Strengthening Your Immune Defenses: The Gut, Nutrition, and Lifestyle Connection

I was actually looking at something on the plane back and it was talking about what is like 10 things that people that do rarely get sick, right? So there are things from sleeping right to eating right, to moving right.

Taken things like vitamin C and immune boosters. But it's just interesting because a lot of people don't do those things. They run themselves to the point that they're worn out and then they are much more susceptible to getting sick.

And that's what we want to help prevent. Welcome to the Holistic Truth Podcast. I'm Jamie Dorley, CEO of Nutritional Frontiers. And I am Christine Genovese, creator of the Soul Intelligence Method.

We're here to help you break through chronic disease and dysfunction physically, mentally, emotionally and energetically. With real proven strategies, protocols and tools you can use in your practice today.

Hello again, everybody, and welcome back to your favorite podcast from Mind, Body and Soul, The Holistic Truth. I am your host, Jamie Dorley, with the co-host, our chief growth officer at Nutritional Frontiers.

Welcome back, Christine. How are we doing? I'm doing great, James. It's like Metallica sold out every time, so I can't wait to be there. So proud that we have over 200 people already registered for the event.

And as they said in Jaws, we're going to need a bigger boat next time. No doubt, we definitely will. We have so much good stuff to talk about for October, November, and December at Nutritional Frontiers.

And one of the things we always do is we try and focus on key wellness solutions to help support our practitioners and their patients during this season.

So one thing that typically most people start turning to as the weather changes a little bit is immune support. Yeah, we want to help prevent getting sick and if you do get sick to lower the intensity and duration.

So there's some key strategy you can adopt not only with lifestyle, but also nutraceutical support. And that's what we're here today to do is help you get a better understanding on.

How do you want to proceed on this journey with your immune system? Because there are some key things you can do. Some people rarely get sick. I was actually looking at something on the plane back and I'm was talking about what is like 10 things that people that do rarely gets sick, right?

So they're in from sleeping right to eating right, to moving right. Taken things like vitamin C and immune boosters. But it was just interesting because a lot of people don't do those things.

run themselves to the point that they're worn out and then they are much more susceptible to getting sick and that's what we want to help prevent. Absolutely.

Well, I'm going to bring up our immune support solutions. Give me one sec right here. Yeah. And so people that have been working in the functional medicine or nutraceutical field for a long time or people are the brand new, you know, one of the best thing you do is keep the immune system operating at a high level.

Look at the immunity system as almost like defense in football, right? You have a great defense and you can prevent a lot of invasion from the offense.

And one of the things to realize is that most of your immune cells are located in and around your intestinal tract. Why do you think that is? That's really interesting that most of our immune system is in our gut.

You know, we always say that our health begins and ends in the gut, I think a famous guy named Hippocrates said that about 2000 years ago. And that's probably a big part of it, right?

When we also feel stressed out or we take a hit, usually we feel it first in your stomach, you know? Something bad happens. Yeah, so first of all, the reason our immune cells are there probably is because that's where foreign invaders are gonna go into our system, right?

Because you have this tube that goes through your mouth all the way through you colon, and that like a pipe where the outside world kind of travels through.

It doesn't get quote unquote inside your body until it passes through that small intestinal tract, gets absorbed through the mucosal, malt engulfed tissue.

gets into bloodstream and the blood stream transports it somewhere in the system. So if you have a healthy system in there, it's like having a strong ozone layer.

It'll keep a lot of things out. However, if your immune system is compromised, If your intestinal tract is compromise, If you have too much stress, you've been a lot of antacids, poor diet like with sugar, dairy products and junk.

Over time, that environment is going to wear out and things that would normally be excreted out of the body are actually going pass through the intestinal tract.

It becomes more and more porous. Some people call this dysbiosis or leaky gut syndrome. And things that would normally pass right through and be excreted through the bowels are now being absorbed into the bloodstream.

A further development would be if your immune system is hyperstimulated now, because something is continuously in the stream, and that's where you get to your autoimmune conditions.

We want to protect the gut. We want to protect that very delicate and very complex immune system that GI microbiome ecology in there. You know, there's over a hundred trillion cells in the intestinal tract of good bacteria.

That's 10 times more cells than you have in your entire body. And. It's often easily dysfunctional. Why? Because what people feed it, those cells rely on fiber and short chain fatty acids to replenish and rejuvenate.

However, a lot of people eat too much sugar. processed junk, dairy products, things that are very hard to break down, and it doesn't provide the foods for the good bugs, it provides the food for bad bugs.

And I say foreign invaders, we're talking about yeast, funguses, mold, candida, parasite, all the things we don't want. Think of your intestinal tract and your immune system as like your neighborhood.

We can deal with one, maybe two bad neighbors. What if you have no bad neighbor? I think the bad neighbor would be you then. So be careful. You say, Oh, my neighbor was great.

You can deal with one neighbor who's a little crotchety. It's normal to have yeast in there. Its normal have funguses and parasites. They all have their role.

But when these things start to overgrow, then that's where we have trouble for the immune system. So about 70 to 80% of your immune cells are in that intestinal tract.

Eating good fiber. feeding with things like GI Complete and the SuperBiotics or ProBio3, taking in a good healthy whole food based diet that's more of a Mediterranean or an anti-inflammatory type of approach, making sure you only take antibiotics when they're extremely necessary, not relying on them.

And plus there's a lot of antibiotics and hormones in food. So don't buy store brand meats. Don't buy dairy products unless they're organic. I like alternative sources.

So if I'm going to use some type of milk, I generally use an organic almond or coconut milk. There's ways you can get around this. Antibiotics are miracle drugs.

They were really designed to help with infections. but not be used for everything. And even back in like 2003-ish, back then, they told pediatricians, JAMA, the General American Medical Association, said, if a kid has an earache, don't give them antibiotics, because they were over relying on antibiotics.

Now, I don' agree, this would give him a little bit of Tylenol for the pain, okay, but don''t give'em the antibiotics because you're just too powerful.

For a while in our country they recommended antibiotics for every thing. Right. Yeah, and one of the things we have to really be conscious of is how much stress is affecting us because that's one great way to, you know, crash your immune system.

If you're constantly stressed out or you are constantly in fear or constantly fight or flight and your body doesn't have a chance to recover and you, know you aren't sleeping well you add all of that up together and get the perfect storm to crash you immune systems.

Which is one the reasons why in the fourth quarter we focus on things like stress, mood and sleep and immune health, right, because it's all tied together.

And our immune system actually has two parts, the innate immune, system that's the one you're born with, that is part of the body's first line defense, and then you've got the acquired or the adaptive one.

That's really one that we kind of develop over time. I used to remember you'd You have the five second rule if something fell on the floor and then you'd eat it, there might be dirt on it.

I used to remember being like, it's going to help me just become a little bit more adaptive and help my immune system. And now today people are like oh my gosh, you can't do that.

Don't eat that! It's actually true because I never use hand sanitizers and they're saying it is one of the worst things to do. Oh my goodness. Because it's making your body too sterile.

It doesn't have the ability to fight these things off. And you brought up a great point. There's an old study. I remember Dr. Bland went over and he says, why do you think when stress is up, immune function goes down?

He said, well, obviously there's and overload and those types of things, but it is interesting. When stress goes up. The repair mechanism of the intestinal tract goes down.

So if you are in chronic stress, your nervous system is overwhelmed. You don't have the ability to heal because the body is trying to deal with all the stress you're encountering.

That's probably like the development of ulcers, right? Yes. Yeah. Oh my goodness. So, you know, we start talking about what key body parts make up our immune system.

Jamie's talked about the importance of the microbiome because it's obviously plays a vital role with 70 to 80% of immune cells located there. There are other parts of the body like white blood cells.

They are immune system cells that attack and eliminate germs. We've got antibodies. Those are proteins that protect you from those foreign invaders Jamie was talking about.

Lymph nodes, those are where we drain things, right? We were talking how to effectively get things out of our lymph. Certainly the spleen, it filters our blood and recycles old and damaged cells.

And then the thymus, right? It helps with T cells, which is a specific type of white blood cell to help protect you as well. Yeah, you need all these working and concert together.

It's like a military or a football team, they all have their role. They all to work well together and You know, the reason they're often compromised is the amount of stress people are under, The amount medications people take, you have these reactions to them.

You have the fact that people have poor lifestyles. So it's a very complex web, immune system. And we want to make sure one is that we're not putting it in harm's way.

and then number two, that is working at an optimal level. so it is a two pronged approach. Well, one of the things that I still do not agree with my mom on, there are only a few, but this is one.

It's about vaccines because that's really the cornerstone of allopathic immune therapy, right? Get your flu shot, you know? And she still does. And then, I've heard, actually I have a friend who did it recently and she's like, yeah, and then I got a little bit of flu.

I'm like well, The intent behind it is you take a little bit of the disease so that your body builds up a resistance to it. But over time, there have been so many crazy things that get put into these vaccines that I'm not so confident that that's the best way to go.

I think if you can keep your immune system strong, then you're not going to need to worry about catching the flu. What's your position, JD? Vaccine insurance last time I got the flu shot was 1993. I was getting ready for Mr.

Pennsylvania and I've told the story before, but I'll tell it again. I worked at a private health club and they were connected to the St. Francis Health Food Health Center.

And the woman that worked there was a nurse, so she'd come over to work out every day at four o'clock. Luanne, she was friend of mine. I knew her from the health Club.

She kept saying, oh, the flu is the worst ever this year, on and on. And then she came after me again, well you work here so it's only five bucks, why wouldn't you get it?

I'm like, I'll get just so you can get off my back. So I got on a Thursday, got the shot, and I get home that night, just a few hours later I started getting the chills, that's when I know I am getting sick.

And I was in bed Thursday night, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And as a young man, single man I would go out with friends all the time. I had so many people I'd go with.

No one saw me for a few days. I told her what happened. She says, well, you didn't get the shot. I go, I did get this shot, she says. Well, imagine how sick you would have been if you.

Didn't. Get it. No, no, that got me sick. It's impossible. So I understand she was just trying to help, but I have not got the flu shot since. And I won't, get that out of the pneumonia shot I didn' get to COVID shot either.

If people want to get them, it's on them. There's a great book by Dr. Timothy O'Shea. called Vaccination is Not Immunization. And his book is really interesting because there's 309 cited references from peer-reviewed journals.

So sometimes those vaccine books are really just faith-based, but this is faith and science-base. The other thing you've got to realize is when we were growing up, how many shots would you get?

It wasn't that many, but now, oh my gosh, the recent total from birth to 18 is 76 total shots. Yeah, it's almost 80. And before 9-11 happened, there was only 20. So it's more than tripled in the last 25 years.

So buyer beware. The other thing is, there's a lot of things in there we don't want. I was just watching this interesting interview and the guy was talking about, you know, why is there all these peanut allergens?

And they said, they started using peanut oil in their vaccines a few years back. And he said that's what created this whole allergen to peanuts. It's not the peanuts, it is the peanut oils they were using as a stabilizer.

emulsifier in the one vaccination. I was like, oh wow, that's really crazy. So you do what you want to do, I'll do my natural program, which is right here.

It's real simple, easy and effective. You know, we have a couple different ways to go about this. This is our old immune kit that we put all in one together.

So you have your complete comprehensive support in this approach. You have all the things that people would normally take on their own. Do you ever take vitamin C?

They would take vitamin D, right? You go down a list, quercetin, NAC, DMG. So rather than taking these individual and trying to guess, we put it all in one formula.

That's a great comprehensive foundation. A couple of years ago, I was getting sick. I called Dr. Lenny, he says, take five immune boosts. And I said, how many times a day?

He says five. Okay. Yep. Well, I could tell it was, you know, remember when something people say it's gotta run its course, but that really means that it has got to go deep in the tissue and then it kind of go out.

It's like how far can you go in a body halfway and you got start going back out? Once these things are embedded in your cells, it's going to take you a week or so to get healthy.

So, have these in you wellness cabinet. Not your medicine cabinet, your wellness cabinets. And that way, as soon as your first sign or symptom, boom, start blasting it.

For me, its usually a change in temperature or chills. What about yourself? What's the first signs or symptoms you get? Yeah, I start to get achy, you know.

That's usually when aching, maybe a little brain foggy. And it's been a while, so I feel pretty good. I'm glad that my immune system seems to be in pretty shape.

It could be also because I use Immunomax as really a daily preventative for me. And that one, you know, has the Miyataki fraction in it, the mushroom, and that really helps my immune system, I think, stay strong.

And certainly this formula also has zinc in, right, which we look for. It also vitamin A, vitamin C, Vitamin D, Vitamins E and selenium. Um, it also the wonderful DMG, Yeah, this is a chewable version.

There's also a capsule version, so they're all slightly different. Let's talk about the maitake PD fraction. If you look at all the research on mushrooms and maiitaki mushrooms, the most research is very delicate extract called the PD Fraction.

It's the molecular structure of the mushroom. That's where all the phase two FDA clinical trials have been done on immune support. So a very interesting patent research trademark ingredient.

You combine that with DMG. DMg has a US patent for melanoma, for rheumatoid arthritis, and osteoarthritis. We have to have DM g in the formula. Then we had things like Arabinogalactokins that will increase the number of immune cells in your intestinal tract.

Some studies show up to doubling the numbers of the immune cell. And then you got the beta-1,6 and 1,3-glucans. Think of these as almost like receptor sites.

that sit on top of the cells and when viruses and bacteria come by, it's like a Venus flytrap. They engulf them, they digest them. they kill them off and they excrete them A lot of times you'll see just one beta-1,3-glucan on the market, which is great.

But again, comprehensive formula, multiple mechanisms of action, better results. Love it. Well, the other formula that we have is the immune glandular, because again, some people prefer having glandulars because like attracts like.

So we want to kind of boost those key glandulas, thymus, spleen, and the lymph. Yeah. Add in the key vitamins, right? Vitamin A, vitamin C in here. We have echinacea, zinc, You know, they always talk about the ACEs, vitamin A, C, E, and selenium are really important in a formulation.

But then we added the glandulars from New Zealand. I love glandulas. They are very, very therapeutic, strong in nature. And we use a combination effect in here.

So we have the thymus, the spleen, and the immune glandular, all in one formulation. Again, you're getting the support of all those organs. Glandulas are interesting because the whole concept is similar to homeopathy.

and use the glandulas from the right tissue, from right types of organ, it'll actually feed that organ and give you a better result. Well, I start to use, when I feel a little something coming on, my formula is definitely using the immune boost, which you talk about as a foundational formula, and then I kick it over the top with some immune glandular to knock it out right away.

Kick it, huh? So we've got some other incredible immune solutions as well. SPMs, buffered C plus and SBC. And when we start talking about SPM's, we talk about inflammation that's anywhere in the body.

I love your analogy that SPMS are like the Pac-Man in body, they find any of that unresolved inflammation and it eats it and gets rid of it, takes it out.

Yeah, I think of like omega-3s as like being a good like broom, you know, and EPA and DHA will clean up the floor a little more. And then this gets in all nooks and crannies and cleans up those cytokines, these unresolved inflammation markers.

That's why I call it pro-resolving mediators. They're resolving unresolved inflammation. I studied at Harvard School of Medicine on original animal studies where they were injecting with a lethal dose of a toxin and seeing what would happen.

Some of them survived and they couldn't figure out why. And then when I looked deeper, they had higher levels of pro resolving mediator. Now, when you actually apply that to humans, it's the same thing.

People have diabetes, cancers, heart disease, arthritis, GI, autoimmune. They have much lower levels of SPM. And the person that comes to mind all the time is someone like Keith Richards from the Rolling Stones.

Like, this guy's done everything to kill himself in 80 years, and he seems to be functioning fine. He must have super high levels So the nice thing is you can take this for your immune health.

You can also take it for acute inflammation, any type of pain, unresolved inflammation. And there's over a thousand, over 1000 published studies on PubMed for SPMs and COVID.

Have you seen that on the news? No, I think that's a really good kept secret, J. D. Yes. So long COVID, chronic fatigue from COVID, COVID in general, take three, three times a day for an acute response.

Awesome. Well, buffered C plus, you know, I, had recently asked our incredible brand ambassadors to do a video on one of their favorite products and our medical director, Dr.

Len Bransiewicz insists that it's buffering C-plus. He absolutely loves this formulation. So why does he love it so much, JD? Well I was exposed to violence as a kid.

My dad was a cop in New York and. one of his fellow colleagues on the police department. He would say, oh, Jerry never gets sick. I was like, Oh, why?

He says, he started taking vitamin C and he would do one vitamin c a day. And that was a guy's claim to fame. and we know vitamin see works. This goes all the way back to the 1600s with scurvy and things like that.

The challenge is a lot of vitamin CS are in big tablets. So you don't really absorb them. Well, the other thing is, is most vitamin sees on market are actually from corn.

And we know corn can be GMO, it could be allergenic. So Dr. Len challenged me years ago to come out with a vitamin C that wasn't from corn. I says, I don't know if they exist.

He goes, you'll find it. And I said, anything else? Oh yeah, veggie cap and then put the bowel flavor noise in. Okay, Len, we got you. so I went back to him a few times with different sources.

and when I showed him the Acerola cherries, he loved it, He goes, there's no allergies to cherries as far as I know. He says, and it's non-GMO, non corn.

I says yep. Has the bioflavonoids? Absolutely. And it is in the veggie cap. Now, you only put so much in a capsule, so they are 500 milligrams per cap, but a much more bioavailable, potent, therapeutic dose because it in in veggy cap with the support nutrients.

So it buffered and you will get maximum bio-availability from it. Awesome. All right. SBC Saccharomyces boulardii. What do we got? Well, Sacchermyces Boulardi is a yeast probiotic, right?

It's derived from yeast, but it is still a good, healthy bacteria. And generally, doctors will recommend the SPC to help when you have things like Candida, traveler's diarrhea, or post-antibiotic.

So those are generally the three times that we will use the SBC formula and it does have a nice effect on the immune system. So there is plenty of SPC on market.

We actually use BioOptima, which is a PRT, Patent and Research Trademark form. And then we did research a few years ago and we found, we really want to know what is the probiotic that is recommended post antibiotic therapy?

Like, oh, this little bacteria in BIO4. I said, Oh, we have that one. We use that already through gnosis. Let's combine it with the Saccharomyces boulardii so that if someone is on antibiotics or you're exposed to antibiotics, they can start replenishing that Bio4 right away.

And again, We talked earlier on a previous episode about the immune system being tied in to the intestinal tract, right? And we've talked about that today too.

We want to make sure you guys understand there is this whole war going on for the good and bad bacteria and overgrowth in your intestinal tract. So SBC is going to help transport the foreign invaders out.

It's like an escort. The bouncer is gonna get them out of the body and in particular things like yeast and funguses and molds. And then it's going come in right behind it to replace it with the BIO4.

That's awesome. Well, we've got a few other formulas that we like to talk about. We talked about immune support. Um, our Probezyme, um, We've Got Pro Reds and we got Super Zinc.

So I think that was really kind of an interesting combination. Why would we include Probes on as part of our immune solution? Well I, think the same reason, right?

One is you want to make sure you're digesting your food really well. Number two is, it's going to help feed the intestinal tract and the microbiome. And you're going absorb your nutrients much better when you've taken a probiotic enzyme, especially in a chewable form.

Possibly it'll help clean up any bacteria in the mouth. So a lot of our clients use it for dental challenges, gums, heartburn, reflux, indigestion. It's so easy to take.

I mean, you use taking the pro-opzyme, right? Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's really interesting that, you know, we've recommended it because, especially before you have a dental surgery, because it is going to, make sure that it takes care of anything that's in the mouth.

So since we really start talking about, the immune system and having it go in, at the top, and then going down through the GI tract, that is really important to actually use Probezyme, not just for digestive health, but also to help boost your immune systems.

Oh, absolutely. Love it. And that was our original formula. What flavor do you like? And don't steal mine. Okay. I will tell you, I do like grape the best, but I would say cherry.

Cherry is the second favorite. That's actually mom's favorite, mom loves the cherry one the most. Oh good. Well I love grape too. Cherries are close second and fruit punch is right after.

So great for kids, adults, nursing, pregnant, doesn't matter. Safe and effective. And a little birdie told me that we might have a new flavor coming out in the beginning of the year.

We sure do. I'm cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs chocolate coming up in 2027. Be ready. I love it. All right, now Pro Reds is so packed. It's so pack, if you're trying to read this slide, you are going to go blind.

We have so many good things in this fruit and veggie base powder. Jamie, why is Pro-Reds so good for us? Let's just look at the ORAC value, right? That's your oxidative reactive absorber's capacity.

So what that means is, How powerful is the formula to clean up any oxidative stress? So as an antioxidant, you gotta clean the oxidation. Oxidation is like rust to your cells.

So this has 5,000 ORAC units per serving. And that's really what you need on a daily basis. The average American only gets about 1,200. So one is we want the antioxidant capacity to help clean up any oxidative stress, because that's usually where things start to go foul is when you have a lot of oxidant stress.

It's a nice combination of fruits and veggies. And we won't people eat fruits, veggies, but they're not convenient. They go. spoil really soon when you buy them.

The growth seasons are varied. We don't know if they're organic or they are not. What herbicides or pesticides are on there. These are herbicide and pesticide free.

fruit and veggie blend and a lot of these things you can't even get at the grocery store. And then we fortify it with extra nutrients. So when you're looking at, how do we forfeit it?

Well, we have DMG in there. We have Lycorad, a patented lycopene. There's a lotta support nutrients inside this formulation, above and beyond the fruit-and-veggie one.

Well, one of the ways you can also get kids to boost their immune health is make pro-reds popsicles. Because all you need is water and some pro reds and those wonderful popsicle trays that you buy.

I'm sure you get them on Amazon. You can get everything on amazon. And make them yummy popsicals as a treat. All right. We've got super zinc because zinc is one of those essential minerals that 90% of us are deficient in.

And it's certainly helpful in the winter for, you know, for the immune system support because it usually shortens the duration of, infection. So Art, do you want to talk about our zinc?

It'd be a great combination combining this with the Buffert C+. That would be nice bundle to do. Really simple to utilize it. It comes in a nice dosage, right?

So you're getting a therapeutic result in this. Zinc is great for immune function, but also healing and for hormones. So it has many benefits in the body, as you mentioned.

Most people are deficient like they are in most nutrients. And it can really cut down on the duration of somebody's illness. So you can take it in an immune boost, you take separately, a la carte, either way.

You have options. Awesome. Well, that's pretty much everything I wanted to touch on with immune health. How about you? Oh, that was easy enough. So look, you got to have a strategy in place and you gotta be prepared before the cold and flu season starts.

The change of seasons, more stress, not as much sunlight where people are getting vitamin D and fresh air from the outdoors. Make sure you have things like the immune boost, immunomax, or immunoglandular.

At home, take the pro-reds every day. Take the vitamin C every for more preventive measures. That way it's already in the body. So if you're having that first sign of symptom, you can ramp up the dose and you don't have to wait two or three days to go get the formulation.

Have these in your wellness cabinet. I love it. Well, one of the things I do want to make sure of is that you aren't caught without this stuff in your wellness cabinet.

That has happened to me. And I had to call a friend and I actually had the phone Dr. Len Bransiewicz who came to my rescue. So don't be caught without your wellness cabinet full.

We provide lots of opportunities for you to get the immune support you need at Nutritional Frontiers. So if you heard something that you think would be beneficial for a friend of yours, a client, patient, someone you know, please make a comment, like and share this episode so we can continue to make the world healthy together.

Thanks, Christine, thanks for all of our clients out there for making Q3 a record quarter for Nutritional Frontiers after 18 years. Thanks to all the customers and clients and patients out here for our love and support.

Without you, we cannot make the world healthy, so sincerely from us, thank you and God bless everyone. Let's have a great Q4 season. If this episode spoke to you, please follow the show and share it with someone ready to take charge of their wellbeing.

And if you can, leave us a review. It helps others find our podcast. For more tools and practitioner support, visit NutritionalFrontiers.com.