How often have you spotted the claim ‘Boosts the immune system’? Probably endless times over winter, and especially at the beginning of this year when flu season really hit hard.
But what does that actually mean: boost the immune system?
The misconception seems to be that the immune system is like a muscle that can be worked and always grown into something bigger and better. But it doesn’t quite work like that. A muscle is quite simple in comparison to the complexity of the immune system, with all its coordinated components. You don’t need to know much about the immune system to know that it’s incredibly complex. The immune system contains antibodies (IgG, IgA, IgM, IgE and IgM) which each respond to different pathogens, a series of proteins, white blood cells, monocytes, macrophages, lymphocytes, chemokines, interferons, interleukins …the list goes on.
Your immune response varies according to whether you’ve been infected by a bacterium or a virus or a parasite, with endless subsets within those categories. The immune response can be generalised or specific. It’s really complicated! So, when a product claims to boost the immune system, I immediately have two questions:
1) Which part exactly?
And
2) How?
A quick search on PubMed or Google Scholar yields mainly results concerning vaccination. That’s pretty much the only way you can really ‘boost’ your immune system, as it actually helps protect you against future infection. Technically, though, a vaccine simply encourages the immune system to be activated in response to a particular disease, without the person suffering from the disease itself, so it simply allows normal operation of the immune system, rather than some ‘super-immune-system’.
Vaccination aside, what would happen if you took an otherwise healthy individual and tried to ‘boost’ their immune system through supplements or food? The only result you may get is inflammation.
Trust me, you don’t want that.
When bacteria or some other pathogen infects the body, or when you get a nasty cut, it produces an inflammatory response, i.e. redness, swelling, pain, and so on. This helps direct the white blood cells to the site of infection and so on. This is helpful for a brief period of time, but long-term chronic inflammation is damaging and dangerous. Inflammation is a ‘boosted’ immune system in some ways, and it’s responsible for many of the unpleasant symptoms associated with a disease, such as aches and fever. Generally, when you take cold/flu tablets you’re trying to suppress these symptoms. In addition, an overactive (or ‘boosted’?) immune system is responsible for reactions such as eczema and asthma.
It’s true that some things, like stress and malnutrition can reduce the performance of your immune system, but there the answer is to resolve the underlying issues, not taking a simple supplement. You can also acquire an immune deficiency through things like HIV/AIDS, but these supplements and foods generally aren’t targeting those people, they’re targeting your average person, who actually has a pretty well-functioning immune system anyway. So what can you, your typical healthy person, do to help yourself out? Instead of relying on specific foods or supplements, all you really need to keep your immune system functioning at its optimum base level is a balanced varied diet, a little bit of movement, decent sleep, and time to de-stress.
Agreed, look into the cause, NOT the symptoms! The stress you put on your body generally does come from an underlying cause that is responsible for a poor immune system. That’s been the case for me in my experiences, at least!
Thank you, I was diagnosed with MS last year & this has actually helped me understand my immune system a bit better. I hope I can keep my running “normally” to avoid any unwanted inflammation.