Immune system Facts
Understand How It Really Works

Immune system Facts and Senior Health
The immune system is a network of specialized cells that work to clear infection and to protect your body from the millions of bacteria and viruses you may be exposed to every day.

Foreign organisms are everywhere. They are in our air, our food and our water. They are unavoidable. It is therefore up to your immune system to protect your body from their invasion into your system, causing illness and disease.

Immune system Facts

Your immunity can be innate or acquired:

Your innate immunity prevents the entry of foreign bodies into your tissues. If they do take hold it is your innate immunity that eliminates them before they have a chance to cause disease.

Your acquired immunity only occurs in response to an actual infection as the immune system adapts itself to fight these foreign bodies and rid your body of potential disease.

To understand how this really works try thinking about what happens to the human body after it dies. Once the body dies the immune system completely shuts down. Bacteria and parasites then quickly invade the body. With no immune system to fight it, the bacteria and parasites soon ‘eat up’ every tissue until only the skeleton remains. Whilst you are alive your working immune system stops this from happening.

Immune system biology

Immune cells are produced in your bone marrow, the most relevant cells of which are called the lymphocytes.

You have B cell lymphocytes (in your bone marrow). These produce antibodies and attach to any foreign bodies in your system ready for their destruction. T cell lymphocytes (in your thymus) then attack and destroy any diseased cells and foreign bodies until your infection is clear.

Immune system disorders

Immunodeficiency is where your immune system is not working correctly and is significantly reduced in its ability to fight infection and disease.

At the other extreme, an overactive immune system is where your immune system malfunctions in a different way and fails to distinguish between your body’s own cells and the invading foreign bodies. Not being able to make this distinction, your immune system begins to attack your own body, destroying healthy tissue and causing further debilitation.

Immune system disorders can be caused by prolonged poor eating habits, an insufficient nutritional balance, alcohol or drug abuse and exposure to environmental toxins. They can also come from the inheritance of a faulty or mutated gene.

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