Super Powered Immunity: Natural Remedies for 21st Century Viruses and Superbugs by Michelle Schoffro-Cook, 2023. Published by Healing Arts Press, Rochester, Vermont.
Are you curious about ways to strengthen your body against the onslaught of infections and microbial invaders? And willing to try alternatives to anti-biotics, by selecting the highest quality, most powerful natural medicines?
Natural and Acquired Immunity
A new book, Super Powered Immunity, describes vitamins, supplements, foods and nutraceuticals that specifically enrich your immune system, with the support of healthy lifestyle choices. By way of introduction, Doctor of Natural Medicine and author Michelle Schoffro Cook reviews how our bodies naturally protect us from infections, the definition of immunity and the antigens and antibodies we naturally produce against invading pathogens.
You’ll learn the science of protecting your immunity, the use of drugs from penicillin to antibiotics and why they may be helpful. Then you’ll read why substances from natural remedies may actually offer more protection than the better-known pharmaceuticals.
Dr Cook is committed to natural immune-building foods and herbs. Her new book—she’s written many on health-related matters—offers chapters on herbs, fermented foods, and mushrooms as the quality of defense-strengthening substances we should make our habit to ingest if we want to maintain robust immunity.
Extremely Powerful Medicines
Written in a casual style, Super Powered Immunity shares awareness about the specific immune-building substances in fermented foods and mushrooms. These foods are freely available, and are the mildest remedies.
Essential oils are also promoted in Super Powered Immunity. Substances that repel pathogens, essential oils are metabolized by plants to safeguard a plant from succumbing to attack by microbes and insects, sometimes animals. So essential oils are, by nature, strong enough to mean business.
Paired with herbs, the essential oils represent the most powerful options in a book on natural cures. Of course the strength of a substance also depends in part on the user or consumer.
Comparing Nutrients and Essential Oils
While a person can measure a specific dosage with vitamins, opting to dose with essential oils is imprecise. The simple reason is that once distilled into the product known as an essential oil, they are full-strength, liquid, with varying viscosities. In the author’s words, the reader is advised to “select oils that clearly indicate their suitability for internal use on the label.” p. 62
Looking for internal use instructions is going to be futile as not many essential oils will have language to that effect on the label. Rather, they might print a warning, such as “Not for internal use” on the label if a particular oil is too caustic for any internal use.
In my training as an aromatherapist, we are taught about the inhalation and application of essential oils of the English method, as opposed to ingesting essential oils, as the French method or philosophy recommends. So, I disagree a bit with the author’s advice to ingest essential oils. It can be dangerous to swallow essential oils.
I’ve asked myself why the English method is, in most cases in this country, preferred over the French. I believe there’s a certain wisdom behind this. And that is, in our market-driven culture, trends rage and then cool down due to buyer preference in the moment. Consumers tend to desire a product, taking to much and risking severe injury. Facts about substances like essential oils include their extremely strong medicinal values. When taken internally can burn their mucosa (alimentary canal, from tip to stern). Actually remedies including essential oils have been marketed for years, but not in their un-blended, undiluted forms! I’m not sure why Super Powered Immunity doesn’t reveal that information.
I think that taking essential oils internally to improve one’s immunity is a bit like taking anti-biotics arbitrarily for any downturn in well-being. It’s good to be herbal-savvy with supplements, but taking essential oils internally can damage the body if not selected with care. Many herbalists will agree that the body is capable of healing without force. It’s only those rare instances of infection that require extremely powerful medicines. So I ask, is extremely strong medicine always warranted? Sometimes it might be the only medicine that will cure, or at least alleviate the suffering from a superbug. And does a consumer know the difference?
Conclusions
Satisfying the body’s need for support with highly nutritious foods, fermented foods, and mushrooms is a lifestyle choice. There are particular herbs that are incredibly powerful, in capsule form, or made into teas in therapeutic doses for immune-building. One of the author’s suggestions is to take adaptogens to “help the body to adapt”. Although it’s true adaptogens have gotten a lot of media attention lately, they are close to food in substance, quality, and have few side effects
I would say that if you’re a student of herbalism, a physician, nutritionist or dietician, you may find the author’s discussions of interest. Tables compare the values of 18 herbs for immunity and give dosages for 14 nutrients; numerous insights are available for at-a-glance review. Perhaps the text could help your patients understand about the range of pro-immune herbs, supplements, and foods that are freely available for their daily use.
Super Powered Immunity presents a broad range of products to help bolster immunity. I think most people who are interested in their health would benefit from the ideas it promotes. And the ideas I’m applauding are details in Foods and Nutrients, Probiotics and Fermented Foods, Mushrooms, and Herbs and Essential Oils—with the reservation that an herbalist, naturopath, or doctor is involved in your choices and suggests dosages for the condition you are trying to improve.
So, are you curious about ways to strengthen your body against superbugs? Since this book reveals information on vitamins, supplements, foods and nutraceuticals, it offers a good checklist. And via the internet readers can find an herbalist, naturopath, or doctor who can assist them in a plan for using these substances to gain better immunity.
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