the very first chapter of the textbook, "Immunology for Medical Students" it states, "Studies of the immune system are aimed at answering the following questions.

• How does our body defend itself from… disease causing microbes?

• How is a pathogen that succeeds in breaching the body’s defenses eliminated?

• How does our body remember a prior exposure to a pathogen and respond faster and more effectively when the pathogen is re-encountered?"

While these are interesting and valuable questions, we would know a lot more and be able to prevent and treat illnesses better if researchers and doctors were asking the following questions:

• What factors allow disease-causing microbes to create illness in humans?

• What can we do to best support the body to prevent illness from happening?

If these questions were being asked, we would find that lifestyle choices are a huge culprit as to why there is so much illness despite such advancements in drugs and medicine. We live in a world of processed foods, Environmental Toxins , and television. Chronic illness is the sad result.

What can you do...

You can take back responsibility for the Biological Terrain that is your body. You can address the underlying CAUSE of your problems by recognizing that Symptoms are Not the problem.

There are REALLY only 4 reasons for Chronic Health Problems:

• Nutritional deficiencies

• Build up of toxic substances

• Hidden Intestinal Infections

• Subtle food reactions

Eliminating even ONE of these problems can make an ENORMOUS positive difference in your health. It doesn’t have to be hard to get better health.

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