In this episode, we discuss the immune system and give you specifics to help you during the cold and flu season. Most of us are very busy and don’t really have time to get sick. Below are some simple ideas to help you boost immune function and hopefully protect you during the cold and flu season.
What Supplements Support Immune Function?
Vitamin D: for immune support, we recommend taking 2,000 to 10,000 IU depending on your exact situation. To boost immune function, you could take 5,000 IU’s daily for 1 to 2 weeks and then reduce down to 2,000 IU daily for maintenance. Note: before you starting taking Vitamin D, you should have your level tested.
Vitamin A: for immune support, we recommend taking 25,000 to 100,000 IU depending on your exact situation. To boost immune function, you could take 100,000 IU for 1 week, then reduce down to 75,000 IU for 1 week, reduce again down to 50,000 IU for 1 week and then maintain at 25,000 IU daily. Note: 100,000 IU daily is considered a high dose, so don’t take this amount for too long. A couple of weeks is enough to boost immunity, but not long enough to cause any unwanted side effects.
Larch Arabinogalactan: for immune support, we recommend taking the fiber found in Larch Arabinogalactan, which has been shown to prevent the common cold. To boost immune function, take 2 capsules daily for 1 to 2 weeks. After that, you can reduce to 1 capsule daily for maintenance.
Probiotic (Ther Biotic Complete): for immune support, we recommend taking a probiotic, especially if antibiotics have been taken. Maintaining a healthy microbiome is very important to optimal immune function. Ther Biotic Complete is one of our favorite probiotics. It provides 25 billion organisms per capsule. You can take 1 to 2 capsules daily.
Echinacea Hydrastis and Berberine: for immune support, we recommend taking Echinacea, Hydrastis, and Berberine. Echinacea has a long history of boosting immune function and Hydrastis (Goldenseal), which contains the constituent berberine have anti-microbial properties. EHB is one of our favorite products to boost immune function.
Vitamin C & Zinc: for immune support, this contains vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, selenium and zinc. We have been using this with patients for years as it provides several immune-supporting nutrients.
Elderberry: most of the time, when people get sick, it is typically a virus of some sort. Sambucus or elderberry has a long history of boosting immune function against the common cold.
PYHP 072 Full Transcript:
Download PYHP 072 Full Transcript
Dr. Maki: Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us for another episode of the Progress Your Health Podcast. I’m Dr. Maki.
Dr. Davidson: And I’m Dr. Davidson.
Dr. Maki: So, on this episode, we’re going to continue talking about immune function, cold and flu season. Last time, we talked more about prevention, how we segway from adrenals and stress into immune function. This one we’re going to actually give you– this one’s going to be a little bit shorter or just going to give you some things to think about and granted a lot of people understand these or know these things already but we want to just give you some of our favorites.
Dr. Davidson: Just real quickly, we try to really make our sound, sound good for you and not any like weird static or fuzz but if you do hear some noises in the background, our dog is having a great time with his toy.
Dr. Maki: Yeah, yeah. You might have heard that on the last one as well.
Dr. Davidson: That was his bone.
Dr. Maki: Yeah, we’re trying to keep him occupied while we do this.
Dr. Davidson: He’s our little buddy.
Dr. Maki: Yeah. Let’s just dive in. Last one, we talked about diet, minimize sugar, minimize caffeine, minimize alcohol.
Dr. Davidson: Improve your sleep.
Dr. Maki: Lifestyle, improve sleep, lower stress as much as possible. In some ways, kind of try to slide down as much as you can and supporting adrenal function, right? That’s something that we’ve talked about in the last few episodes, that’s how you keep your immune system strong and resilient through the stressors of life. Now this one, we’re going to talk about some actual specifics. Let’s just kind of dive into the nutrients side, so vitamins and minerals, things that you recommend for your patients.
Dr. Davidson: Exactly. I mean, what’s so amazing is now we have access to really good quality supplements that can help with kind of what we talked about last time is, what can we do to prevent getting sick and what can we do if “darn it. I’m already sick right now and what can I do acutely in the moment to reduce the duration, reduce the intensity and the severity” and also, try to not– which ends up happening, not let it progress into something more serious. Of course, we had mention to– I mean, people have kids, people have grand kids, people have nieces“ and nephews and family members and friends and this little kids, they might be little germ machines, granted it’s good for them and their immune system to get sick but they bring that home to us. One thing that I think probably a lot of you have heard of and may know is Vitamin D. I think Vitamin D is great for that immune system, it’s not to preventative. Now, granted Vitamin D isn’t really a vitamin, it’s a hormone.
Dr. Maki: Yeah, it should be called hormone D, not vitamin D. I think there’s a lot of misconception about that but it’s interesting, granted we get most of our Vitamin D from the sun, you know I lived in the South West for almost 15 years and everybody that we would test their Vitamin D on will always be either low below 30 or low and normal in the low 30’s, that shouldn’t happen in a place where there’s constant sunshine at them. Either, people are spending a lot of time indoors, which is probably part of the problem–
Dr. Davidson: Or hopefully wearing sunscreen.
Dr. Maki: Yeah.
Dr. Davidson: That’s my own prerogative.
Dr. Maki: Yeah. Well, we can argue about that. You and I disagree about the sunscreen thing so we’ll save that one for another episode but nonetheless, in a place where there’s sunshine all the time, everyone should have at least the middle of the reference range which is the reference range is 30 to a hundred, at least be at the middle if not high normal when it comes to Vitamin D and everybody is low normal on Vitamin D. I think that we’re either testing a wrong thing, the metabolite or whatever the lab test are set up for or there’s a different mechanism going on there that actually pulls that Vitamin D down whether it’s an inflammatory process or like you say, a hormonal process. I could even see there’s a connection between, let’s say cortisol and low Vitamin D levels.
Dr. Davidson: Yeah. Or just the conversion process. So, you think you’re outside, the sun hits your skin, it converts into Vitamin D1, then it has to go through the liver and the kidneys to convert into Vitamin D2, to Vitamin D3 which is the active form. Sometimes, that gets lost in translation or hormonally or stress-wise or something, I don’t know but reduces that conversion to the active form of Vitamin D3 which is– but then, with wonderful science and technology, we can just take Vitamin D3 or you can stay out of the sun and cover up and wear a little sunscreen but cover up and just take Vitamin D3.
Dr. Maki: Yeah yeah. You’re Asian, right? So you have cultural—
Dr. Davidson: Eye freckle.
Dr. Maki: Yeah. Well, you’re also trying to protect your skin from the sun, which I do agree with trying to protect your skin but I do not agree with the whole sunscreen as a form of protection.
Dr. Davidson: Well, either way, Vitamin D is very good for your immune system. Something I had mentioned on the last podcast was, you don’t want to necessarily take immune stimulating vitamins and herbs and supplements and minerals and what not because if you’re stimulating the immune system but you’re not sick, that’s actually not very healthy but you know, nobody wants to get sick even if it’s for one day. I mean, when you’re sick, you are so humbled by how great you feel when you’re not sick. That actually, Vitamin D isn’t necessarily stimulating the immune system but it’s strengthening the immune system that help prevent you from getting sick and then on the flip side about what’s so amazing about Vitamin D is if you are sick, you can increase up your level of Vitamin D and that will help reduce down that duration and that intensity and that severity. Now, one side thing is, Vitamin D is a hormone and it’s fat soluble which means too much of a good thing isn’t a good thing is they can say “Hey, you can have Vitamin D toxicity.” But you really have to take a lot of Vitamin D for that to happen.
Dr. Maki: Yeah. And most doctors, even conventionally minded doctors nowadays are testing everybody’s Vitamin D. So you are taking Vitamin D or you’re going to take Vitamin D, it’s a good idea to check your levels. We recommend– there’s a couple of different companies that we use but we like to use liquid Vitamin D, not in every case. There are some that are soft gels but liquid Vitamin D usually 1 to 5000 IU’s per drop so 1000 international unit per drop so these bottles, they come with a little eyedropper on the top, and you take 5-10 drops maybe depending on the person, maybe 2 drops, maybe 4 drops, maybe 5 drops, 10 drops, usually on the upper hand and that does a really really nice job of improving lab values. You’ll see it in a matter of a– even a couple of weeks to a few months, that their lab numbers will go from the low 30’s or even abnormal and now they’re 45-65 on a lab range which is actually very nice.
Dr. Davidson: And something that Dr. Maki had mentioned on the last podcast talking more about lifestyle is he had mentioned about the wonderful magic of your gut microbiome and how many– gosh, how many things it can do for a body and probably things we don’t even know about yet but one thing that our gut microbiome does is it’s very involved in the immune system. That’s pretty much where we make a lot of our immunity is from our gut microbiome so a probiotic, I think is a great thing to help kind of strengthen that immune system, not stimulate it but good for preventative.
Dr. Maki: Yeah right. That’s one of those things you could do on a regular basis to maintain that really healthy balance between the good bacteria and the pathogenic bacteria. When that balance is offset, that’s what they called Dysbiosis, that’s why as we’ve mentioned in the last one, that’s why in our opinion, you want to be very very careful with antibiotic use. When I was a teenager, I had a really bad complexion which is the worst time of your life to have a bad complexion when you’re a teenager and you got pimples all over your face. It’s just a really hard thing to deal with and of course, I went to dermatologist after dermatologist and only what they give me is was Retin-A and tetracycline and I think that’s just– knowing what I know now, I just think that it’s just a terrible approach to treat acne but antibiotics, this is also not necessarily a secret or a big surprise but antibiotics are just been over prescribed. Now, you have MRSA and antibiotic resistant bacteria that is going to cause big problems in the future because we overuse them up until this point. In our opinion, you want to use an antibiotic when there’s no other option, okay? So, when you really need it the most when you are in kind of dire straits then take the antibiotic but if you got a stifle or a sneeze or this or that or the typical and flu season, all of those 90+% of them are caused by viruses, the antibiotics are going to do you no good anyways but the things we’re talking about, the Vitamin D and we’ll get in some other ones, those are ways to either bolster your immune system or to acutely bolster it when you really need it. We have lots of options when it comes to that and I think that that is something that gets missed sometimes out there in the conventional world.
Dr. Davidson: Yeah, I think a great probiotic for an adult and even for kids. Like we said, kids are meant to get sick, that’s okay but if we can reduce the severity, I think a probiotic, improving your gut microbiome, working on it is only a benefit to your health. And then another thing that I like to use, I’m going to mess up how you– say it out loud, but it’s also working on that digestive
