Immune responses

I posted a basic explanation of what a Cytokine Storm is in the link at the right. I've been reading about it in many places because it seems to present some counterintuitive information about how H5N1 virus seems to kill. Some of the articles I found were just a bit too technical, written more for medical people than for me. This one seemed to explain Cytokine Storm on my level.

Usually, we think of the flu as taking out old guys like me more often than the healthy young. That is because we are old and our immune systems have weakened. It is the same reason so many old ones die of pneumonia. And this is what the common flu does each year and what we are used to.

However, the history of both the 1918 killer and this H5N1 is that both diseases take a larger proportion of young people than of folks over 40. And one possible explanation of that is this concept of the immune system reacting so strongly that it kills off the good and bad alike. and when it takes out the ability of the lungs to function, the young ones die quickly. The same healthy immune system that helps the kids fight the yearly flu and colds, contributes to their quick deaths when H5N1 strikes.

I sent that site and a few other sources to my organic and health food friend Debbie, and she responded arguing that a strong immune system is still the best defense. She is not a proponent of vaccination either. "A healthy body is the best defense" against any illness, sums up her argument. My other reading explains that pandemic is a different thing and that so many young, healthy people die because their strong immune system takes out vital organs like the lungs.

Here are Debbie's thoughts:

"Yes, I've read about cytokine storm before. It is my belief, however,
that
the immune system had to be either already in distress or somehow not
working properly for this condition to actually occur. They blame an
overactive immune system, not a healthy, properly working one. There is
a
world of difference because an overactive system obviously has some
sort of
disturbance which could make it just as dangerous as an underactive
one. For
an immune system to overreact in this way means that something was
already
out of balance. The body is a remarkable machine that was built to
survive
whatever we throw at it. It adapts quickly to overcome
toxins/virus'/disease
etc. but it can only take so much abuse before it shuts down. Kind of
like
never changing the oil in your car I guess, after a while it gets so
gunked
up with residue it clogs the engine and bye-bye car......or life.

To achieve proper balance we all need to follow a whole foods diet and
regular exercise. This is our ultimate best defense against bird flu,
cancer, and/or any other imaginable disease, virus or illness. If
people are
not willing to do that, then yes, they are definitely more susceptible
to
contracting viruses and disease and may have to resort to prescription
drugs
to aid their ailing bodies. But in reality it becomes a vicious cycle
because the drugs actually tax the already struggling immune system
even
more which means more drugs are needed and the cycle
continues.....These
concepts aren't new, they've been around for thousands of years."

I welcome discussion of this idea. It seems crucial for developing a strategy for defense. The overwhelming strategy I am reading consists of quarrantine and then vaccination with the newest vaccine available. The quarrantine is to keep us and our children alive while the government and scientists respond to particular evolved version of the H5N1 virus and get an effective vaccine to us. It is necessary because the flu is so deadly and chooses the young as its common victim. Ward Stone explained to the group of caged bird enthusiasts that quarantine was important for them, their children, and their birds until such time as science caught up with the mutation of the virus.

I think Debbie's thoughts are that medicines including vaccines are as much a danger as they are a benefit and good nutrition and a natural life style will keep us and our children safe.

What do you think?

Finally, Debbie finishes with that same theme I got from my friends at the tavern the other night.

"In my opinion, Dewey, you'd be doing A LOT more to protect yourself if you started researching healing nutrition instead of worrying so much about contracting the bird flu."

Cathy and Melanie said the same kind of thing. I assume they are thinking that it is sort of ironic for me to establish a site aimed at avoiding bird flu. I imagine their thoughts to be something like:

Why doesn't this guy get to the gym, lose some weight, and eat
responsibly. He's killing himself every day while he worries about this Boggieman Flu bug that is mostly media hype anyway.

Well, you are all certainly right about my life choices being stupid for me. It isn't that I don't believe you. I just don't seem to act in my own best interest. I am glad that my kids' lives are not based on my personal eating habits. My entire family would be doomed for sure. As it is, when I eat poorly and drink too much, and absorb carcinogins in the poker rooms of Vegas, all my bad choices risk only my own health.

However, on bird flu prevention I seem to be ready and able to act early. I guess it is because I worry not only about my own risk of death from H5N1, but that of the millions who might be affected by pandemic, most of them in the prime of life with plenty of fun ahead of them, if we can keep them safe.

All that being said, I sure hope that Deb and Cathy and Melanie are right. And I hope Steve is right when he rants that this is all just one big joke and there will be no pandemic for a hundred years. Imagine no pandemic or Cytokine Storm comes, and I still keep to my unhealthy ways and die of cancer. My kids still get to live until their own retirement years. Not a bad scenario.

Better than what I read about 1918 flu:

"It was an awful disease, which, due to the war and the accompanying censorship and the jolly peace that followed, was half forgotten until Crosby's book in 1976. It was also a peculiar disease. Although it eventually struck a broad portion of the population, it had seemingly started among the young and most fit, and from beginning to end it would be most efficient at killing individuals whose immune systems were the best H. sapiens can produce. There are no usable statistical measures, but here and there doctors in hospitals, nurses in wards, sailors on ships, and soldiers in barracks reported that it was the most robust, strongest, most fit, disease-free athletic sorts who suffered the worst. Post mortem studies on such victims of the 1918 epidemic often showed enormous damage to the lungs, which could not at that time be explained. Years later, it was realized that such victims had literally drowned in the waste products of their own powerful immune reactions to the virus. As Crosby put it, "a springtide of fluids overwhelms the lungs." Thus in 1918, in contrast to other flu epidemics, many robust young people died of the influenza itself -- rather than from secondary infections of pneumonia-causing bacteria, the standard cause of death among those with weaker immune systems. They died so rapidly that pneumonia-causing bacteria had had no time to establish secondary infections."
http://www.acsh.org/factsfears/newsID.694/news_detail.asp