There’s nothing like an ongoing global pandemic to make you aware of defending yourself against potent viruses. The human immune system is a design masterpiece, deemed along with the human brain in complexity. So, how does it work?
First, a brief overview of intricacies of the human immune system is in order.
It’s Us or Them
For healthy, adaptive immune system function, a set of closely linked polymorphic genes contained in what they call the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) runs highly sophisticated code on the surface of all your cells.
Your immune system 'knows' or recognises everything milling around that is uniquely you, or ‘self’ as the experts say, and what is nonself.
In a classic 'us versus them', or self versus nonself scenario, our immune system operates like a slick stealth operation to protect us. No surprise that in the category of nonself are such disease-causing organisms as bacteria, fungi, parasites, and yes, viruses.
As soon as something foreign and harmful enters the body, with the wrong ‘identity tag’ as it were, your immune system goes into defense mode against ‘enemy’ pathogens by producing antigens to nuke them.
An Astoundingly Elegant Piece of Science
Just as keys fit specific locks, scientists explain how the immune system maintains a formidable armory of weapons against every conceivable invader.
'The immune system is designed to recognize foreign invaders. To do so it generates on the order 100,000,000,000 different kinds of immunological receptors so that no matter what the shape or form of the foreign invader there will be some complementary receptor to recognize it and effect its elimination...the body produces such a steady and dazzling variety of immune proteins. To meet the possibility of any sort of invasion, the body must keep on tap many millions of antibodies and T-cell receptors, all shaped just differently enough that at least a few can recognize even an entirely new type of pathogen.' - The New York Times
Your immune system is on alert 24/7 and steps up its game to defend and protect you without you even being aware.
Meet the Main Players of Your Immune System
In summarizing the complexity of the immune system, one is scratching the surface and describing its super-efficiency in very clumsy terms. Still, knowing enough is enough to motivate respect and raise awareness to the benefits of supporting it.
First Lines of Defense
- The Skin - far from just a passive covering, skin cells warn the immune system of foreign invaders.
- Mucous Membranes -tears, saliva, and mucous secretions contain microbe-killing weaponry.
- Cilia - hairlike, the presence of these push trapped invasives and debris from the lungs to the throat - coughing and sneezing expels what your immune system labelled as nonself dudes.
The Big Guns of Your Immune System
Should alien organisms reach the bloodstream, body tissues, or other fluids, things start to get more serious. Every second that you live, your bone marrow supplies you with a million white blood cells that mature into three divisions:
- Phagocytes - a.k.a. ‘eating cells’, these guys are not choosy, they eat anything suspicious. They ingest, or at times even digest, foreign nonself particles, neutralizing them and sending them off via your elimination system. But they are more than just garbage disposal units. They can also manufacture required enzymes and antimicrobial agents.
- Lymphocyte T Cells - operate in three basic capacities; helper, suppressor (regulatory), and killer (cytotoxic) cells.
- Lymphocyte B cells - long-lived and quiescent cells, meaning not actively dividing to create new cells, but able to reenter the cell division cycle and proliferate when needed. Your B cells are poised to quickly respond to antigen upon recall i.e. responsible for ‘remembering’ past exposure to pathogens and they decide the fate of the invader.
Your Immune System’s Attack Protocol
Once your ‘eater cells’ have ingested enemy invaders they need a new identity, so that your immune system knows they are now nonself cells! To do so, the cell displays the enemy antigen, which is like a ‘red flag’ indicating a foreign body is on the loose inside you.
The red flag manoeuvre does two things, it starts to recruit the appropriate helper T cells to latch on and then both of them multiply prodigiously to vanquish the identified invaders.
Immune Exhaustion
While the human organism is has self-healing and self-perpetuating capability, it is possible to deplete its resources or retard them even.
No matter how well we eat, or how much we exercise, no one can fully escape environmental toxins due to modern man’s incessant pumping of harmful substances into the planet’s ground, water, and air supply.
Poor life choices, such as smoking, consuming fast foods, overuse of alcohol impose too great a toxic load.
As speedy and effective as the immune system is if we continually add toxins, the pathogens outdo the body’s T cell production rate.
How Can You Help Your Immune System?
Eating healthily, drinking pure water, and exercising are all plusses for helping our immune system function well. Organic supplements are vital because even our food is affected by genetic modification, crop spraying, and environmental pollution.
To supply the body with enough nutrients today, we need to supplement our food intake. We also need to detox regularly. There are detoxing formulations that because they are natural, are recommended for babies and seniors.
Top 5 Immune Support Tips
- A quarterly detox to nuke the toxins that will always find their way in.
- Organic Zinc supplementation has been shown to increase T cell function.
- Vitamin D is the precise vitamin that nukes killer T Cells.
- Vitamin C has long been understood to contribute to innate and adaptive immune system capability.
- Selenium is a potent antioxidant, reduces oxidative stress in the body, and enhances immune response.
In summary; you have a remarkable immune system. It will serve you well if you treat it well.
Unfortunately, environmental pollutants mean we constantly become toxic no matter how healthy we try to live, so detoxing every three months or so with a natural product will reboot your immune system to as good as new.
Get organic immune support supplements for your family and feel confident that you are protecting on of the most important mechanisms in the human body - the immune system.
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