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March 24, 2020,
Managing your health begins with a focus on a number of pathways.
The food that you consume is paramount. Getting the proper exercise, including joining a health club, securing the right amount of sleep and perhaps participating in spiritual activities to strengthen the mind.
All of those sound like exceptional endeavors especially since all of those pathways are paved to be driven towards your immune system.
With the current Coronavirus pandemic strangling the world, though it may not have been a conversation in the forefront before, it certainly is now.
The technical stuff first.
What exactly is the human immune system?
The immune system is a host defense system comprising many biological structures and processes within an organism that protects against disease.
To function properly, an immune system must detect a wide variety of agents, known as pathogens, from viruses to parasitic worms, and distinguish them from the organism’s own healthy tissue.
In many species, there are two major subsystems of the immune system: the innate immune system and the adaptive immune system. Both subsystems use humoral immunity and cell-mediated immunity to perform their functions.
In humans, the blood–brain barrier, blood–cerebrospinal fluid barrier, and similar fluid–brain barriers separate the peripheral immune system from the neuroimmune system, which protects the brain.
Pathogens can rapidly evolve and adapt, and thereby avoid detection and neutralization by the immune system; however, multiple defense mechanisms have also evolved to recognize and neutralize pathogens.
What is a pathogen?
In simple terms a pathogen in the oldest and broadest sense, is anything that can produce disease.
A pathogen may also be referred to as an infectious agent, or simply a germ.
The term pathogen came into use in the 1880s. Typically, the term is used to describe an infectious microorganism or agent, such as a virus, bacterium, protozoan, prion, viroid, or fungus.
Small animals, such as certain kinds of worms and insect larvae, can also produce disease.
However, these animals are usually referred to as parasites rather than pathogens.
Here is the scary part.
There are several pathways through which pathogens can invade a host. The principal pathways have different episodic time frames, but soil has the longest or most persistent potential for harboring a pathogen.
We didn’t really realize that. We actually thought the soil diffuses and breaks down pathogens.
Interesting.
Diseases in humans that are caused by infectious agents are known as pathogenic diseases, though not all diseases are caused by pathogens. Some diseases, such as Huntington’s disease, are caused by inheritance of abnormal genes.
A pathogen may be described in terms of its ability to produce toxins, enter tissue, colonize, hijack nutrients, and its ability to immunosuppress the host.
Which brings us to this very frightening virus.
A virus is a small infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses can infect all types of life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea.
Since Dmitri Ivanovsky‘s 1892 article describing a non-bacterial pathogen infecting tobacco plants, and the discovery of the tobacco mosaic virus by Martinus Beijerinck in 1898, about 5,000 virus species have been described in detail, of the millions of types of viruses in the environment.
Viruses are found in almost every ecosystem on Earth and are the most numerous type of biological entity.
Viruses spread in many ways.
One transmission pathway is through disease-bearing organisms known as vectors: for example, viruses are often transmitted from plant to plant by insects that feed on plant sap, such as aphids; and viruses in animals can be carried by blood-sucking insects.
Influenza viruses are spread by coughing and sneezing.
Norovirus and rotavirus, common causes of viral gastroenteritis, are transmitted by the fecal–oral route, passed by contact and entering the body in food or water.
HIV is one of several viruses transmitted through sexual contact and by exposure to infected blood.
Viral infections in animals provoke an immune response that usually eliminates the infecting virus. Immune responses can also be produced by vaccines, which confer an artificially acquired immunity to the specific viral infection.
Therein is the key.
Our immune systems must be strong enough to provoke a response and more importantly, be powerful enough to eliminate the threat.
Disorders of the immune system can result in autoimmune diseases, inflammatory diseases and cancer.
Immunodeficiency occurs when the immune system is less active than normal, resulting in recurring and life-threatening infections.
The immune system protects organisms from infection with layered defenses of increasing specificity.
In simple terms, physical barriers prevent pathogens such as bacteria and viruses from entering the organism.
Sounds like a seawall or a fence.
If a pathogen breaches these barriers, the innate immune system provides an immediate, but non-specific response.
If pathogens successfully evade the innate response, vertebrates possess a second layer of protection, the adaptive immune system, which is activated by the innate response. Here, the immune system adapts its response during an infection to improve its recognition of the pathogen. This improved response is then retained after the pathogen has been eliminated, in the form of an immunological memory, and allows the adaptive immune system to mount faster and stronger attacks each time this pathogen is encountered.
Inflammation is one of the first responses of the immune system to infection.
The symptoms of inflammation are redness, swelling, heat, and pain, which are caused by increased blood flow into tissue.
This is really important.
The immune system is affected by sleep and rest, and sleep deprivation is detrimental to immune function.
This whole notion that I can get by or need little sleep is very unwise.
When suffering from sleep deprivation, active immunizations may have a diminished effect and may result in lower antibody production, and a lower immune response, than would be noted in a well-rested individual.
Over nutrition is associated with diseases such as diabetes and obesity, which are known to affect immune function in a negative way.
Over nutrition is a euphemism for eating too much. Being a glutton.
Another important role of the immune system is to identify and eliminate tumors. This is called immune surveillance.
Sometimes you don’t realize what you have until it is compromised or not functioning all together.
Appreciate the importance of your immune system. Strengthen it while you still can which is another discussion.
Until then, at least please get plenty of sleep.
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OPENING PHOTO fciwomenswrestling.com femcompetitor.com, fcielitecompetitor.com, pexels.com Anna-Shvets-photo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immune_system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathogen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus
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