I’ve talked about it, you’ve talked about it, we’ve both read about it, the “IT” I’m referring to is your immune system. But do you really understand and know what it is. I’m far from a doctor but I’ll try to explain what it is and how it works the best I can.
Our immune system is a system of biological structures and processes that first has to identify and then destroy a wide variety of parasites and pathogens (aka bad guys.) Detection is complicated as bad guys can look like healthy cells plus the bad guys evolve rapidly. To survive this challenge our immune system keeps evolving and evolving some more resulting in an adaptive immunological memory. That’s why infants and children keep getting sick. Their immune system hasn’t evolved yet.
Our immune system is divided into three layered defenses:
SURFACE BARRIERS: This is your skin, hair, saliva, tears, gastric acid, sneezing, coughing and much, much more. This is our first defenses…keep the bad guys out!
INNATE: When bad guys get passed the first barrier and enter your system and are already identified by your immune system because of your adaptive memory. Your immune system already knows what it takes to kill off the bad guys and goes about its business ,doing just that.
ADAPTIVE: Here is the wonder of the human body! If a bad guy gets this far and our immune system does not recognize what to do to kill it, then (this is true!) killer T-Cells are activated. The T-cells form pores and deposit these pores in the bad cell’s plasma membrane and then a series of complicated stuff happens (told you I was no doctor) and from these processes tries to identify and eventually kill these new pathogens. Until this happens, guess what? You are SICK. After the immune system identifies this new strain of pathogens, it now becomes part of the adaptive memory and if they ever enter again your innate system will know what to do.
This is an extremely simplistic microscopic glimpse of our immune system. Believe me, the immune system is a remarkably effective structure that works well, but alas the system has it’s flaws. It can fail. And we, being the host, often don’t help the situation. More on that later. (Hint, it has something to do with our deplorable eating habits)….Robert