Super Immunity
Authors: Joel Fuhrman
The Essential Nutrition Guide
for Boosting Your Body's Defenses to Live
Longer, Stronger, and Disease Free
Joel Fuhrman, M.D.
Dedicated to my wife, Lisa, whose encouragement and love
have enabled me to pursue my dreams.
INTRODUCTION:
What Is Super Immunity?
TWO
The Failure of Modern Medicine
THREE
Super Foods for Super Immunity
FOUR
Colds and FluâWhat We Need to Know
FIVE
Healthy Carbs, Fats, and Proteins
It just dawned on me that two and a half years ago I began the wonderful journey with you to get my health back, and I did not just lose one hundred pounds; I haven't had a virus, cold, or flu bug since. Considering that for over thirty years straight I would get a nasty case of bronchitis every winter and I'd cough like crazy for six weeks, this freedom truly is wonderfulâin more ways than just preventing obesity, cancer, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease.
âEmily Boller
S
uper Immunity can be best defined as the body's immune system working to its fullest potential. Modern science has advanced to the point where we have evidence that the right raw materials and nutritional factors can double or triple the protective power of the immune system. If you learn to fill every cell receptor lock with the right nutrient key and meet the demands of each cell, the body's defenses take on superhero qualitiesâand you will hardly ever get sick again. More important, this change from average immunity to Super Immunity can save your life.
Emily Boller, July 2008.
June 2009.
The fact is that Super Immunity is needed now, more than ever. In the United States, adults can expect to catch a cold two to four times a year, and children can expect to get six to ten colds annually. All of these colds sap about $40 billion from the U.S. economy in direct and indirect costs. On top of that, getting sick is no fun. Influenza, for example, can result in a prolonged and serious illness. With health authorities' warnings about the potential of new flu epidemics and the global spread of viral illnesses, it is vital that we keep our immune system strong and know the steps to take to protect ourselves and our families. In someone without a well-functioning immune system, a mild infection can hang on for weeks; worse yet, it can develop serious consequences such as heart damage or nerve paralysis, or it can blossom into a difficult-to-treat bacterial infection such as a life-threatening pneumonia.
Our immune system also protects us from developing cancer. The same white blood cells and other immune system components that are utilized to fight infection are also used to recognize our own human cells as they become abnormal and to remove them before they can evolve into a tumor or cancer.
The immune system is like an angel watching over our lives and protecting us from the risks around us. With Super Immunity you can have a healthier, happier life with more comfort and productivity. Super Immunity can also enable you to push the envelope of human longevity, because it puts a force field of protection around the body, radically reducing the risk of annoying minor infections, serious major infections, and even cancers.
Today we are exposed to more dangerous infections from around the world than ever before. We are routinely in airports and jets crowded with world travelers who have come in contact with exotic and newly created microbes, and we are in schools and hospitals with bacteria circulating that have developed antibiotic resistance. Scientists suggest that environmental, social, and nutritional changes have helped trigger an unprecedented explosion of infection: more than thirty-five new infectious diseases have burst upon the world in the past thirty years. The U.S. death rate from infectious diseases is now double what it was in 1980, up to 170,000 annually. With two billion people traveling by air each year, the potential for serious viral illnesses looms even larger in our future.
1
Once a disease takes hold these days, it tends to be globalized quickly by travel and trade. The West Nile virus, for example, is thought to have reached New York from its traditional home in the Middle East on an infected bird carried by a ship or a plane. Within six weeks after SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) first appeared in November 2002, it had spread worldwide, carried by unsuspecting travelers. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 8,000 people were infected with this severe viral illness, and about 800 eventually died during the outbreak.
2
This will certainly not be the last viral illness to travel from one region of the globe to another, spreading rapidly to highly populated areas, but it set a record for speed of continent-to-continent transmission.
In addition to the increased risk of dangerous infections circling the globe, we have another modern epidemic affecting a large segment of our population: cancer. The lifetime probability of being diagnosed with an invasive cancer is 44 percent for men and 37 percent for women. However, because of the earlier median age of diagnosis for breast cancer compared with other major cancers, women have a slightly higher probability of developing cancer before the age of sixty. Currently, one in four deaths in the United States is due to cancer. The statistical trend for women looks bleak: breast cancer, almost unheard of a hundred years ago, now affects one in eight women over their lifetime, with signs that this may increase in the next few decades.
Together, we can turn these statistical trends around. Research from the field of nutritional medicine has shown us that there is a clear way to improve and sustain our health and fight off illness in all its forms.
I believe that the nutritional research and information in these pages is essential and needs to become common knowledge. The modern diet is causing a tragic reduction in immune competency. Due to the increase in consumption of processed foods, “fake” foods, food additives, and all the cancer-causing elements these things contain, our current food environment is compromising our health. We must intercede with relevant research from nutritional science and empower people to protect themselves
before
we see the continued degradation of our daily health;
before
a massive life-threatening epidemic explodes; and
before
we witness a secondary explosive wave of cancer.
Super Immunity is well within our reach. Before we talk about
how
, it is important for you to learn about immune system competency and what it can do for you and your health.
Not
the Answer
We are living in an era of rapid advancements in science, and much of this new knowledge can be applied to help us live better, longer, and happier than ever before. But let me warn you: exposure to more medical care, more drugs, more vaccines, and more doctors does
not
beget Super Immunity. In fact, medical care is part of the problem, not the solution.
When most of us think of preventive medicine and proper health care, we think about getting shots, taking medications, or having diagnostic tests. We've had these products and services marketed to us for the last fifty years and have accepted a belief system that equates more medical care with better health, survival, and longevity. This equation is simply not true.
As a matter of fact, the Kaiser Health Foundation, which studied this issue in depth, determined that one-third of medical spending is devoted to services that don't improve health or the quality of careâand may make things worse!
3
Too many people are becoming sicker and sicker. A
lack
of medical care is not the problem, and
more
medical care is certainly not the answer.
The new patients I see daily in my practice are great examples. People may catch a cold or flu that lingers for weeks, and then have a cough that lingers for additional months. Often we see patients develop facial headaches from a sinusitis that lasts for months after a simple cold. The most minor illnesses turn into major calamities requiring more and more medications. The medications may help initially, but after a while they stop working and the initial problem reappears, often worse than before. These medical complications occur because of impaired natural immunity that results from a combination of inadequate nutrition and medications that have degraded our body's ability to protect itself.
Laura Kaminski is a wonderful example of how proper nutrition can repair the immune system, making it stronger than ever before. Laura, a former patient of mine, wrote to me about her experience: