Hey, now that you know you had made a choice towards living longer and healthier, and having decided to undergo an assessment of your own health risk, the next step is to enlighten yourself on the understanding of your body.

For a start, the most important part of the human body that you should know of is your Immune System. It is your first line of defense against any diseases. But how much do you know of it?

The human Immune System plays an important role in your overall well being. Its primarily role is to be your body’s defense mechanism against illness. The system enables your body to know the difference between yourself, germs, and the outside world. It sees foreign substances such as bacteria, virus etc being intruders. In the human body, there are already viruses and bacterias residing and perhaps hibernating. Whether these intruders are harmful to the human body or not depends their strength against the Immune System that you have. Your Immune System functionality again depends on it readiness to fight head-on against these foreign substances. The body does not like foreign substances which result in illness, pain, and other physically negative phenomena. That is why your body is set up to battle against those substances it perceives as an invaders.

How does it work? In simplicity for the layman to understand, your Immune System works as a community team which comprises of many different cells working together to keep you healthy. It is composed of many interdependent cell types that collectively protect the body from pathogen (bacterial, parasitic, fungal, viral) infections and from the growth of tumor cells. Having specialized functions and ways of communicating with each other, the important tasks of your Immune System are to:-

  • identify,
  • kill and
  • to remember.

Killing and remembering must first involve the process of recognizing foreign invaders. Your Immune System is equipped to specifically recognize the differences between different invaders referred to as pathogens. Your Immune System recognizes certain chemicals and proteins released by these pathogens and as such triggers a kill response. Your Immune System consists of a few types of cells; namely T-cells, B-cells and Natural-Killer (NK) cells. Each of these cell has its own specific function which are assisted by the protein-based immunoglobulins known commonly as antibodies.

There are nine types of immunoglobulins; four kinds of IgG and two kinds of IgA, plus IgM, IgE, and IgD. Immunoglobulins G, D, and E are similar in appearance. The major immunoglobulin in the blood, IgG is able to enter tissue spaces to work efficiently to coat microorganisms, speeding their destruction by other cells in the immune system. IgD is almost exclusively found inserted into the membrane of B cells, where it somehow regulates the cell's activation. IgE is normally present in only trace amounts, but it is responsible for the symptoms of allergy. IgA, a doublet, guards the entrance to the body. It is concentrated in body fluids such as tears, saliva, and secretions of the respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts. IgM usually combines in star-shaped clusters. It tends to remain in the bloodstream, where it is very effective in killing bacteria.

B cells work chiefly by secreting the soluble substances antibodies and are responsible for killing, eating and digesting pathogens. Eating the pathogen allows some of the killer cells to process the bad guys and package them so that the other members of the immune team and recognize them if the same pathogens return. When an invading pathogen returns, those Immune System team members responsible for remembering past invasions can sense the invading pathogen’s chemical signals. These signals stimulate them to produce and excrete chemical tags called antibodies which stick onto the pathogens and enable to killer B and T cells to recognize and kill again. Immune System cells whose duty is to patrol and report do at times become ineffective with some invading pathogens successfully evading them and attacking from the inside. When this happens these victim Immune System cells ask for help by displaying proteins on their exteriors that are flags for help. The patrolling team recognizes these flags and goes into action to kill the infected Immune System cells and alert the other Immune System cells that there are pathogens in the area. This way, the invading pathogens inside the infected Immune System cells are killed and do not have a chance to infect other healthy Immune System cells.

Whenever a person actually catches a cold, it’s not because his Immune System team members neglected their roles. One reason sickness occurs is because these members team do not always recognize a new pathogen fast enough to react. A new pathogen may be able to inflict enough damage to cause illness, before the immune response is complete. Another scenario is a low numbers of players. The body may be in the process of recovering from fighting a foreign pathogen. Thus, the body is in the process of gaining new team members and rebuilding its back up to full strength. This, being the time when resistance is down without sufficient numbers to handle invading pathogens. Viruses, clandestine foreign invaders, form a special threat to the immune team. Having the capability to actually hide dormant inside cells for a long time without warning, they come out of hiding and begin attacking our Immune System cells. When they are undercover hiding inside our cells, the immune team doesn’t see them and these pathogens multiply and assemble to kill the human cells in which they hide; after which they go out and infect more.

If you eat well, exercises, relaxes with good rest, and stress free yourself, you can keep their immune team at its best. Keeping the system strong results in better health. It’s just that simple. However, our Immune System is constantly changing over time, daily, monthly and any time it is down, its defense capability is compromise. Thus, it is important to take good care of your body from the inside.

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