asthma, vaccines and immune function

The discussion about raw milk over at The Complete Patient continued through the weekend, and someone mentioned in passing how asthma is “inherited.” Since most of our federal research dollars are devoted to determining the allegedly genetic causes of disease, this is not a surprising assumption, but it’s also likely untrue.

While the tendency to express chronic disease in the form of respiratory problems is likely inherited (although it’s far more complicated than simple genetics — the new field of epigenics, also known as soft inheritance, has much to offer us here), asthma is not a hereditary disease in any true sense.

For starters, there is no such thing as a genetic epidemic — it’s biologically impossible — and by any measure we are in the midst of an epidemic of asthma. Autism is the same way, so when we keep looking for a genetic “cause” we might as well be pounding sand.

Like asthma, kids with autism may have inherited a predisposition, but some trigger sent them over the edge, yet we keep scratching our heads, pretending we don’t know what’s causing these “spontaneous” mutations or manifestations of the disease. And having such a heritary predisposition, by the way, in no way means that one has to walk around with asthma symptoms for the remainer of her life. Vibrant, robust health means that such tendancies are not expressed, and we have lots of ways to achieve such a state.

According to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology, nine million children in the United States have symptoms of asthma. The prevalence of asthma has increased more than 160 percent from 1980-1994 in children under five. About 5,000 people die of asthma-related events every year, and the direct health care costs of managing the disease medically are more than $11.5 billion annually.

So what’s going on? Let me pose one explanation as I understand it, as I think it’s the one that merits the most attention.

We actually have two different types of immune function, cell-mediated immunity involving the mucous membranes of the body and humoral immunity, which comprises production of antigen-specific antibodies (to particular viruses, bacteria, etc.).

Multiple studies have indicated that healthy immune function has a natural bias towards predominance toward cell-mediated immunity (otherwise known as TH1). People with allergies, asthma, bowel disease and other inflammatory conditions tend to have very high humoral immune function (also known as TH2), at the expense of their TH1 function.

What does this mean? Basically your TH1 function is an unspecialized army capable of dealing with any invader regardless of the intruder’s shape, size, color, smell, whatever. TH2 is a highly specialized force, with each unit specifically focused on only one kind of bacteria, virus and so forth.

What are we doing to children’s immune systems today that’s different than children two decades ago?

Lots, and food can’t be excused here, as the more processed the food, the more your immune system has to be involved in digesting it. So processed food (including pasteurized and homogenized milk, and pretty much anything sold in a box) actually is toxic enough to the body that the immune system has to get involved, sapping its energy and distracting it from its real job of keeping you well. Other environmental factors cannot be ignored either, in particular indoor air quality. Our obsession with hygiene is also suspect.

But there’s something even more insidious going on, and that’s the childhood vaccine schedule, which has more than tripled in the past few decades. With some of those vaccines we are prepping our children’s bodies for antigen’s they will likely never see (because the incidence of these diseases already waned on their own, before the vaccine was introduced). And perhaps more importantly, with many of the other vaccines on the schedule, we are actually preventing children from coming down with mild illnesses (chicken pox, for example) that actually teach their immune systems how to function.

In short, we are over-specializing their little immuno-armys, creating hyper-TH2 function at the expense of the more healthy TH1 function, and cutting their immune systems off at the knees before they even learn to walk.

Many studies have linked hyper-TH2 function with asthma and other chronic illness, and it’s exactly the humoral (TH2) immune system that we are stimulating with vaccines. Vaccines bypass the normal ways your body comes in contact with a virus, through the mucous membranes. Exposure in that way creates a robust immune system, dominated by TH1 function. So by injecting all of these antigens, we are basically tricking the body into fighting a phony war, constantly, for the rest of the person’s life. (This article by Dr. Philip Incao is probably the best and most succinct discussion of this subject and certainly the most important link in this post.)

In this way, we are trading acute illness for chronic illness. We cannot manifest acute chicken pox if we are harboring it chronically, which is how the chicken pox vaccine “works,” when it does. That chronic over stimulation of TH2 function is exactly how the immune systems of many children with asthma are functioning. Getting acute chicken pox (and don’t believe all the hype manufactured to sell Varivax, chicken pox is not deadly or life-threatening to almost anyone — and we are by any measure harming more kids with the vaccine than we would be “saving,” in any case) and getting over it is actually good for the immune system, increases TH1 function and teaches the body by experience how to stay well for the rest of its life.

If our medical system were honestly interested in promoting our health, and our federal research money was directed at the same, we would see a great deal more research done in this area. But as it is, we are now spending our tax dollars on researching a vaccine for asthma, despite significant and irrefutable evidence that our current paradigm of disease control is exactly what is causing the epidemic of asthma to begin with.

Related posts:

“The Age of Autism — Something Wicked”

Why hasn’t my doctor mentioned this?

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