It is easier to stay well than to be sick. Loss of time at school, work, fun activities, and serving others are a few of the consequences of being sick.
Many people choose to take a preventive approach to avoiding seasonal illnesses. But some recommendations don’t consider the limitations or idiosyncrasies of what they recommend. Often neglected, is the long term effectiveness of herbs or vitamins.
Immune-fortifying remedies can lose their effectiveness in the body in sometimes short periods of time. With regular use, the body may become too accustomed to them, called “tolerance”, reducing their impact on the immune system. Excessive or prolonged use of immune-stimulating herbs could lead to immune system “fatigue” or dysregulation.
To circumvent these issues, I like to recommend an “Immune Rotation”. This is a system developed to help prevent illnesses by rotating what is used, by immune system, and by time.
The 4 most important distinct organs or systems responsible for immunity include: the bone marrow, thymus gland, spleen and lymphatic system. Choosing one herb or vitamin from each of these categories, and rotating them each week, at a low dose, I have found to be an excellent approach.
The herbs with the most effectiveness on the bone marrow’s role in immunity include: ginseng, and reishi and other mushrooms. For the thymus: thymus extract, B vitamins (from food concentrates) and turkey tail and reishi mushrooms; for the spleen: licorice (caution if high blood pressure), Chinese yam and red ginseng; and lymphatic system: burdock, mullein and elderberry. Echinacea, astragalus, garlic, Vitamin C, D, and zinc, antioxidants, and carotenoids, all work on all these systems, so they should be saved for the acute illness phase, not the preventative. Having said that, echinacea can be more effective if it is always in the system, and the body doesn’t build as much tolerance to it. What it doesn’t do, is build these 4 systems as well, but is very good at reducing the viral load in the body.
By taking supplements in a schedule, as example: Week 1 taking a combination mushroom product to help build the bone marrow part of the immune system; Week 2 taking a thymus extract to strengthen the thymus; Week 3 taking ginseng to support the spleen; Week 4 taking elderberry to work on the lymphatic immune system could be a helpful approach. Take about one third of the normal dose recommended if you’re sick. Week 5, cycle back through, and keep cycling every 4 weeks. It takes only 2 weeks to build a tolerance, so by rotating weekly, you avoid that.
The “Immune Rotation” approach suggests rotating low-dose immune-supporting herbs weekly, targeting different parts of the immune system (bone marrow, thymus, spleen, and lymphatic system) to maintain effectiveness, prevent tolerance and strengthen the immune system. As always, do any program such as this with your practitioner that is skilled in herbal and preventive medicine.
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©2024 Holly A. Carling, O.M.D., L.Ac., Ph.D.
