How Immunity Really Works & Why Certain People Keep Getting Sick

Dr. Ashley Froese explains how it’s mostly not about “boosting” the immune system:

What makes the biggest difference

For most people most of the time, immune systems usually don’t fail because they are weak, but rather, they fail because they become confused, exhausted, or distracted. For this reason, “boosting” is usually the wrong framing.

In few words: immune dysfunction is more often about regulation, energy, and focus rather than raw strength.

• The first breakdown is immune confusion. Rather than being weak, the immune system can lose its ability to tell what is dangerous and what is harmless. Chronic stress signals such as elevated cortisol, poor sleep, and inflammatory eating patterns keep the system constantly activated, like a smoke alarm that goes off every time you so much as think about making toast. Over time, this incessant immune activation wastes resources, fuels chronic inflammation or autoimmune reactions, and makes the immune response less effective when a real infection appears.
• The second breakdown is immune exhaustion. Immune responses require large amounts of cellular energy, particularly ATP produced by your mitochondria. When energy is depleted by chronic stress and inflammation, infections linger, recovery slows, and dormant viruses can reactivate. Blood tests may even come back normal, but the immune system lacks the energy to deploy its strongest defenses, much like a phone that shuts down battery-heavy functions when its battery is nearly empty.
• The third breakdown is immune distraction. This one builds on from the previous two, and occurs because even with enough energy, the immune system can fail if it is constantly responding to background problems instead of true threats. A damaged gut barrier is a common example, allowing toxins, bacteria, and food fragments to leak into the bloodstream and continuously trigger immune activity. This constant cleanup diverts attention away from exogenous pathogens, allowing viruses and other infections to slip in and take hold, while the immune system is busy managing ongoing internal battles.

So, what to do about this?

• Reduce chronic inflammation to negligible (e.g. eat an anti-inflammatory diet, and don’t take recreational inflammatory substances like alcohol)
• Get adequate rest. Not just sleep, but also just relaxing downtime. This is important too, for your body to receive the signal “it is safe to spend some resources on maintenance, because we are not in crisis mode”.
• Look after your more general health, including prioritizing gut health, since a lot of things (good or bad) start there. We sometimes say you can’t have good brain health without good heart health, and that’s true, but you can’t have either without good gut health.

For more on all of this, enjoy:

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Want to learn more?

You might also like:

Why Some People Get Sick More (And How To Not Be One Of Them) ← for a very prophylactic approach

Take care!