Adaptation from Childhood

As a child I distinctly remember having the mumps and while I was feeling miserable and couldn’t eat very much, all the neighbors were stopping by with their children to play with me. This was the concept of “herd immunity”. This was the natural way to prevent infection from becoming widespread - simply expose yourself to an illness and allow your immune system to recognize the challenge and mount a response.

Symptoms of infection such as fever, cough, loss of appetite are all ways in which the body mounts a response and works to resolve the infection. When we take anti-inflammatories or anti-pyretics (such as aspirin or Ibuprofen) then we suppress these natural actions of the immune system and this delays resolution. This is why you may feel better, but the illness will linger longer. We need the immune system to “act” in order to maintain a healthy adaptive immunity.

Adaptive Immunity

This is the meat and potatoes of your immune system.  This is what takes over when a challenge to the body extends beyond both the Barrier and Innate immune capabilities.  Adaptive immunity is based on the special properties of the lymph system and specifically lymphocytic cells.  These important T and B cells create a pattern of response that is remembered, an adaptation that allows for a faster, more aggressive response to chronic or future infestations.

This response requires multiple steps including danger signals, antigen presentation, T cell verification and PRRs (Pattern Recognition Receptors).   When cells in the body die, chemicals are released that create alarm signals to the immune system.  For many years it was believed that any cell death would create an immune response.   But we now know that there are immune responses to our own tissues that are a normal, everyday occurrence. 

When a cell dies naturally (apoptosis) then no immune response should be stimulated.  This is partly due to apoptosis occurring to individual cells.  When an entire area of cells dies (necrosis), alarmins are released which are a powerful stimulant to the immune system.  

So our immune system response occur not only as part of"foreign" recognition, but it can also respond to the release of "danger signals", which happen during necrosis. 

"Danger" represents the
ultimate toxin in our body.