What does boosting the immune system mean and should you do it?

Written by Dr. Ryan Kneessi, ND

You might be reading a few articles on social media about boosting your immune system.  A more accurate phrase would be activating or supporting immune function. A holistic or naturopathic approach can be a great option to prepare your immune system for foreign invaders or disease-causing agents. This holistic or “Naturopathic Approach” is based on a few mechanisms involved in cellular physiology. The three major lines of defense against disease causing agents include:

1) The physical barrier

2) The innate immune response

3) The adaptive immune response

Physical Barrier

Our first line of defense against foreign invaders is our physical barrier, which includes all areas of our body exposed to the outside world, primarily our skin and mucous membranes. Physical barriers prevent the invaders from entering our body and multiplying.

Innate Immune Response

If foreign invaders get by our physical barriers, then they are exposed to our innate immune system. Our tissues contain white blood cells that act as our next line of defense against foreign invaders. Macrophages are one type of white blood cell heavily involved in the innate response. Macrophages are born from white blood cells called monocytes, which are produced by stem cells in our bone marrow.

Macrophages can detect foreign invaders and engulf them, resulting in destruction of those foreign invaders. Thick of macrophages as many little “PAC-MANs” eating up these invaders.  When a macrophage encounters a bacteria, virus, fungi, or parasite, it will engulf or eat these inside a pouch called a phagosome. The phagosome is then taken inside the macrophage where it’s combined with a lysosome. Lysosomes contain strong enzymes and chemicals that will destroy these foreign invaders. 

Adaptive Immune Response

An antigen is a foreign substance that elicits an immune response. Antibodies are proteins produced in response to specific antigens and antibodies have unique protein structures that allow them to bind to antigens. Our bodies have five classes of antibodies: IgG, IgA, IgD, IgE, and IgM. IgG is the most abundant antibody in our blood.

B cells produce antibodies that will bind to a given antigen, with one example being a protein on the surface of a virus. Once they attach to the antigen, the B cell will double in size and proliferate into two cells, which then proliferate again into four cells and so on. All of these new cells will have receptors on their surfaces that can recognize the antigen. It’s almost like the cells have radars for a specific disease causing agent. 

Most of these new cells will also make antibodies and send them into the blood supply as quickly as possible. It’s important to note that antibodies don’t actually kill the antigen. They mark the antigen so our immune system can destroy them. You may remember from a basic science class that this mechanism is called opsonization. Opsonization is a process of coating or marking a particle with proteins to elicit an immune response.

During a viral attack, viruses enter our cells by binding to receptors on a cell’s surface.  Those receptors are not made for the virus, but the virus has learned to use it to its own advantage. Once inside the cell, the virus replicates itself and can infect neighboring cells. It infects neighboring cells by bursting out of the cell – sometimes killing it in the process – and entering neighbor cells. The virus can literally blow up our cells to infect other cells.  

Think of antibodies as a bouncer and their job is to prevent the viruses from entering the cell. They essentially grab the virus while it’s outside the cell and keep it from entering a new cell or replicating. Theses specific antibodies are called neutralizing antibodies. Neutralizing antibodies essentially bind to the portion of the virus that would bind onto our cell receptors, thus tagging the virus to be engulfed by phagocytes. 

When the antigen has been destroyed, the B cells die as we can only have a finite number of B cells. This is a pretty impressive regulatory process that allows our body to focus on pathogens that are currently attacking us rather than pathogens from our past. We do store some of these B cells into memory cells just in case that specific antigen tries to attack again. 

If the virus does make it inside the cell, the virus is safe from our antibodies and will be able to replicate itself. Don’t worry though, our immune system is amazing and has a solution. T cells are another component of our adaptive immune system. We have three types of T cells: Killer T cells, Helper T cells, and Regulatory T cells. The Killer T cell makes contact with its target cell and triggers it to self-destruct. Helper T cells secrete cytokines (proteins, peptides, or glycoproteins), which are known as signaling molecules that mediate immunity and inflammation. Regulatory T cells help regulate other T cells, but their full function isn’t well known. The Naturopathic Approach focuses mainly on Killer T cells because they are our most potent immune cell for fighting viral infections.

You might be asking yourself, how in the world does a killer T cell know which cell to target for destruction? Special proteins called major histocompatibility complex proteins present a portion of the virus to the Killer T cell. These complex proteins are located on the surface of most cells and they pretty much hold a giant sign saying, “I’m infected.” Killer T cells can easily locate these infected cells and destroy them. Helper T cells can recognize a different class of major histocompatibility proteins, which ultimately results in Helper T cells working with other immune cells to destroy the viral infected cell.

Holistic Options

The Naturopathic Approach combines holistic healing with modern medicine. To truly apply this approach, one needs to fully understand the mechanisms involved in cellular physiology. The goal of this approach is to create a healthy environment inside the body to facilitate one’s own immune system to function optimally. This is usually done by identifying and removing barriers to good health and using protocols and nutrients to support specific mechanisms. 

If you want to focus on optimizing your immune function, specific nutrients can aid your body’s own mechanisms for addressing disease-causing agents. Thousands of phytonutrients exist in nature and many can be beneficial for our immune system. While there are too many to list here, a few options include:

Astragalus membranaceus has been shown to activate macrophages to increase the migration and release of immune response mediators. Vitamin C has many beneficial effects on both the innate and adaptive immune response. It has been shown to enhance phagocytosis and increase neutrophils to the site of infection, and surprisingly, vitamin C deficiency still affects about 7% of people in the United States. Zinc is an important mineral for normal development and function of neutrophils and natural killer cells, and zinc deficiency can decrease the function of T helper cells, B lymphocyte development, and antibody production.

Bupleurum potentially promotes autophagic effects, which help regulate the immune response to disease-causing agents. Vitamin D is a very important nutrient that many people are deficient in, and it is important for the modulation of both the innate and adaptive immune response. With probiotics, gut microbes play an important role for the immune system by aiding what enters the blood and what gets eliminated. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) is an inflammatory toxin made by “bad” bacteria that results in inflammation if too much reaches the circulatory system, and probiotics can help balance a healthy ratio of gut flora inside the intestinal environment.

What the research shows

Vitamin C is often promoted for colds, but the evidence is modest. A 2013 Cochrane review by Hemilä and Chalker pooled placebo-controlled trials. In 29 comparisons with 11,306 people, regular vitamin C did not lower the number of colds in the general population, though it roughly halved colds in 598 people under heavy physical stress such as marathon runners. Regular use shortened colds by about 8% in adults and 14% in children, while taking it only after symptoms began showed no consistent benefit.

Sleep plays a large role. In a 2015 study by Prather and colleagues, 164 healthy adults aged 18 to 55 had their sleep tracked with wrist monitors for a week and were then given cold-virus nose drops in quarantine. People who slept under 6 hours were about 4 times as likely to develop a cold as those sleeping more than 7 hours. It was an observational study of one virus, so it shows a strong link rather than proof of cause.

Sources

• Hemilä H, Chalker E. Vitamin C for preventing and treating the common cold. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2013. PMID: 23440782. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23440782/
• Prather AA, Janicki-Deverts D, Hall MH, et al. Behaviorally Assessed Sleep and Susceptibility to the Common Cold. Sleep 2015. PMID: 26118561. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26118561/
• Vidarsson G, Dekkers G, Rispens T. IgG subclasses and allotypes: from structure to effector functions. Front Immunol 2014. PMID: 25368619. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4202688/
• Carr AC, Maggini S. Vitamin C and Immune Function. Nutrients 2017. PMID: 29099763. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5707683/
• Schleicher RL, et al. Serum vitamin C and the prevalence of vitamin C deficiency in the United States: 2003-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Am J Clin Nutr 2009. PMID: 19675106. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19675106/
• Shankar AH, Prasad AS. Zinc and immune function: the biological basis of altered resistance to infection. Am J Clin Nutr 1998. PMID: 9701160. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9701160/
• Aranow C. Vitamin D and the immune system. J Investig Med 2011. PMID: 21527855. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3166406/

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