Facilitated

BONUS: Stop Calling A Temporary Lab Change “Boosted Immunity”

• The Facility Denver

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A single lab spike does not equal better health. We dive into the viral claim that an upper cervical adjustment “boosts immunity” by raising salivary IgA for 30 minutes and unpack what that marker actually reflects at your barrier surfaces. In clear, plain language, we explain why IgA is a frontline "bouncer" for the mouth, sinuses, lungs, and gut—and why a temporary increase can mean everything from an appropriate alarm to simple irritation. The headline sounds exciting; the physiology is more nuanced.

We walk through the 2021 observational study at the center of the hype: 41 existing clinic patients, no control group, no blinding, and no clinical outcomes. The result showed a transient IgA bump half an hour post adjustment that returned to baseline two weeks later. Interesting, yes. Proof of enhanced immunity, no. We contrast statistical significance with clinical meaning and outline what a rigorous trial would actually measure: sick-day reduction over a season, antibody titers, cytokine balance in the mucosal system, and microbiome shifts. If we want credibility, we need outcomes patients can feel and methods scientists respect.

From there, we reframe the goal of immune care: not boosting, but regulating. Boosted immunity describes allergy flares and some autoimmune activity. Regulated immunity means a system that mounts a defense when needed and then stands down. We cover what drives chronically high IgA—dysbiosis, food sensitivity, mold, alcohol, ongoing infections—and what low IgA can signal—depletion from relentless stress or long-term viral load. The practical takeaway is simple: stop chasing numbers; build resilience. If a therapy makes a marker move, ask whether symptoms, infection rates, and quality of life move in the right direction too.

If this kind of clear, context-first health talk resonates, follow along, share the episode with a friend who loves data, and leave a quick review so we can reach more curious listeners.

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SPEAKER_00:

Alright. This is Mitchell. I want to record a little solo episode today because frankly I'm a little fired up. I think we'll call this uh when boosting immunity isn't the flex you think it is. Jeez. So there's a s let's just get right into it. I am kind of annoyed today. So I want to talk about something. There's this new study, it actually wasn't that new, it was a few years ago, but it's going around uh that's got chiropractors super fired up. It's claiming that an upper cervical adjustment can raise your secretory IgA, which is then being celebrated as proof that chiropractic care air quote boosts immunity. And look, I'm certainly all for people getting excited about physiology, but I think if we're gonna wave a study around and call it proof of immune enhancement, uh I hope we better understand what that biomarker actually means. Here's a spoiler. I don't think it means what people think it does. I want to talk about this study. You can find it, it's open access. It's called Secretory Immunoglobulin A, an upper cervical chiropractic. It was published in 2021 in the Journal of Chiropractic Medicine. The esteemed journal. And it's what we'd call an observational study, right? This wasn't randomized, this wasn't blinded. Essentially, they took 41 patients from five different chiropractic offices. Keep in mind, these were people already coming in for care. These individuals, they gave a saliva sample before their adjustment, and then another one 30 minutes after, and then one more two weeks after that. Here's what they found salivary or secretory IgA went up about half an hour after the adjustment, and then by two weeks it had returned to baseline. That's it. Again, no control group, no placebo, no sham adjustment. There wasn't even clinical outcomes measured. This was literally just a temporary lab change after a procedure. Interesting, sure. Was this proof that chiropractic air quote boosts immunity? I I would honestly say not even close. And I I actually responded in a group on Instagram last night about this because I was fired up. And if the chiropractic field wants to be taken seriously and scientifically credibly, I I think we need to know what we're actually saying. And so let's talk about what IgA actually is. I think if you're gonna use it as proof of anything, you should at least know what it does. So IgA stands for immunoglobulin A. It's something that we measure in people frequently. We look at it on a stool test, we can test it in your saliva. Um, it's essentially this main antibody that's going to guard your mucosal surfaces. Think about the surfaces of your mouth, your upper respiratory passages, your lungs, your sinuses, and really quite heavily in the gut. This is your first line of defense. It's going to coat these surfaces. It's kind of like a thin film, and it's going to catch and neutralize incoming microbes and toxins so that they then can't cross the barrier. So it's what we'd call your first line of immune defense along your barrier surfaces. Uh you can think about it kind of like a bouncer at the door. It's not destroying anything, but it just keeps them from getting inside and causing trouble. So when IgA goes up, it usually means the body sensed a threat, which is why I'm so frustrated by this proclamation by these chiropractors. It can literally go up when you get sick, when you're exposed to a food that you're reactive to, when you've got gut problems, mold exposure can raise this, and even alcohol in the system. So basically, anything that irritates your barrier will drive up IgA. And that's to me the cute the key point here. IgA elevation is not just an inherently good thing. It's literally a sign that your immune system is doing something. It doesn't tell you whether that something is healthy as an adaptation or if it's just more inflammation being created. Is it ever a good thing to see IgA go up? Yeah, of course. And sharp bursts, you'd see that after exercise, or maybe you did cold exposure, or you got an acute cold. That shows us that the immune system is responsive and it can at least mount a defense when needed. But chronic or repeated elevation, that's a completely different story. If you've got chronically high IgA, especially in your stool or saliva, that's telling me that you've got mucosal stress. You might have a leaky gut, a chronic infection, a food allergy, exposed to a toxin. I mean, so many different reasons why that will stay elevated. So, in my opinion, if we are saying that an intervention raises IgA, my first question is why? You know, what was the body responding to? Was it adaptive or was it literally just a stress signal? Here's some context. I wrote a list down of things that also raise IgA on top of this upper cervical adjustment, chronic sinus infection, gut dysbiosis, candida overgrowth, rheumatoid arthritis, alcohol, mold, emotional stress, gluten or dairy food sensitivities. So you might be asking yourself, okay, so what is this study actually saying? And I'm saying if a neck adjustment temporarily raises this, that's not an automatic sign that we're air quote immune boosting. It literally just means the body perceived a threat. And again, that's not necessarily bad, but it's not necessarily good either. It's literally just your body responding to something. I want to talk a little bit about why it's low and why we might want to boost it. We know that if we have low secretory IgA, your mucosal immune system is worn out. It's probably been chronically activated for so long that it's simply depleted. I'm gonna see this a lot of times in people with chronic unrelenting stress, adrenal, you know, HPA access dysfunction, long-term infections like Epstein Barr virus or cytomegalovirus, essentially people who have been running on fumes for a long time. And I think that's where my world focuses. I want to help your body restore balance so that IgA isn't constantly spiking or crashing, but it's kind of staying resilient. And this irks me. People say we're gonna boost your immune system. I don't want to boost your immune system, I want to help you regulate it. Okay, boosted immunity is literally how you describe allergies or autoimmunity or the cytokine storm that became famous during COVID. I don't want my immune system boosted. I literally want to work to keep it balanced. Okay, I went through that study. Let's talk about some of its weaknesses. 41 subjects, no blinding, no control group, no clinical outcomes, and talking about heavy bias, these were literally drawn from these chiropractic clinics' own patients, and the change lasted 30 minutes. It might be statistically significant, but uh when we think about clinical meaningfulness, it does not say that. I think that the only conclusion that we can honestly make is that cracking the upper back stimulated something in the body. Maybe it was vagal nerve tone, maybe it was a stress response, maybe a little bit of both. But I think it's really dangerous to jump from this change to this proves chiropractic boosts the immune system. Yeah, that's that's a marketing statement. Okay, that's not a scientific one. And back to the beginning, guys, this is where I think we lose credibility as a profession. When I grab one marker, take it out of context, and then I make a post, chiropractic proven to boost immunity, that's what I saw last night. We sound like we don't understand what we're measuring. Physiology isn't some binary thing. Changing a biomarker shouldn't be the end result, right? I'm after clinical outcomes, and if I want to be taken seriously within the broader healthcare landscape, I've got to know how to interpret data the way real scientists do, right? There's nuance, there's mechanism, there's context, and then again, does it lead to a clinical improvement? I want to show, you know. I think I want to show how I understand that the body regulates itself, not just that I can make a number move, right? What I wrote last night is bragging about IgA elevation could be similar to bragging that you did something that raised your CRP, right? All we saw was that something was stressed in the body. And I think something that we could actually focus on is if we really want to study this connection between chiropractic and immunity, we've got to set up a trial that measures outcomes. How often are you getting sick? Uh, antibody titers, cytokine balance within the mucosal system, maybe even microbiome shifts. You know, I want you to show that these adjustments improve immune resilience, not just creating some noise, right? I think that's where this could be moved, the needle could be moved for the profession. But not, you know, adjust the upper back, take a salivary sample, see a transient change, and then say, okay, that means it's a good thing. Again, it could be just noise, it could be just stress on the system. Here's my takeaway. I wrote this down, so I'm just gonna read it. The body's physiology is responsive, and that's a good thing, but not every reaction is worth celebrating. A transient bump in IgA tells you something happened, it does not tell you whether it helped. So instead of chasing this idea of boosted immunity, let's talk about regulated immunity, a system that can respond when needed and calm down when it's done, because that is health and that's scientific credibility. Uh boosting your immune system is what happens in an allergic reaction. Um, I'd rather help you build an immune response that knows when to turn on and when to chill out. So, all in all, data can be a good thing, can be a bad thing. Uh, taking one study with a small sample size, a ton of bias, and no usable outcome measurements is a slippery slope to pseudoscience and to again showing the world that we don't have a true grasp of physiology and that we should not be considered doctors in the healthcare space. And I I think for our profession to move forward, we we we just do we need to do better. We need to get the data that's meaningful and not jump to a conclusion to celebrate something just because one small biased sample showed some sort of change in blood work.

SPEAKER_01:

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