All this talk of chronic infections and it’s quite evident that some people don’t struggle with them (your husband and his regular Taco Bell habit…) while you’re bent over with body pain multiple times a week. But why? How do the cards get tossed out so irregularly?

Triggering Events!

Before we head full force into triggers, let’s pull back to that immune system balance. We need TH1 (killer) and TH2 (antibody) balanced. Equal players engaging in fair play - kinda how your household labor is supposed to be spilt…

These are teammates - partners, if you will - and we need them always working in balance…or it all falls apart.

TH1’s primary job is to surround invaders to the body and take them down. Think about how the body surrounds a splinter with pus and inflammation, trying to push it out of the skin and clean up the bacterial mess left behind. TH1 should be showing up, strong and ready - brute force style, with this cell-activated immunity where the immune cells themselves attack pathogens directly or send messages out to other immune cells asking for backup. They’re the bouncer at the door of your favorite college haunt. They get in the cells and toss out the junk.

TH2 cells are still attacking pathogens, just in a different way. TH2 cells are a delayed response, think of them as the ladies of the immune system - they’re out directing and producing a lot of messages, over time, that tell other immune cells to do their job and produce antibodies. Then the antibodies head out to attack everything from bacteria, virus and yes - allergens..sometimes mistakenly our food. TH2 is a hive mind concept and whatever these cells say: antibodies listen and proliferate, building an army against the communicated issue.

When there are more pathogens for attack, TH2 sends out more chatter for more antibodies to be made. Which, cool, I love anything out to kill pathogens in my body. But not cool: TH2 cells can make a lot of racket and don’t do as much “complete the kill”, so we can end up with lots of antibodies -> inflammation ->allergies ->food sensitivities and allergies ->FPIES, even and at it’s most confused: autoimmunity. When TH2 is up, less intracellular immune cleanups are happening….which make the way for pathogens to hide in the cells.

Back to Triggering Events or the events that get TH1 and TH2 out of fair play and unbalanced.

The theme of triggering events will be stressors and anything that interacts with the immune system.

Pregnancy: Good, ole natural process. AND pregnancy is naturally a TH2 state, meaning the body shifts away from the killer dominant TH1 and into more TH2 to prevent the immune system from “killing” or rejecting the baby during pregnancy. We want this. This is normal and natural, but sometimes after pregnancy, the immune system may not shift back to balance, rather staying TH2 dominant. I bet you can think of a friend right now whose health deteriorated into autoimmunity after the birth of her child. Yep, that was a triggering event. It can also happen in reverse. Someone who was disregulated before, I think of a client who was vomit and epi-pen level reactive to gluten before her pregnancy, did ok with some exposures during pregnancies and passed a gluten test with flying colors after her delivery. In this case, pregnancy left her with a balanced immune system, which can happen.
Vaccines: Another immune interaction. Vaccines, by design are meant to provoke TH2, creating antibodies against the vaccinated-for-pathogen, effectively creating immunity. This can create too much response from TH2. There are other prices of vaccines, like mercury, or environmental toxins like lead which are documented to promote excess TH2 cells. Remember that vaccines include those in your childhood, those taken for travel later in life, the accrual of annual cold and flu type vaccines and those related to pregnancy.
Acute Infections: This one’s easy - a sickness will interact with the immune system, get both TH1 and TH2 moving and sometimes afterward (think long Covid), the balance doesn’t return quite like it could. Less intense infections like Streptococcus to the more aggressive mononucleosis can create imbalance in their wake, too. No one’s immune to the potential disruption caused by acute infections.
Antibiotics: These interact with the immune system, but in a less common way. Antibiotics kill. They kill bad bacteria, sometimes good bacteria get lost along the way and they can cause secondary immune responses like diarrhea, allergic reactions, breathing difficulties and skin reactions as the immune system joins them in the fight against bacteria. Ultimately our bodies are more bacteria than human cells, and this balance can be greatly altered after antibiotics, particularly several rounds, IV versions of hefty options - which can leave an immune system imbalanced.
Stress: This is it: the one thing you can *sorta* control, but love to think you can’t! It’s the daily stress and stress knots we make of out smaller problems. And it’s also the big stressors - the life traumas: divorce, job loss, moving, death of loved ones, abuse, unreasonably stressful seasons - they can all ramp up other immune cells (remember TH17?) and disregulation is quick to follow.
Physical Stressors: Talking toxins, here! Anything that’s coming in the body and requiring more detox processes or increasing antioxidant need - really anything that weighs down the system. Think living in mold daily: your body has to filter that out everyday, on top of all it’s other responsibilities - then mold can go and cause damage to your cells and increase TH2 antibodies all at the same time and now your body really has an extra mess on hand. Pollutants, allergens and irritants constantly exposed to the body can ramp up TH2, put extra stress on normal function and leave things imbalanced.

Overwhelmed and stressed out? Don’t be. You were designed beautifully.

It’s our modern world that makes things hard. We’ll talk about it more, in time, but as you work at caring for your body, eating well, staying hydrated with clean water, removing toxic everything - people and substances, continue moderate exercise, build in community and connection, sleep well, poop well and laugh well - you are truly doing so much to support the wonderful design of balance. It’s when we don’t do these things so well or we choose to be human-givers over human beings (Hi, Mommas) or we avoid emotional healing or choose a life that’s not what we want…well, our body listens and becomes more susceptible to these triggers.

Remember: there are plenty of women who feel great after pregnancy. There are plenty of people who recover after divorces and job losses and moves. And plenty still, who do a so-so job of caring for themselves while going through acute illness and come out immune balanced.

Have hope: The human body is a beautiful art form and while we love to learn its workings, a bad event won’t equal poor health forever, but it can and if it does: we know what to do about it!