-Don’t Blind Your White Cells
-Your Diet, Mood, Stress and Genetics All Play A Role

Royce K. Bailey, M.D., M.P.H., F.A.A.C, M.A.A.C.

“Most people worry that they eat too much between Thanksgiving and Christmas, when really they should be worried about eating too much between Christmas and Thanksgiving.”   Anonymous

The chance of dying from cancer, heart disease, stroke, viral or bacterial infections, like pneumonia, depend on the strength of your immune system.  We could all die, if it were not for our immune system’s ability to fight foreign invaders and chronic inflammation in our body.  Our immune system’s response depends on our diet, stress, genetics and our mood.  Our nutrition can up regulate or down regulate our genes for life or death.

Getting A Cold Or The Flu?

Around the holidays people tend to eat more sugary foods and refined carbohydrates, thus, having a direct and negative effect on their immune system.  Adults tend to get 2-4 colds or flu a year.  The common cold’s  increased occurrence is when the air is colder and less humid, we don’t get as much sunshine (vitamin D) and is more common around the holidays when our defenses are down from our intemperance in our diet.

Holiday Cheer Or Holiday Fear

Increased sugar intake boosts the neurotransmitter serotonin, our happy mood brain chemical.  This suggests that eating sugar can make you feel better when you are depressed.  Your mood may temporally improve from the sugar high; but, you will pay a high price.  Numerous research studies have shown that increased sugar intake dramatically decreases your immune response.  Short-term hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) negatively affects all major components of your immunity.

Sugar Blinds Your Immune System

Your white cells (leukocytes) are the primary mediators of the immune response.  Neutrophils are a type of white blood cell that is a first line of defense that swallows up (phagocytosis) foreign cells or bugs.  High sugar loads in the body turn off the neutrophils radar for several hours, depending on the amount of sugar ingested.  High glucose levels increase the risk of infections from Staphylococcus epidermidis, Staphylococcus aureus and E coli.  In diabetics, high glucose levels increase the risk of Klebsiella pneumoniae.  In healthy adults, eating simple carbohydrates like: glucose, fructose, sucrose, honey and orange juice significantly decreased the ability of the neutrophil to engulf bacteria.  The greatest effect was one to two  hours after the sugar consumption, but lasted for up to five hours before the fasting control values of normal white cell function returned to normal.

Sugar And Heart Disease

But sugar doesn’t cause heart disease?  Can it?  The Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study (ARIC), a community-based cohort of almost 16,000 people from four states (North Carolina, Mississippi, Maryland and Minnesota), found that HbA1c levels taken in 1990-1992 and tracked for 10-12 years, correlated with coronary heart disease events, hospitalizations and deaths.

HbA1c Predicts Heart Disease

The researchers found that Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c)-a measure of long-term blood glucose level-predicts heart disease risk in both diabetics and non-diabetics.  An elevated blood glucose level is the defining feature of diabetes.  It has been argued whether elevated glucose levels contributed independently to increasing heart-disease risk, until now!  In participants with diabetes, the researchers found a graded association between HbA1c and increasing coronary heart disease risk.  Each 1-percentage-point increase in HbA1c level was associated with a 14 percent increase in heart disease risk.  Non-diabetic persons with HbA1c levels of 6 percent or higher had almost a two-fold greater heart disease risk compared to persons with an HbA1c level below 4.6 percent.

Stress And Your Immune System

Stress, through the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, modulates the immune system.   The adrenal glands produce cortisol in response to stress, which suppresses the immune response.  Stress can reduce neutrophil activity, change the type of chemical mediators called cytokines produced by the white cells, decrease cytotoxic T-lymphocytes (CD8) and natural killer cells.  It is now known that increased stress can lead to increased respiratory infections, due to a stress related decrease in your immune response.

What Can I Do?  Seven Recommendations

Recommendation #1: Cut out the sugars and refined carbohydrates in your diet and eat more raw food to improve your immune system function.
Vitamin A : is required for the growth and activation of B-lymphocytes, increases macrophages, improves T-lymphocyte function and is critical in maintaining sufficient levels of natural killer cells.

Recommendation #2--5,000IU of vitamin A a day extra while sick.
Vitamin C can reduce the duration and frequency of the viral common cold and flu symptoms.

Recommendation #3--1000mg of Vitamin C every several hours, no maximum.
Vitamin B6 improves lymphocyte differentiation, maturation and antibody production.

Recommendation #4--100mg of B6 a day, maximum.
Zinc improves white cells immune function such as neutrophils, natural killer cells, T lymphocyte function and B lymphocyte development, antibody production and macrophage activity.

Recommendation #5–add an extra 15 mg of zinc a day.  Literature suggests that greater than 100mg a day of zinc actually depresses the immune system.
Vitamin D up-regulates the gene called cathelicidin, a naturally occurring broad spectrum antibiotic in our white cells.

Recommendation #6--5000IU of Vitamin D a day.

Recommendation #7--Read your Bible daily for its healing qualities.
“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth up the bones.” Prov 17:22

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