I get a newsletter from Jon and Kristen Barron, called Baseline.  Their 1/21/08 newsletter was about boosting the immune system and how this can lead to even death when the immune system is overtaxed. 

Some folks that I've spoken with in holistic chatrooms have complained of constant inflammation when they are working on building their immune systems and complaining on how this isn't working.  From the article below, it would seem that it's working, but too well, that what we need in conjunction is the use of things like ... LO, AND BEHOLD, I see wild oregano oil and olive leaf in the list, and I've never heard MH say anything but good things about our taking garlic!  These things keep the pathogens effect on our body down.

Back in August of 2005, I first addressed the issue of Bird Flu (although at the time, despite the beginnings of the media frenzy, I said that I didn't see it as an imminent threat -- which it turned out not to be.). More importantly, though, I proposed that contrary to most of the advice you would hear in the alternative health community, building your immune system could be a major contributing factor in mortality rates if bird flu did hit. As I said back then:

• Many alternative health companies are trying to tell you to boost your immune system to protect yourself. That's a questionable tactic with bird flu -- at least if not accompanied by the use of pathogen destroyers. Death from bird flu is most likely to come from a cytokine storm triggered by your own immune system, not from the flu itself. This is the same situation we saw in the great influenza pandemic of 1918/1919.

And now, thanks to Dr. Spottiswoode's study, we have an idea as to why this happens. In the case of bird flu, the stronger immune response of "healthy" people exacts too great a cost on the human body -- literally killing it by virtue of its overreaction. Or to put it another way, the cost of an extremely strong immune response is too high.

It's interesting that almost three years later, and even with the new study now available for all to see, little has changed. Medical doctors still tell you to get flu shots to protect yourself (even though they are, at best, only marginally effective), and people in the alternative health community still tell you to build your immune system (so that your body can be overtaxed and die).

It's not just flu

Once we understand the problem -- that an overly strong immune system forced to address pathogens at full viral or bacterial load is an unbalanced immune system and will exact a cost on the body, we realize that the problem is likely to be endemic and appear in many different forms (some fatal and others not) in many different people.  And it does. For example:

• Endemic immune system disorders
• A significant increase in diseases/symptoms such as fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue
• Chronic systemic inflammation in joints, muscles, and cardiovascular systems. (Remember, just like in the birds, inflammation is an immune system response.)

Conclusion

Dr. Spottiswoode conducted her experiments to better understand why more animals didn't have extended families since doing so appeared to offer great benefits. In the end, she went a long way to proving her hypothesis that extended families demand much more active immune systems from individuals, which extracts a heavy cost on the body. Kudos to Dr. Spottiswoode. For me, though, I see other important information coming from this study -- information that can alter how you choose to "optimize" your immune system and prepare for any invading pathogens. What the study showed, if you look from a slightly different perspective, is that when it comes to the immune system, more is not always better. Improving the strength of the immune system comes at a cost. Optimizing the immune system, then, comes down to "cost benefit analysis."

The bottom line is yes, you want your immune system to respond strongly to any pathogens -- but not too strongly. If it responds too strongly, the costs can outweigh the benefits. An overactive immune system can lead to:

• Sustained systemic inflammation
• Autoimmune disorders
• Overactive responses to allergens
• Even death, as in the case of avian flu

So exactly what does that mean:

• It means that you do want to use immune builders such as
  • Echinacea
  • Pau d’arco
  • Suma
  • Astragalus
  • Medicinal mushrooms
  • AHCC
  • Beta glucans
  • Aloe vera
  • Alkyglycerol
  • Lactoferrin
  • Bovine colostrums
  • Glutathione
  • Mangosteen
  • Colostrum
• But it means you also want a supply of natural antipathogens on hand to ratchet down the need for a high level immune system response.
  • Garlic
  • Olive leaf extract
  • Oil of wild mountain oregano
  • Grapefruit seed extract
• It's also a good idea to regularly supplement with natural immunomodulators that help to regulate immune response - moving a weak immune system up and calming an overactive immune system down. These include
  • L-carnosine
  • Colostrum
  • CMO