Immune Support Online

Learn about Immunity and how to Strengthen Your Immunity

Welcome to Immune Support Online

Purpose of this Site

This site is dedicated to the task of teaching you how your immune system works and how you can strengthen your immunity. Hopefully it will also stimulate critical thinking about the current view of immunity. It has been created by a family physician who has, for years practiced integrative medicine. The suggestions come out of my work with thousands of patients. I hope you will find it useful.

Perhaps you have noticed that more people are becoming ill, that there is an increase in childhood diseases like asthma and autism, and that there are more people contracting autoimmune illnesses like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. I believe the information here can help to reduce the suffering from these problems as well as giving you a greater chance of avoiding serious viral illnesses, or reducing their severity. I will begin with a brief overview of current concerns then lead on to a relatively complete, but not overly scientific view of immune processes. Please feel free to jump directly to the section on strengthening immunity for practical suggestions you may find useful.

 

Introduction

The "Spanish flu virus" of 1918 is actually thought to have originated in Tibet (Levine 2005). During this pandemic caused by a corona virus, about 20 million people died. Our current concern, "avian flu" is also a corona virus, closely related to the virus which caused the Spanish flu. The "Spanish flu" virus had never been encountered by the people living at that time. They had no immunity to it except the innate immunity possessed by some. This innate immunity is the inborn strength which allows us to survive an encounter with a new organism. Many people got the flu but did not die. They had strong innate immunity. Likely social and nutritional factors in 1918 (the war starvation and rationing) had weakened people and contributed to the horrendous death toll. Could the current calorie rich but nutrient poor diet of most of the world's population be leaving many of us in a similar state? People who had innate immune strength in 1918 either did not get ill, or at least survived the flu. While science may come up with a solution to this particular virus, many new forms of viruses and drug resistant bacteria are emerging more rapidly than medical science can keep up with. So it is very important for us to strengthen our immune defenses. The information here is designed to help you with this.

To be more able to resist viruses and other pathogens, you will want to improve your first line of defense, your Innate Immunity.

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