A 100% human written blog about holistic health and wellness, including the physical and metaphysical. At DonnyPodcast.com, you'll find many useful tips on how to relieve pain, prevent pain, improve posture, maintain a healthy immune system, and much more.
Since this blog takes a holistic approach to health and wellness, all factors are considered, including how our evironment, the health of our planet, and our thoughts affect our wellbeing.
With the COVID-19 pandemic firmly etched into our history, people are now more than ever aware of how important it is to maintain a strong immunity against the pathogens that are forever and pervasively lurking all around us. This interest in learning to strengthen the immune system is heightened by the fact that many of us have no choice but to put ourselves in environments where we spend hours in close quarters.
Maybe it's work. Perhaps it's some sort of social obligation we have. In any case, we find that we have no choice but to be very near other human beings and whatever pathogens they carry. Then, it must be inevitable; we're going to catch a cold. Or, at least that's what all the advertisements in the media would lead us to believe. Surely, there's no way to prevent illness and our only choice is to spend our hard-earned money on drugs that promise to at least ease the burden of our malady. Or, is there a way to prevent ourselves from getting sick?
What if I told you that there was a secret to improving immunity? What If that secret was absolutely free and already in your possession? Well, according to many studies, you can in fact prevent the majority of communicable illnesses using free, simple methods. The secret to preventing yourself from catching an illness such as a cold only requires good nutrition, adequate rest, and these 3 components:
Breaking a sweat
Cold Immersion
Breathing Exercises
In addition, some legitimate scholarly information even suggests that we can prevent some non-communicable diseases such as type II diabetes, obesity, and even cancer utilizing methods, such as fasting, that almost anyone can easily practice.
There is a lot of health information out there. Unfortunately, and especially on social media, an awful lot of the advice by which we're surrounded is either a fallacy or an outright falsehood. Even on some movie streaming sites, you'll find "documentaries" that claim to be giving you the truth about health-related issues while they dispense to you nothing other than propaganda backed by outdated or misinterpreted studies. In many cases, these "documentaries" even go as far as to take out of context one sentence from a scientific study and use that as their excuse to claim that a study supports their agenda.
You'll be relieved to know that the sources for the claims made in this post are scholarly sources, and they are cited via links. With that, let's explore the first of the 3 topics.
You may have heard that our skin has an "acid mantle" which serves to protect us from invading pathogens. According to an abstract on PubMed, the concept of the mantle is antiquated. However, the "acid" is legitimate. Skin with a healthy PH does seem to have a protective effect when it comes to defending against viruses and bacteria. Our sweat can certainly contribute to this PH. What's interesting is that when it comes to immunity, it's not the "mantle" nor the sweat that is the major contributing factor to boosting our immunity, it's the temperature.
If you get a fever of even 99.6 degrees Farenheight, you'll break a sweat. But, if you know anything about preparing food, you might be thinking, "So, what? You have to cook pork to an internal temperature of at least 145 degrees before it's safe to eat." Yes, that is true. What is also true is that if you're going to cook pork to an internal temperature of 145 degrees, it should rest for at least 3 minutes. And according to the USDA, achieving an internal temperature of 160 degrees makes the pork safe to consume without a rest time. You could safely consume a pork chop immediately (except that you might burn your mouth) if it has been heated internally to 160 degrees Farenheight.
This tidbit of culinary knowledge may seem to serve no purpose, at first. But, the clue is in the duration. Consider the coronavirus. According to an article found on infezmed.it, SARS-CoV-2 can survive 30 minutes at 60 degrees Celsius and only 1 minute at 80 degrees. The virus can survive 2 days at 37 degrees Celsius, 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. So, for starters, the virus that causes COVID-19 (as well as many other viruses and bacteria) is extremely sensitive to temperature. Now, consider that duration mentioned at the average healthy human body temperature of 98.6 degrees F. If pathogens are so drastically impacted by slight changes in temperatures, then the impact a single degree can have on a virus or bacteria can easily be the difference between your body easily wiping out a pathogen and becoming violently ill.
In addition, the temperature of the air we breathe can make a big difference in whether or not we become infected with a virus, according to a review from tandfonline.com. Breathing cool air makes us more susceptible to an upper respiratory tract infection than breathing warmer air (tandfonline). Therefore, if you increase your body temperature enough to break a sweat, that may also be sufficient to warm the air as it passes through your upper respiratory tract and prevent the majority of pathogens from infecting your body.
But, does it matter how we cause ourselves to break a sweat, in regard to achieving this goal of preventing infection? When I attended a seminar titled The Immune System: The Mind-Body Connection: Who gets sick and who stays well presented by Dr. Nick Hall, in response to that same question, Dr. Hall stated that it does not matter if you went to the gym to get a good sweat going or if your perspiration was caused by a sauna; what matters is that your body temperature has increased enough to cause you to break a sweat.
One important note is that breaking a sweat is a good preventative measure that isn't believed to do much good once nonspecific immunity has been triggered (once you've already come down with symptomatic infection). This method works very well before symptoms develop -- before you even know that you're sick. This asymptomatic phase of infection is when specific immunity is taking action to try to rid your body of pathogens without interfering.
Since you would never know if you've been exposed to an illness or that one is trying to take hold in your body before the symptoms develop, it's best to regularly get a good sweat going throughout the week. This is perhaps one reason why people who work out on a regular basis rarely seem to get sick. Even when physically active people get sick, they usually don't get it as bad as sedentary people.
Before cryotherapy became a household term, the entire notion that cold temperatures could be good for your body in any way was almost unheard of. Do you remember your parents or grandparents saying, "Don't go outside? It's too cold out there. You'll catch a cold!" That suggests that even several decades ago, it was commonly believed that being exposed to the cold was going to cause you to become sick with some kind of illness.
Imagine, then, that it's 1846 and you've contracted consumption, the illness we now call tuberculosis. Now that you've confirmed that you indeed have tuberculosis, a disease that was almost always a guaranteed death sentence, you decide that what's going to fix you is an ice bath.
That's exactly what one man by the name of Sebastian Kneipp did. Kneipp, at the time, was a student of theology and just happened to discover a book on cold water therapy written by Johann Siegmund Hahn. Since he had nothing to lose, anyway, and was very intrigued by the information he found in Hahn's book, Kneipp decided to be his own cold-water therapy guinea pig and do ice baths, affusions, and other methods of cold-water immersion. Amazingly, Kneipp felt his health improving right away and continued to stick to his ice baths until his tuberculosis was completely cured. Sebastian Kneipp went on to promote this healing practice and helped thousands of people and even thousands of cattle to recover from and prevent illnesses via cold-water therapy.
In the current era, we are lucky enough to have a man named Wim Hof.
Wim Hof has been a great contributor to the science of yoga, meditation, and cold-water therapy. He has allowed scientists to study him and his methods to see if his practices really work toward improving immunity, and if so, how do they work? Thanks to Wim Hof's accomplishments regarding holistic wellness and his openness to being tested by the scientific community, we now know a lot more about how cold immersion and breath work boost immunity.
Speaking of breathing exercises, that is our next tool for preventing illness. Breathing is something we take for granted. And it's so available to us and so continuously used that it may be hard to believe that something so pervasive in our lives could have such potent immune-boosting potential. What's most impressive about how breathing exercises improve immunity is they help our immune system in so many ways.
Breathing exercises similar to that of Wif Hof help with immunity by increasing the production of antibodies, changing blood pH, and reducing the severity of immune responses.
It turns out that pranayama is more than just a spiritual belief that certain structured ways of breathing can improve your health and prevent sickness. In one study, Wim Hof and 24 other participants were tested to see if controlled hyperventilation could reduce the severity of an infection. In the study, Hof and 12 participants used breathing exercises shortly after receiving an injection of an endotoxin. The injection would normally be expected to cause patients to show signs of illness, such as fever and chills. The other 12 participants were in the control group. In the control group, everyone had the expected outcome: feeling miserable. In contrast, Wim Hof and the 12 participants that underwent Hof's training all had very little if any response to the endotoxin. They basically did not "get sick" from it.
As mentioned before, there is no simple answer as to how breathing exercises prevent sickness. This is because breathing exercises are very powerful and cause multiple beneficial changes.
Another factor that affects a pathogen's ability to thrive in your body is pH. Typically, in acidic (low pH) conditions, viruses and bacteria are more successful and possibly even deadly. In a study found on frontiersin.org, they compared how the SARS-CoV-2 virus performed under conditions of varying pH, and the data suggests that the virus that causes COVID-19 thrives in low pH (acidic) conditions. The same study's data also demonstrated that the SARS-CoV-2 virus does not survive well in more alkaline environments.
This information on how increasing one's alkalinity helps to fight off infections is awesome because of how some breathing techniques have been shown to increase pH (boost alkalinity). The basic concept of it is that carbon dioxide is acidic compared to oxygen. Deep breathing techniques improve the alkalinity of your blood by constantly breathing in more oxygen while also continuously expelling carbon dioxide. You can find a thorough explanation of how Wim Hof's breathing method changes alkalinity in this YouTube video.
pH is a very powerful factor when it comes to dealing with pathogens of any sort. For instance, did you know that when brewing your own, homemade hard cider, the main factor that determines whether or not your batch will be overtaken by mold is pH? Hard cider and beer produce an acidic environment. Mold does not like an environment that is ideal for a homemade brew. So once a batch of hard cider becomes strong enough, mold has almost no chance against the environment in which the hard cider's yeast is thriving. I hope this example serves to drive home the point that if breathing techniques change the blood pH to a level of alkalinity that a virus can't handle, then breathwork is a very formidable adversary to pathogens of any sort.
One important note regarding breathing exercises:
I know that I mention Wim Hof's methods in this post a lot. However, that is only because they are a very simple and effective way to get the benefits associated with breathing exercises. There are many forms of breathing that involve deep, rapid breathing. Therefore any of these many breathing techniques should logically provide the benefit of improving your blood's alkalinity:
Tummo
Various Pranayama Exercises
Qigong Breathing
Therefore, please don't feel that there is only one right way to obtain these benefits. There are many ways to improve alkalinity via breathwork.
When we think of our immune system, one of the first things that may come to mind is the concept of antibodies. We have many different types of antibodies. One that is known to be directly impacted by breath exercises is immunoglobulin G (Igg).
In regard to Igg, breath work causes the body to produce more of these types of antibodies. The powerful thing about producing more Igg is that Igg is the most abundant antibody in our bodies. Approximately 70% or more of our antibodies are immunoglobulin G antibodies.
Antibodies help to conquer maladies silently, as part of the specific immune response. During the specific immune response, we don't know that we are sick. We feel completely healthy. So, boosting our antibodies is an awesome way to improve our immunity and possibly prevent us from ever having to deal with that nonspecific immune response, which makes us feel all the pain, inflammation, nausea, fever, and chills that we all hate about getting sick.
Breath work can improve well-being by reducing interleukin-6, which suggests that some therapeutic breathing practices reduce the severity of the signs and symptoms of illness as well as reduce the intensity of autoimmune conditions. One really great example is the case of COVID-19.
Typically, people who have died of COVID-19 have died after the "reflash" has taken effect. There's a phenomenon in which people recover from COVID and then feel fine. Shortly after, they feel sick again, and that's when things tend to take a turn for the worse. What's happening in the "reflash" is an immune response in which the body misidentifies some of its own cells as "the enemy" and the body attacks itself. This immune response causes a lot of inflammation and fluid build-up in the lungs of a COVID patient. This immune overreaction is known as a cytokine storm.
In regard to COVID and many other inflammatory conditions, the cytokine that is "storming" and flooding throughout the body is interleukin-6 or IL-6. The amount of IL-6 production is so key to predicting whether or not a patient would survive the SARS-CoV-2 virus that eventually doctors realized that, to improve the chances of survival, they needed to inhibit IL-6. Doctors came up with IL-6 inhibitors, such as tocilizumab, to administer to patients and those doctors began to have a high success rate.
This is where it gets really interesting. It turns out that breath work like that of Wim Hof actually inhibits IL-6. When doing bouts of deep, rapid, inspiration and expiration, the body produces more IL-10, which inhibits IL-6. In essence breathing exercises reduce the severity of the innate immune response, which is the response that causes all pain, damage, and even death associated with illnesses such as COVID-19.
What's more, is that this doesn't simply apply to only communicable viruses and bacteria. Since this affects how aggressively our immune system reacts in general, this has huge implications for any sort of inflammatory issue such as IBS, asthma, and just about any conditions that end in "itis." In other words, breathing exercises may help to ease the pain and problems associated with autoimmune conditions.
Anyone will tell you that, to be healthy, one should eat healthy foods. Some people may think that this only applies to having a good body composition or improving athletic performance. Others know that the health that a good diet provides includes that of the immune system. One thing that is commonly mentioned is that we should consume lots of vitamin C to prevent illness. But how much of this knee-jerk vitamin prescription, that we're so commonly bombarded with, legitimately holds water?
Vitamin C: Immune Booster or Myth?
Fairly recently, an article was published stating that a doctor got in trouble for pushing vitamin C (ascorbic acid) as a way to prevent the coronavirus. In yet another incident, a bogus study claimed that vitamin C could prevent sepsis and/or deaths related to sepsis infections. And according to an article found on Vox, in the 1970s a doctor by the name of Linus Pauling touted that people should consume 3000mg of ascorbic acid per day to help fend off pathogens. Yet, the recommended daily intake of ascorbic acid is about 90mg for men ages 19 and older. So, does vitamin C, in fact, actually do anything for immunity?
It turns out that, yes, ascorbic acid does help to promote the stimulation of antibodies, phagocytes, and neutrophils. Essentially, vitamin C does help to enhance the activity of our bodies' microscopic defenders. But this is not wherein the true strength of ascorbic acid lies. If you read the article linked in this paragraph, you'll learn that vitamin C promotes immunity by helping to maintain the health of the skin and the epithelial lining of mucus membranes.
In the IBP seminar that I cited earlier in this post, Dr. Hall mentioned this same concept. He explained that vitamin C doesn't do a whole lot for our actual microscopic army of germ killers; it actually does best in regard to keeping our mucus membranes intact. Hall explained that this might explain why some people take vitamin C and still get sick and others see a significant improvement in how well they do throughout the year.
The doctor specified that people who are very active and do a lot of long-distance running, for example, would tend to have compromised mucus membranes due to excessive, strenuous breathing. Therefore, people who participate in endurance activities would most likely be the ones to realize an improvement when they take vitamin C compared to seasons of the year where they don't supplement with ascorbic acid. So, if people who don't need vitamin C get sick if they don't take vitamin C, then what is it that causes them to fall ill?
Thanks to Dr. Pauling's massive marketing efforts in promoting 3000mg doses of vitamin C to the world, we still to this day think of vitamin C when we think about immune support. As previously written, there definitely are some good reasons why ascorbic acid would benefit the immune system. However, if you were to call one vitamin "the immunity vitamin," then that would probably be vitamin A (retinol, retinyl esters). Perhaps that's why Airborne "vitamin C" tablets actually contain 40% of the daily value of vitamin A.
You know how I said that vitamin C helps to maintain mucus membranes? Vitamin A also does that. in fact, an abstract found on academic.oup.com mentions that people with a deficiency of vitamin A suffer from "altered mucosal surfaces." In the same article, it is written that retinol helps lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell), helps responses to antigens, prevents cell death, and of course, restores the integrity of mucus membranes. So to answer the question "why do people who don't need vitamin C still get sick when they don't take vitamin C?": There could be many factors that contribute to their susceptibility to getting infected, and a lack of vitamin A might be one of those factors.
In regard to the diet and how it affects wellness, it's not all about making sure you eat all the right vitamins. It's definitely important to have enough nutrients of each kind in your diet. For example, a lack of B12 can cause pernicious anemia.
Pernicious anemia is a precursor to gastric carcinoma (stomach cancer). B12 is only found reliably in animal products, such as meat and dairy. This is why the demographics that get pernicious anemia most often are vegans and vegetarians. So, it is definitely important to get enough of all the vitamins that we need each day. But, we can get problems from consuming too much of anything as well.
For instance, vitamins A, D, E, and K are fat-soluble vitamins. Since they are absorbed in our fat, we can overdose on these vitamins and cause organ damage, even organ failure. Even water can be deadly if taken excessively. In 2008 a woman died from excessive water intake, despite the fact that she was hiking for miles that day. Also, many cancers rely on an excessive concentration of a carcinogen in order for cancer to have a chance to develop.
This carcinogen threshold is exactly why it's not always about what we're eating to maintain our health, but sometimes we have to consider that from which we should be abstaining. So, does this mean that we have to be super paranoid all the time and avoid anything that may be considered a carcinogenic food like it's the plague? I'd say that would be a very frustrating, if not impossible, way to live life.
It seems that every day another food formerly considered "safe" is being declared carcinogenic. For instance, french fries form acrylamides (a type of carcinogen) when they're fried. When potatoes reach temperatures of 248 degrees Fahrenheit, that's when they form acrylamides. So, that's pretty much any cooked potato ever, especially deep-fried potatoes.
Luckily, that's where we can learn to work with our lymphatic system to prevent most diet-based cancers. Our lymphatic system is another part of our immune system that is constantly working all around the clock to get rid of waste products from our bodies. The lymphatic system can only work so fast. Therefore it can only remove a certain amount of waste per day. With that considered, what can we do about trying to prevent cancer?
Since our lymphatic system can only remove so much toxin per day, our best bet is to provide less toxin than the lymphatic system is removing. The way to do this is by consuming less of the offending toxins. A very practical and efficient way to accomplish this goal is to practice intermittent fasting (Ingentaconnect). Intermittent fasting is simply setting aside a window of time in your waking hours within which you will not eat anything. In some IF methods, you can make coffee with grass-fed butter and medium chain triglycerides added to help stave off hunger while you fast.
To explain how fasting helps you to steer clear of exceeding carcinogenic thresholds, let's take a look at a hypothetical situation:
Let's say there's a carcinogen in your diet that needs to meet a concentration of 6000 ppm for cancer to be able to begin formation in your body. And, let's imagine that your lymphatic system clears out about 2000 ppm of this carcinogen per day. Let's also pretend that you found out that you consume enough of a carcinogen on a daily basis that your concentration in your blood rises by 3000 ppm per day. That means that every day that passes makes you 1000 ppm closer to meeting that cancerous threshold. Also, that means that you'll meet that mark in about 6 days.
What if this is happening even though you're already eating as clean as you possibly can? Then what can possibly be done? Well, that's where fasting is very powerful. Intermittent fasting is very comfortable compared to other styles of fasting. And during your non-eating window, your lymphatic system is still getting rid of the waste while you are not contributing at all to the lymphatic system's workload. So essentially, if your blood concentration of our hypothetical carcinogen was nearing 6000 ppm and you started to practice intermittent fasting, maybe you're body would be completely clean of these undesirable toxins in a matter of days, or even hours.
Unfortunately, this information on fasting really does seem like a secret. I once attended a seminar about children's health and one doctor who attended that seminar via Zoom continuously recommended that overweight kids in bad health had to eat more of this and more of that to try to get more vitamins. During that entire seminar, which was largely about preventing childhood obesity and other diseases, not once did any doctor ever recommend any form of fasting. I speculate that the reason why fasting is such a well-kept secret is that there's no money in selling the idea that something you can do for free can prevent major diseases.
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Thanks for checking out my blog. I hope these 3 secrets to immunity help you to prevent yourself from catching communicable illnesses. And I hope the information on fasting helps to prevent other health problems.
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