Is Your Immune System Really Working?
   by James Occhiogrosso, N.D.

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I often see clients that are constantly getting sick with various minor illnesses like colds and short-term respiratory infections, as well as regular bouts of more serious conditions like the flu and pneumonia. These folks typically suffer from a range of other problems too. Their complaints often include low sex drive, erectile dysfunction, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, depression, lack of energy, muscle deterioration, brain fog, cognition problems, and others.

When they ask for my recommendations for the flu shot and other vaccines, I try to explain that their problems result from an overworked and insufficient immune system that is incapable of defending them against illness — and that a flu shot will not protect someone whose immune system is seriously compromised.  And, it may even cause more problems.

It seems like public health authorities and the media are always pushing the benefits of vaccines on the public. These benefits are overblown by the media and vaccine proponents. The mainstream media gets a significant amount of revenue from pharmaceutical advertising, and thus, has a huge conflict of interest regarding vaccines and other pharmaceutical products.

Most media sources quote that about 36,000 deaths occur each year from the flu or its complications. According to a statement in August of 2010, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention considers these numbers to be grossly misleading. The actual average is about one-third less or around 23,000. Note that these figures always are stated as “deaths from flu — or its complications”. These so-called “complications” include other diseases—like pneumonia—that typically strike a segment of the population that is immune-compromised, i.e., the elderly and people with pre-existing health problems.

The vast majority of deaths reportedly due to the flu strike people with serious underlying health problems that make them susceptible to death from almost any extenuating circumstance. When a 95-year-old senior citizen with congestive heart failure and a plethora of other health problems gets the flu and dies, the death is added to "flu-death" statistics, even though this person could have just as easily expired without contracting the flu. However, the statistics are frightening and are used extensively by vaccine manufacturers to market their products.

For the average person in decent health, the flu is no more than a minor inconvenience resulting in some annoying symptoms for the better part of a week or so. When this average person does get an attack of the flu, his immune system responds to the invader and mounts an attack to fend it off. Each subsequent illness event (flu or otherwise) further strengthens one’s immunity. If vaccines were to prevent all illness occurrences, our immune systems would deteriorate in the same way a muscle deteriorates from lack of use!

There are many doctors and other experts seriously questioning the safety and efficacy of various vaccines as well as testing methods used to secure approval for them. In my opinion, as well as the opinion of these experts, many of the vaccines being marketed today for the flu are close to worthless. The companies marketing them are using pseudo-scientific data to sell dangerous and ineffective vaccines to an unsuspecting public. There are several vaccines that have caused serious reactions and even some deaths.

In light of the dangers of vaccines, it seem quite odd to me that health authorities continually ignore the wealth of data suggesting that nutritional status is a strong contributing factor to the risk of acquiring the flu. Making this even more confounding is that it is occurring at a time when the overuse of antibiotic and anti-viral drugs has caused serious outbreaks of drug-resistant infections like MRSA!

There is extremely strong evidence that good nutritional status is crucial to enhance the immune response for all illnesses. Unfortunately, it is rare that doctors discuss nutrition or test patients for nutrient deficiencies or proper hormone levels. Optimal health for both men and women is dependent on both. Quoting from a report published the Journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases in 2007,

“Undernutrition or malnutrition adversely affects host defenses against many invading microorganisms, thereby increasing the severity of infection.”