By Dr. Mikael Brucker, ND, LAc, Yang Institute of Integrative Medicine
Immune cells concentrate in the areas where our bodies interface with the outside world including: our lungs, digestive tract, and skin. At these boundaries, our immune system is the gate keeper.
Introduction and Public Health Advisory
We are in the midst of a public health crisis. It is a confusing time that is evolving by the day. We are also in the midst of an information age, in which we are not limited by our access to information but our ability to interpret it.
Much of the information disseminated concerns the virus and how limit your exposure. Much less has been written about the other side of the infection - us and our immune system. As a Naturopathic Doctor with expertise in natural medicine and the immune system, I will be writing a series of articles to empower individuals with an understanding of immune health and measures they can take to optimize their immune function preventatively and acutely.
I am not an epidemiologist or virologist and do not have expertise in public health. I encourage you to listen to the advisories and guidelines set forth by public health officials. These measures are only effective if everyone listens and follows them. These times require collective efforts to help curb the spread of the virus if not only for ourselves, then also for alleviating stress from the hospital system, and our friends and family who are more vulnerable to the virus.
Conceptual Overview of the Immune system from a Naturopathic Doctor
The concept of the immune systems is a bit confusing. Unlike the heart or the brain, a centralized structure that we can refer to when discussing the immune system does not exist. The single best marker of the immune system is warmth. When evaluating immune function in my patients, I assess whether there are areas of too much or too little warmth.
Warmth breaks down and regenerates tissue. Outwardly, in excess, we get inflamed red blotchy skin, eczema, or allergies. If the warmth is focused too intensely inward, it concentrates on our internal organs and we encounter autoimmune conditions such as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis or type 1 diabetes.
Cold forms and preserves tissue. In excess, the body stiffens and obstructs physiology. It can result in muscle stiffness, asthma, or chronic pain conditions like fibromyalgia. The key to a healthy immune systems is a balanced distribution of warmth and cold throughout the body - top to bottom, inside and out.
Figure 1: Finnish Heatmap study correlating body sensation maps to emotionsl 1
The physiological gestures of warm and cold are also carriers of psycho-emotional meaning. Warmth gestures the breaking down or dissolving boundaries. It is associated with feelings of unity and love. Imagine the warmth you feel gathering with your family for a shared meal. Cold caries the gesture of separation or of erecting boundaries. It is associated with feelings of isolation and fear. Imagine the cold sweat you may generate when you recoil from an encounter with a wild animal.
Immune cells concentrate in the areas where our bodies interface with the outside world including: our lungs, digestive tract, and skin. At these boundaries, our immune system is the gate keeper of our castle, which is analogous to our body. The gate keeper is tasked with identifying and coordinating how to react to each of the visitors approaching our castle. Coldly reject each visitor at the gate, and your castle crumbles from lack of supplies. Warmly usher each visitor in, and the castle becomes overrun with unseemly guests not aligned with the mission of your kingdom. They may cheat, lie, and pillage the resources from your castle.
A diligent gate keeper knows if and how to incorporate each visitor. Ushering in the friends, rejecting foes, and directing those with attributes of both friend and foe to the proper place. The gate keeper becomes skilled at identifying and directing visitors only through practice, through the experience of years and years of learned encounters.
Every once in a while though, a visitor arrives that does not resemble anything the gate keeper has previously encountered. In these instances, the gate keeper is at increased risk for not reacting appropriately, unsure to what degree this visitor is friend or foe.
Our immune system is faced with such a challenge with the novel coronavirus. This virus does not resemble anything our immune systems has previously encountered. Our immune system does not have a trained response and is forced to improvise. Some vulnerable individuals’ immune systems are either overreacting, burning down their castle so to speak, or underreacting, allowing the virus to overmultiply in the respiratory tract.
The vast majority of immune systems adapt to novel encounters like the coronavirus. After having overcome coronavirus infection, you will be able process subsequent exposures with a lot less symptomatology. Most likely, you won’t even notice a repeat exposure. Your immune system has learned how to identify and react to this now familiar visitor; it has also more intelligent and strong for working through the previous viral challenge.
In the next sections I will focus on natural remedies and practice you can adopt to:
- Proactively prepare your immune system before you encounter the virus
- Support your immune system if you are acutely symptomatic
Work Cited:
Nummenmaa L, Glerean E, Hari R, Hietanen JK. Bodily maps of emotions. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2014;111(2):646-651. doi:10.1073/pnas.1321664111
