Some archived information on this blog about inflammation and immune health is here.

It’s such a refreshing story to read when compared to the recent spate of trouble some prescription drugs have encountered when promoted or used for off-label applications to “treat” a variety of conditions for which the drug was not intended.

As the story points out, food and supplements don’t work the same as drugs. Drugs are created to provide a relatively fast therapeutic effect.  Food and supplement regimens can also make an impact on health conditions, but they take time and persistence and commitment to stick with the program. But the results can be compelling and even dramatic.

Many dietitians are proponents of  “food-only” solutions for condition-specific health problems. I remember Dr. Jeff Blumberg, a leading antioxidant researcher at Tufts University and a big food proponent as well, telling a conference of nutrition industry experts that “you need both. You need food and supplementation.”  To get enough of a certain nutrient to spur a change in serum content of that nutrient delivered to the body, one might need to eat 5 big servings a week of fish for DHA or 3 big bowls of romaine lettuce a day for chromium or manganese. That’s just not practical or real for the everyday Joe or Josephine.

See the Tribune/Times story here.

I hope the docs really know why this nutrition thing is important. Foods rich in vital nutrients can aid in proper immune function, helping ensure that immune response is proportional and not over-aggressive, which could lead to prolonged inflammation and more trouble down the road to recovery.

A good summary of immune health and inflammation is here.

Both my kids are pretty good about eating healthy (except for the red licorice) and one of them takes EpiCor immune balance supplementation. So I’m pretty confident if anyone was ready to take on the wisdom teeth ordeal, it was them.

At quote from the story summarizes the familiar theme we’ve emphasized in this blog all along: “Stress also creates biochemical changes that can affect the immune system, making it underreact to viruses and bacterial infections, or overreact, which can set off allergies, asthma and skin disorders like psoriasis and eczema. And stress can raise the level of inflammation in the body, which has been associated with heart disease.”

Overract. Underreact. It’s the epicenter of the immune balance story.

The financial and consumer markets are experiencing a reset. Perhaps that’s an appropriate way to look at immune balance; a reset of your immune system. Just like new underwriting and regulatory standards are being formed to attack and supress exotic, toxic debt instruments before they further infect the capital markets, immune balancing factors help natural killer cells recognize and attack microbial invaders quicker and more efficiently.

And, just like banks are now over-reacting to benign, harmless credit scoring results by denying financing to qualified applicants and damaging business growth, over-aggressive immune cell responders attack harmless foreign bodies in the serum, causing inflammatory (or could you say, “inflationary”) conditions that can damage health. An immune reset could help suppress and dampen that over-reaction, and allow healthy cells to flourish.

Bottom line: we all could benefit from a reset. The only difference? An immune system reset through supplementation does not possess the pain that a sweeping economic reset does.

Dr. Stuart Reeves

Wanna experience one of the most beneficial half hours of your life? Listen to Embria Health Science’s Stuart Reeves as he is interviewed about immune balance on a Latrobe, PA radio station.  Stuart hits the big points on immune health and quality of life, from colds and flu to stress and travel  to extreme exercise vs. moderate exercise. He also gives some great detail on how EpiCor is produced

Click here for the interview.

It seems that Windows Media Player works well for this.  If you need to grab it for your machine, download it here.

About.com has a forum on fibromyalgia, with a blog moderated by Adrienne Dellwo, a journalist who was forced to scale back her reporting career because of fibromyalgia.  This week her post talks about new research showing that an imbalance of cytokines–agents in your body’s immune system that both promote and suppress inflammation–may be a cause of sleep disruptions in fibromyalgia sufferers.

Not that everyone has fibromyalgia, of course. But such findings continue to illustrate the effects that lack of immune balance–from whatever cause–can have on everyday health and living.

To their credit, J&J didn’t try to BS their way out of an apparent misfire. The company pulled the ad quickly. They came out and said, “we screwed up,  we’ll learn from this.”  Good for them.  Yet most of the comments on the story seemed to say, “What’s the big deal? You call that offensive?”  I guess if enough customers complain and launch a global social media campaign against your product, it IS a problem and it tenders no time for Socratic debate. As one retailer taught me, “the customer may not always be right, be he/she is never wrong.”

Of course, not to be too blatant, but I would be remiss if I didn’t take this moment to advocate for immune balance supplementation as a potential health agent for moms who may experience extra muscle and joint strain from carrying their infants throughout the day. Just a thought, as they say.