Super Immunity (13 page)

GOMBBS

Greens, onions, mushrooms, berries, beans, seeds

Greens, onions, mushrooms, berries, beans, seeds

Greens, onions, mushrooms, berries, beans, seeds

Nutritional science has provided us an unprecedented opportunity. We can live healthier and longer than at any point in human history if we put this science into action. We are living in an age of scientific advancements of all kinds. But science is a double-edged sword; it can cure us or destroy us. It can answer our questions, or create more problems. My hope is that we can learn to use modern advancements in science to benefit humanity and protect our natural environment from chemical and physical destruction. Clearly, our health is dependent on the health of our planet and on sustaining a healthy supply of natural, unadulterated food.

Many people choose to reject new science, even when the evidence is overwhelming. This book may be attacked by people in powerful positions of authority whose livelihood is dependent on competing interests, such as “recreational” foods, drugs, and medical technology. Too often people mistake authority for truth: they accept an opinion voiced by a person of high authority, right or wrong, instead of undertaking an unbiased scrutiny of the facts. Doctors are guilty of this all the time. They accept conclusions fed to them by prestigious medical journals about studies that were performed by drug companies promoting their products, without an adequate awareness of the bias in the study preparation. In order to help ourselves, our families, our neighbors, our nation, and our fellow earthlings, we have to cultivate a respect for the precious value of our natural world while also cultivating the best natural foods that can protect our precious health.

T
he common cold continues to be a great burden on society, in terms of both human suffering and economic loss.

The common cold, the flu, and over 95 percent of all acute sicknesses are caused by viruses. I mention this specifically because one of the major issues with colds and flu is not the illness itself but the myriad ways we try to treat it. Too often these so-called solutions tax our immune system, prolonging the illness, or turning colds and flu into something much worse, even potentially life-threatening.

Everyone should be aware by now that antibiotics do
not
kill viruses and do
not
aid in the recovery from viral illness. Yet over 90 percent of antibiotic prescriptions are utilized inappropriately (that is, prescribed for viral illnesses). That's right, 90 percent! Antibiotics are routinely and repeatedly administered by physicians for illnesses such as colds and bronchitis, which are viral, not bacterial.
¹
In one study, more than half of the patients who visited a physician in the United States with cold symptoms left with a prescription for an antibiotic.
²
This use of antibiotics is inappropriate and dangerous.

The common cold is caused by a host of viral invaders. The primary offenders are the so-called rhinoviruses, but others include coronavirus, parainfluenza virus, respiratory syncytial virus, adenovirus, echovirus, and coxsackievirus. Typically, the common cold is contracted by touching a contaminated object or shaking the hand of an infected person, and then touching one's eyes, nose, or mouth.

Influenza, on the other hand, is caused by one of three types of influenza virus: A, B, or C. It is contracted primarily through inhalation, when an uninfected person is close to an infected person who is sneezing or coughing.

The vast majority of sore throats (pharyngitis), sinus congestion and drainage (sinusitis), and bad coughs (bronchitis) are of viral causation. It is well established that antibiotics are not helpful in these conditions; they are useful only in relatively rare cases, such as bronchitis in smokers, or in former smokers with lung disease who are prone to developing bacterial overgrowth when infected.
³
The misuse of antibiotics is a multibillion-dollar industry in the United States every year.

A common misconception exists among those suffering from cold and/or flu symptoms regarding the color of the mucous: many people believe that yellow-or green-tinted mucous indicates bacterial involvement (thus calling for antibiotic treatment). This is an important point: research has shown that patients do
not
benefit from antibiotics even in the presence of green or thick sputum.
⁴
That is, the color of the sputum was not found to be an indicator of bacterial involvement; viral pathogens also produce thick yellow-or green-tinted mucous.

So when you have a cold, a fever, a sore throat, body aches, and nasal congestion, and are coughing up thick yellow or green mucous, medications are
not
indicated and are
not
supported by the scientific data. In fact, medication will not help you get better faster and will not prevent further complications.

Besides their ineffectiveness, there are other compelling reasons to avoid the use of antibiotics. They can actually prolong your illness—but worse, they can lead to more serious illnesses in your future. The problem is that when we get sick, when we become physically very uncomfortable, we look for a solution. That's human nature: no one wants to feel miserable, and we all have things that must get done in our busy lives. So we look to over-the-counter medications; or even worse, we go to a physician seeking more powerful drugs for relief.

Unfortunately, most physicians seem to comply, wanting to meet their patients' expectations. They assume the role of “savior,” when in fact their antibiotic prescriptions not only are not helpful, but more likely are harmful to patients' long-term health. Increased hospitalizations attributed to adverse drug reactions alone account for billions of dollars each year within the U.S. health care system. Over 140,000 of these severe reactions to antibiotics drive people to emergency rooms each year; and they are not just costly financially, but serious and even tragic in human terms.
⁵
Antibacterial adverse effects account for nearly 25 percent of all adverse drug reactions among hospitalized patients.
⁶

If that doesn't make you think twice about the inappropriate use of antibiotics, consider that antibiotics can cause cancer. A history of using antibiotics more than ten times in childhood increases the likelihood of developing non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) by 80 percent, according to the largest case-controlled study to date of NHL risk and medication use.
⁷
Other studies looking at this issue also confirm a link to cancer, including a higher rate of breast cancer, which increased as prescriptions for antibiotics increased.
⁸
The investigators found that increasing the cumulative days of antibiotic use and the cumulative number of antibiotic prescriptions increased the risk of breast cancer proportionally, and that the most frequent users (women given between twenty-six and fifty antibiotic prescriptions) had more than double the risk of breast cancer compared to women in the control group.

Antibiotics are one of the most common medications taken by pregnant women, and a new study has made convincing connections between antibiotic use during pregnancy and incidence of birth defects. Women who took sulfonamides and nitrofurantoins (frequently used for urinary tract infections) while pregnant were two to four times as likely to give birth to babies with heart defects.
⁹
The more commonly used penicillins, erythromycins, and cephalosporins were also each associated with at least one birth defect. It is also known that giving infants antibiotics in their first year of life triggers asthma and allergies that develop later on in childhood.
¹⁰
Yet more than half of all babies are given prescriptions for antibiotics before they turn one!

Antibiotics are risky medications that should be reserved for severe (and carefully documented) bacterial infections—infections that would seriously threaten the health of the patient if left untreated. We have powerful immune systems that, when supported by excellent nutrition, will clear the more moderate infections without help from drugs. (And don't miss the big-picture point: although most antibiotics are prescribed and taken for inappropriate indications, even the
appropriate
indications would not likely have occurred if superior nutrition and the resultant increased immunity to infection had been in place.)

The risks of antibiotics include diarrhea, digestive disturbances, yeast overgrowth, bone marrow suppression, seizures, kidney damage, severe bloody colitis, and life-threatening allergic reactions. In addition, in every single person who takes an antibiotic, the drug kills a broad assortment of helpful bacteria that live in the digestive tract and aid digestion. It kills the “bad” bacteria—such as those that can complicate an infection—but it also kills these helpful “good” bacteria lining your digestive tract that have properties protecting you from future illness. These changes in bacterial balance can take over a year to recover from after one course of antibiotics.

These are all individual consequences, but there are societal consequences as well. The overuse of antibiotics during past decades has been blamed for the recent emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains of deadly bacteria. By overprescribing antibiotics when they
aren't
needed, we have made these drugs less effective when they
are
needed.

The facts are documented, and yet too many of us remain unaware of the dangers of antibiotics—or are aware but remain unconcerned. In the following pages, I will go through the various medical and nonmedical remedies for colds and influenza and explain what works and what doesn't. There are a lot of myths and theories circulating.

But as you will continue to discover, we don't need to be on a roller coaster with our health. Creating Super Immunity will help prevent colds and influenza from occurring in the first place; and in the very rare circumstance that you do get sick, my approach will have you feeling yourself in no time. There are real, proven remedies available to you.

Given people's general willingness to take antibiotics at the drop of a hat, let's take a brief detour into the subject of healthy bacteria. Knowing the facts might make you less willing to take medications that target bacteria indiscriminately.

More than one-third of the dry weight of human stool is bacteria—bacteria that have been busily doing their job of food processing. Hundreds of different species of “good” bacteria play a very important role in our health; among other things, they process fiber and produce certain vitamins (such as B vitamins and vitamin K) and other nutritive substances. The health-promoting bacteria, called “probiotics,” are normal inhabitants of the human gastrointestinal tract. Amazingly, bowel bacteria cells comprise approximately 95 percent of the total number of cells in the human body. These bowel inhabitants play a critical role in the health of our immune system.

Seventy percent of the immune system is located in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, and the microflora (the bacterial population) of the GI tract constitute a complex ecosystem that can be viewed as an organ of the body. These microbes profoundly influence our health and survival. Certain normal metabolic functions and enzyme activities can be attributed to the microflora, which play a role in metabolizing nutrients, vitamins, drugs, endogenous hormones, and carcinogens; synthesizing fatty acids; preventing colonization of pathogens; and modulating the normal immune response.

For instance, these friendly flora make short-chain fatty acids (such as lipoic acid and butyrate) and other nutrients that have antioxidant and immune-enhancing properties. In addition to these health-enhancing activities that enable your body to function more efficiently, good intestinal bacteria secrete antibacterial substances that prevent
disease-causing
bacteria from taking hold in your body. In other words, the health-promoting bacteria crowd out and prevent the development of pathogens looking to take hold as bacterial illnesses. Having a proliferation of health-promoting bacteria is also thought to offer protection against colon cancer.

When you eat a healthy, micronutrient-rich, plant-based diet, you promote the growth of the
good
species of bacteria. The typical American (unhealthy) diet is lacking in these very powerful and protective bacteria and in fact promotes the growth of microbes that can damage your health and body.

If you take antibiotics repeatedly, you further diminish the population of good bacteria that protect you against the “harmful” bacteria. In addition, the “harmful” bacteria become more resistant (that is, harder to kill with antibiotics the next time). Over a hundred different helpful intestinal bacteria are lost with the use of antibiotics, which then gives disease-causing microbes the chance to proliferate and fill the ecological vacuum created by the repeated administration of antibiotics.

Here are the most important functions of intestinal microflora (good bacteria):

1. Supplement the digestive process to break down food

2. Produce vitamins, short-chain fatty acids, and proteins utilized by the body

3. Protect against the overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria and yeasts

4. Strengthen immune function

5. Create beneficial nutrients that prevent weight gain

Here, on the other hand, are the harmful effects of pathogenic bacteria and yeasts—those that can invade us if our population of
good
bacteria gets too low: