How to keep your Immune System Strong

“All information contained here is for educational purposes and is not intended to diagnose, prevent or treat any disease or illness.”

I wanted to share some tips for keeping your immune system strong. Check here for prevention guidelines for the current situation from the World Health organization. 

Some influenza viruses possess glycoproteins on it’s surface Hemagglutinin A (HA) and neuraminidase (NA). HA and NA are necessary for the virus to replicate. It appears that Coronaviruses utilizes Hemagglutinin A (HA) only. One of the strategies to inhibit viral replication is to reduce HA and NA activity, because that slows the virus ability to multiply inside your body. Interferon also inhibits viral replication and you will find out in this article what natural foods contain interferon. Lastly some of the more dangerous outcomes people have when they contract these viruses are due to the body’s uncontrollable inflammatory response to the viruses via inflammatory cytokine release. Very high fevers, swelling of the mucous membranes, copious amounts of mucous, muscle aches and pains are symptoms of the body’s inflammatory response to the virus. So calming down the inflammatory cytokine response may reduce how “sick” someone feels. Where a proper immune response to the virus is important to kill it, an excessive inflammatory response can increase complications. Below are some natural remedies that support the immune system. 

1.     Chinese Herbs: A traditional Chinese herbal formula called Yu Ping Feng, or Jade Windscreen contains herbs that increase your Wei Qi. What’s Wei Qi? It is an energetic defense system everyone’s body has against pathogens and allergens. This herbal formula strengths your “force field” so that it is harder for germs to penetrate and infect you. This formula also strengthens your lungs and spleen which are important systems needed to regulate your immunity. In China, people take this formula preventatively during cold and flu season. Get Jade Windcreen here.

2.     Andrographis: Is an Asian and Ayurvedic herb that has a bitter taste. It contains anti-inflammatory components (inhibits inflammatory cytokines) and immune enhancing properties. Andrographis inhibits Hemagglutinin A (HA) and therefore viral replication. Some previous studies have shown Andrographis to have an inhibitory effect against the Avian Flu and H1N1. Get immune support formula Andrographis Plus here.

3.     Chicken Broth/Turkey Broth: Chicken and Turkey broth contain interferon which inhibits viral replication. According to the March 2005 issue in the Journal of virology, Influenza A actually inhibits interferon, so this is the flu’s tricky way of stopping your immune system from stopping the flu. Add some broth to your diet to increase interferon to block viral replication. Everyone is exposed to germs, they are all over the place. Whether or not you get sick depends on if your body is a good breeding ground for the germs (another article). Whether or not you will get sick depends if the viruses infect your cells, and then use your cells to replicate to a number beyond what your immune system can eradicate. When that happens you will start feeling sick. This is why these strategies increase your odds for a strong immune system defending against pathogens.

4.     Decrease Stress and Negative Thoughts: Have you gotten sick after a huge project was done, after finals, after a breakup, or during prolonged periods of stress? Stress can be physical or emotional. Negative thoughts and worry cause your body to produce the same stress hormones that physical stress does. The stress hormone cortisol suppresses the immune system. It can lower your lymphocytes, which are a type of germ fighting white blood cells. If you are feeling stressed, take some time for selfcare. One strategy is to catch the silent thoughts swirling in your brain, flip a negative statement into a positive one. If you’re needing a little more support to re-set and get out of feeling overwhelmed, unhealthy and not yourself, feel free to contact me for a distance energetic healing session where we can reset your nervous system and support your immune system.

What health functions does the Basic Chakra Control?

Wishing you health, abundance, peace, and a thriving life this new year. If you feel like you can’t have all of these, or not sure how you can, let’s change that this new year. You see, good health is not just being physically healthy it also includes your emotional and spiritual health.

 There are generally three large categories of life:

1. Health
2. Money
3. Relationships

If you can improve one of these usually the others also start to improve. I believe that the first aspect to improve on is health. Once you have health it is much more efficient to make more money and a lot less effort to improve relationships. My patients who are willing to invest in both their physical Health and energetic health improve exponentially quicker than those who only focus on the physical. How would you like to get out of survival mode this new year and thrive in all 3 aspects of your life?

There's a technique I use with patients that can help release negative energetic frequencies. This literally "unstucks" blocks to healing. It's called pranic healing and can be done over the phone. If your body has been very depleted this technique adds energy to your body so it can heal faster (like recharging your batteries for you). Patients with long term traumas, anxiety, depression, migraines, hypertension, infections, frequent illness, and physical pain have had an incredible success what Pranic Healing. Why?

What does immune imbalance, feeling like you don’t have enough, low sex drive, and pain have to do with each other? They are all controlled by a center in your body called the basic chakra. Today I'll share with you some information about the basic/root/or first chakra. If you have not heard about what a chakra is before, a chakra is an area of concentrated energy that corresponds to particular aspects and part of your physical body. If you like science, you can measure the size and electromagnetic frequency of a chakra through Kirlian photography.

The basic chakra is located near your tail bone and base of the spine. It controls and maintains the health of the following body systems:

1. The muscular and skeletal systems. If the basic chakra is out of balance, muscular tension, joint pain can occur.

2. Immune System. Since the basic chakra controls the skeletal system, the bone marrow controls the immune cells in the blood made by the bone marrow. The throat chakra also controls the immune system and is responsible for the lymphatic system. Allergies, auto-immune diseases, infections, and frequent illness are associated with basic chakra imbalance.

3. The spine. Weak basic chakra may increase tendencies osteoporosis, spinal compression or curvature etc.

4. Blood. The bone marrow makes blood. The basic chakra out of balance may worsen anemia, leukemias, cancer etc.

4 The adrenal glands. If the energy in the basic chakra is low, an individual will feel fatigued, low motivation, or even depressed. Patients with suicidal tendencies have extremely low energy in the basic chakra, they have a very low will to survive. If overactive, a patient may feel anxiety, insomnia, in survival mode, and in fight and flight response. Feelings of lack can be shifted by improving the health of the basic chakra.

5. Growth rate of cells and healing. Slow healing wounds, slow healing broken bones, growth problems, cancer, and slow healing from illnesses may be contributed by imbalance in the basic chakra.

6 The heart. Imbalance here can contribute to heart ailments.

7 Reproductive Organs. Low sex drive, pelvic infections, HPV, fertility issues, and miscarriage may benefit by balancing the basic chakra.

With any medical issue it is important to seek the attention of a qualified medical practitioner. In addition to what your doctor recommends, natural therapies such as supplements, herbs, homeopathics, foods, and attention to lifestyle add so much to the success of healing. Then addressing the energetic aspect is like the “secret sauce” I’ve found in my practice that exponentially improves the speed of healing. 

You might be thinking to yourself, "this sounds wierd! Why would it be something that would help me?". Both biology and physics are types of sciences. In our western thinking we go to biology in medicine. We think about what pills we can take to change our biochemistry right?

But our bodies are electric also. For example, we use EKG to measure the electric activity of the heart, the EEG to measure the electric activity of the brain. Your cells communicate by exchanging Na+, K+, Cl- creating an electric gradient. Pranic healing and energetic healing falls into the physics aspect of science and healing and may be the missing aspect to getting your body back to where it needs to be. One patient with anxiety felt an incredible shift and didn't feel anxiety after the first session for a whole couple weeks. Another patient with chronic debilitating migraines that occured 4-8 times a month has been migraine free for over half a year now with a few sessions. 

Feel free to contact me to see if this would be something beneficial for your case, or if I have any other thoughts for your situation. Wishing you a healthy and abundant new year!

Hack Your Circadian Rhythm

Get the Right Kind of Light 

I don’t really like the winter time change when it gets so dark so fast in the afternoon. I’m sure many of you feel the effects of this like feeling more tired, increased tendency to depression, feeling more sluggish or craving more junk foods. Good news there may be some tools you can use to “hack” the time change problems. Photo credit Mark Morgan

One of the ways to “hack” the winter blues is with light. Our brains more specifically the pineal gland have sensors to light which affect melatonin secretion and other hormones. Light is not all the same. When light hits water in a certain way, the water creates a prism, which separates the wavelengths of light creating a rainbow. Different colors of light have different effects on our bodies.

For example blue light is stimulating, can give more energy, helps with a positive mood, suppresses melatonin production. Sounds great right? But if you use a lot of blue light at night, it’s not healthy because melatonin production is reduced. This may cause you to not sleep as deeply or restfully at night. Melatonin is also linked to cancer prevention, so low levels of melatonin may be associated with an increased risk of cancer. This is one of the reasons why there is research showing higher level of cancer in people who work night shift.

When to use blue light? There is more blue spectrum light from the sun in the morning compared to the afternoon. This is nature’s way to protect your circadian rhythm. Exposure to sun in the morning is the best way to get blue light. Get more natural sunlight during the day to prevent the winter blues and stay energized.

At night, you want to reduce blue light. There is a lot of blue spectrum light emitted from cell phones screens, TVs, certain LED lights, and fluorescent lights. Blue light is bad at night because it kills melatonin production and throws off other hormone balance. Red color is the opposite of blue. If you put a red filter on your electronic devices, it reduces some of the damage. There is a free software called:

f.lux

https://justgetflux.com/

You can install this on your computer, put down what time you’d like to go to bed and it will automatically adjust your screen color.

If you have an iPhone you can go to settings: display and brightness: night shift. Put down when you’d like your screen display to be warmer (more red colors) at night. Of course it is always best to stay away from electronic screens if you can 30-60 minutes before bed. You can create a low light setting with more warm colors (red spectrum) before bed such as with candles, or Himalayan salt lamps.

Being smart with your “lights” is one way to help with winter blues, body clock, and hormone balance. If you need more help beyond this, please feel free to reach out to me and we can go over a personalized assessment of your situation and give you specific therapies to help you overcome your health concerns. I’m so happy to get to share with you. Thank you for honoring yourself and investing in your health and future.

Feeling “Off” with the Season Change?

So nothing much has changed in your diet or exercise, but something feels slightly “off”. Are you feeling more tired than usual? Are you pushing yourself to do work that normally feels easy, but now feels like a drag? Maybe you even notice feeling a little bit more easily irritated by others. Your physical health seems slightly on the line. But then you brush it off and think that perhaps you just been really busy, or getting old. See, feeling a bit “off” creeps up very gradually so it’s very easy to brush it off to other reasons. But could it be the change of seasons that is throwing your body off?

Today, I will talk especially about how the season of fall affects your body from a TCM Chinese medicine Photo Credit Anton Vakulenko prospective. Then I will give you some DYI at home solutions that can help your body breeze through autumn into winter with energy, an even mood, and a little pep in your step.

God created the universe to operate in cycles. The planets rotate every so often around the sun. Our bodies have an internal clock. Many of our hormones are secreted at different levels throughout the day or at different times of the month. In Chinese medicine certain organs are highlighted at different times of the day, in a 24 hr cycle. For example 1 to 3 AM is liver time, so if you wake up in the middle of night during this time perhaps your liver is out of balance. On a grander scale our organs cycle through the four seasons. Below is a table showing this. 

Season	Element	Yin Organ	Yang Organ	Balanced Emotion	Stressed Emotion
Fall	Metal	Large Intestine	Lung	Reflective	Grief, Sadness
Winter	Water	Kidney	Bladder	Courage	Fear, Depression
Spring	Wood	Liver	Gallbladder	Assertive	Anger, Frustration
Summer	Fire	Small Intestine	Heart	Joy, Passion	Anxiety
Solstice	Earth	Spleen	Stomach	Compassion	Worry, over- concern for others

Tips to Balance Yourself During the Fall 

Message Between Shoulder Blades

The area of your body in between your shoulder blades stores sadness and grief. Fall relates to the element: metal which in TCM corresponds to the lungs. The lungs if out of balance is related to grief, sadness, depression (these emotions can also weaken the lungs). So if you’re often tight between the shoulder blades, there may be some emotions you need to address that either you are unaware of that is subconscious, or you may be able to pinpoint exactly what this emotional stuff is about. Since autumn is a time for reflection, stuff you may have buried away may automatically come up during this time for you. That’s why you maybe puzzled why you even feel these emotions come up because no one may has died, or nothing catastrophic has happened in your life, but still you may feel emotionally a bit “off” during this time. Fall is a good time to address old buried things and release them. You will feel happier lighter and younger. I offer distance-healing sessions that can help your body let go of years of stored emotional stress and junk. My patients feel lighter, sometimes tell me it seems like a whole weight is lifted off them after these sessions. They finally have the emotional energy and focus and increased physical energy to move on with what is important in their lives, rather than feeling held back. These healing sessions I do with patients over the phone are very helpful for depression, anxiety, and stress. Some people have not seen the value of this type of treatment because they don’t understand it yet. But for those who gave it a try, they felt this is an answer to prayers because they finally made significant progress they were looking for so many places before they found this. 

One self-care practice you can do at home is to roll out your back on a foam roller. Or you can put a tennis ball or spiked orthopedic product called the “beastie” between your shoulder blades to release the tension. When your muscles are more relaxed it is a sign that there is less emotional junk in that part of the body. 

Apple cider vinegar and water

If you’re feeling kind of blah simply adding 1-3 teaspoons of apple cider vinegar into 4 to 8 ounces of water and drinking this one to three times per day can be life-changing. Apple cider vinegar can help boost your energy levels especially if you’re overworked or over exercised. It can help detoxify acidity caused by stress. Apple cider vinegar helps to alkalize your body, which helps your immune system be less susceptible to those winter and fall germs. Decreasing acidity in the body also helps to decrease inflammation and increase energy levels.

The yin organ associated with autumn is the large intestine. If your digestive system seems sluggish or your digestion is weak, apple cider vinegar is a great old wives digestive tonic and you can drink this 10 minutes before a meal. If you like you can also add a pinch of cayenne pepper to this mixture. Cayenne helps move stagnant Chi which decreases fatigue and stuck energy. You can also add a teaspoon of local honey for seasonal fall allergies. Lastly, you can add some fresh lemon juice to the mixture to further alkalize the body and detoxify. But to keep it simple, just apple cider vinegar and water is fine.

If you are feeling drawn to have me work with you, you are seeing this for a reason. If you have questions about how I can help you, that will help you make the best choice for your next step, do not hesitate to reach out prior to scheduling an appointment.

What’s the COMT Gene and how is it related to your Hormones?

COMT is a gene that codes for an enzyme in your body that does a very important job of detoxifying certain stress hormones and sex hormones like estrogen. It is called Catechol O-Methyltransferase. COMT helps to detoxify dopamine, catecholamines, and estrogen by transferring a Methyl group to them. Everyone has the COMT gene, but some have forms that work normally, and some have gene variants where the COMT enzyme works not as efficiently. Patients who have the slower COMT gene may have more difficulties dealing with stress or have a higher tendency to suffer from anxiety because their bodies do not clear catecholamines (stress hormones) as quickly.

-Do you tend to have issues with feeling overwhelmed easily?

-Do you wake up feeling “heavy” sometimes?

-Is it hard to get motivated to start certain tasks?

-Do you push through your life and work with strong will power, but feel depleted inside?

-Is it hard to control your thoughts?

-Do you tend to have chronic inflammation?

-Do you have a feeling that maybe your hormones are out of balance?

Many patients with these symptoms may be prescribed anti-anxiety medications, anti-depressants, birth control pills, or ADHD medications. Those may not be options you want to use long term. Those going more of a natural route may be familiar with 5-HTP, or St John’s Wort to try to increase serotonin. But serotonin is not the only player, and one must consider dopamine, catecholamines and estrogens levels. COMT genetic mutations, or lack of nutrients that support COMT can make a huge difference in finally getting answers to some mood, inflammatory, or hormonal imbalance issues. 

What are the COMT Gene Types?

Naming the Genes: Most genetic reports may show you have either (-/-), (-/+), or (+/+); one gene from mom and one from dad. 

Normal Type (-/-) or also referred to as GG or Val/Val. Most of the world’s population has this genotype and it is associated with better adaptation to stress. 

Slow Type (+/+) or also referred to as AA or Met/Met. 20-30% of the population has this genotype. It is associated with slower detoxification of stress hormones and slower detoxification of estrogen. Since it also detoxifies dopamine slower, there may be an advantage in more dopamine activity and lower risk of memory issues or Parkinson’s disease. 

Combination Type (-/+) have one normal gene and one slower gene. 

COMT and Estrogen

Did you know that most hormone tests you get through your gynecologist only tests total hormones, not what your body does with them. Your liver and intestinal tract is very important for detoxifying and processing your hormones. In a Genova Diagnostics hormone test I run for my patients, we can tell what molecules your liver converts your hormones to. This is important because some of those breakdown products are good (help you stay young, mentally sharp, have a good sex drive, have vibrant skin), but some of the breakdown products are bad (inflammatory, increase cancer risk, contribute to moodiness). 

Case Study:

In the Complete Hormones Test diagram shown, you see COMT is needed to convert to the GOOD estrogen types. The “MeO” stands for methylated estrogens and these are the good guys. As you can see, this particular patient has very low levels of the MeO forms, and not doing a good job converting from the “OH” forms. This may indicate a COMT mutation.

This patient consulted me for fatigue, hair loss, body aches and pains, and PMS. She said she fluctuates between sleeping a lot and having nights of insomnia, but felt that even if she was able to sleep well for a couple weeks, she would still feel tired. She had body aches and pains all over her body and was only 38 years old. She was also concerned with thinning hair, weight gain and some hormone related symptoms. Something just did not feel right to her, but she did not have any particular diagnosis. 

As you can see from her hormone test results, her body is not methylating well and she has more toxic forms of estrogens. With this type of pattern, we may suspect a slower genotype for COMT, it is always important to confirm with a genetic test. After working with her for 3 months, she said she is feeling a lot better overall, her hair is no longer falling out, she has no cramping with her periods, and she no longer feels tired. 

It is important to tell the difference between the need to work around a COMT mutation, or nutrient and hormone imbalances. Even thought COMT detoxifies estrogen, high estrogen levels actually slow down COMT. So a patient may present as if they have slow form of the COMT gene, when their hormone imbalances have slowed ability of COMT to do its job. Another thing to take into consideration is that some nutrient deficiencies can also slow COMT down. This information may be a bit more complicated than you want to know, but finding a doctor who understands and specializes in this can take the guesswork and confusion out for you. Feel free to contact Dr. Emily Chan ND if you need some specialized opinion for your situation.