Authored by Joel Salatin via The Epoch Times,
Bugs, viruses, and sickness—these maladies creep into countless conversations as people wrestle with the question: How do I strengthen my immune system?
The overriding answer from the conventional pharmaceutical and vaccine industry is thatfunctional wellness comes from a pill, a needle, or some kind of medical treatment.As a farmer with thousands of animals and no vet bills, I can attest that the overriding conventional notion in the livestock industry is that a sick animal is apparently pharmaceutically disadvantaged.
I have a completely opposite paradigm:A sick animal testifies to my own mistakes. Maybe I chose weak seedstock. Over many decades of livestock farming, I’ve had half a dozen economically significant sickness outbreaks across various species. Every single time, the problem was my fault. Hygiene, diet, stress, discomfort, and toxins. An animal can get sick for many reasons, none of which is because it was medically deprived.
In his iconic New York Times bestseller “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” Jared Diamond explains the ascendancy of cultures that lived proximate to domestic livestock.
People groups who cultivated close relationships with domestic farm animals developed better immune systems.
Many years ago, British epidemiologist David Strachan observed that children with more older siblings had fewer allergies, suggesting that early exposure to infections offered lasting protection.
Many in this field of study rallied around this “hygiene hypothesis,” positing that the immune system is like a muscle and needs periodic exercise to be strong.
Consistent with Diamond’s overall findings, this theory is best supported by research in Finland.
Beginning a couple of decades ago, researchers in Finland began examining this “immune system as muscle” concept, comparing overall health between closely related children (cousins or siblings) who lived in different environments. The findings added substantial weight to the notion that the immune system has attributes similar to a muscle.
Source: ZeroHedge News
