Arming the Immune System

Book excerpt: This book is a public service announcement. Discover the power of your natural immunity. Learn why we should allow our bodies to run their intelligent health maintenance programs, including those of the immune system. As they are more effective at eliminating invaders than any military on earth. You will discover that fever is an essential part of the immune response, and is found throughout the animal kingdom. I'm talking hamsters, rats, guinea pigs, lizards, gators, crabs, scorpions, grasshoppers, lobsters, beetles, leeches, snakes, snails, mice, monkeys, fish, ferrets, baboons, and even my beloved bees. Learn how hard our bodies are working just to maintain our body temperature, and what happens when our internal thermostat intelligently and purposefully shifts up the heat. The fever response has developed over a 400 million year history, slowly perfecting its orchestral brilliance over that time. I'll share stories of bees who make an effort to fever together, lizards who lounge around trying to get a fever, kids who've had chickenpox longer than their peers because they took medicine to stop their fever, and, incredibly, people whose cancer completely disappeared after a fever. Until the late 1800s, fever was widely considered a healthy sign during disease. This view has changed with fever-lowering drugs now the knee-jerk reaction worldwide. We have more scientific evidence than ever about what actually happens when people fever-and when they interrupt this natural process with common, easily-accessed medications. When people feel lousy, achy, tired, hot, and miserable, the idea of taking medication and interfering with this process is pretty compelling. They simply want to get rid of the nasty, noxious feeling that comes with fever. Moreover, many people still worry about letting the body fever, as there remain myths that make people nervous or downright fearful. Some of these myths are rooted in truth but have been disproven or distorted over time. Others just aren't true and never have been. Not only will we establish exactly what happens biochemically during a fever, giving us an understanding of why it truly feels crappy, we will see that when we interrupt fever we stay sick for longer. We will then explore how can we actually use fever therapeutically and harness it for our benefit. And this isn't a new idea. Fever therapy has been used for a long time with sometimes incredible results. For example, we will review the malarial fevers used to treat neurosyphilis that won Dr. Julius Wagner-Juaregg the 1927 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology. Perhaps more impressive were the cancer treatments of Dr. William Coley (who used bacteria) and Dr. Nina Klyuyeva (who used a parasite). We've really come a long way in our understanding of the immune system in the last few decades. The timeline for the most significant fever-related immunotherapy discoveries is very interesting. Since the turn of the 21st century, the scientific and medical communities have rapidly accelerated research in this field, with exponential growth since 2000. In 2020 alone, the FDA approved fifteen new immunotherapy treatments. I'm happy to be sharing this important, age-old knowledge, especially at this time in the world. Inspired by the tireless efforts of the scientific and medical communities, I'm optimistic that this book will help spark conversation and change. Bringing together ancient wisdom and new understanding. We can all play a role in the guardianship of the fever response, providing this knowledge to our children, and they theirs. Trust the wisdom inherent in your body, arm your immune system, and share the incredible power of the fever response. Because when we honour our bodies, we can be sick less, get better faster, and live healthier lives.