Book Review: The Immune System Recovery Plan by Susan Blum

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My bloodwork came back with two genetic markers for autoimmune disease, so “genetically predisposed” has never been an abstraction in my life. By April 2021, three months into healing my rheumatoid arthritis, I’d already devoured Dr. Susan Blum’s Healing Arthritis — so I went back for the book that started it all: The Immune System Recovery Plan.

This is Dr. Blum’s original four-step program for treating autoimmune conditions at the root: use food as medicine, get your stress response out of emergency mode, heal your gut, and support your liver. Each step comes with self-assessments, meal plans, and the kind of specificity most health books are too vague to attempt.

What I Loved About The Immune System Recovery Plan by Susan Blum

The word I keep coming back to is hope, but hope with an instruction manual attached. When you’re newly diagnosed, the internet hands you horror stories and the waiting room hands you brochures. Dr. Blum hands you steps. She walks through how conditions everyone calls “incurable” can improve and sometimes reverse, patient by patient, system by system, and she shows her work.

Reading it mid-protocol, I stopped feeling like I was in exile from normal life and started feeling like I was in a program. There was an order to things. My supplement era was in full swing (I was up to ten pills a day at one point, a fun fact about a formerly pill-phobic person), and this book made the whole apparatus feel purposeful instead of desperate.

Usual disclaimer, because I mean it every time: I’m a writer, not a doctor. What worked for me came with a care team and a lot of bloodwork. Use books like this to ask better questions, not to skip the appointment.

What I Didn’t Love About The Immune System Recovery Plan

This is a workbook you do, not a memoir you inhale. You’ll hit your first self-assessment before you’ve finished your tea, and if you’re not ready to participate, the book will sit on the nightstand judging you. That’s not really a flaw (it’s the point), but know what you’re signing up for.

Final Thoughts on The Immune System Recovery Plan

A must-read if you’re dealing with an autoimmune condition, and honestly also if autoimmune disease runs in your family and you’d rather get ahead of it than chase it. This book and Healing Arthritis formed the spine of my food-as-medicine education, and the results of that education are documented in my remission essay.

My final score: 5 out of 5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Do I recommend this book? 👍 Yes — for patients, and for the genetically predisposed who’d rather prevent than treat.

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