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Restoring Immune Health and Function with Thymosin Alpha-1

By |2025-02-13T18:53:07-05:00February 13th, 2025|Categories: Peptides|Tags: , , , , , |0 Comments

Your immune system can act as a double-edged sword. When it’s functioning properly, it attacks and eliminates every alien invader that poses a threat to your health, be it a pathogenic bacteria, virus, fungus, or parasite.

When it’s underperforming, you’re at a greater risk of contracting infectious illnesses, including colds, flu, staph infections, e. coli infections, herpes, shingles, salmonella, pneumonia, and the list goes on.

When it’s overperforming, this active system can attack healthy tissues, causing autoimmune disorders, such as rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, lupus, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, and Graves’s disease. Then there are other immune disorders that often fly under the radar, triggering chronic inflammatory responses that can cause significant distress.

Graphic for Thymosin Alpha-1

Modern medicine has provided us with numerous medications that can dial up or dial down the immune response. Medications most frequently used for dialing up the immune response are vaccines that trigger a response to specific pathogens that cause common illnesses such as measles, mumps, hepatitis, and polio. Other medications that prompt an immune response include interferon, colony-stimulating factors (CFSs), and monoclonal antibodies. Those medications that dial down the immune response include antihistamines and corticosteroids, among many others.

That being said, there are very few medications or supplements that are effective at both dialing up and dialing down the immune response to restore healthy immune function. Which is why we here at PROVOKE Health often recommend a peptide called Thymosin Alpha-1 (Tα1) to our patients who are struggling with immune system dysfunction or age-related immunosenescence (deterioration of the immune system).

What Is Thymosin Alpha-1

Thymosin Alpha-1 is a zinc-dependent thymus peptide primarily secreted by the thymus. If you’re unfamiliar with peptides, please read The Healing and Rejuvenating Power of Therapeutic Peptides by our founder, Dr. Matthew Lewis, D.C., DACBN, CFMP®, here on the PROVOKE Health blog.

Thymosin Alpha-1 plays a crucial role in modulating immune function, particularly in T-cell differentiation and immune response regulation. (T cells are a type of white blood cell that plays a key role in fighting infections.) Over the years, research into Thymosin Alpha-1 has uncovered its potential applications beyond immunomodulation, including neuroprotection and anti-inflammatory effects.

One of the beneficial applications of Thymosin Alpha-1 is its ability to Continue reading…

Fighting the Flu in Florida Naturally

By |2018-02-07T20:02:24-05:00February 7th, 2018|Categories: Influenza (Flu)|Tags: , , , , , |0 Comments

Our sunshine state has been hit particularly hard by the flu this season. As reported in Florida Flu Review published by the Florida Department of Health (January 21-27, 2018), “Flu activity was at higher levels than at the highest points in previous flu seasons,” and deaths due to pneumonia and influenza “were slightly higher than expected and are expected to increase over the coming months.”

Photo © by Kinga Cichewicz | Used with permission from Unsplash

While the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Florida Department of Health (FDH) recommend everyone boost their immunity to the Influenza virus by getting a flu shot, vaccines aren’t a silver bullet. According to the CDC, the effectiveness of the flu vaccine is between 40 and 60 percent; in other words, it works about half the time. And effectiveness can vary, because each flu season vaccines are developed based on predictions of what will be the three or four most prevalent flu strains for the coming season. If you’re exposed to other strains, the vaccine will be of little or no use. In addition, viruses frequently mutate and “dodge” the silver bullet.

Also, despite claims that flu vaccines are safe, they still carry risks, not the least of which is that the virus introduces foreign substances into your body that serve as stressors. After getting a vaccine, people often report a number of symptoms, including Continue reading…