Super Immunity
Endocannabinoid
System
Cannabis as medicine is not a new concept. Its medicinal use dates back thousands of years. What IS new is the 1992 discovery that mammalian bodies come with a built in endocannabinoid system (ECS) composed of endogenous neuro-modulatory lipids and cannabinoid receptors located in our brains and in cell membranes located throughout the central and peripheral nervous systems. The ECS system is involved in a variety of important physiological processes – including appetite, pain-sensation, mood, memory, and in mediating the psychoactive effects of cannabis.
Prebiotics & Probiotics
A lot is being written these days about the importance of probiotics for maintaining or restoring good health. Probiotics are micro-organisms, mostly friendly bacteria and some yeasts, that we consume to create a healthy and balanced gut microbiome. Probiotics are essential to our health – an unbalanced gut microbiome produces chronic inflammation in the gut and in other parts of the body, leading to all sorts of autoimmune diseases and other serious health problems. If your gut microbiome is lacking in probiotics, pathogenic bacteria can move in opportunistically and take over.
Did you know we also need PREbiotics to feed those PRObiotics and keep them healthy?
Vitamin D
Results from a recent data review by English scientists link COVID-19 incidence and deaths across Europe to Vitamin D deficiency. A good blood serum level of Vitamin D is needed for healthy immune functioning – including fighting off Coronavirus-19. Unfortunately, most of us are severely Vitamin D deficient.
“When your skin is exposed to sunlight, it makes vitamin D from cholesterol. The sun’s ultraviolet B (UVB) rays hit cholesterol in the skin cells, providing the energy for vitamin D synthesis to occur.
Raw Milks & Raw
Milk Cheeses
Raw milk is basically milk as it comes from the cow, goat, or sheep. It’s milk that has not been PASTEURIZED or HOMOGENIZED.
During PASTEURIZATION, milk is heated to a specific temperature for a set period of time. The process was developed by Louis Pasteur in 1864. The purpose of Pasteurization is to kill harmful organisms in the raw milk. Unfortunately, a side effect of the process is that heat also kills the good probiotic bacteria, minerals, and vitamins naturally present in raw milk.
Salt: Sea Salt vs
Table Salt
Salt was deservedly highly esteemed throughout history – from the sea, necessary for life, full of minerals and other trace elements. The commercially processed table salt generally in use today, with its trace minerals removed and chemicals added, has essentially been rendered toxic.
Refined salt (table salt – the ground-up white stuff found in salt shakers in most American homes and on the tables at restaurants) is basically refined sodium chloride with additives, such as anti-caking agents to extend its shelf life and keep it from clumping together in salt shakers.
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Umeboshi Plums
Umeboshi plums are considered the king of alkaline foods, highly respected in Japan for their remarkable medicinal properties in balancing the body and helping with indigestion. Even sucking on an umeboshi plum pit can settle a queasy stomach. (Minifie, 2013)
Because they are high in citric acid, which has a powerful, paradoxical alkalinizing effect on the body, umeboshi plums are the Far Eastern equivalent of both aspirin and apple, a potent hangover remedy and one of the best preventive medicines available. An umeboshi a day keeps the doctor away.
Super Immunity
Catching whatever viral or bacterial thing is going around? Suffering from a skin condition, poor sleep, allergies, acid reflux, an autoimmune disease, chronic sinus congestion, frequent tooth decay, gum disease, constipation, diarrhea, frequent UTI’s, a mood disorder or nail fungus? Work on restoring the friendly bacteria in your gut flora and see if your health doesn’t improve. Depending on where you’re starting from, this may take a while.
The idea isn’t to avoid contact with all the bad bugs out there but to build up your gut immune system with good ones, our traditional ‘old friends’, so they can deal efficiently with the bad guys.
Hygiene Hypothesis
The Hygiene Hypothesis states that being overly afraid of exposure to all kinds of germ and trying to eradicate them completely in our homes is dangerous to our health. Just think of all the products that promise to kill 99% of bacteria!
According to the Hygiene Hypothesis, developing children need exposure to a wide variety of bacteria in order to develop robust immune systems. Young children’s lack of exposure accounts for the steadily increasing incidence of autoimmune diseases in both children and the adults they grow into – including allergies, asthma, skin conditions and many more.
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Saccharomyces Boulardii
Now we turn specifically to Saccharomyces boulardii – generally regarded as a powerhouse in the group of probiotics that keep our guts and bodies in good balance. This amazing probiotic yeast, along with dietary changes and other probiotics, helped restore my health from a nasty Clostridium difficile infection, when my mast cells were going wild, and most recently when I had a Morganella infection and needed to take antibiotics for it. S. boulardii is a yeast with digestive benefits that support the immune system by nourishing the cells in the intestinal walls, which are a front-line defense against invaders.
S. boulardii works in several ways, including as an antitoxin, an antri-microbial and an anti-inflammatory.
Kefir
Kefir, one of the oldest cultured milk products in existence, is regarded by many (including me) as a super food. It is a fermented, yogurt-like drink made from cow, goat or sheep’s milk, containing probiotic yeasts along with ten strains of live, beneficial bacteria … billions of active probiotics to support the immune system and balance the gut microbiome.
Centuries ago, shepherds in the Caucasus Mountains running between the Black and Caspian Seas discovered that fresh milk carried in leather pouches sometimes fermented into a tart, effervescent beverage with amazing health benefits. It is consumed regularly for its medicinal benefits in eastern Turkey, Georgia, Chechnya, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
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Laughter, Meditation &
Breathing
Laughter, especially a good belly laugh, is one of the best ways we have to relieve stress, calm the brain and turn a bad mood into a good one. We all know we feel better after we’ve had a good laugh – even smiled. So how to get that benefit when life feels really hard?
I remember reading about something called Laughter Yoga and thinking I’d go to a Meet Up Laughter Yoga group to try it. For one reason or another I never got myself there. Then one day in the shower I decided just to try laughing – at nothing at all. And I felt good all the rest of the day.
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Tea Tree Oil
Tea tree oil is a true miracle of nature — an essential oil, steam-distilled from the leaves of the Melaleuca alternifolia, which includes a variety of plants native to the southeastern area of Queensland and the northeastern coast of New South Wales in Australia. The oil has a fresh, camphor-like odor and a color ranging from pale yellow to clear. (Wikipedia, 2014) It contains over 98 active compounds, is natural, green and sustainable.
Humans have found many topical uses for this miraculous natural substance. Often referred to as a “medicine cabinet in a bottle”, it stimulates the immune system and is effective against bacteria, fungi and viruses.
Vaccines
In early December 2014 the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged that this season’s flu vaccine is not as effective as in years past because the viral strain circulating this influenza season has mutated. Of the 85 influenza samples, the CDC collected and analyzed between October 1 through November 22 2014, 52% of them differed from the virus strains included in this season’s vaccine. (Goldschmidt & Christensen, 2014)
Across all age groups reviewed by the CDC, the flu vaccines’ effectiveness during the 2012-2013 flu season was found to be 56% – that is, only slightly better than 50/50. The effectiveness rate of flu vaccine for seniors 65 and older in the US was found to be only 9%. (Mercola, 2013)
