The human immune system is an intricate web of design, and it is all put together in this way to prevent us from getting sick. It is safe to say that you wouldn’t last very long without your immune system, and the white blood cells within have evolved over centuries to tackle any foreign entities that enter your body. This all happens automatically, of course, and you can be protected from hundreds of diseases during your daily life without you even knowing.
While you probably have a basic idea of how important human immune system is, there is always more to learn about this fascinating bodily feature. As such, let’s look at some of the facts about human immune system that are often overlooked or completely ignored altogether.
1: Your Gut Health Is Crucial To Its Function
Your gut is full of thousands of bacteria that are used to break down the food you consume and extract the vitamins you need. However, these bacteria have an additional function, producing anti-bodies.
Anti-bodies are the protein in your blood that seek out and destroy foreign agents that could potentially make you ill. Therefore, a lack of good bacteria in your gut can lead you to become sick. Therefore, a healthy, balanced diet can work toward cultivating a strong immune system. It is also why doctors recommend that you eat yoghurt and other bacteria-friendly products when you aren’t feeling well. Replacing the good bacteria in your gut kick-starts your immune system to help you recover from illness much faster than you ordinarily would.
2: Allergy Attacks Are Caused By Your Immune Systems Responses
Allergies can sometimes be uncomfortable to deal with and they seemingly come out of nowhere. Some people will experience red eyes, itchy skin, a runny nose, and a dry mouth all because they encountered some pollen, for example. These allergy attacks occur for a reason; however. That is because your immune system is interpreting the pathogen as a foreign body.
In short, your immune can sometimes confuse a perfectly harmless substance as a threat to your health, and it reacts to try and remove it from your system. The most common response is secreting high levels of histamine, the hormone that stimulates the body’s nervous system. Too much stimulation causes the negative effects that experience during an allergy attack, so you have your immune system to blame for these occurrences.
3: Sunlight Is Good For Human Immune System
Those who get a healthy dose of regular sunshine are less likely to become sick than those who do not. This is because the sun’s U.V rays provide the skin cells with vitamin D, the nutrient that supports and enhances the human immune system. You can also receive vitamin D from foods, such as egg yolks, fish, cereal, and red meats; however, it is always beneficial to get some natural sunlight whenever you get the chance.
4: Clean Environments Provide A Negative Effect
A common misconception about the human immune system is that you need to stay away from bad bacteria to remain healthy. It is an easy conclusion to draw. If bad bacteria don’t enter your body, then you can’t get sick. Unfortunately, the human immune system is more complex than this.
You may be surprised to know that it is beneficial for you to meet foreign antibodies and bad bacteria. This is because your immune system needs to learn which agents will cause harm to you so that they can evolve and develop a system to defeat them. If you never encounter these harmful bodies, then your immune system never develops a strategy to protect you from that illness, which makes you more susceptible to contracting these ailments. Therefore, you are better served to engage in new environments and avoid completely sterile places as you grow.
5: Vaccines Train Your Immune System
The negative effects of sterile environments discussed in the previous passage can go a long way to describing the science behind vaccines. These preventative procedures work by introducing a small and unthreatening dose of the specific disease into your immune system. Your antibodies are equipped to recognise this new agent as a threat so they will adapt and learn how to attack this agent in a way that prevents you from contracting symptoms. Therefore, a vaccine trains your immune system to fight off larger, more infectious versions of the disease.
6: Some People Are Born With An Over Active Immune System
Anyone born with an over-active immune system will find that their antibodies cannot tell the difference between harmful agents and normal cells. Therefore, they will start to attack normal cells resulting in a condition known as an auto-immune disease.
There is a wide variety of auto-immune diseases, and they will display different symptoms depending on the type of cells that the antibodies recognise as a threat. For example, the medical information directory, Patient, describes alopecia as an auto-immune disease that causes rapid hair loss, and lupus is another type that creates itchy and flaking skin. Sadly, there currently is no cure for this auto-immune disorder, but most conditions can be controlled with medication.
7: Sleep Helps The Immune System Recharge
While many people understand that sleep is necessary for helping your brain recharge, there is a lot more going on when you shut down than you may think. Your body needs time to make repairs, which is why you heal faster with plenty of rest; however, your immune needs a chance to rest too.
Studies have shown that sleep is a fundamental part of the development of T-cells, some of the most important antibodies in the human body. Therefore, you need to ensure that you are getting a full night’s rest so that human immune system can function at full capacity the next day. This also explains why you feel so run-down after a night of poor sleep. Your immune system is having to work extra hard to make up for the lack of T-cells in your body, which means that you are more prone to illness when you suffer from insomnia.
8: Your Appendix Is Part Of Your Immune System
One of the biggest medical mysteries plaguing experts is the role of the appendix in the human body. It seems that you can perform perfectly fine without it, so why do we even have this organ in the first place?
The leading theory surrounding the appendix is that it houses some of the strongest antibodies in the entire immune system, known as ILC cells. These antibodies were once used during a time when humans ate things like tree bark or soil alongside their foods, so stronger antibodies were required to help fight the bacteria attached to these substances. Since you have evolved beyond this point in our history, these super-strong antibodies are no longer needed. Therefore, the appendix is left to sit there as an obsolete part of human immune system until we evolve to recognise that it is no longer of use.
Summary
The human immune system is a set of processes that experts are still learning about, but it seems that they have a good handle on things for now. As you can see, your immune system is not infallible and there are behaviours you can engage in to help it perform its duties. Make sure you do so, as you wouldn’t get far without a strong immune system.
