Robert G. Lahita M.D. Ph.D. - IMMUNITY STRONG: Boost Your Natural Healing Power and Live to 100

Immunity Strong

Boost Your Natural Healing Power and Live to 100

Robert G. Lahita, M.D., Ph.D.

Humanix Books

IMMUNITY STRONG
Copyright 2022 by Robert
G. Lahita All rights reserved

Humanix Books, P.O. Box 20989, West Palm Beach, FL 33416, USA

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any other information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

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Disclaimer: The information presented in this book is not specific medical advice for any individual and should not substitute medical advice from a health professional. If you have (or think you may have) a medical problem, speak to your doctor or a health professional immediately about your risk and possible treatments. Do not engage in any care or treatment without consulting a medical professional.

ISBN: 9-781-63006-195-1 (Hardcover)
ISBN: 9-781-63006-196-8 (E-book)

Printed in the United States of America
10987654321

1. What Is a Booster Shot?

Dedicated to my loving wife and artist, Carolyn D. Palmer

Greetings, Im Dr. Bob! Thank you for joining me on this journey through immunity and your immune system, or what I call your biological soul. In the pages of this book, my goal is to give you a different way through stories and metaphor into understanding your immune systemhow it works and connects to everything you do, its strengths and weaknesses, and its physical and, yes, spiritual sides. As Dr. Bob, I tried to keep things as simple as possible, but I did not shy away from the science or dumb it down. Thats because I am also Dr. Robert G. Lahita. Dr. Lahita uses the same medical terms people in the profession use and likes to cite lots of important and interesting studies and scientists. As a doctor and scientist, it is important for me to approach the material both ways and be precise. So, I did not hold back on the depth of each chapters dive. But Dr. Bob knows Dr. Lahita can get really inside baseball when it comes to all this immunology stuff. So, for ease of reading, this book is not filled with the footnotes and parenthetical citations that make scientific literature so hard to read, let alone understand. Nor will you find dozens of pages of bibliography for the hundreds of sources I consulted. In order to keep things readable and also update you with any new findings after the book is published, I have placed all of that and more on my website: doctorboblahita.com. The only footnotes in the book will be stories and additional information Dr. Bob or Dr. Lahita thinks you might find fun, informative, or interesting as you read. Finally, Dr. Bob and Dr. Lahita both know they could never include everything about the immune system in one bookat least not one anyone would want to read, let alone carry. This is my take on the biological soul, based on my decades as a doctor, and both sides of me hope you enjoy the journey.

Life, not death, has no limits.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A few months before COVID-19 began its relentless push across the globe, I was talking with my wife, Carolyn, over breakfast about the bodys immune system. Carolyn was used to these conversations. She knew what she was getting into when she married a doctor and professor of medicine and a microbiologist who had studied civilizations responses to viruses. That day, I was contemplating how every immune system is unique due to immutable internal factors like genetics and biological sex, as well as external factors like the environment, stress, and the life that is around, upon, and within us: parasites, bacteria, and viruses. But while every immune system works differently to battle everything from the common cold to life-threatening viruses, I also noted a similarity I saw in every patient facing an illnesssomething like a life force working to keep them alive.

Thats when I noticed Carolyn, a sensitive artist, looking at me in a way that usually means its time to shut up now, Dr. Bob. Instead, she looked at me thoughtfully and said, You mean a biological soul?

Yes! Our immune systems are incredibly complex biological forces that determine our wellbeing. They want to protect us and make our lives long and healthy. They are always at work without our knowing or thinking about them, and they affect how we eat, sleep, work, breathe, and look. As a physician, I have always felt a need to integrate the spiritual, scientific, and emotional factors that enlighten immune function. That morning, after decades of studying the wonder and mystery of immunity, I finally had a name for this great protector that is chiefly responsible for our longevity: the biological soul.

According to philosophers, the human soul is dualistic: there is a physical soul and a spiritual soul that integrate to form the foundation of a long life. The same is true of our biological soul, the root of our immune system. The physical (the tangible and measurable) side of this immune system integrates our organs and manifests itself through the biology of the body. It is in our circulatory functions and beating hearts, the manifestations of sex and libido, the functions of the brain, and most importantly, our immunity.

Most people understand the need to take some form of action, like proper diet or exercise, to ensure that this physical side of the biological soul endures and to try to obtain overall happiness. But feelings of happiness are not controlled solely by our physical body, so why should we think that about our immune systems? Because in the past, discussions of a mind-body connection have been relegated to the fringes by medical practitioners, if not dismissed entirely. Today, data, not just supposition, supports this vital mind-body relationship when it comes to immunity. Emotional events that affect behavior, like the death of a family member, the stress of divorce, or an intractable disease are all known to influence immunity negatively and can result in disease and/or a decreased life span through lowered resistance to infection and susceptibility to disease. Meanwhile, positive spiritual actions, such as yoga, meditation, walks in nature, and faith and prayer can increase immunity by ensuring happiness, allowing our bodies to flourish and work to lengthen the life span.

Of course, it is much easier to understand how the physical side of the immune system is critical to life. How staph or strep infections that corrupt the immune system are beaten back with the assistance of modern medicine. How aggressors that destroy the immune system like human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which cripple immunity, allow opportunistic infections to wrest life from the soul and kill the patient. How organ failure, infertility and arrested reproduction, and possibly behavioral diseases are related to immune dysfunction. From dementia to heart disease to cancer, every day I see patients with disease in which immunity is involved directly or indirectly. Each of these diseases leaves a scientific footprint to motivate me and other physicians toward new directions for research and new ways to treat illness.

But there is much that we still cannot explain. So much of our biological soul operates beyond the physical, without our knowledge. For example, autoimmunity (the process in which the immune system attacks the body) has no known cause but could be the result of a novel and yet unknown infection, disruption of