The Immune System

On a typical sunny day, your body may produce up to 25,000 international units (IU) of vitamin D, although many people aren’t in the sun enough to optimize their vitamin D levels. However, I strongly recommend getting your vitamin D from proper sun exposure, if possible, as it provides benefits beyond vitamin D optimization. Higher levels of vitamin D may even serve as a marker for healthy sun exposure, which in turn may be responsible for many of the health benefits, which include reduced risk of cancer and increased longevity, attributed to vitamin D. Regular sun exposure, for instance, enhances the production of melatonin — a potent anticancer agent. Near-infrared rays from the sun penetrate deep into your body and activate cytochrome c oxidase, which in turn stimulates the production of melatonin inside your mitochondria. Your mitochondria produce ATP, the energy currency of your body. A byproduct of this ATP production is reactive oxidative species (ROS), which are responsible for oxidative stress. Excessive amounts of ROS will damage the mitochondria, contributing to suboptimal health, inflammation, and chronic health conditions such as diabetes, obesity, and thrombosis (blood clots). But melatonin essentially mops up ROS that damage your mitochondria. So, by getting plenty of sun exposure during the day, your mitochondria will be bathed in melatonin, thereby reducing oxidative stress. If you’re unable to get adequate sun exposure each day, vitamin D supplementation may be necessary. Keep in mind that 20 ng/mL, which is often used as the cutoff for vitamin D deficiency, has repeatedly been shown to be grossly insufficient for good health and disease prevention, which means the true prevalence of people without optimal levels of vitamin D is even greater. The only way to determine how much sun exposure is enough and/or how much vitamin D3 you need to take is to measure your vitamin D level, ideally twice a year. Once you’ve confirmed your vitamin D levels via testing, adjust your sun exposure and/or vitamin D3 supplementation accordingly. Then, remember to retest in three to four months to make sure you’ve reached your target level. Resources: https://articles.mercola.com/

UNDERSTANDING THE IMMUNE SYSTEM When operating at its peak performance, our immune system can pinpoint and remove risks to wellness, recognize and imitate previous immune responses, and repair cellular and tissue damage. If it is running too high or too low, however, it can produce debilitating pain and allow all types of disease to develop like autoimmunity. While our culture is used to prescription solutions and quick fixes, learning how to how to boost your immune system naturally isn’t on top of most people’s lists. And, it’s important to understand that the immune system is very detailed. It takes more than just increasing the amount of cells to really improve and protect our health. In other words, we can’t just take something (like vitamin C) to boost the immune system. (1) With that said, we can certainly identify some steps that you can take as you learn how to boost your immune system naturally, which will help your body function more efficiently and prevent disease more readily. I like to call it bolstering the immune system. An antigen is a toxin or foreign substance that induces an immune response in the body. Most of the time, this immune response is the production of antibodies (blood proteins with regions that bind specifically to a particular antigen to neutralize it). In laymen’s terms, antigens are the bad guys and antibodies are the good guys. The good guys are sent out to  seek and destroy when your body is invaded by the bad guys. The more often the body is successful at destroying an antigen, the tougher and more varied the immune system becomes; this is called acquired (or adapted) immunity. (2) The long term immune response involves white blood cells called lymphocytes that produce antibodies that assists the body in breaking down antigens. The cells then preserve memory of deactivating or destroying the antigens, then remain until they need to reproduce that action in the future. Because of the way the immune response is switched on, the immune system is entwined with the circulatory, endocrine, digestive, neurological, and integumentary systems, to name a few. One action always influences many processes, and for the immune system specifically, can have far encompassing results. The most important thing is, the whole body works together. The skin is an example of the immune system preventing many destructive substances from spreading to the rest of the body. Fevers also perform as an early reaction, raising the body temperature over what the pathogen can endure. We are all brought into this world with immune function called innate immunity, the first line of protection against disease. This is the fast-acting response to an invading antigen – germ, bacteria, or virus – blocking it from ever spreading to the body to become an illness. Mucous snares them, stomach acid and enzymes can shut down or kill them, and coughing can remove them. 5 THINGS THAT DAMAGE YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM 1. AGING 2. EATING HABITS IMPACT IMMUNE RESPONSE 3. INADEQUATE OR EXCESSIVE EXERCISE 4. STRESS & ANXIETY 5. ENVIRONMENTAL TOXINS HOW TO BOOST YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM NATURALLY 1. DRINK PURE, CLEAN WATER 2. BREATHE PURE AIR 3. EAT PURE, CLEAN FOOD 4. USE IMMUNE BOOSTING SUPPLEMENTS 5. VITAMIN D 6. AVOIDING TOXINS 7. REGULAR CLEANSING AND DETOX 8. RESTFUL, SOUND SLEEP 9. REGULAR EXERCISE 10. TAKE PROBIOTICS Source: Natural Living Family