Dr. Jenna Macciochi describes immunity and how lifestyle, food, exercise, and genes affect it. Macciochi divides the book into easily digestible sections, and while it is evidence based, it’s written for a layperson. The information is important but some of the phrases Macciochi uses seem glib and a bit insensitive. Macciochi often personifies bacteria referring to it as “our old friends” and uses the term “dead ducks” more than once in referring to people if they didn’t have certain aspects of an immune system. Ultimately, this was a good book despite some of the writing decisions made by the author.

I so enjoyed this very timely book that came at the right time during the covid pandemic. I found the information very concise and science based while easy to follow and sensible. I highly recommend this book for all that are interested in better health and immunity during this difficult time . This is both very readable for the average reader and fascinating to find out so much more we can do to protect our health. If your a student of science, studying the science of the pandemic or just interested in better health practices this is definitely the book to choose to better your own health and understand that our health depends so much on our immune system. Thank you to the publisher and to Net Galley for the opportunity. My review opinions are my own.

I absolutely loved this book! Dr. Maccioci writes about the function of our immune system, how we can improve its functioning, as well as sources of immunosuppression that could compromise our immune functioning. The book is very academically rigorous but manages to also be accessible to the average reader, which is often hard to find in health books like these, which are often watered down or based in pseudoscience.

Nice overview of healthy habits to help improve immunity. Most of it was pretty straight forward info that I already knew, but it covered the topic fairly well. I would have liked to see more talk about adaptogens to improve health as I utilize these and know that they personally improve my health and immune system. I thought it was a very enjoyable read though!

Interesting look at immunity from the various factors that can impact it: diet, stress, sleep, exercise, and environment.

As someone with a seriously compromised immune system, I was particularly happy to receive a copy of Immunity by Dr. Jenna Macciochi from NetGalley and The Experiment. With a subtitle “The Science of Staying Well — The Definitive Guide to Caring For Your Immune System,” I was hoping to learn…well, anything to boost my health, really.

The book has lots of helpful information on the GOOD things to focus on (sleep, sunlight/nature, movement — not necessarily “exercise” — and eating nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables). Fairly standard stuff in Western medicine/treatment. She also points out the not-so-good things, including antibiotics (including antibacterial soaps/washes) and stress. There are some common sense mentions of myths around boosting immunity, and a generally positive approach to health and well-being.

Not much on adaptogens such as herbs and mushrooms, which was not surprising as she is a Western-trained PhD. TBH, I found her website extremely helpful and informative, and would recommend both to someone looking into the topic of immunity — oh, wait, with the current pandemic, that’s everyone! Four stars.

This is a well written book composed of modern teachings of mainstream Western medicine's views on immunity. That is not to say it's wrong, but it's the sort of things you'd have been taught if you got your PhD in immunology in the past 15 years as the author did. It covers all the typical stuff that most of us who have researched this know -- sleep is vitally important, stress weakens us immensely, antibiotics and antibacterial soaps are causing far more harm than good, you need way more fiber, you need way more vegetables and fruits (and more protein, in some cases, especially as you age), you need to move more (not exercise to death, just move a lot and stop sitting so much), part of it is just in your genes, stop eating processed junk, get enough sunlight and nature, etc.

The start of the book has a very brief bit about Covid-19 since it was published just as that hit, but mostly in a very general sort of set up way since so little was known at that point and you'd need several books just to cover that topic. The rest of the book was chapters on each element -- sleep, movement, food, etc.

Macciochi is very, very mainstream and conventional. She frequently tut-tuts anything about boosting immunity (she says anyone who understands immunity knows you don't want the immune system boosted, which is true but misrepresents what people really mean when they talk about "boosting" it) and she mostly blasts the idea of any food or supplement being good for the immune system other than fish, fiber, and eating a wide variety of plants (this is definitely the new hot topic of health books left and right these days -- aim for a minimum of 30 different plant foods a week for the healthiest gut and most nutrients, some say aim for 50). She gives a reluctant admittance that elderberries, garlic and chicken noodle soup have proven immune benefits, but mostly squashes any other notion of "superfoods" -- even ones with lots of good studies showing benefit such as ginger.

Adaptogens are never mentioned at all, which is kind of staggering for a book about immunity. She doesn't discount them, she just acts as if the topic never existed at all. This is rather disappointing, as adaptogens like ashwagandha and astragalus are well researched and have been found to work very well at helping the body adapt to stress and improve the immune system (dial it down for autoimmunity, rev it up for the opposite). Likewise, many varieties of mushrooms have shown remarkable effects on the immune system but they are never mentioned at all. As I said, the book covers mainstream, Western, well established teachings.

I'm not sure I came away with any new knowledge, other than a few little tidbits like the fact that being exposed to very hot and very cold temperatures together can help our immune systems. I'm not sure I can adapt her policy of ending my showers with cold water, but I did file the information away. Some of the information will be new for other readers, and it's a good primer on the subject.

I read a self-destructing digital ARC of this book for review.