It is amazing how some people take their health for granted. They never worry nor ask questions about health and even less about their immune system. White blood cells and red blood cells are not words they care about. This website was created to provide you with some answers. If you are looking for some information about your immune system, white blood cells, red blood cells and other health issues you have come to the right place.
Immune Systems - Your
Health
Human immune
system
What is the Immune System?
The immune
system is what protects an organism, in this case
our human body, from invasion by viruses, bacteria,
parasites, germs, toxins and all kind of pathogen microorganisms.
Our immune system helps us to stay healthy by
preventing infection to spread in our body. Put simply, our immune
system keeps us alive. The minute the immune system is overloaded
or stop working properly, we get sick and can even die.
When we refer
to immune systems we have to realize that it
is really a network, a very well organized system in
fact which is composed of cells, tissues, organs and
processes that work together to defend our body against attacks by
foreign invaders. These tiny germs or microbes such as bacteria,
parasites, viruses and fungi are the organisms that cause
infection. Infection is the first response of the immune
system. This is the signal that means something is
wrong.
The human body is an ideal
ground for many germs and they sure would like to break
in and invade the body. It is the immune system job to keep
them out. But If they do manage to get in, it is also the
immune system duty to seek and destroy the
invaders.
The first barrier these
invaders encounter is the skin, which offers a great protection for
the body. The skin is hard to penetrate and produces an array of
substances that are dangerous to the invaders. Of course there
are openings like the eyes, the mouth and the nose, which seem
easier to invade. Lucky for us they have some defense too. They are
protected by fluids that can capture sneaky invaders.
The respiratory tract secretes
antimicrobial peptides and also has mechanical defenses in the form
of cilia, tiny hairs that remove particles. Invaders that would
make it as far as the stomach are up against stomach acid that will
kill most of them instantly.
Role of the Immune System in your
body
As you can
see, immune systems are always busy and
on the lookout for pathogens that are trying to harm our body. It
is not an easy task because first of all the immune system has to
recognize and remember millions of different enemies. Secondly, it
has to produce the proper defense such as secretions and cells
to match up with and wipe out each one of them. This is done with
the help of an elaborate communication network.
Millions of organized cells
meet and exchange information back and forth. Once the immune
cells receive the alarm, they begin producing powerful
chemicals. It's like awakening an army and sending the
soldiers to the trouble spots.
But the key to a healthy immune
system is the fantastic ability to distinguish the body' s own
cells and the foreign cells. This is critical because without this
ability the immunesystem would have no clue of
which organisms to attack or not. This is done with the help
of "marker molecules". When the immunesystem defenders
encounter organisms carying markers that say "foreign",
they immediately launch an attack. The faster the
response the better they can get rid of the invaders.
This is the reason we should take
care of our immune system. The healthier and stronger our immune
system is, the better and healthier we will also be.
This website was built with the
intention to provide information that could help the
reader to get at least a glimpse of the complexity and the
extraordinary system working non stop for us, and that most of
the time we are not even aware of. By learning about our
immune systems it will help you to be
healthier and live longer.