Four Immune Stimulating Herbs And A Bit On How They Work

My first idea for this post was to write about how certain herbs can help to strengthen our natural immune response. 

But then I thought to myself that someone else has already done that, I will just find it and give you all a link.

I could not find anything of the sort.

Ok, I do not think that I went further than the first page of search results, but who does.

Anyway, all I saw was stuff, kind of like this, listing off different herbs or giving recipes.

What is interesting though is there is not a lot of research proving that most of these herbs actually strengthen the immune system.

Let me explain.

For example, a herb such as thyme, is a very strong antimicrobial herb, which is very useful when trying to fight off an infection.

But it does not affect the immune system (as far as I know).

These kinds of plant medicines are very good to help fight disease, but that is not what I am talking about here. 

Also the four herbs that I am going to talk about.

• Garlic

• Elderberry

• Withania

• Astragalus

Are not herbs that strengthen the immune system by simply nourishing the body (those are great to).

But these are herbs that actually strengthen the body's natural immune response.

How do they do it?

Let me try and explain a few of the ways that they work without getting all scientific and boring.

Also because I can't be bothered to go and look up all those fancy names that I can never remember, let alone spell.

Even spell check doesn't know what they are. 

From what I understand there are two ways that they can work.

1 - they cause the body to produce more white blood cells which go around our body killing germ cells that might have found their way in.

2 - this one is a bit hard to understand but there is something beautifully poetic about it, they produce a sort of in check state of inflammation that is ready to go in a sort of controlled state at the first sign of trouble. 

Pretty cool right?

For any of you who would like all the big words and scientific lingo here are the links to each of these herbs research articles. 

Garlic

https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/food-beverages/garlic

Elderberry

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1756464614002400

Ashwaganda(Withania) 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3252722/

Astragalus

https://cmjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13020-019-0234-0