Joseph Mercola - Upgrade your immunity with herbs : herbal tonics, broths, brews, and elixirs to supercharge your immune system

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Copyright 2021 by Joseph Mercola

Published in the United States by: Hay House, Inc.: www.hayhouse.com

Published in Australia by: Hay House, Inc.: www.hayhouse.com.au

Published in the United Kingdom by: Hay House UK, Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.uk

Published in India by: Hay House Publishers India: www.hayhouse.co.in

Cover design: Scott Breidenthal Interior design: Bryn Starr Best

Interior photos: William Meppem, Mark Roper, and Steve Brown

Food stylists: Lucy Tweed and Deborah Kaloper

Images used under license from

Indexer: J S Editorial, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise copied for public or private useother than for fair use as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviewswithout prior written permission of the publisher.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress

Names: Mercola, Joseph, author.

Title: Upgrade your immunity with herbs : herbal tonics, broths, brews, and elixirs to supercharge your immune system / Dr. Joseph Mercola.

Description: 1st edition. | Carlsbad, California : Hay House, Inc., 2021. | Identifiers: LCCN 2021005515 | ISBN 9781401963484 (hardback) | ISBN 9781401963491 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Herbs--Therapeutic use. | Naturopathy--Popular works.

Classification: LCC RM666.H33 M4437 2021 | DDC 615.3/21--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021005515

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4019-6348-4

E-book ISBN: 978-1-4019-6349-1

Audiobook ISBN: 978-1-4019-6353-8

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

1st edition, May 2021

Printed in the United States of America

Y our immune system is your first line of defense against all disease, especially infectious disease, and there are many different ways to boost your immune system and improve its function.

Think of your immune system as an army whose primary job is to protect you from invaders. Just like an army, you want your immune system to be responsive; to be able to correctly discern what is a threat and what isnt; to use the appropriate force to neutralize the enemy without causing collateral damage; and to have the stamina to keep fighting until the danger has receded.

What you dont want is to have your immune system launch such a massive response that it harms your tissuesas is the case with the storm of cytokines (particularly potent immune cells) that COVID-19 triggers in a small percentage of cases. Or to always be on high alert with chronic inflammation. Or for your body to become its own enemy, as it does with autoimmune conditions.

A healthy immune system is balanced. It can ramp up, and it can stand at ease. While there are medicines designed to stimulate your immune system and others to suppress it, what you really want is a highly functioning, balanced immune system, one that doesnt rely on medications or the actions of others to protect you.

As I write this book, we are in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, and many people are waiting for a magical vaccine to provide widespread immunity to the virus so we can safely resume living our lives and enjoying shared space with people once again. There are a few flaws in this thinking:

• The best way to develop immunity to any infectious threat is through natural exposure. Although it carries a risk of getting sick, natural exposure is what helps you develop a broader immunity both to a specific virus and to all pathogens as your immune system grows stronger from use. Its a paradox of the human body that getting sick is the best thing to prevent you from getting sick.
• Your immune system has two branchesthe cellular (T cells) and the humoral (B cells)and both need to be activated in order to secure long-term immunity. When you get a vaccine, you stimulate only your humoral immunity, the B cells. The T cells are not stimulated.
• Its important to know that even the medications and vaccines that so many rely on for protection against disease dont work by themselves; they work by supporting your immune system so that it can better defend against whatever particular threat the vaccine is designed to overcome. So no medicine is a savior; ultimately, that role falls to your own immune system. And the stronger it is, the stronger you are.

For these reasons, it makes far more sense to optimize your immune systems function so you can withstand whatever pathogens youre exposed to and develop whats known as active immunity, which is one of the three basic types of immunity and also the best and longest lasting. The three types are:

• Active immunity, which comes from the actions your immune system takes to protect you from pathogens. It is the result of your immune system fighting off a threat. Thanks to your immune systems ability to remember how to fight invaders it has already encountered, in most cases, active immunity lasts a lifetime.

  This immunologic memory comes thanks to T cells and B cells, which retain the ability to recognize and fight every particular pathogen they encounter. These two types of immune cells circulate at low levels until they identify a familiar pathogen. Then they rise in level and trigger other immune cells to ramp up their defenses too.

• Passive immunity, which is passed along via immunity gained by someone else. For example, a pregnant mother can pass antibodies to her unborn child through her placenta, or through her breast milk once the baby is born. Passive immunity can also be transferred through immunoglobulin treatments, where antibodies that have been developed by individuals who have fought off that pathogen are injected into someone who hasnt. Although passive immunity can be lifesaving, it is short lived, because those antibodies dont get stored in immunologic memory.
• Community immunity, otherwise known as herd immunity. This occurs when individuals are protected by the people around them. This does not involve the protected persons immune system at all. Rather, it relies on the immune systems of others. In herd immunity, when enough people have developed immunity to a particular pathogen, the virus has fewer people it can infect and thus, fewer potential carriers. As a result, there are fewer outbreaks and fewer instances of infection.