Immune System - An Ounce of Prevention - 008

SPEAKER A The following program presents principles designed to promote good health and is not intended to take the place of personalized, professional care. The opinions and ideas expressed are those of the speakers. Viewers are encouraged to draw their own conclusions about the information presented. SPEAKER B Welcome to healthy living. I'm your host, Margot Marshall. It's no fun being sick, having to fight off viruses and infections, is it? Stay tuned to discover things that strengthen our immune system and things that weaken it. SPEAKER C Healthy Living is a 13 part production of three ABN Australia television, focusing on the health of the whole person, body, mind and spirit. You'll learn natural lifestyle principles with practical health solutions for overall good health. SPEAKER B With me in the studio is Jenifer Skewes, the health psychologist, and Dr. John Clark. Welcome, Jenifer. And welcome, John. So good to have you on the program. We've appreciated all you've done, and now we're talking about the immune system. Very, very important it is to keep us well. So, John, what would you like to start off with telling us about the immune system? SPEAKER D You know, when I was in high school, I had a teacher who was like the dorm manager, and he decided he was going to go on a diet that was mostly fresh fruits and vegetables. I mean, this guy was eating basically raw food. Now, before this, he'd been very sickly. He'd have a cold every winter or the flu. He'd have a lot of problems with congestion, post nasal drip. He was a sickly kid. When he changed and went to a total raw food diet, his symptoms all went away. He quit having colds and flus. SPEAKER A Wow. SPEAKER D Well, I called him and talked to him not long ago, and I said, how are you doing? He says, Well, I'm doing great. I said, Are you still on, like, that raw food diet? And he says, I sure am. I said, how's that going? He says, well, in 25 years, I've never missed a day of work due to being sick. I've never had a cold, I've never had a flu. It's interesting that studies from the literature, medical journals, show that just such a diet does the best at making your immune system much stronger. SPEAKER B Would you be suggesting a totally raw diet or would you be suggesting a certain amount of raw? What would you be saying to that? SPEAKER D He went totally raw, and I don't suggest a totally raw, but I am saying that if you ate a lot more fresh fruits and vegetables, you could come closer to his record of being free from yes. SPEAKER B Yes. And that's really great. Jenny. SPEAKER A Well, he had a good attitude, too. SPEAKER B Yes. SPEAKER A And this is where one of the biggest impacts on the immune system is to do with stress. And it causes a lot of inflammation in the brain and the body. And when we have prolonged stress, that inflammation doesn't come down. So that will affect the whole system. And every part of our body is impacted by stress. SPEAKER B Yes. SPEAKER A So it's important that we practice stress management. And this is where the person you're talking about, it sounded like he was enjoying his lifestyle. He was relaxed, he loved his work, and that adds in to the dietary principles. SPEAKER D What a very interesting guy in that. Here we are, high school students, and you can imagine how we teased him. We would say, oh, here comes the gopher. Can we go down and get you some greens or some oleanders, which are sort of poisonous? SPEAKER B It's sort of poisonous, yes. SPEAKER D And he would just throw it right back at us. He was a good sport. SPEAKER A He had a good sense of humor. Another thing that helps immunity, and let. SPEAKER D Me tell you, this school had a hay farm where we baled hay into big bales of hay, like 60 pound bales. So see, that would be like 30 kilos and or 25 kilos. We would take these bales of hay and throw them up on the back of a big flatbed truck. Well, nobody could throw a bale higher than he than he could. And he was on this raw food diet, and we're like, wow, where do you get all that energy? You get good energy from good food. SPEAKER A Well, now you know that. SPEAKER D Now we know that. SPEAKER B And so the immune system is obviously a vital part of staying alive, isn't it? SPEAKER D Absolutely. SPEAKER B It's not just nice to have it going well, but if we didn't have an immune system, we wouldn't survive. SPEAKER D If you don't have an immune system functioning, even antibiotics can't save you. There's a classic story of a gentleman called Bubble Boy. SPEAKER A As a movie, there's. SPEAKER D A movie out on it. And this gentleman was born with no immune system. They knew he was going to be born with no immune system because his brother had the same problem genetic. And so they had him born in a sterile environment, put him into the bubble, which was a big plastic incubator, and kept all disease out of there. And he grew up in this bubble. NASA, the space organization, the United States got involved and made him a spacesuit so he could go outside. But finally they decided to try a stem cell transplant and it didn't work and he passed away. But all to illustrate, if you don't have an immune system, there's big troubles. And so when you look at what the immune system does, it makes sure that no enemy gets at you. SPEAKER A That's right. It's our fighting force. It's the army in our system, isn't it, that protects us. SPEAKER D And this is like keeps you from getting the disease from viruses, bacteria and other pathogens. SPEAKER B And we're battling those all the time. SPEAKER D All the time. SPEAKER B There wouldn't be a time, I suppose, never, that we're not battling something. And we don't know about that because, well, sometimes we do. Sometimes we come down sick, but other times we wouldn't realize just how busy our immune system is at doing all that. SPEAKER A See, when your immune system is healthy, you don't feel what the bacteria is or what's going into your system because it's busy fighting it and removing it. So it's only if you're unhealthy that's when there's a problem. And it's interesting in research. Now, they've done a lot of research in why these children are growing up like the boy in the bubble, because they're finding now children's immune systems are not as good at times. And they found that what parents are doing is putting them in too sterile environment. When I was growing up, we'd be outside, you'd eat snails and dirt. SPEAKER B That's what kids do. SPEAKER A If you look at things that they ingest is quite remarkable and that challenges the immune system to function. And what's happening, they have got all these sterile wipes. They wipe everything, all the benches get cleaned and the children are, oh, don't play in the dirt. And they're not doing things that actually help the immune system to grow. It's like a muscle, it needs to be strengthened. SPEAKER B Okay? SPEAKER A Which is interesting, isn't it? SPEAKER B Well, it is interesting. SPEAKER A I'm telling you to send your kids. SPEAKER B Out to eat that's all right, they're a bit big to do that now, but I've heard two schools of thought on that and it's a bit of a balancing thing, isn't it? It is. SPEAKER A To know when we need if a child gets an infection, then you're going to treat it and try and treat it, but the child won't get the infection if their immune system is working really well. And that's that principle you talked about in this story. SPEAKER D Some of the information we get on the immune system comes from when we have had pandemics. One of the most classic and the biggest one was the 1918 Spanish influenza. And I got most of my statistics from America, but they had a 30% attack rate, meaning 30% of people would come down with it, but that means 70% did not get it. So how do you make sure that you are in the 70% instead of the 30%? I mean, this is an important ODS to look at here and so boosting the immune system so that when anything like that infectious disease, be it SARS, be it Ebola, be it bird flu, whatever comes around, you are prepared. SPEAKER B What else would help to strengthen the immune system? What would you say? SPEAKER D One thing that's very helpful is to get you rest. Interesting study looking at mice. They took mice, they put them in two groups. One group, both groups got vaccinated and then they deprived one group of sleep one night for 7 hours. That was it. And then they gave them a flu virus. The ones who had been vaccinated but had lost their sleep for one night caught the flu as though they'd never been vaccinated. SPEAKER A Isn't that interesting? SPEAKER B That's very impressive. And sadly, these days. I think sleep deprivation is just rampant because since the electric light came in, that was the beginning of it. But now with all these electrical devices and 24/7 television and a lot of shops being open 24/7, life just goes on. It used to be that go to bed when the sun went down and so on, but not anymore. We had a blackout here a few weeks ago and it was just amazing the difference it made to people and they started talking to each other and things like that and getting more sleep. But yes, sleep deprivation is quite a significant thing. So it's something to be aware of, isn't it? There's the foods, the fresh foods and then we've got this sleep deprivation. What else might well, I was going. SPEAKER A To say the majority of illnesses that I see like mental, emotional health problems, sleep deprivation is a major part of it and they're either taking drugs or not sleeping. And over a period of time their immune function goes down so much they end up getting very, very sick because they're not getting enough sleep. And we're talking about people who go for sometimes years with insomnia. SPEAKER B Yes. SPEAKER A So you can see our system can be robust to a point, but there's a point where it's worn down and insomnia is a stress factor. So there's a lot of things not. SPEAKER B So all of these things impact on each other. Sleep causes stress, stress causes lots of sleep and they do work. SPEAKER A It's like a vicious cycle when you look at it. But see, stress is pervasive in. There's so many things that are stressful in life, but it's the person who learns how to deal with the stress and stay focused in the present and solve the problem or maybe fix whatever the problem is if they can or get support to deal with it. Are the ones who will be healthier than the ones who are going to worry about it, think about it, go over it and that's where the mind comes into play then it's important. SPEAKER B You mentioned that being in the present. Now you mentioned that in another program. Just tell us about that. SPEAKER A We only have the present moment, but our brain to be healthy and in balance and that's we're talking about mentally, emotionally, we need to keep the whole brain, which is your neocortex left right brain, focused in the present moment. And if you look at how often you do that or don't do that during the day and a lot of people spend the majority of their time either dwelling on the past or fearing the future. So this is where to alleviate stress. I teach people how to what we call be mindful and put your mind in the present. And that's like body awareness, recognizing emotions that come up. For example, I was just talking to John before apparently five minutes of anger will impact the immune system negatively for 5 hours five minutes of anger. Anger is the most volatile emotion we have. So every time we have that little anger spat, we're actually impacting the immune system for a long period of time. SPEAKER B Goodness. SPEAKER A Now, it's amazing, isn't it? SPEAKER B Yes, it is. SPEAKER A One of the antidotes is to stress is laughter, right? One of the best ones is the belly laugh. And they've done studies on that and found that people who have a ten minute belly laugh a day, their whole system, including immunity, is much healthier, and it starts in 15 muscles in the stomach and radiates through the whole body. And it's equal to a 20 minutes aerobic workout if we have a good belly laugh. SPEAKER B Oh, well, I think we should just do one right now. I'd like to, you know norman Cousins healed himself through laughter, didn't he? You aware of that one? He was dying, he was really, really sick and he was a doctor, so he just thought, well, that was the only thing he could think of to do. SPEAKER A Laughter was the best medicine. SPEAKER B Funny DVDs and things like that. And he was laughing so much in the hospital, I asked him to leave. So he went to a hotel and continued and he got well. Yes. So there's many things destress, many things our mood, what's going on in our mind. We've noticed that in many instances, the stress and the sadness and the happiness, they impact hugely on the body. And it works both ways. The body impacts on the mind. SPEAKER A You're focused in the present when you're laughing that's you see, and it's a type of laughter. It's not laughing at someone, it's laughing with people or at yourself or something that happened. SPEAKER B I've got plenty of scope when it comes to laughing at myself. SPEAKER A We have to see ourselves with humor help again to keep the immune system healthy. So we're looking at lots of good things we can do in the present that will keep us that way. And what we eat is present focus. SPEAKER D There we go. Boy, doesn't that make you hungry? What shall we eat? SPEAKER A That's about chewing your food, isn't it? Well and enjoying using the five senses to enjoy what you eat and the visual image of the food. And there's a lot to do that helps strengthen the whole system and preferably. SPEAKER B Eating with people, because that social aspect makes it so nice. And you find that out when you people who live alone and they come out, they say, oh, it's so nice not to eat alone. SPEAKER A And that's a stress thing. SPEAKER B All part of what happens. SPEAKER D And when you look at the immune system, the cells that are the most active in fighting, like a viral illness, are your natural killer cells. SPEAKER B Yes. SPEAKER D And if you're going to eat something that will wipe out your natural killer cells, number one would be eating a high fat diet, particularly eating cholesterol. SPEAKER A Okay? SPEAKER D It cuts the number of natural killer cells down and shuts their function down to one fourth the normal function level. SPEAKER A Well, stress is the other factor that impacts these killer cells. SPEAKER D Knocks them out as well. SPEAKER A Yes, it does. So you've got a double whammy there. SPEAKER D If you're on a bad diet and you're getting depressed and stressed, anxious, they're in real trouble, in big trouble. You're a sitting duck for the bird flu. SPEAKER A That's right. If you're there with the birds is. SPEAKER B That meant to be a pun? You're sitting duck for the bird flu. Yes. And it's just interesting how many things impact us and the directions they come from. And that's why in this program we like to focus on the mental and the physical and the spiritual and the social aspects. We haven't actually talked about the spiritual input. Jenny, did you have something to say on that? SPEAKER A Well, there are a lot of good studies to show that people who have a practicing faith, prayer and faith, and it's not necessarily about going to a church. It's about your belief and your faith in God. And you work with that. And that's a present moment thing, you see. So it keeps people focused in the present, have a much healthier overall system, but certainly a healthier immune system, and they do can live up to six, seven years longer because of their faith. And this is well documented. It's not just a hearsay. SPEAKER B No. They can perhaps pick that up on the fact sheets if they want to check that out. SPEAKER A I can do that. SPEAKER B That we'll talk about later in the program. SPEAKER D Another aspect to good immune system and good health is living a life where you are helping other people. SPEAKER B Yes. SPEAKER D We call it Benevolence volunteering. People who volunteer for their community have 60% less disease than those who end up just living for themselves. SPEAKER B Isn't that that's profound? SPEAKER A But you have a look at the focus when you're helping someone. Where are you focused in the present but you're focused away from yourself? Stress is when we are self focused and they find that when people focus out of themselves and help others, their stress levels go right down. SPEAKER B So you're just explaining how this actually works. You've told us it happens and now you're telling us how it actually works. Because we're outwardly focused and our mind's. SPEAKER A Not going and our stress levels come down. SPEAKER B Come down. SPEAKER A And it's a good reason to go and help other people. SPEAKER B Yes. SPEAKER A Keeps me healthy. I get paid. SPEAKER B You get paid. SPEAKER D All right. SPEAKER B Does that take away John? Okay. SPEAKER D And this sort of gets us into a thing. We've talked about another program, sugar. When a person takes twelve teaspoons of sugar, about the amount of sugar that would be in one soda, it decreases the immune system by 60%. SPEAKER A Wow. SPEAKER D In other words, the white cell that's supposed to gobble up bad bacteria will instead of gobbling up 14 bacteria will only gobble up 5.5. SPEAKER A Wow. SPEAKER D And then if you got 24 teaspoons of sugar, and it cuts down the immune system so that a white cell will only gobble up one bacteria in the same amount of time. It would have normally done 14. So the amount of sugar and I don't know the statistics on Australia for sugar consumption, but in America, the average American is consuming about 44 teaspoons of sugar per day. SPEAKER A It used to be about 35 here, but they're older statistics, so it's probably beyond par now, particularly with you look at junk food and added sugars and all sorts of things, and people drinking the soda drinks and that. SPEAKER D And that's a good point. People don't always realize where their sugar is coming from. SPEAKER A No, it's hidden sugars. SPEAKER D Hidden sugars. We said a soda would have twelve teaspoons of sugar for your average soda, but did you know if you eat cornflakes and milk for breakfast, it'll be about 16 teaspoons of sugar in your bloodstream? Even though they may not have sugar on the label, because the carbohydrate is so refined by the way they cook it, that you end up with a high sugar load in your bloodstream. SPEAKER A Well, sweet biscuits is about seven. One little sweet biscuit. SPEAKER B There's lots and lots of ways that it leaks in, and who would ever think that there would be? Was it twelve teaspoons in a can of we call it soft drink in this country, just so that people know. Yeah, we do have soda as well. SPEAKER A One of the health principles I practice with my clients is get them to start reading labels when they go shopping. And even if they just do one product every time they shop, or if they can do more, and they're often shocked at what they find they're eating. SPEAKER B I was doing a supermarket tour once with some schoolchildren, and this little boy, he was just about ten, and that's as young as we usually take them on a tour. And we were looking at the labels and seeing how much sugar was in. I just don't remember what the product was now. But it wasn't in the confectionery aisle, I do know that. And he was so shocked, he said, I'm going to be telling my mother about this. What a good idea. Yes, what a good idea. SPEAKER D And people get tricked by this. For example, in West Virginia and America, there got to be a big lobby going that they should take the soda machines or pop machines, what do you call it? Soft drink machines out of the schools and put in juice machines. And they did, and somebody came and looked at the quantity of sugar in the juices and they compared three juices to the top soda, and all the juices had more sugar because it's sugar. SPEAKER A In the juice and added sugars, usually. SPEAKER B Yeah. And that's been a refined thing, too, because the fruit's been extracted out and the fiber is gone. And so it's different from having it right there in the fruit when you do that to it. So those sugars which eaten in the whole fruit, say an apple or something, is missing all of that fiber and all that chewing and everything. So those sugars aren't as good for you when they've been extracted and pulled out. SPEAKER D That's correct, yeah. SPEAKER A Because when you're looking at children, immunity starts at a very young age, and we were talking about this before, so what are your thoughts? SPEAKER D That's right. A lot of people have their child and then they go look down to the supermarket where they get all their food for something for the child. And that's baby formula, which is hugely refined, and instead of using the best food for the baby, and the best food for the baby is mother's milk. And studies show that if you breastfeed a baby for two years, their whole life, they have a better immune system their whole life, they have less diseases, they're more intelligent, a lot of benefits. SPEAKER B I just noticed on the World Health Organization website, just a day or so ago, two years, like you just said, that's what they recommend. Obviously you introduce suitable foods at six months, but it should be exclusively breastfed for six months and then continue for two years. And that's something that would be such a gift. I mean, we spend a fortune on presents for children and toys and things like that, but what a gift to give them to strengthen their immune system when you can? And I know some parents are not able, some mothers aren't able to do that. I know the fathers can't. SPEAKER D Is that a sex? SPEAKER A I hope not. SPEAKER B No. And I know some people can't, but if you can, it's just such an incredible gift for their whole life. Toys wear out, but what a gift. SPEAKER A What's that first few days of feeding, breastfeeding once the child's born? I think is it five days? It's a period of time that they're having as a colostrum where that builds the immune system. And if the child doesn't have that, that's when the immunity is going to struggle. SPEAKER B Yes. And even if they could do that, much like any amount is going to be better. Yes, better than nothing. But all of these things we talk about that are going to be helpful, they obviously involve change, and that can be a bit of a challenge and we ought to just have a little mention of that. I came across this gorgeous quote. It's a Chinese proverb and it said, when the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills. And I like that. I think that's tremendous. And so I guess there's some people out there thinking maybe that you've already got some walls going up or maybe you're thinking, yes, I'm going to try that, I'm going to do more. And I hope that you are, because it's a good opportunity to be motivated to do that. SPEAKER A Yes, it is. And this is where change, again, that's what I do, I help people bring about change. SPEAKER B Yes. And that's huge because I think change is something we usually need help with, and some people resist it more than others. SPEAKER A They do. And that's part of the personality. SPEAKER B That's part of the personality. SPEAKER A But I encourage people, if they're struggling to change, to get help, whether it be professional or read a book or. SPEAKER B Find information or all of the above. All of the above, because it's not an easy thing to do. We can be very motivated at a certain time and then that can just go down and that's where the support needs to come in. SPEAKER A Yeah, I totally agree. SPEAKER D Change is important. We have the saying that Craziness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. SPEAKER B That's right, yeah. And so change is inevitable. SPEAKER A People who don't change or can't change or really won't change, because it is a choice, have much higher stress levels than people who can go with the flow or initiate change more easily. SPEAKER B So people who really stuck where they are, are you saying that's a stress or thing? SPEAKER A Yeah, they have a lot of adrenaline, a lot of cortisol, because they're fighting change and they're very threatened by change, and it's usually underpinned by their insecurity, which often starts at a very early age. So that's where, again, I help people to start to feel secure that they can face change and it's not such. SPEAKER B A threat to them. I wouldn't have actually realized that, I thought. People who stayed put, they're not changing, so they're not going through the stress, but it's actually worse. That's interesting. SPEAKER A It is, isn't it? SPEAKER B That's interesting. I'll be more sympathetic to someone I know who no change. No change because they're going through more stress than maybe people. SPEAKER A A lot of stress at that point of time. Yes. And people need to learn that they're stuck in one mode because of what's happened to them, and they fear change. SPEAKER B And they must maintain the status quo. That seems to be their main goal in life. SPEAKER D And while they're remaining fixed and not changing, there is nothing else that isn't changing. SPEAKER B That's right. SPEAKER A Everything changes. Our life changes constantly and we have to learn to deal with that. SPEAKER D Now, one change that people could make is eat an apple a day. SPEAKER B Yes. That's not good for your business, though. That's always your business, keeping the doctor away. SPEAKER D And studies of people who eat an apple a day show that they do get fewer lung diseases. Their lungs work better for breathing. They actually breathe an extra 150 air with every breath, and it cuts down on the number of viruses that they get. SPEAKER B How much extra air? SPEAKER D 150 air with every breath. SPEAKER B So we worked out that was just over a half a cup. That's a lot of more volume, isn't it? Just because you're eating an apple a day, did you say? SPEAKER D An apple a day and you have. SPEAKER B More and then it's more oxygen to the brain, more capacity nutrients, I was going to say. SPEAKER A They're finding out more and more now about apples, scientifically, and it really is an apple a day keeps a doctor away. SPEAKER B How they right back then, I wonder how? Because that's such an old saying, an apple a day keeps the doctor away. It's true. And they're really finding out more and more that there's tremendous amount of truth in that. SPEAKER D And with the immune system, what we're looking at is it increases the number of natural killer cells. SPEAKER A Okay. SPEAKER D And it's got phytochemicals like corcitin that actually work as virus suppressors so they don't multiply so much in the cells. SPEAKER A That's interesting, isn't it? SPEAKER B Yeah. Excellent. Well, we've covered some really good things today, things that work for us and then they're things that work against us. SPEAKER A Yes. SPEAKER B So be really good if we could encourage our viewing audience and our listeners to embrace take on something. Yes, embrace change. SPEAKER A Love it. SPEAKER B Think of at least one thing that would actually work for them. And so we'll wrap up our program today, and if you'd like a fact sheet of what we've talked about, or you'd like to watch our programs on demand, visit our website, 3abnaustralia.org.au and then you just click on the watch button and John and Jennifer are happy to answer your questions personally. We probably haven't covered everything you'd like to know, or there might be another thing on another topic. So you can email them at [email protected] And we look forward to having you join us next time on Healthy Living because we have many topics to discuss and we hope they'll all be very helpful to.