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Thyroid, Adrenals, & Immunity – A Clear Path to Surviving Swine Flu

The myopic public health machine is clinging to their anti-viral drugs and future experimental vaccines as their great hope for minimizing a potential swine flu pandemic.  It is a paradigm of assistance that woefully falls short.  What the public really needs is credible immune system information that not only helps overcome the fear of this flu, but also provides tangible steps to take in addition to hand washing, hygiene, and reducing potential exposure.  In the case of a pandemic, everyone will be exposed.  The million dollar question is: What determines immune system fitness?

Our bodies are used to fighting infection and we have very advanced weaponry or we as a race would not have survived earlier battles.  Your body is the superpower, not the virus.  Do you know how to unleash your potential?

Fundamental to any aspect of health is energy.  You must have energy to do anything and you must have lots of energy to effectively prevent an infection or to mount an efficient immune response.  Your immune system in a time of need is an energy intense operation.

Your brain coordinates your deployment of energetic resources during a time of infection, as commander and chief.  The language it uses is heavily reliant on a system of short-lived immune system signals called cytokines.  Cytokines are communication molecules that share connections between your nervous system, your immune system, your thyroid function, and your adrenals. 

Cytokines are involved in inflammation and anti-inflammation.  Those who have so far died from this new swine flu have suffered from a “cytokine storm” leading to mortality – meaning that this critical system of natural function was unable to keep up with the demands of the infection.  Why?

Intruder Alert

Just as you would be somewhat panicked by a stranger entering your home, your body sends out 911 signals to the command and control center of your brain (hypothalamus gland) once an infection has been identified.  In essence, your body is preparing for battle and is going on high alert.  This initial process is highly inflammatory and is a vital part of ramping up your defense system.  It is initiated by cytokine signals cross-talking between immune cells and your hypothalamus gland.

Because this process is highly inflammatory your brain knows that it will need an extra supply of anti-inflammatory lubrication to keep things cooled off, like making sure you have enough oil in your car engine to keep it running faster without overheating.  In your body, this function is performed by your adrenal glands.  Thus, cytokines directly talk to your hypothalamic/pituitary/adrenal axis and tell it to ramp up production of inflammation-quenching lubricant (cortisol). 

What happens if you are already low on adrenal lubricant?  In other words, what if you are already stressed out, tired, fatigued, anxious, irritable, and in a general trend of wear and tear?  Answer – there is no way you will make lubricant in the proper amount because your system is either out of shape or already running on a credit card that is overdrawn.

This problem is what would set you up for being more at risk for a cytokine storm.  During an intense infection your body must balance the need to make highly inflammatory compounds with the need to protect your body from the inflammation.  If the infection is intense, you must make a lot of inflammatory compounds.  If you don’t have an adequate supply of relaxation reserves because you have already spent them on day-to-day living, you could be in trouble.

This may be a wake up call for many people to find better balance in their lives, especially at the time of a potential pandemic flu.  Depleting yourself from stress or pushing it too hard in general, especially when combined with a lack of quality sleep, puts your immune system at a significant disadvantage.

The best way to test the health of this system is to do some aerobic exercise.  In this case the stress of the exercise actually activates the same higher need for anti-inflammatory reserves – raising your cortisol up to five times normal resting value.  Cortisol at this level then activates endorphins and you get a runner’s high (or at least feel refreshed).  Too much exercise will tire you out and those who aren’t fit enough to exercise are also of questionable fitness to fight an infection.

By the way, if you feel on the verge of fighting a bug, cut back on intensity or eliminate aerobics until you are done fighting the infection.  This is because the aerobics demand is too intense when your body needs to also activate an immune response.

There are many nutrients you can use to boost adrenals, including a high protein breakfast, pantethine, Q10, magnesium, B complex, and vitamin C.  There are also numerous nutrients that can help your adrenals quench inflammation, including quercetin, bromelain, and curcumin – to name a few.  Of course, there is no making up for a lack of sleep.  For a more comprehensive discussion please see my adrenal and sleep health topic pages.

Energetic Competence

The next issue of great importance is the function of your thyroid system, as it facilitates the pace at which energy can be produced by your body.  Many individuals struggle with poorly functioning thyroid and this is a clear weakness that can handicap available energy, especially during a time of increased energy need such as fighting an infection.

Relatively new science has pinpointed how the toxins coming from infections are a major challenge to your thyroid function.  This information shows that when toxic infectious particles are sensed by your hypothalamus gland, thyroid function is progressively turned down in response to the initial inflammatory gene signals that are needed to fight the infection.  This is most likely a survival system in and of itself, as energy needs to be diverted to immune function and away from general metabolic needs.  However, it appears a line can be crossed where too much toxicity can simply crash your thyroid function – creating a major problem for immune function.  Additionally, infections directly inflame the thyroid gland itself.

This inflammatory problem will be magnified by pre-existing thyroid problems, especially in those with pre-existing elevated thyroid autoantibodies.  Even sluggish thyroid issues are a problem, as they will handicap general energy production.  By the time a person has elevated thyroid autoantibodies (5% of the population), it means that the anti-inflammatory reserves of the adrenals are also already lacking. 

Leptin resistance causes a similar thyroid problem in your brain, as your body gets the false notion you are starving and so turns down your metabolism by deactivating TRH (thyrotropin releasing hormone).  This means that following the Leptin Diet is a really good idea so as not to be placing your thyroid function in a state of pre-existing stress based on how you are eating. 

The infection anti-thyroid response targets the same TRH signal in your hypothalamus, but is orchestrated by non-food signal inputs.  There are special glial cells called tanycytes that line key areas within your hypothalamus gland.  These cells sense the infection particles and actually producing extra T3 within your hypothalamus gland only, which makes your brain think your body has enough T3, at which point your brain turns down TRH production and consequently reduces thyroid output for the rest of your body.  Interestingly, this is one reason why people with sub-clinical or chronic low grade viral infections typically have sluggish thyroid problems.

Another significant thyroid stress is the toxicity of the drugs used to fight viral infections.  While no specific studies exist on Tamiflu and thyroid, the fact that Tamiflu causes mental derangement in a percentage of children is evidence that it interferes with normal adrenal and thyroid function.  We know that other viral therapies, as applied to HIV or hepatitis, can be very toxic to the thyroid.

This means that viral drug treatment is likely to take a toll on the thyroid anyway, so it is a good idea to ideally have your system working so well that you don’t get sick and if you should have to battle the flu you want to keep your thyroid as functional as possible.

Strength training exercise helps to condition your thyroid to work better, as one final end point of thyroid metabolism is to combine smoothly with growth hormone to rejuvenate muscle recovery.  It is an especially good idea to have fit muscles going into any potential flu pandemic, as your muscles act as a bank account of protein that your body will use in a time of need to make antibodies.  The more muscle you have, the better chance of survival.  I have noticed for many years that when people keep their muscles fit they are much less prone to getting sick.

Please consult my thyroid health topic page for more information.

Summary

Your immune systems need to activate various germ-killing troops in order to defend you. Fundamental to this task is having energy on demand, much like having money in savings for a time of need.  You help promote this savings by living in harmony with your hormonal systems.

Eating in harmony with leptin helps your adrenals, thyroid, and immunity.  If you aren’t aerobically fit or muscularly fit, then there is no better time to get started.  Even if the U.S. is spared the swine flu this summer, there is a high probability it will be back next fall.  This might give you a little extra time to be better prepared.

Maintaining optimal function of your adrenals and thyroid are key to many aspects of health, including immunity.

The New Swine Flu – Why Are Younger Adults Dying?

Up to this point most deaths from the new swine flu have occurred in Mexico, striking indiscriminately at young and old.  What alarms health officials is the ability of this flu to kill seemingly healthy young adults, which is a prerequisite for a pandemic.  I have received a number of questions from concerned individuals wondering if boosting their immune system would make them more susceptible to a problem, a question I will cover in detail.

First, let’s put what we do know in perspective.  Many of the Mexicans who have died are lower income individuals living in unsanitary and crowded conditions which are ideal breeding grounds for germs.  It has been reported that they cannot afford to take time off work to seek medical care.  Their diets are often lacking in key nutrients that would help the immune system behave normally.  Nevertheless, there is still serious and legitimate concern that young adults can be killed by this flu.

The first death in the U.S. occurred in a 23-month-old Mexican infant who was in Texas at the time of outbreak.  What has concerned health authorities here is that they were unable to save the child despite the use of anti-viral drugs, breathing assistance, and the best care that could be mustered.

The flu pandemic of 1918, also a swine flu, struck many young adults.  Only recently did scientists figure out that this earlier swine flu was able to hijack the host’s own immune response and ramp up the inflammatory aspect of that immune response and thereby increase its level of attack in a healthy person.

It is important to understand that your immune system is not just one type of response, it is many.  If you get the flu you absolutely must have the energy and nutrition to be able to make antibodies.  The speed and efficiency you can do this will determine the severity of infection and your odds of survival.

For example, in cases where humans contracted the bird flu in Asia, if they began making enough antibodies to the infection by day 7 they lived, if they didn’t start mounting an effective response by day 9 they died.  This pattern appears similar to the current reports of people dying in Mexico – by the 9th day of a significant battle it is too late unless your own immune system has kicked into gear.  In this context you must have the nutritional horsepower to fuel antibody production or you could be in for a very unpleasant experience.

Another aspect of your immune response is its initial inflammatory reaction – which is of course normal.  This is one aspect of immunity that occurs before antibodies are made, and is part of the process that leads to antibodies being made.  It is possible for a younger or healthier person to have a more exaggerated inflammation response than an elderly person, infant, or person with compromised immunity.  In this scenario, inflammatory cytokines may become their own problem – think of this as a “cytokine storm.”  This was the case with the similar flu in 1918.

This problem does not mean that you should not attempt to naturally boost your immune system.  It does mean that you should use nutrients as part of your immune support protocol that reduce inflammation so as to help “put a lid” on how much inflammation is generated.  The single best nutrient for this is quercetin, which has been proven to help flu_susceptibility/” title=”prevent the flu“>prevent the flu.  However, there are many nutrients that are anti-inflammatory in nature and any of them would be helpful, including the fresh fruit and vegetables that should be part of your diet.

It is also important to understand that a younger adult who is stressed out, not sleeping enough, eating poorly, is too anxious or wound up, and is in a general trend of wear and tear has already primed the inflammatory pump.  This means that a flu entering into such a person is much more likely to have a magnified inflammatory response because this person’s anti-inflammatory and relaxation reserves are already running on empty.

During the time of a potential flu pandemic the last thing you want to do is let yourself get worn down.  Besides lifestyle management, any nutrients that help you sleep better, feel calmer, or manage stress better will also help your immune system not hyper-react to a problem.

While this may seem like common sense, there are many people out there who are generally healthy but are running their bodies into the ground trying to get things done.  This is definitely a time to re-evaluate your priorities as doing so can put you into a high risk category if this flu begins to spread.

In my recent article, flu_season/” title=”Tips for the flu Season”>Tips for the flu Season, I have given a thorough review of nutrition that can help you effectively boost and support your own immune system.  You need to be able to make immune troops on demand, have them well armed, while at the same time minimizing the inflammatory aspect of fighting a bug.  Of course, if you do develop a problem seek medical care.

Folic Acid and Vitamin D Help Allergies and Asthma

Two new studies help to show the power of nutrition to assist allergies and asthma.  In one study people with higher levels of folic acid in their blood had had fewer IgE antibodies, fewer reported allergies, less wheezing and lower likelihood of asthma.  In another study researchers found that lower blood levels of vitamin D in children were linked to allergy and asthma severity.

There is a national epidemic of asthma in children, in part due to obesity and in part due to the overuse of antibiotics that has caused an overgrowth of Candida, in turn causing excessive production of airway inflammatory signals coming from the Candida.

Nutrients are certainly important and low levels of key nutrients may allow such problems to manifest.  Magnesium has long been known to be lacking in individuals with allergies and asthma.  Vitamin C and bioflavonoids, especially quercetin, are of immense help.

In the new folic acid study researchers look at medical records of 8,000 people ages 2 to 85, comparing folic acid blood levels to levels of IgE antibodies, a key immune system marker that elevates to an allergen. People with higher blood levels of folate had fewer IgE antibodies, fewer reported allergies, less wheezing and lower likelihood of asthma.  The researchers believed that folic acid was acting to help reduce inflammation.

“Our findings are a clear indication that folic acid may indeed help regulate immune response to allergens, and may reduce allergy and asthma symptoms,” says lead investigator Elizabeth Matsui, M.D. M.H.S., pediatric allergist at Hopkins Children’s.

In the new vitamin D study the researchers found that “children with lower vitamin D levels were significantly more likely to have been hospitalized for asthma in the previous year, tended to have airways with increased hyperreactivity and were likely to have used more inhaled corticosteroids, all signifying higher asthma severity. These children were also significantly more likely to have several markers of allergy, including dust-mite sensitivity.”

It appears that nutrient deficiencies of common nutrients set the stage for excessive inflammatory reactions, which include allergy and asthma.  Parents should obviously improve the quality of the diet of any child with such a problem.