If you don’t view the whole thing ,at least  make sure to watch the segment from 3:23 to 5:20, where he talks about the optimal immune health state:  the state of “balance.”  That’s where the nutritional and life management insights that we talk about in this blog come into play; attempting to create a healthy level of immune balance so that immune cells react appropriately to pathogens, but don’t overreact to point of harming healthy cells.

The Five S’s refer to five things you can do to maintain optimal immune health. In my book, these measures will also impact many other health areas, including weight, cardio, skin and mental health.

The are:

Sustenance – Meaning diet and nutrition. A diet tilted toward fruits and veggies, less processed sugar, moderate lean fresh meat consumption, healthy fats, a good amount of water and maybe a red wine or dark beer here and there, can help feed healthy gut bacteria essential for immune health while also addressing cell inflammation that damages health. Think Mediterranean.

Sport – Moderate exercise can improve immune function. The science is there.

Stress – Managing stress helps impact gut health, where stress can upset the balance of immune-controlling beneficial bacteria.

Sleep – A solid 7 or 8 hours of sleep a night can do wonders for immune health.

Supplementation – Nutritional support with EpiCor can help optimize immune health, especially during stretches when diet, stress management, sleep or exercise might be lacking.

Keep these Five S’s at the fore. See how things go during the year. You may be surprised.

1. The sleepless plane ride over. A guy behind me insisted on talking at a yelling volume to the guy next to him. During the dark (sleep) time on the plane. For two hours straight. That, combined with the sleepless 7-hour layover in Newark Liberty Airport means I got no quality sleep for 23 hours. Then, I had a 2-hour nap before starting the new day in Scotland. No sleep is bad for immune function.

2. I tried haggis my first morning in Scotland, and kind of liked it.  In my quest to eat more haggis in the ensuing days, I’m pretty sure I was served “black pudding” instead. Made of pig’s blood. I don’t think it agreed with me. I spent 24 hours finding out the hard way, but it did not put me down.

3. Rainy weather in Edinburgh. It rained nearly every day. And I was outside during a lot of it. Cold rain. And wind.

4. The plane ride home. Surrounded by two screaming kids and two coughing kids. I think kids under 8 years old should not be allowed on flights more than 2 hours in duration. Again, no sleep. Also, two men coughing their heads off and not doing it into their bent elbow.

So how did I live? Dumb luck? Maybe. A daily EpiCor regimen before, during and after the trip? Maybe. Washing hands several times a day? Perhaps. Getting plenty of sleep at night while on vacation? Possibly. And, finally, a certain beverage may have helped as well. See the picture.

I’m as guilty as anyone. Just when I was doing pretty good throughout the fall with nutrition and exercise, suddenly it’s Thanksgiving, and since then, wow. I’ve abandoned a lot of discipline. Someone brought a pile of holiday treats to our office a couple days ago. Did I eat one or two and bow out? No. I had to take three or four back to my office, fearing the rest would be gone in an hour.

My wife and kids took most of a Saturday to bake up a storm Of course, I had to sample everything as it came out of the oven or off the wax paper. And of course, a sample means more than one.

Sugar may not necessarily lead to severely reduced immune function. But if obesity, cardiovascular damage, cellular inflammation are some direct outcomes of  long-term processed sugar intake, those conditions right there are enough to wreak havoc on immune function. Others make a strong cell-based argument that sugar can compete with and displace vital nutrients needed for proper support of immune cell structure, leading to weakened immune function.  Too much sugar can also trigger overreaction of immune response, feeding proinflammatory cytokine cells that lead to chronic inflammation, a fundamental driver of many serious diseases. Such imbalance within immune response results in immune cells frenetically going after healthy tissue, leaving depleted immune capacity to fight real pathogens that may enter the body (bacteria, virus, etc.)

So now that I’ve made sugar enemy No. 1, are you scared to eat even one more cookie?  Don’t be. After all, a little sugar does provide some short term energy. But remember to keep the sweets at a reasonably low level, while getting good exercise, sleep and a good dose of fruits and vegetables. That would be a sweet deal all the way around.

I am mindful of this because my college daughter just presented a huge project for a huge grade in her architecture studies. She did great. But, to get it done, she literally got 2 hours of sleep a night, spending most of every evening and overnight during the past two weeks at her design studio. Many other students had the same sleep regimen.

But, so far, no health problems. No viral crud, no  fever, no missed class or studio time. As we all know, lack of sleep coupled with little exercise, iffy diet and nutrition, and unabated stress can knock one’s immune system far off the rails. And, as we also know, stress and tension being allowed to build over the course of time can also lead to getting sick once the stressful stretch is over. Hence, many students and adults get sick during holiday break once the job duties or semester studies end.

I do think taking EpiCor may have helped my daughter get through these sleepless, stress-filled stretches. I can’t imagine how she could have performed like she did if she had been out for the count for several days, in bed, waiting to get well enough to get back to class.

Of course, now that I think about it, maybe when she was home during Thanksgiving helped prepare her immune system for the end-of-year grind at college. Watching all the recorded episodes of Glee that she missed, plus massive shopping, seeing high school friends and Mom and Dad’s home cooking might have also helped the cause.

You can do better, especially if you’re wanting to keep your immune system as healthy as you can. You don’t need to cut out all the beige and brown, but why not try adding more vibrant color to the dinner plate. More color means more antioxidants and phytonutrients (plant-based nutrients). In other words, try to make your food selection the same colors as Nebraska’s football pants, or the Minnesota Vikings’ football helmets, or maybe the Celtics’ basketball jerseys.

This report on “color” intake within the American diet talks about the shortfall the average American experiences in eating enough of the proper colors.  The more color you can get in your diet, the better for your immune health. Those bright plant pigments deliver a lot of nutrients to the body, nearly all of which can support immune health.

When we talk about immune system balance, we’re talking about immune cell response being aggressive when conditions warrant, flooding an area with killer cells to wipe out an intruder.  This is my analogy for flooding the money system with stimulus cash when consumer spending and business lending has dried up because of an intruder to the system: bad mortgages.

We’re also talking about immune cells suppressing an aggressive response when presented with a “false alarm,” such as a pollen grain or another benign foreign substance that enters the body. This is analogous to investors not pulling all of their money out of the market or out of the banks when markets undergo a major correction.

And, helping drive this balanced response is an amazing system of cell communication, where certain cells can tell other cells to charge or back off.  Of course, investors and fund managers and exchanges and currency traders all communicate with each other, especially in this instant information age. The problem is accuracy and integrity of the information. Bad or deceptive information can spell doom. Hopefully, cells haven’t got quite that crafty…yet.

And cells remember from experience as well. A certain virus that entered your body years ago (e.g. chicken pox) is remembered by your immune system and vanquished quickly if it enters your body years later.  Seems like many U.S. and foreign policy makers don’t have much of an institutional memory for what worked and did not work decades ago in our political economy.

If our economic system could behave like a well-balanced immune system, we’d experience much of what people experience while taking EpiCor…a balanced, proportional response to antigens entering the system, reducing symptom severity and shortening symptom duration.

Sauerkraut and sausage - two fermented mainstays

products to his cattle on his small farm. He eventually noticed that cattle eating those fermented material seemed to be healthier and require less attention than other herds.

Soon, he was developing a technology in 1943 for a natural, dried yeast-based fermentate as a livestock feed additive.  A lot of research was conducted on efficacy in animals, and as the science grew, the real-world animal health and production results grew and the company grew.  A similar natural fermentation technology was developed for human consumption, and is now the core ingredient product for EpiCor.  Which brings me to my point: fermented foods and beverages seems to be very good for you, and fermentation may be one big reason why EpiCor works so well in human trials. Why do fermented foods have such nutritional mojo? One source, Rebecca Wood, sums it up nicely:

1. Unprocessed fermented foods boost the immune system by increasing antibodies that fight infectious disease.
2. The flora in living cultured foods form a “living shield” that covers the small intestine’s inner lining and helps inhibit pathogenic organisms including E.coli, salmonella and an unhealthy overgrowth of candida (yeast).
3. Some ferments create antioxidants (glutathione and superoxide dismustase) that scavenge free radicals which are a cancer precursor.
4. Fermenting transforms hard-to-digest lactose from milk to the more easily digested lactic acid. It neutralizes the anti-nutrients found in many foods including the phytic acid found in all grains and the trypsin-inhibitors in soy.
5. Fermentation generates new nutrients including omega-3 fatty acids, digestive aids and the trace mineral GTF chromium.

What  fermented products, besides EpiCor, can you eat and drink that can provide even more imunne health benefit?

• Yogurt
• Sauerkraut
• Sourdough bread
• Beer (not too much)
• Miso, soy sauce
• Olives and other pickled vegetables (not mass produced, but traditionally marinated)
• Aged cheeses
• Wine
• Kimche (spicy Korean cabbage)

Now we find out this week about some new research showing that non-alcoholic wheat beer may help support the immune health of highly trained athletes by balancing immune function. Huh?

According to story on the reseasrch:

“The study shows that after running a marathon race, athletes experience intensified inflammatory reactions. The immune system is thrown off balance and runners are much more likely to suffer from upper respiratory infections. This heightened susceptibility to illness following strenuous sport activity has been identified as an “open window.”

Furthermore it was shown that non-alcoholic wheat beer containing polyphenols has a positive, health promoting effect on the human body: inflammation parameters in the blood were significantly reduced, and there was a lower frequency of infection with milder symptoms.”

I understand EpiCor may have some research findings to release soon regarding athletes, EpiCor intake and inflammatory response changes . We’ll be watching. And drinking. Just a little.

One is a recent story in the Oakland Tribune/San Jose Mercury News. The piece takes a look at the general health of kids who grow up in violent urban neighborhoods.

“To a teen living in the rough areas of East Oakland, sorrow is no stranger. Random violence, worry about the future and a constant battle for basics such as healthy food, good schools and physical exercise, add up to a kind of life that can make an East Oakland teen far older than his or her chronological age.

Research shows that like adults, teens exposed to chronic stress can suffer from anxiety, insomnia, depression and eating disorders; they experience short-term memory loss and inability to focus or to manage time. As teens age, there is an even bigger physical toll: Adolescents exposed to chronic stress have higher adult rates of asthma, obesity and Type 2 diabetes, and are at higher risk for some cancers and stroke.

Chronic stress will upset a teens’ neurobiology, reducing their ability to regulate key hormones that restore equilibrium after stress, whether it’s a bad grade on a science quiz or a friend’s slaying.

It can also raise the level of inflammatory proteins in teens’ body, putting their immune system on permanent alert, and worsening both the risk and the symptoms of illnesses that include inflammation, from asthma and eczema to diabetes and heart disease.

Wow. Sounds like the classic stress/immune conflict so frequently written about here. It is sad that such a health scenario is amplified many times in the lives of young people who are brought into a violent world through no fault of there own.

The other California connection is news of a new milk beverage with added probiotic bacteria, produced by what the story describes as the largest privately owned dairy in California.

“In addition to providing essential calcium and vitamin D, Dairy Balance can help support digestive and immune health with the addition of GanedenBC30 Probiotics. Plus, there is no change in taste or texture to the new milk when GanedenBC30 is added.”

The company says that this particular probiotic ingredient can endure the stress of the manufacturing process to deliver enough viable, live bacteria to the gut to make the product effective. It’s another example of the growing importance of enhanced immune health benefits that consumer products are focusing on.

All in all, California, for good or bad, is at the heart of the immune health world this week.