Immune Resilience

Chapter 1

 

Hidden Enemies Around Us

 

Humans have lived with infectious microbes since our very first beginnings and they have been, for most of our history, one of humanity's biggest preoccupations. Fortunately for us, modern science has had many shining successes against infections. To understand these successes, as well as our ongoing vulnerabilities to pathogens, we need to look at where we've come from, and where we are now.

 

Louis Pasteur's "germ theory," which originated in the 1870s, marked the dawn of our modern-day approach to microbes by illuminating for the first time the immense landscape of microscopic infectious pathogens that were behind the most problematic diseases of the time. It was a turning point after which medics and scientists began to develop and use hygiene principles and antimicrobial agents to prevent infection. Improvements in sanitation, water treatment, and pasteurization that were subsequently adopted have saved millions of lives and are still vital today. But despite these advances, the leading causes of death in the early 1900s remained infectious diseases, especially pneumonia and tuberculosis. Smallpox, cholera, diphtheria, and polio were also widespread. Average life span was just forty to fifty years in part because childhood infections were frequently fatal, and infections we now consider minor could lead to sepsis and death.

 

Against this background, it's no wonder that the first licensed vaccines in 1914, and first widely distributed antibiotics in 1928, were hailed as miracles of modern medicine. The decades that followed World War II were a golden age for vaccine and antibiotic development, culminating in the complete eradication of smallpox, near-eradication of polio, and the ability for people to live their lives unencumbered by the fear of catching diseases that could cause paralysis, brain damage, blindness, and death. The

Romilly Hodges, MS, CNS, CDN, is a practicing clinical nutritionist and director of nutrition programs at an interdisciplinary clinic in Connecticut. She helps individuals and families improve their health and symptoms of disease through nutritional and lifestyle interventions. During her time in practice, she has honed an expertise in natural interventions to build deep resilience against infectious pathogens and immune dysfunction. Hodges earned her master s degree in human nutrition from the University of Bridgeport. She has lived in Europe, Africa, and South America, and now resides in Connecticut.