Immunity

Have you ever in your life hit a bad patch in terms of your diet? Have you found yourself eating junk food because you felt the need to at the time? Either because of ignorance or recklessness? If so, let’s hope it was for as short a period as possible,...

Every year, the same people seem to miraculously escape the epidemics of flu or gastroenteritis. The fact is though, luck has nothing to do with it: it’s the quality of their immune response which ensures they sail though winter untouched by these illnesses, and what lies behind that response are...

Long before the advent of medicines, humans treated their health problems using properties present in living organisms; certain mushrooms, for example, were used to boost the immune defences. Thousands of years later, science is validating our forebears’ methods and empirical knowledge: today’s studies show that mushrooms, particularly the shiitake variety,...

It has been known for some years now that poor air quality, such as in large cities, can negatively affect our health. In the immediate term, of course, it can alter heart rate variability 1 , but in the long-term too, it can significantly increase the risk of death from...

The immune system is a complex network, the role of which is to defend the body against pathogenic germs. It distinguishes between the body's own cells referred to as ‘self’, and foreign cells – called ‘non-self’, by means of a number of immune cells, the best-known of which are white...