• Question: Could balanced emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical status help fight parasites?

    Asked by Jumanah M to Franco on 11 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Franco Falcone

      Franco Falcone answered on 11 Jun 2016:

      Hi Jumanah
      there is a branch of science called Psychoneuroimmunology which studies the relationship between mental health (e.g. the effects of stress) and the immune system. Certainly keeping healthy and fit, with a good emotional etc. balance will ensure that your immune systems works at its best. This will protect you against many pathogens that you encounter all the time, in the air, in the food you eat, on the things you touch, and most of the time, your immune system has the upper hand and you don’t get any disease as you successfully fight the invaders.

      The problem with the parasites is that they are very well adapted to their natural hosts, because they have evolved ways of escaping the immune response to establish an infection. I don’t think that the type of balance that you mention in your question can do much to protect against infection against such parasites, e.g. against malaria. But certainly achieving such a balance has many other benefits?
      Also, some parasitic infections and many bacteria are good to have – they protect against allergy and autoimmune diseases, but that’s a different story.

Comments

  • Photo: Mark

    Mark commented on :

    HI – our immune systems are at the front line of physically defending us from parasites. Through evolutionary time our own immune systems have co-evolved with the parasites so that they ‘tolerate’ each other to some extent. Some people have better immune systems than others due to many factors – including their genetic background, their lifestyle, access to good nutrition, and even previous exposure to a pathogen. Whether or not a sense of wellbeing can protect against parasites is not well known because most research is about the basic biology.