Here’s a brief explanation.

Stress can alter the bacterial composition of the digestive tract. When that happens, good/bad bacteria are out of balance. When bad bacteria rule the roost (in the gut), the ability of the body’s immune system to operate at top efficiency is compromised. Gut bacteria are the “educators” of the body’s immune cell behavior, signaling aggressive or passive response as needed, depending on the kinds of pathogens or antigens that enter the body and alert the immune system.

An even better, but lengthier, discussion is here. The author likens immune balance as a “four-way seesaw” that needs to maintain balance to work.

Go, stress, gut, immune. They make your health world go round. That’s why stress management over the long term is so important. It can impact so many other parts of your health and eventually, your quality of life.

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.

But what about the converse? Can working to naturally improve immune function result in beneficial weight loss? It’s hard to say. But there may be some correlations. Take diet and exercise, for example. Both are important for immune health. Exercise can aid with production of antibodies and T-cells to fight infection. Research is also suggesting moderate exercise for immune health support. Extreme exercise can, at least temporarily, weaken immune function.

Healthy diet can influence gut microbiota–the balance of healthy bacteria in the digestive system. And sleep. Always important for immune health and stress reduction, which impacts immune health, too. Stress reduction can also impact release of “stress hormones” in the gut, which can contribute to mid-section girth and weight gain. One outlyer I’ve found, though, is the concept of colon cleansing for weight loss. The concept is that a colon cleanse will rid the intestinal tract of toxins that can inhibit healthy weight loss. Problem is, colon cleanses may also take out beneficial bacteria as well, leading to questionable health results, to say the least.

While I’ve not found any sizable clincial study showing a direct correlation between improved immune function and healthy levels of weight loss, to me, it appears to be a circular sequence. Many of the things that go into healthy weight loss…better nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress reduction…can contribute to a healthier, balanced immune system as well. And vice versa.

Next time, maybe we’ll see a Top 10 List on immune health and stress. Stay tuned!

Today, I stumbled across some information that gives an almost opposite take on emotions and immune health: that falling love can damage your health! What?!?!?  I’ve always assumed that a hot romance would be good for your health.

Here’s my theory: the first stage of romance–falling head over heels for someone–probably does something a little crazy to bodily functions: restless sleep, an upsetting of daily routines, obsessive thoughts, racing pulse, stomach turbulence, etc.  And I can see how this combines to throw immune function off kilter.

But the center of my theory of  love and health problems is FEAR! When the relationship is new and you’re nuts about someone, there is a constant, overriding fear that person may not be as nuts about you, and may have a different outlook on the relationship. Hence, constant worry combined with the exhilaration of new romance.   The result? Sickness. As that article says, that’s why they coined the term “love sick.”

Then when the relationship turns into a stable, solid one, maybe even morphs into marriage, perhaps the health parameters return to normal.

After that, when kids enter the scene, hello sickness again. Finally, after years of togetherness, knowing all the faults and foibles of your spouse, and living in an empty nest, you don’t give a rip about much of anything, and a healthy life returns again.  That’s my theorem of the relationship/health continuum. In which case I should be…and am…very healthy.

A new study this summer from Ohio State, Cornell and The University of Akron show that such stress/health issues are amplified among single mothers who have children out of wedlock, especially white and black women. Hispanic single mothers in the study showed no significant adverse long-term health trends up to  midlife, possibly reflecting a history of greater family support among Hispanic populations for single moms.

There are around 14 million single custodial parents in the U.S. today, and 84 percent of them are mothers. Yet another population segment that may benefit from greater immune support.

A good read about the single mom and stress study is found here.

Taking care of an elderly parent or parents is incredibly demanding (wow, how perceptive of me). And recently, we’re starting to see some statistics that paint a picture of the sacrifices caregivers make, in money, quality of life and health.

A Wall Street Journal story this past week painted a pretty harsh picture of what caregivers face when caring for an elderly parent. “Older caregivers who work and provide care to a parent at the same time are more likely than other workers in their age group to report poor health, with problems including depression and chronic disease. There is evidence they experience considerable health issues as a result of their focus on caring for others,” the story says.

Stress as a driver of health problems for caregivers is a big concern. If there were ever a need for additional help and support for caregivers’ health, the time is now.

• The Times of India has an interesting little list of “fun facts about your immune system.” Among them: “A study of 100 men conducted by researchers at the medical school of the State University of New York at Stony Brook finds that ‘positive events of the day seem to have a stronger helpful impact on immune function than upsetting events do a negative one.’ Furthermore, the study revealed ‘having a good time on Monday still had a positive effect on the immune system by Wednesday;’ the negative immune effect from undesirable events, however, lasts only one day.”
• The ubiquitous Dr. Joseph Mercola offers up a lengthy explanation (with copious citations) on why walking barefoot on the ground may positively impact your immune response.  Worth the read.
• A very good read on the Huffington Post is from Joe Robinson on job stress and health. He calls the current work environment, where legions of employees are on edge about job security and whose desk drawers look like a small pharmacy with all the OTC remedies tucked inside, “a national health tragedy.” Here’s one particularly gripping passage from his column: “More than three-quarters of the 956 million visits to physicians every year are estimated to be the result of stress-related problems. Want to dramatically cut health care costs? Start here. Three-quarters of visits to doctor’s offices at, conservatively, $100 a pop = $71 billion.” Makes sense to me.

Click image to enlarge so you can read it better

My family and I are taking a vacation soon. And everyone probably knows how that goes. You get frantic trying to get everything done…at work and at home… so you can have peace of mind on vacation knowing that all is well back home.

Of course, what actually happens is that you run yourself ragged, in time-crunches and in worry, trying to beat the deadlines before vacation launch.  Then, once you’ve finally left, it takes a day to wind down. Then, you get sick because your body is finally catching up with reality and it does not appreciate what you put it through. So it rebels. You come down with a whopper of a cold or flu or both. And by the time you get home, you’re just now recovering.

Here’s a lot of dialog about this topic on Fodor’s Web site.

My theory–and I’ll bet it’s borne out in some research–is that the stress you put yourself through to reach vacation time (and maybe even during vacation) knocks your immune function off track. The lack of immune balance comes back to haunt you once you’ve set sail from the office.  An NIH immunologist gives some thought about it, too. And, we’ve seen in this blog some of the science showing stress actually alters the good/bad bacteria in the gut, leading to a profound change in immune function.

I’ll go into my vacation fully confident my immune system is ready (with my EpiCor regimen fully in place).

Bad viruses, bad!in the middle of summer. Cold sores are caused be a recurring virus.

The thing is, since my wife has been taking EpiCor, the cold sores have nearly become extinct. We can’t remember the last time she had one. Researchers have long known that the HSV-1 virus that fuels cold sores is very adept at hiding from immune cells.

Could the simple balancing of immune response — which includes activating aggressive immune response when something is detected — be an answer? I’m not a researcher, and certainly EpiCor does not have specific cold sore or HSV-1 research supporting it. It does have research showing EpiCor  activates NK cells and sIgA immune antibodies when ingested. Just wondering….