Listen or Read Dr. Rubinstein’s Monthly Podcast Interview!
Topic: Increasing Natural Immunity
Below you will find an easy to read transcript of Dr. Gregg Rubinstein’s interview on the razorcast™ monthly podcast. You can click the video to listen to the podcast or simply read the easy to follow transcript below. Enjoy!
Podcast Interview:
RC: Hello everyone, this is Liz Harvey coming to you from our razorcast™ studios in New York City where we are dedicated to bringing you top quality advice from many of the leading expert professionals across the United States.
In today’s episode we are speaking with chiropractor, Dr. Gregg Rubinstein. Dr. Rubinstein is the founder of 57th Street Chiropractic located in the heart of Midtown Manhattan where he has been practicing since 1993. He specializes in pediatric & family care and Dr. Rubinstein is a long standing member of the International Chiropractic Pediatrics Association. He also serves as a board member of Friends of Fresh and Green Academy, a non-profit organization that does extensive charity work in education in Ethiopia.
Dr. Rubinstein is widely considered to be one of the top chiropractors in the U.S. and is also a contributing member of our national network of razorcast™ professionals.
Today we are going to talk about a very important topic: Increasing Natural Immunity
RC: Hi Dr. Rubinstein, how are you today?
Dr. Gregg Rubinstein: I’m doing just great Liz. It’s great to be with you again.
RC: Well thanks for joining us.
Question 1: Can you explain how our immune system is tied into our nervous system?
RC: So let’s see, can you explain how our immune system is tied into our nervous system?
Dr. Gregg Rubinstein: Yes, I can. And as a matter of fact, we talk about these things a lot in chiropractic but the major premise that I want everyone to understand is that your nerve system is the master system. It controls everything that goes on in your body. And when you really think about it, your spine and your nerve system are just really a communication system. It’s just a means by which messages go from your brain out to the rest of the body. So if you understand that your nerve system is controlling everything that’s going on in your body then you know that it controls your heart, your lungs, your kidney, your spleen, your intestines and even your immune system which is a system completely governed by your nerve system.
Now this wasn’t always known to everyone. As a matter of fact, a while back they used to think that the immune system kind of ran by itself. Then there was this article by this Dr. Felton who did some research. He was working with the electron microscope and he was noting how he saw nerve system fibers embedded in all the immune system fibers and where they were all going. And what he did was he did a study where he took some lab animals (unfortunately these little poor rats) and he used a laser scalpel and he severed the neuro connection that went to the immune system tissues and what he found was when he injected those animals with a pathogen – something that should cause an immune response – he saw that without the nerve system telling the immune system what to do, the immune response was significantly reduced.
So that really kind of opened the eyes to knowing that (you know) the immune system was completely under neuro regulation. Then there’s a more common example that I use in my office to explain this to people and I always talk about Christopher Reeve, the actor. Everyone seems to remember him. He was a famous guy and he had a horrible accident. He fell off a horse and he broke his neck and what happened was when he broke that bone, it went into the spinal cord and it stopped about 80% of the communication from his brain to the rest of the body. Now in reality, there was nothing wrong with his legs but he couldn’t walk because the messages didn’t get through. There was nothing really wrong with his lungs but he couldn’t breathe on his own because the messages didn’t get through. Now the same thing happens with the immune system and his example most people might remember (some don’t) but he died of pneumonia which is a pretty simple infection that most anyone can beat but the problem was his nerve system couldn’t tell his immune system what to do. Now he was a very wealthy man. He had all the money in the world. He could afford the best doctors and any treatment and he would have traded every penny he had for a few more years on this earth but it didn’t matter what they did and what medicine they gave him because his nerve system wasn’t able to tell his immune system what to do. His nerve system wasn’t enabling his body to absorb the medications that they gave him and deliver it to the infection that developed in lungs and ultimately he lost his life to pneumonia, a very simple infection.
So really that example in my opinion is the best definition to explain how your immune system is tied and 100% connected to your nerve system.
RC: Alright that’s great.
Question 2: Are there specific chiropractic techniques that can help increase a person’s natural immunity?
RC: So are there specific chiropractic techniques that can help increase a person’s natural immunity?
Dr. Gregg Rubinstein: You know that’s a very fair question but the truth is and you know I practice a handful of techniques that I’m very good at and there are probably easy maybe twenty different chiropractic techniques that people can practice but all techniques in chiropractic are designed to achieve the same goal and that’s the elimination of nerve interference. Very simply what happens is stress, tension, poor posture, accidents, falls – these things accumulate over time and create misalignments which we call subluxations in the spine and when you have those misalignments, it interferes with the communication between the brain and the body because those bones misalign and irritate the nerves that they’re designed to protect. Now with that irritation, it slows down the communication. But it doesn’t matter what technique you use and I think almost all the chiropractic techniques work well but they’re all designed just to remove that interference whether it be a high force technique, a low force technique, a no force technique or what they call a neuro energy technique.
There’s a lot of different techniques you can use to try to realign those bones and get pressure off the nerves so there aren’t any specific techniques that I would say are better or worse than any other. They all are designed to achieve the same goal which is remove the interference from the nerve system and allow that body’s systems to work better inclusive of the immune system.
Question 3: Will reducing stress in our lives help increase natural immunity?
RC: Okay so now on our side will reducing stress in our lives help increase natural immunity?
Dr. Gregg Rubinstein: Absolutely and I’ll tell you how. And it’s something pretty simple. Stress really comes from that fight or flight and if anyone’s ever studied psychology, basically if I turn the corner and there’s a kid with a knife and he wants my cell phone and my wallet, all of a sudden I’m going to go into stress, right? I’m going to feel that tingling in my spine, my body’s going to crank out the adrenaline and now I’m sizing up that kid and I’m like well maybe I can out run him or maybe I could beat him up and I don’t have to worry about giving him my cell phone and wallet. But that stress hormone, number one.
But the real problem with immunity comes from stress hormone number two which is cortisol. Many people have heard of cortisol, there’s a lot of people familiar with it. Cortisol does two really important things. The first thing it does is it shuts off insulin because if you’re in survival mode or fight or flight you’re going to need the sugar in your blood stream for energy to either fight or run away from this guy with the knife who wants my cell phone. But the other thing that cortisol does is it shuts off your immune system because when you’re in survival mode your body doesn’t want anything to do with healing, it only wants to survive. So it’s not going to waste any of its energy on trying to heal the body, it’s only going to pay attention to the immediate survival needs of the body. So if someone’s really stressed out and they keep thinking about that same stressful situation, their body will revert to that chemistry, crank out the cortisol and shut down the immune system. And those are the people who get sick all the time because their immune system is run down or basically shut off due to high amounts of stress. That’s truly how stress makes us sick.
Question 4: Does taking dietary supplements help increase natural immunity or should we stick with a regular healthy diet?
RC: And does taking dietary supplements help increase natural Immunity or should we stick with a regular healthy diet?
Dr. Gregg Rubinstein: Well the truth is, it’s both, you know. I used to think a long time ago that you didn’t need supplementation as long as you ate a pretty healthy diet but with the insane amounts of stress that people put themselves in now these stressful situations and basically when you look at what’s called the SAD, the Standard American Diet, which in most cases is really sad, you know the foods we eat are not really eating the right ones so there are definitely some big holes in our nutritional composition and what we take in. So I mean unless you have an impeccable diet, I think some level of supplementation is necessary and required. But you can’t sit there and say well it’s specifically this or specifically that without really doing a seven day nutritional profile of that person. So those are the things that we kind of look at but I think nowadays that some supplementation is probably necessary for some people unless you eat impeccably which is not a very easy thing to do.
In addition there’s all kinds of toxins in things, in our food and our water and our air and to help you break those down increasing the amount of antioxidants you take in are also very important. So I think there are some supplements that are important for increasing your overall immunity but you’ve got to have a healthy diet as well. You can’t just do one and eat garbage, you know you can’t supplement and eat garbage all the time and think that you’re going to be healthy and have a strong immune system.
Question 5: What are some other ways that we can increase our natural immunity that we haven’t discussed?
RC: Right, okay so lastly. What are some other ways that we can increase our natural immunity that we haven’t discussed today?
Dr. Gregg Rubinstein: Well we didn’t discuss it in full but there’s one that we kind of touched on a little bit which is rest. Remember your body heals when it’s at rest. It doesn’t heal when you’re waking during the day, it heals at rest and if you’re not getting enough rest, your body’s ability to repair is going to be impaired. So you really need all the rest that you can get. The other thing (you know) is a lot of people when they’re not feeling so good will turn to drugs and even things like Aspirin, Tylenol, cough medicine, cold medicine. Although they might make you feel better, they’re only addressing the symptoms and not really getting rid of the cause of the problem. And when you take drugs, there are what you call side effects and I have a different name for them. I call them direct effects because they’re a direct effect of taking that medication. And your body has to break down the chemicals in those things because those drugs aren’t common to our body. That’s why there’s always warnings, “Don’t take too much of this” or “Watch the dosage” and things like that because those drugs can be toxic and although they have a desired effect in making us feel better, it’s really only covering up the symptoms and not addressing the cause.
So I think when we take drugs, it can also make our body slower to heal. Although we might feel better, it takes the body longer to heal because now the body has to contend with those chemicals that we put in the body as well.
RC: Alright well thank you so much Dr. Rubinstein. We know you’re extremely busy so I just want to thank you for your time and help today.
Dr. Gregg Rubinstein: Well I’m really glad to do it and I hope some people hear this message and it changes the way they think a little bit.
RC: Yeah we certainly hope so too! And for our listeners across the country, if you are interested in speaking with Dr. Gregg Rubinstein, you can either go online at www.chiropractormidtown.com or call (917) 534-6484 to schedule an appointment.
On behalf of our entire team at razorcast™, we want to thank you for listening and we look forward to bringing you more top quality content from our country’s leading industry experts.
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