Healing the soul. How we program our own lives

From this article you will learn:

What are the signs that your soul needs healing?
How to heal your soul and body through meditation
What mantras should you listen to to heal your soul and body?
How aromatherapy can help heal the soul and body

Probably, every person periodically encounters a feeling of fatigue, which goes away as soon as you get a full and quality rest. But in some cases, this condition may drag on. And if fatigue is accompanied by apathy and lack of desire to do anything, this may indicate that you have a real breakdown. Is it possible to fight lack of energy? Certainly. You will learn about how to restore energy, what healing of soul and body is and what methods exist in our article.

The relationship between soul and body

Experienced specialists working with internal energy are confident that the human soul and body are inextricably linked. However, this point of view is also shared by a large number of ordinary people. A special scheme has even been developed to find a direct connection between the manifestation of negative emotions and the diseases that they can cause.

Healing the soul and body is a process that each person must carry out independently. After all, it is built entirely on personal feelings and seems to be a journey into your inner world. In such a situation, the energy of love will help, the power of which will renew the soul and body. And there should be enough space in the heart for warm feelings, and it must be cleared of any negativity, primarily from fear and anger.

How to help a patient? What to do?

You should know that the grief reaction, regardless of the cause that caused it, goes through several stages:
Stage 2 - anger. “Why did this happen to me?”, “This shouldn’t have happened to me!” - the suffering person is indignant.
Stage 3 - immediate feeling of grief, grief, sadness. A person must mourn his loss, then he will feel better.
Stage 4 - adaptation to new living conditions, filling the void, establishing new meanings and goals in life, new relationships.
Normally, the grief reaction under severe stress goes through all stages within a year. In the case of extremely stressful situations (death of a spouse or child), the grief reaction resolves within 2-3 years. If a person cannot live fully after this period, he often has “flashbacks” - memories of the departed, of a stressful situation (we are not talking about forgetting about the departed loved one! - only about continuing to live normally and work without constantly being immersed in memories of the grief event), a pathological grief reaction appears to be taking place.
The task of the doctor, to whom a patient came with an unresolved grief reaction, is to help him survive and go through those stages that he could not go through on his own and help him adapt to life in a new life situation.
If a patient has an unresolved grief reaction accompanied by mental and physical symptoms of depression, antidepressant therapy may be necessary.

In the treatment of patients with adaptation disorders and psychosomatic disorders due to an unresolved grief reaction, it is necessary to provide not only pharmacological, but also psychological assistance.

The multidisciplinary CELT clinic employs highly qualified, experienced specialists. You can seek help from a neurologist, psychoneurologist, or psychologist. Timely contact with a specialist is the key to your future health. We are always happy to help!

How to heal your soul?

Everyone has the power to heal their personal inner world. You can always achieve harmony if you understand well the nature of your soul, which has a feminine principle. To maintain internal energy, desire alone is not enough. Positive emotions, creativity and some imagination are required. The development of these properties allows, first of all, to heal the female soul.

You should definitely strengthen your connection with the forces of the magical world. The perception of spirituality can always be revised regardless of religion. You should always find an opportunity to devote time to subjects and activities that bring joy and pleasure. You need to have several different ways in stock that evoke pleasant feelings. You need to heal the soul in a relaxed state using meditation.

Work on yourself

Every wrong action and excessive emotions are reflected in a person’s karma and cause negative consequences. By clearing karma, people give themselves permission to change. Changes often lead to a restructuring of the very foundations of life, carrying out its reconstruction. The teachings of karma say that everyone paves the way to their own future, so we need to work on our thoughts and behavior. Healing the soul should become a daily effort on yourself. A few tips will help you take your first steps in the right direction:

Modern media contain virtually nothing useful, so it is advisable to use them as little as possible.
You should not speak badly about yourself and others. If there is a desire to express negativity, it is better to close your eyes and imagine a bowl of water in which negative emotions are drowning.
You always need to have a cool head, since lack of control over your thoughts often leads to rash actions that you later regret.
Healing the soul can be done using various methods of meditation.

Meditation

In alternative medicine, it is generally accepted that a person has useful energy that must be in continuous motion. However, obstacles often appear on people's paths that slow down the energy flow. By regularly practicing meditation, you can overcome all difficulties and make the movement of the flow uniform, and therefore optimal. This will allow you to free yourself from the problems that weigh on your soul and normalize the functioning of the entire body.

The main thing that is required during meditation is to direct energy to the problem area. This triggers the self-healing mechanism of the soul and body. To do this, you need to take a comfortable position and relax. The main task is to feel how energy penetrates every cell of the body and especially where there is the greatest tension. You need to meditate until you begin to feel lightness throughout your body. This is considered a sign of the onset of internal harmony.

Indications for use of Charcot's shower

Indications for the use of such a physiotherapy procedure as Charcot's douche are:

chronic fatigue syndrome;
depression;
neuroses;
chronic stress;
diseases of the osteoarticular system (arthritis, osteoarthritis, osteochondrosis);
muscle diseases;
metabolic disorders, in particular obesity;
vegetative-vascular dystonia;
allergic diseases.

The procedure is often used as a preventive measure - to strengthen the body's defenses, as well as to relax muscles after intense sports.

In cosmetology, the method is actively used as an effective means to combat cellulite - the skin after a course of treatment becomes smoother, firmer and more elastic. In addition, women are happy to discover minus centimeters in problem areas of the body.

Mantra for healing

With the help of the power of words, a person has both positive and negative influence. The word is endowed with such great power that it can cure many diseases. Its effectiveness is equally high for both physical and mental illnesses. For example, ancient prayers are endowed with great healing power, and a person will definitely feel its influence.

The mantra for healing the soul and body creates certain frequency vibrations that can be detected by the auditory organ. Such vibration can work real miracles: it normalizes the body’s functioning and strengthens the immune system. If a person has suffered mental trauma, then with the help of vibration healing and renewal of internal energy occurs.

When the goal is to cure an illness, reading a prayer for healing the soul and body begins during the period of the waning moon. Its duration is 21 days. If a course of healing is carried out, its optimal period will be the waxing Moon, and the duration will be the same. The mantra is pronounced the next morning or evening. Reading should be done in a relaxed state, the head should be cleared of extraneous thoughts.

Contraindications to the use of Charcot's shower

In some cases, Charcot's shower will not improve the patient's health, and may even cause harm to his body. So, contraindications to taking Charcot's shower are:

infectious diseases in the acute stage;
active inflammatory processes of non-infectious nature;
thrombophlebitis;
low body weight;
hypertension stages II and III;
history of heart attacks and strokes;
kidney diseases;
skin diseases (pustular, eczema and others);
oncopathology;
benign neoplasms with a tendency to grow;
diseases with an increased risk of bleeding;
pregnancy of any stage;
menstruation.

It is worth noting that varicose veins are also a relative contraindication. However, in this case, it is possible to carry out this procedure, but on the condition that the water jet will not affect the problem areas of the limbs.

Healing the soul in Orthodoxy

The Orthodox faith teaches that the soul is primary in man, and the body is secondary. To maintain this harmony, you need not to overload yourself with thoughts and carefully monitor your actions. Bright faith in God gives forgiveness and healing. Church attendance and confession should be made a norm of life.

The ringing of bells has a very soulful effect on people. It literally fills the body with positive energy. Listening to the ringing of bells, you can get rid of fears and anxieties. It has been noticed that the sounds of a church bell improve the functioning of the heart and blood vessels and normalize metabolism. Of course, bell ringing should only be heard live.

Each prayer contains in its text a request for cleansing from sins and deliverance from temptations. If the prayer is aimed at healing from an illness, then at the moment of reading it it is important to focus your consciousness on positive emotions and faith in God’s help. You can turn to the Mother of God, as well as to the icons of saints. A prayer for the healing of the soul for children is said in front of the Tikhvin Icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary. A prayer read in front of the icon of the holy great martyr and healer Panteleimon helps against physical and spiritual illnesses.

Inner strength for self-healing

Each person’s body contains functions that trigger a self-healing mechanism if necessary. The body is endowed with a powerful defense system that prevents the penetration of external and internal pathogens. The daily process of the body creating new cells helps to increase energy and increase the duration of its life. All this is called self-regeneration. It is possible to stop this process only if you do not believe in the miraculous abilities of the body and do not give your own body what it needs without fail: rest, balanced nutrition, reasonable exercise.

Is Charcot's shower possible at home?

It is impossible to conduct a full-fledged, according to all the rules, Charcot shower at home. Yes, this is not necessary, since the procedure, as you could read above, is not indicated for everyone, and it also has a very impressive list of contraindications.

That is why the necessity and expediency of its implementation must be determined by a doctor, and carried out by a specially trained person who, if the patient experiences any undesirable reactions, will be able to help him.

However, at home, such a useful and safe method of physiotherapy as a contrast shower will always help you. The result of regular procedures will be a healthy immune system, strong nerves and smooth, toned skin.

Head of the physiotherapy department Evgenia Alekseevna Tsymbalova

Only man himself can heal his soul

Indeed, no one else will do this like the person whose soul is needed to be healed. Of course, you can create a whole team of assistants who will offer their knowledge, experience and support. However, all these people will not be able to do the main thing - to heal. Only those who want to rid their soul of everything negative can heal it. Because it is a purely personal journey into your own world, in which no one else can experience your own emotions or understand how the mind works. Others can give the right hints, but all the wisdom of healing the soul belongs only to its owner.

How the life of a person with an incurable disease changes, and how you can help him

On January 16-19, at the “Healthy Moscow” Assembly, Moscow palliative care specialists spoke in a special section: the head physician of the Moscow Multidisciplinary Center for Palliative Care of the Moscow Health Department Tatyana Kravchenko, her deputy for the organization of inpatient care Svetlana Gurkina and the head of the First Moscow Hospice Arif Ibragimov. What did they talk about?

"Life from PET-KT to PET-KT"

The concept of palliative care—helping people with incurable, progressive illnesses that significantly shorten their lives—is based on the understanding that serious illness affects more than just the body. Svetlana Petrovna Gurkina spoke about this .

What happens to a healthy person when he is diagnosed with an incurable disease? “You are a healthy person when you are physically absolutely independent, you have a family, a home, professional fulfillment, hobbies and plans for life. A serious illness affects all these areas,” says the doctor.

Gradually or abruptly - depending on the situation - a person finds himself thrown out of social life. Friends become awkward and unclear how to communicate with him; the work he has put his whole life into becomes impossible to do. Hobbies, especially active ones, are now overwhelming. A person loses strength and independence. “It doesn’t occur to most of us: how am I going to drink my favorite coffee today? And if a person is stricken with an illness, getting to the kitchen and making his usual coffee is already a big task, and he is not sure that today he has enough strength to cope with it,” explains Svetlana Petrovna.

All this leads to a “conspiracy of silence” - both within the family and with friends, colleagues, acquaintances, because any conversation one way or another comes down to illness, death. And because such conversations, as it seems to the patient, will greatly upset his loved ones: it is better to postpone them until later.

Plans change, your whole life is rearranged around the illness. “Life from PET/KT to PET/KT” - as one patient said about himself. Someone close to you is forced to take time off from work or leave it in order to accompany the sick person to the doctors, to care for him - tension increases, financial problems appear. Fears appear - fear of becoming a burden for the family, fear of physical pain, death, fear of the hospital ward with her life according to a schedule, with helplessness, with loss of self-esteem.

“It wouldn’t even occur to a healthy person,” says Svetlana Gurkina. - That he can sit on a toilet seat and perform physiological functions in front of four strangers in the room. It’s not clear why in a hospital you have to eat any food with an aluminum spoon instead of a fork. Why is there a clock in your room that doesn't work? Why do you have an uncomfortable pillow, sterile white linen, and a bedside table on which you cannot place your usual things, because it violates the sanitary and epidemiological regime? You want your loved ones to be nearby, and visits are strictly from 17 to 19. A person is always subject to some kind of regime, he has no choice.”

In ordinary life, people are beautiful, they take care of themselves, they choose what to wear and how to look. When a person gets sick, he changes, his appearance changes - and now he is not always ready to meet with friends who remember him completely differently. In the hospital he is depersonalized: everyone has the same bed linen, the same routine, the same food on the plate, he loses his individual features and becomes a patient.

“As a result, a person lives in a different world, with different rules: with physical limitations, with the destruction of self-esteem, with the destruction of plans for the future, loss of freedom of choice, impossibility of professional fulfillment, destruction of social ties, problems with loved ones. And all this is accompanied by helplessness, apathy, fear, dependence on other people, pain and silence, so as not to upset loved ones. In practice, this is a dead end,” sums up Svetlana Gurkina.

When a doctor understands exactly what his patient has lost, how he feels, what he is afraid of, it is easier for him to understand how to make the patient’s life better, no matter how short it may be.

“Who will you trust with your cat when you’re gone?”

“Not only he himself, but also members of his family are faced with the complete destruction of the world in which a person lived,” clarifies Tatyana Kravchenko , chief physician of the Moscow Multidisciplinary Center for Palliative Care. And he talks about a tool that makes life easier for everyone:

“In America there is a questionnaire that is asked to be filled out at the moment when a patient is diagnosed with an incurable disease.
There are questions there: would you like to have a gastrostomy tube installed when you stop swallowing? If your condition changes critically, would you like to be transferred to artificial ventilation? If you lost the ability to get out of bed on your own, who would you trust to care for you - a loved one, a hired caregiver, a nurse? These are important questions. If a person is honest with himself and answers them, this greatly facilitates the adoption of medical decisions by both doctors and relatives, and relieves them of feelings of guilt, anxiety, and doubt.” Questionnaire-testament Your wishes for loved ones and doctors in the event of a serious illness and the last days of life Vera Foundation
Communication

Such a questionnaire also contains the following questions: who will you entrust to care for your pet when you are gone? How would you like your funeral to take place? Who would you like to say goodbye to and who would you not want to see? Who would you like to give things that are meaningful to you?

“This is not some additional way of torment, but one of the opportunities to destroy the conspiracy of silence that surrounds each of our patients,” explains Tatyana Vladimirovna.

There is no such practice in Russia yet. But palliative care specialists advocate having an honest conversation with a seriously ill person, answering his questions, and talking with both the patient and relatives.

It often happens that a person simply does not know that he has very little time left to live. He has been ill with oncology for many years; he has undergone 20 courses of chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation therapy, but all he can say about his condition and prognosis is: “I know that I have cancer. The doctor said that we are now stopping chemotherapy.” How can such a person manage his life?

Knocking before entering a room

Palliative care deals with both the soul and psyche of a person, and the head physician of the Palliative Care Center says that sometimes just sitting next to you, even silently, is the greatest thing you can do for a patient. But, of course, the priority is to relieve pain and other painful symptoms - shortness of breath, vomiting, intestinal obstruction, constipation, etc.

Tatyana Vladimirovna says that most people want to stay at home and get help there. In Moscow this is possible - this is done by the mobile palliative service. What can a patient receive at home?

Pain therapy
Relief of painful symptoms
Medical care
Observation of extended respiratory support at home
Social assistance
Teaching relatives the basics of care
24/7 support from the Center's dispatch service

Field services work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and there is a doctor on duty who can be called at any time of the day.

A person can receive palliative care in a hospital, or a doctor’s visit to the hospital of a social institution is possible - for example, if a lonely elderly person ends up in a nursing home. In a hospital, a person can count on:

24/7 medical supervision and care
24/7 monitoring with extended respiratory support
Selection and provision of therapeutic nutrition
Social assistance
Diagnostics
Habilitation and activation activities.

“If a situation arises that it is impossible to provide help at home, we must create a home in a hospital,” says Tatyana Vladimirovna. This means that the visit is 24/7, and it is not prohibited to bring children or meet with grandparents, mom or dad.

Cat therapy at the First Moscow Hospice. Photo: Anastasia Maksimenko / Vera Foundation Archive

Moscow hospices have technical means for moving patients. Special comfortable strollers for walking, even if a person is on artificial ventilation, he does not have to lie in intensive care and stare at the white ceiling all day: there is a portable ventilator with which he can go out into the yard. You can go out into the corridor or outside in bed. There are special “beds” for washing a bedridden patient.

In the hospital, a person loses his individuality. Hospice and palliative care departments, on the contrary, try to take it into account: patients are allowed to bring their personal belongings, and they may even consider the issue of living with a pet. The staff tries to do everything so that a person can continue to engage in any activity and, if he wants and has the strength, learn new ones - for example, needlework. One elderly woman, a pianist, could come in a wheelchair to the hospice hall and play the piano.

New Year's concert by Polina Osetinskaya at the hospice. Photo: Nikolay Oleynik / Vera Foundation Archive

The staff of the Palliative Care and Hospice Center follows certain rules: they enter the room only after knocking, ask the patient’s permission for all manipulations, explain what they are going to do with him, and address the patient by his first name and patronymic. And he does not allow himself to call a “corpse” a person in a deep coma, unconscious.

The menu and daily routine must be individual. “Why should a terminally ill person choke on something he doesn’t like? Why should he wake up at 6 am if at home he is used to getting up at 10? One of the important requests of a person: I want to remain beautiful.

Beauty Day at the Moscow Hospice / Vera Foundation Archives

You can organize beauty days and photo sessions where patients will look beautiful,” says Kravchenko. Perhaps before the illness the family did not have time to get together and take pictures together: why not do this now?

Beauty day and photo shoot at the First Moscow Hospice. Photo: Yulia Borisova / Vera Foundation Archive

People need spiritual support. Weddings in a hospice are not such a rare story: in ordinary life, people postpone this event, and when they have only a short time to live, they decide to do so.

Wedding at the Butovo hospice. Photo: Nadezhda Fetisova / Vera Foundation Archive

Volunteers of the Vera Hospice Fund and hospice coordinators work to fulfill dreams that a person might also put off for later. One palliative patient dreamed of flying in a helicopter. Why not? Volunteers helped her organize such a flight.

“No matter how much the disease destroys the life of the patient and his family, we, doctors, must remember: we are here to help the patient and preserve his dignity,” says the head physician of the Center for Emergency Medicine.

Dry statistics and “The Lion King”

The head of the First Moscow Hospice, Arif Ibragimov, spoke about palliative and hospice care in Moscow “in the language of dry numbers.”

2017-2019 were breakthrough years for palliative care in Russia and, in particular, in Moscow, but this does not mean that there is nowhere to develop - if only because in 2021 in the capital less than half of those who need it received palliative care .

In 2021, a new definition of palliative care was enshrined in law.

Palliative care is a set of measures, including medical interventions, psychological measures and care, carried out in order to improve the quality of life of terminally ill citizens and aimed at relieving pain and other severe manifestations of the disease.

Federal Law of November 21, 2011 No. 323-FZ (Article 36)

In 2021, a unified Coordination Center for the provision of palliative care in Moscow was launched; it keeps a register of all palliative patients in the capital.

Providing 80 thousand people a year with beds is not necessary: throughout the world, end-of-life care is moving towards a “hospice at home” model. “What kind of model is this - hospice at home? This is a model in which not only a doctor, but also a nurse, an auxiliary nurse, a social worker, and volunteers participate in helping a patient at home,” explains Arif Ibragimov. Therefore, it is more important to create a sufficient number of mobile palliative services that would work 12 hours a day. An ambulance station cannot always fully help a palliative patient, so in acute cases teams work around the clock to visit him. In 2021, it is planned to open 6 more field services in Moscow, including in new areas.

How to become a volunteer of the Vera Foundation What volunteers do in hospices, what are the restrictions and how to sign up for an introductory meeting Editorial Board

About palliative care

24-hour telephone support and free transportation of patients have been created. “Previously, transportation from hospital to hospital, from home to hospital and back fell on the shoulders of relatives,” says Ibragimov. — And families with different budgets, and for some it hit their pockets very hard. Now, in more than 90% of cases when our patients need to be transported, we solve this on our own - a transportation department has appeared.”

Since February 2021, respiratory support at home has become operational: this means that a person with breathing problems can receive equipment at home. In 2021, more than 1,000 pieces of equipment were issued: oxygenators, equipment for artificial ventilation, coughers, vibration vests, etc.

“If anyone worked in palliative care before 2021, they probably remember that a palliative patient was equated with an oncological one: non-oncological diseases were almost not considered. In 2021, there was a change in legislation, which allowed us to expand our activities in terms of nosologies: to provide palliative care not only to cancer patients,” says the head of the First Moscow Hospice.

Since palliative care is practically not taught in medical schools, the Palliative Care Center launched the “Doctors to Doctors” training course. “In this course, our staff, including yours truly, train palliative care providers. 50 academic hours of classes have already been conducted, and several cycles are planned for 2021,” said Ibragimov.

Training in patient transfer techniques / Photo archive of the Palliative Care Center

There are issues that cannot be solved with the help of medicine. But it is possible with the help of volunteers. “We had such an episode,” says Arif Niyazovich. – Not long ago the film “The Lion King” was released, an interpretation of the old cartoon. We had a young cancer patient with a short life prognosis and no opportunity to go to the cinema. The distributors brought us this film, despite the fact that it was not yet on media - it had only been released for a week. And this patient was shown a film within the hospice.”

Watching old films at the Center for Clinical Practice /Photo archive of the Palliative Care Center

Everything that palliative care specialists do is about respect for the person, his needs, desires, and feelings. This is not exactly what Russian patients and Russian doctors are used to, but, as Tatyana Kravchenko, the head doctor of the Center for Emergency Medicine, says: “The main thing is to rebuild your head!”

We thank the training department of the Moscow Multidisciplinary Center for Palliative Care for the illustrations provided.

The material was prepared using a grant from the President of the Russian Federation provided by the Presidential Grants Foundation.

Healing begins with the soul

The soul and body have different needs. But when both substances receive everything they need for health, harmony occurs. You cannot neglect anything, otherwise an imbalance will arise, and diseases will begin their onset. While the science of medicine deals with the treatment of diseases by influencing the body, healing given by Higher powers involves starting it from the soul. After all, the soul is the beginning of existence, and it breathes life into the body. When healing begins with her, everything else will catch up and join the process automatically. But the soul doesn’t need much: to live happily, have a purpose in life, grow and express your emotions with positive thoughts, words and deeds.

How to Know if Your Soul is Exhausted and Needs Healing

Have you ever woken up with the thought that you have absolutely no desire to get out of bed? Did you feel tired at the very beginning of the day? Did it seem to you that nothing could bring you joy, and familiar things were no longer a source of positive emotions?

The listed signs indicate your need for quality rest and fresh energy. Or rather, your soul needs rest and energy. Spiritual exhaustion, unlike physical fatigue, is not as noticeable. Every day we go to work, solve professional and everyday issues. Different situations force us to put on different masks and pretend that we are fine. But in my soul there is a feeling that everything around is getting out of control and starting to collapse. This means that measures need to be taken to correct the situation.

The urgent need for healing of the mind, soul and body can arise for a number of reasons. We list just a few of them that could lead to spiritual exhaustion:

you have been engaged in self-deception for a certain time;
you don't love yourself;
you don’t know how to refuse and say: “No”;
you suffer from a lack of something;
you do not have clearly defined goals for which you need to take certain actions;
you live in the past;
you lack motivation;
you engage in meaningless conversations and gossip;
There are negative people in your environment.

There is no need to become a victim of your lifestyle. It is very important not to immerse yourself in a feeling of poverty and inferiority. You should realize that you are worthy of happiness.

If you understand that the reasons described above may apply to you, it is imperative that you take measures aimed at healing your body and spirit. Its main methods are described below.

Love as healing of the soul

The energy of love has enormous healing power. Love and healing of the soul are inextricably linked. Sent to the point of the body where it is most needed, love heals it with the renewing influence of the power of the soul and mind. The power of thought causes a shift in attention from the problem found to the search for a solution to eliminate it. The soul can “see” pain and fill the sore spot with absolute love. This great feeling can only exist in the present, that is, where self-healing should occur.

Proper concentration

Healing is closely related to the law of attraction in the world of thought. Returning the soul to analyze one’s own actions, relationships with friends, and the state of one’s health is considered the best way to properly concentrate one’s thoughts. It helps you become what you think about. And everything you think about definitely exists somewhere in the Universe.

People are structured in such a way that sooner or later they begin to bring closer to themselves what they actually do not need at all in life. To attract what you want, you need to radically change this incorrect process.

Forgiveness is a close path to love

If the heart is filled with negative emotions - sadness, anxiety, hostility - it is useless to look for even a small place for kindness. And without this bright feeling it is difficult to be healthy spiritually and physically. Forgiveness releases the charge of negative emotions that fill unhealthy thoughts and eliminates stagnation in energy flows to ensure a stable connection with the soul. And this is a direct path to recovery. The connection between love and the soul is indisputable, and the healing of the female soul with the help of love is obvious.

Forgiveness, with the help of correctly selected impulses, extinguishes fear and an unhealthy attitude that suppresses all the positive emotions of the body. Forgiveness kickstarts the healing process. The protective functions of the immune system are strengthened and the susceptibility to diseases is reduced.