Honey, how do I 'boost my immunity'?

This is a follow-up to my last piece on the importance of the immune system for any vaccine. It led to an immediate question: how do you build healthy immunity?

Are you among those losing sleep over being betrayed by Dabur in fortifying your immune shield? Or are you part of the group that never bothered with home remedies and feel vindicated by the CSE ‘honeytrap’? Let me help you: it does not matter.

Sure, selling something by claiming what it isn’t goes against basic human and business principles. But losing sleep over sugar-syrup-laden honey is missing the wood for the trees. Or, in corporate lingo, claiming credit for a business deal where you changed the font style of a footnote in one of the appendix slides.

If there is one takeout you must have, it is this: our immune system is far too complicated to be influenced by the sticky hands of one food item. Also, any time someone tells you something ‘boosts your immune system’, be cautious. Not suspicious of its composition, but cautious like you would of someone promising to double your investment when the prime lending rate is, say, 15%.

It will help you appreciate both these points if I took you on a brief tour of our immune system. 

Buy one, Get one

You have to give it to human beings for having crafted what Daniel M Davies calls ‘the beautiful cure’. It is a double layer of protection, mediated by three players (broadly):

·       White blood cells (WBCs, as your blood test report will show them);

·       Physical barriers like our skin, mucus, saliva, gastric acid, and the like; and

·       Gut bacteria (or the microbiome).

Together, they provide us with two levels of immunity: innate and adaptive. The former is an immediate but broad-based (yet specific to its task) response to a pathogen If innate immunity defenses are unable to contain the infection and it prolongs beyond a few days, adaptive immunity kicks in. This is a specific, targeted response to each invader, mediated largely by our B and T cells. This is the part of the immune system that is the target of vaccines.

You will appreciate how lucky we are to have this second level when you consider that we are among the 2% of species on this planet that has two lines of defense. As Davies states, “Of the 1.5 million species on our planet, nearly 98%...are invertebrates…and survive disease with only (innate immunity).” You shouldn’t discount the value of innate immunity though: it manages to act upon nearly 95% of microbe attacks, he adds.

Cost-benefit analysis

Like everything in business and life, the benefits of the immune system come with serious costs. The benefits are obvious – identifying, killing and weeding out the invader. Restoring your cells to health. The costs aren’t so obvious to many of us.

There is a cost incurred by the body in producing multiple T cells, for instance, when an invader must be killed. There is a cost of inflammatory damage throughout the body when hormones of the immune system (cytokines) cause inflammation to directing relevant immune cells to the site of infection. And finally, there is a significant collateral cost of oxidative stress to cells due to the respiratory burst of immune cells trying to engulf and destroy the pathogen. Anti-inflammatory products and anti-oxidants find a mention in the latter context.

The strength (or ROI, for business folks) of an immune response therefore, must be measured on its ability to perform three roles:

1.  To identify self from non-self, and harmless non-self from a harmful non-self;

2.  To capture, kill and weed out the troubling non-self; and

3.  To cease and desist after the act, thus saving additional costs.

Boosted immune responses can play havoc at all three levels. Increased inflammation and oxidative stress may further damage healthy cells. Think of autoimmune diseases like psoriasis, celiac, IBD (inflammatory bowel disease), Type 1 diabetes, and more, where, for unfortunate reasons, the immune system turns against healthy cells. Or think of cancer where the immune system becomes incapable of identifying or killing tumorous cells. Allergies are a type of immune disorder where the system is unable to distinguish between a harmless and harmful external agent.

The Optimal Solution

What you need therefore, is an optimal immune response. Neither under-responsive, nor boosted. And what allows it? In order of priority, food, sleep, exercise. Take a look at this beautiful graphic from the Linus Pauling Institute and you can see how honey is a drop in the culinary ocean.

At a fundamental level, you need adequate food. Both malnutrition and excess energy intake (over-weight, obesity) will come in the way of an optimal immune response. Within your food choices, you want your body to have a range of vitamins and minerals – right from Vitamins A through B, C, D and E, along with minerals like copper, zinc, iron, selenium, and omega-3 fatty acids (fish, flaxseed, hemp, brussels sprouts, etc).

Quick question: as you ticked honey on your to-do immunity list, did you run a check on your body’s levels of Vitamin D, C, zinc and copper? Let’s say you did. Let’s, for a moment, agree that you are the health-conscious person who eats home-cooked food, at the right time, with the right mannerisms of ingestion, digestion and egestion, so to say. Would that still guarantee an optimally functioning immune response? Is there something that could thwart your best dietary programme?

Think of that much-maligned six-letter word that you are all too familiar with: stress. Stress is the villain to the heroic immune system star cast. Now think of all white collar workers, breathing fire at revenue dips or cost jumps, perhaps in video calls at both India and US times. Still concerned about honey? 

PS: Honey is pure sugar, lacking any protein, fat or fiber. Sure, it has some trace minerals and our grandmothers and marketers seem to claim various antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory benefits. But evidence is scant and disputed, and it mentions adverse effects. But please don’t stop if it makes you happy. 

Disclosure and any possible conflict of interest: I consume honey! I am not a doctor. Nor do I hold any degree in medicine. I do not hold any positions in pharma companies or their equities. And this is not a prescription, but a lay person's attempt at demystifying health concerns relevant to senior corporate executives.