COVID-19’s preferred habitat is the respiratory tract, where it is most life-threatening in the lungs.  Infected lungs can become so congested that breathing becomes impossible without the help of a ventilator, and even using a ventilator hasn’t been enough in some cases to prevent death. So now is a good time to give your lungs some special care and consideration.  If you already have lung problems, such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, you’re more apt to get serious complications like pneumonia from COVID-19.  And whether or not you have existing lung problems, air pollution exposure increases your risk.  According to Dr. Meredith McCormack, a spokeswoman for the American Lung Association and associate professor of pulmonary and critical care at Johns Hopkins University, recently quoted in the New York Times , “Increased pollution increases susceptibility to infection. . . . All things being equal, a person exposed to a…

Pneumonia is an infection in the air sacs of the lungs. For anyone with a weakened immune system, it can be life-threatening.  This would include very young children, people with compromised immunity, and those older than 65 whose immune systems are in decline. For the elderly, pneumonia is the leading cause of death due to infectious disease. But here’s some great news for those on the far side of middle age.  A 2015 study found supplementing with vitamin E may give you the same resistance to pneumonia enjoyed by youngsters! As we age, our immune systems not only become less responsive, they make more mistakes. This overall decline is called “immunosenescence,” and it occurs in older animals as well as in older humans. The study compared young with old mice infected with the most common cause of pneumonia, the bacteria S. pneumoniae.  In both, immune cells were rushed to the lungs to address the infection. But in the older mice, this response was “overly exube…

How many people that you know get frequent colds? Have allergies? Candida fungal infections? Or cancer, or any one of a number of immune or autoimmune illnesses?  If you’ve read Raymond Francis’ books, you may recall that people living in healthy traditional cultures regularly lived into their hundreds without getting a single cold or flu, let alone cancer. But weak immunity is common these days, and how could it be otherwise?  When people stayed in one place, their immune systems adapted to local pathogens.  Now we travel all over the globe, exposing ourselves to exotic pathogens and carrying these infectious agents to yet other locations. Though our lives are made richer by exposures to other cultures, our immune systems are continually bombarded with novel viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites from all around the world. Meanwhile, most of us have taken antibiotics, which permanently weaken our immunity.  About 80% of the immune system resides in the int…