Art Youmans, “Immune System Overview, 7 November 2017
Did you know that simple fungal infections, like athlete’s foot, jock itch, ringworm, thick & yellowed toe nails, yeast infections etc. can lead to full body infections, limb amputations & even sudden brain death?
A weak immune system can allow a simple skin fungus, for example, to spread its way into the brain, killing you, suddenly. 70-80% of your immune system is found in your gut.
Your immune system starts with your mouth, where digestive enzymes begin to digest your food. Don’t wolf down your food. Chew it slowly, allowing the mouth’s enzymes to begin pre-digesting your food. Next, the stomach’s digestive enzymes break down your food & move it into the small intestine to process nutrients into your bloodstream, then moves what’s left into the large intestine & through the colon to the anus. In addition to your mouth, stomach, small & large intestines, the immune system also includes all organs that assist digestion, like the liver & spleen & protective body disease-killers like bone marrow (killer cells) & the thymus (an organ that produces disease-killing T-cells.).
As you age, your immune system weakens & eventually, what would be only a running nose when you’re thirty becomes deadly pneumonia at age 80.
An intelligent human should wish to have a strong immune system. If you’re very lucky, you could be genetically pre-disposed to a long life of 80 or more years, even if you abuse tobacco & booze & eat an unhealthy junk food diet. This is about 25% or less of the U.S. population.
However, the life span of 75% of us is determined by our lifestyle…how reckless we are (speeding a motorcycle on wet pavement & not wearing a helmet), not using tobacco or illegal drugs & what toxic products we eat & drink.
Use common sense to determine how to strengthen your immune system as you age. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure this out. My suggestions include:
Eliminate risky stuff from your life, like tobacco, stress, anti-bacterial products, heavy metals that are in many products, sugar-and-sugar substitute drinks, like sodas & booze. Add good stuff to your lifestyle, like exercise, vitamins, minerals, herbs, fresh vegetables, grass-fed meat, water without fluoride & heavy metals, & at least 7 hours sleep a night. Read as many articles as possible about keeping your immune system strong. Without a strong immune system, you’re a walking dead man or woman.
According to a report by Joseph Mercola D.O., do the following if you wish to have a strong immune system: “Avoiding processed foods, grains & sugars will go a long way in strengthening your immune system. Below, I have outlined what I consider to be the absolute best foods you can eat (for a strong immune system.). Unpasteurized grass-fedorganic milk If you don’t have access to raw milk, use high-quality whey protein from grass-fed cows. Fermented foods. Like sauerkraut, yoghurt, pickles, natto etc Raw, organic eggs from free-range chickens Grass-fed beef Coconuts & coconut oil, both organic Blueberries & raspberries Mushrooms Chlorella (an algae that carries toxins like mercury, out of the body) Propolis (bee resin that is a antimicrobial) Teas, like Green tea & Matcha Herbs & spices like garlic, cloves, cinnamon. Black pepper turmeric, licorice, oregano, black pepper, Artemisia etc. (SOURCE: “Top 12 Foods For Healthy Immune System Response,” Mercola.com)
In summary, Dr. Mercola believes that if the food or drink is processed by a manufacturer or a farmer, in a can, bag, bottle, or shrink-wrapped in the supermarket, it can harm your immune system. Dr. Mercola prefers you avoid taking herbs & spices in pill form & get, for example, your garlic from cooking with it & cinnamon from sprinkling it on your food. Buy your food, like sauerkraut, in a health food store, if possible, rather than at a supermarket.
Like in politics, our food supply is so corrupted with contamination & fake news that the public must do its own research & make its own choices.
All you can do is to try to buy your food, locally, or grow it organically or buy it fresh & unprocessed by manufacturers.
Never trust eating packaged food prepared by a manufacturer including anything from a can. The contents are usually filled with additives & usually overcooked unless you buy organic foods at a health food store. The canned organic food may also be overcooked, but should be less harmful to your body & be less stressful to your immune system.
Since you already know that 70-80% of your immune system is located in the gut, it’s obvious that any intelligent person would wish to be constipation-free for a healthy gut, so their immune system could operate at 100% efficiency protecting you from disease.
According to Mark Stengler M.D.” a quality probiotic can give you much needed reinforcements, but ONLY if you get the right strains in the right amounts.
“A new study confirms that one of the most effective is Bifidobacterium longum(which I call the “Genesis strain” because it’s one of the first to colonize the gut, as well as several strains of Lactobaccillus.” (SOURCE: Mark Stengler newsletter, 9/3/2017.)
I take probiotics with every meal. They’re not cheap. Cost’s about 1 buck a pill.
Remember that taking antibiotics kills both good & bad bacteria in your gut. It may take up to 2 years to restore all your good bacteria in your gut. My advice would be to double your probiotic dosage for 2 years after antibiotics usage of two weeks or more.
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Gut & Immune System Story 2
Art Youmans, “Chronic Inflammation,” 27 November, 2018
The purpose your immune system is to kill pathogens, bacteria, viruses & any other intruder in the body.
Anything that causes a Autoimmune disease is the result of an imbalance of the immune system, causing it to attack the same body that it should be protecting.
The primary goal of a healthy continuous (chronic) inflammatory response, like alcohol or a sugar-filled scoop of ice cream eaten or sipped every day for weeks or months, can trigger an autoimmune disease. Even if you may be genetically-predisposed to an autoimmune disease, it’s important to discover your trigger of chronic inflammation…the source of most autoimmune disease. Dementia is currently considered an autoimmune disease by many doctors.
There are more than 80 different types of autoimmune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis (RA), type 1 & 2 diabetes, lupus, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, multiple sclerosis (MS), Crohn’s disease, eczema, & dementia.
By knowing the trigger or triggers to an autoimmune disease, you can take corrective measures to either heal it or prevent it.
INFLAMATION Acute inflammation occurs when you cut your finger or scrape your knee. A redness & swelling at the injured part of your body is the result of your immune system dispatching an army of white blood cells to kill the bacteria & other harmful invaders. Acute inflammation & its automatic immune system response, prevents other infections, like the flu or pneumonia from killing you.
Chronic inflammation occurs when your digestive system is repeatedly exposed to something, like sugar or gluten, both of which cause inflammation. If the immune system cannot stop the inflammation from the trigger (e.g. sugar or sugar substitute or gluten), the immune system becomes fatigued or overburdened or it might malfunction & start attacking itself.
Hashimoto’s disease is an example of such a chronic inflammation attack against the thyroid gland. Diabetes is a chronic inflammation attack on the pancreas.
An intelligent person should wish to protect themselves by eliminating any or all substances that could be triggers of a chronic inflammatory response in their body
.
IDENTIFY POSSIBLE TRIGGERS OF CHRONIC INFLAMMATION
SUGGESTION: Autoimmune diseases tend to run in families, so ask family members what their triggers are.
Mold, whether in food or your home, is a trigger for autoimmune disease. A healthy body may be able to handle exposure to toxic mold until infection, old age or another trigger, weakens your immune system & an autoimmune disease can result. Parasites, like pinworms, tapeworms, hookworms & roundworms etc. can cause inflammation in your intestines & cause a leaky gut.
Over 50% of folks in the Western World have parasites. Lyme disease, usually caused by a tick bite, can get into your cells & trigger an autoimmune disease. The tick bite can also transmit parasites, viruses & other infections that cause inflammation. Everyday exposure to toxic chemicals damages our immune system, limiting its ability to protect against chronic inflammation.
We eat food sprayed with toxic pesticides. Every time we drink from a plastic cup we’re consuming chemicals leeching from the plastic. Soaps, shampoos, toothpaste etc. all contain chemicals that seep into our body through the skin & disrupt our endocrine system. Household cleaning products, exhaust car fumes & the water you drink, all add to the toxic load on your immune system. Practically every pharmaceutical drug causes inflammation. This is because most (if not all) pharmaceutical drugs are synthetic, petroleum-based & toxic to the body.
These Big Pharma drugs treat your symptoms, & 99.9% of the time, never cures you of anything. A fatty liver causes irritation to the body & inflammation. If the liver is bombarded with too many toxins, or is unable to filter properly because of a nutritional deficiency, the liver begins to store toxins it can’t filter creating a fatty liver.
When the liver can’t store more toxins, the excess toxins permeate to the rest of the body creating inflammation & exhausting the immune system. Remember that a junk food diet when you’re a young kid can cause a fatty liver when you’re an old kid.
Hormonal imbalances can lead to many autoimmune & thyroid conditions that your doctor should check for in blood tests. Many studies show that electromagnetic radiation from WIFI, cell phones & even hair dryers can cause stress in your body & trigger an immune system response that weakens the immune system.
My advice is to keep your turned-off cell phone at least 6.5 feet from your brain at night. I just bought a red “SafeSleeve Anti-Radiation RFID case” for my IPhone 7 on Amazon.com for $49.95 +tax & shipping. (This highly-rated anti-radiation case blocks up to 99% of ELF & RF cell phone radiation.)
Heavy metal, like aluminum, mercury, copper, lead, cadmium & arsenic, damage brain neurons & causes inflammation. Why the government allows aluminum in antiperspirants, processed cheese, aluminum cooking pans, baking mixes, vaccines & hundreds of other products is a mystery to me. Mercury & aluminum are used as a base in most government vaccines, lead impairs the brain, & arsenic is found in chicken feed to fatten commercial chickens. Cadmium is found mostly in cigarettes & plastic & can cause kidney damage. Copper is found in some chocolate, shellfish & coffee & causes loss of sexual interest & nervous system problems.
My advice is to never cook with either aluminum or copper pans. Avoid GMO food if possible. Although not yet proven, GMOs have been linked to autism & cancer by tests done in Europe, where GMOs are banned in most countries as a cancer-causing agent. Chemicals used on GMO crops, such as glyphosate in Roundup, are linked to liver disease & birth defects.
Wash all non-organic fruit & vegetables in special Fruit & Vegetable washes available in bottles in most health food stores. Water alone won’t wash off glyphosate, which adheres like Velcro, from GMO fruit & vegetables.
A FIRST STEP IN FIGHTING AUTOIMMUNE DISEASES WHETHER YOU ALREADY HAVE AN AUTOIMUNNE DISEASE OR IF ONE IS IN YOUR FUTURE
Henry Ford didn’t reinvent the wheel & neither should you.
Ford did research & discovered the assembly-line technique which was long-used in the meat packing industry. With it, Ford cut the time to build his Model T auto from 12.5 hours to just 93 minutes.
The father of modern medicine, Hippocrates, also did his own research into preventing disease & minimizing symptoms cause by diseases. “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food,” he wrote around 400 B.C.
My advice to you, below, is to be like Henry Ford & Hippocrates:
“Research steps now to prevent inflammation which makes you susceptible to disease. If you already have any disease, including an autoimmune disease, research the disease online & at the library, ask your doctors for advice (besides Big Pharma drugs) to find ways of either reversing the disease or minimizing the symptoms caused by the disease.”
To start you along your quest for knowledge, I have listed below foods that have anti-inflammatory effects as well as those that wreak havoc on your body & can contribute to your getting an autoimmune disease.
POTENT ANTI-INFLAMATORY FOODS (Good for you) Berries. Beans & Lentils, Greens like Kale, Spinach, Broccoli, Seeds, Sprouts, Onions, Garlic, Scallions, Shallots, Leaks, Chives, acai, turmeric & Ginger. All these foods contain special chemical compounds that decrease inflammation & pain. Practically every fruit & vegetable is anti-inflammatory as long as it isn’t processed by a manufacturer who will usually add sugar & other inflammation-causing toxic ingredients for longer shelf life. Eating fruit & vegetables raw gives you better nutrition.
Pesticides, herbicides & fungicides on fruits & vegetables can trigger many autoimmune diseases over time. If possible, buy or grow organic fruit & vegetables, that shouldn’t have any pesticides, herbicides or fungicides on them.
Phytonutrients in berries, vitamins, minerals & fiber in fruit & vegetables work together (synergistically) to promote health & lower disease risk,
According to Bob Livingston’s alerts on September 1, 2018, “Anthocyanins, the compounds that give cherries their brilliant red color, are anti-inflammatories 10 times stronger than ibuprofen and aspirin. A few cherries every day can keep inflammation & gout away.
ELIMINATE INFLAMATORY FOODS (Bad for you) Avoid commercial bread with gluten in it & most processed food you buy in containers or bottles in the supermarket. Sugar is inflammatory, so remember that catsup is 15% sugar, many breads are 10% sugar & even white potatoes have a high glycemic (sugar) value.
This is only basic information, to help you both avoid disease or to possibly reverse it if you already suffer from a form of arthritis, dementia or any other disease. Eliminating inflammation is the key to preventing many diseases & reversing existing diseases.
SOURCE: “Autoimmune How-to-Guide,” Jonathan Otto, 2018
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Gut & Immune System 3
Art Youmans, “pH Levels in the Body,” 24 July 2018
In my opinion, maintaining an alkaline pH level in your body is the best thing you can do to ensure you’ll live a long & disease-free life.
Your body can either have an alkaline pH level or an acidic pH level. Unless you have a death wish, you should never want to have an acidic pH level.
Acidic pH levels promote all types of deadly diseases, like cancer, which overwhelm your immune system & can kill you.
When your Mother told you to eat your vegetables (alkaline food), she really knew what she was talking about.
BACKGROUND
Otto Warburg M.D., a German, received the 1931 Nobel Prize for proving that low oxygen levels in cells causes cancer. Warburg’s later studies with Dr. Reich proved that a lack of oxygen & calcium & depleted hydrogen pools were caused by a low pH (AKA acidosis) in the body.
As your pH level drops to 7.0 & below, your body becomes acidic until you reach a condition called acidosis, which is a deadly, silent time bomb. When this happens, calcium & hydrogen are pulled out of your bones, blood & tissues.
Next, your oxygen level drops due to a lack of hydrogen, leaving you tired & fatigued, which allows fungus, mold, parasites, bacteria (candida), & viral infections (cancer) to flourish throughout your body.
The pH level is so important, it mystifies me why no doctor, except my urologist, has ever checked my pH level with a simple test strip dipped in a small cup of urine.
My guess is that most doctors are trained, today, to manage disease, not to prevent it. I measure my own pH level every few months & have raised it from an acidic 6.5 to a a still acidic 6.75 (2 months later), drinking 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar & 1 teaspoon of honey mixed together in a small amount of water, before bedtime, daily.
Apparently, raising the pH level will be a lengthy process for me. Because of this acidity, a skin cancer grew on my right shinbone below the knee. It will be surgically removed in about 2 weeks.
The pH scale is a logarithmic scale that runs from 1 to 14. A pH level of 7.2 to 7.4 is ideal for a human being.
Every time you eat food, it’s broken down by gastric juices in the stomach. These gastric juices have a pH 1 or 2, which eventually returns to a resting level of pH 4 or 5. Little hairs (cilia) next move the partly-digested food into the alkaline small intestine for further
digestion.
It’s wise to minimize your intake of meats, which are highly acidic, to about 6-ounces (1 hamburger patty) a day & load up on alkaline vegetables, nuts, seeds & fruit.
IMMUNE SYSTEM
Your primary immune system is made up of killer T-cells antibodies, macrophages etc. that neutralize potentially-harmful invaders, like cancer cells.
Your secondary immune system is your fungal immune system, which, in an adult is 6 to 8 pounds of friendly bacteria, known as Soil Based Organisms (SBO’s), located in the lower gut. In a healthy adult, the SBO’s comprise 85% of all friendly organisms in the bowel. The remaining 15% is normally fungus & yeast.
However, because of junk-food diets, many sickly folks have the ratio of good bacteria to fungus reversed. They have 85% fungus & yeast & only 15% SBO’s.
A fungus, like Candida, can cause diabetes, constipation, Diarrhea, Thyroid problems,
Leaky Gut Syndrome, Acidosis, Bloating, Gas, Cancer, Brain Fog, Depression, Anemia, Acid Reflux, kidney failure, heart problems & other bad stuff.
To have a chance to reverse your good bacteria to fungus/yeast ratio, from 15% to 85% to 85% to 15%, you must first normalize your pH level to alkaline, drink lots of water & eat an alkaline diet. Drink half your weight in ounces, every day. (e.g. If you weigh 150 pounds, drink 75 ounces of water a day.)
Fungus can be difficult to eliminate. Your doctor will probably try to eliminate the fungus with drugs, but the fungus will return unless you normalize your pH level from acidic to alkaline.
If you have a fungus problem, you might get additional information about eliminating this problem from The Wolfe Clinic in Tennessee, a medical clinic that specializes in products to keep you healthy with an alkaline pH level. Reach them at thewolfeclinic.com
Refer to my May 22, 2018 newsletter, “Preventing Dementia,” Part 1 of 2, for further information about using apple cider vinegar to raise your pH level from acidic to alkaline.
You can buy pH strips either at a large, local pharmacy or online. If out of stock, most pharmacies will offer to re-order pH strips & have them in 3 days for you.
Next week’s (July 31st) newsletter will discuss skin cancer, the most common of all human cancers.
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Gut & Immune System 4
Art Youmans “Poetry” Immune System 26 April, 2016
The immune system starts diminishing
When your age hits fifty-five
If your IQ is over sixty-nine
You’ll take three steps to stay alive.
1st step should be to lessen stress
Which kills the immune system fast
So change your ways, Buster
, If you want your life to last!
2nd step is improve your diet
No sugar & no high-glycemic foods, you hear!
Eliminate potatoes, cereals, bread…all grains
No fried food, no junk food, no booze or beer!
3rd step is to increase your exercise
Fat folks stress their bodies, which is no surprise
Too much weight harms the knees and heart
Being overweight is neither smart nor wise.
Don’t be a dummy…Sister & Buddy
Be smart and get to work!
Change your lifestyle, America!
Please don’t be an absolute Jerk!
On the bottom of this page are facts I used to write this poem. These facts in my poem were supplied by Fred Pescatore M.D. from page 3 of his recent e-mail newsletter.
Additionally, I’m investigating Human Growth Hormone (HGH), a miracle amino acid protein that strengthens the immune system & reverses aging by stimulating the pituitary gland to produce the same HGH it produced in childhood. By age 30, our HGH levels are about 20% of what they were before age 20. HGH levels normally fall another 12-15% per decade after 30, so you may have little HGH left by age 80
My 1ststep is to read a 1998 used book I just ordered on Amazon.com (for 1 cent plus postage) by Dr. Ronald Klatz, “Grow Young with HGH.” I found the paperback listed on the www.lifeextension.com website, where I buy many of my vitamins & minerals.
I prefer “Lypo-Spheric” (enteric) coatings on pills which protect the pills from high acidic digestive enzymes in the stomach. Any HGH pills I buy will have enteric coatings to guarantee passage intact to the alkaline small intestine, from which the contents move directly into the bloodstream to strengthen the immune system.
Always remember that your health knowledge plus a decent doctor can add years of healthy & pain-free living to your life! Never stop learning!
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