Читать книгу 100 Ways to Boost Your Immune System - Theresa Cheung, Theresa Cheung - Страница 8

Your immune system is an elaborate, interactive system of cells, chemicals and tissues located throughout your body. When any of its components come into contact with cells or substances – such as bacteria or viruses – to which they are programmed to respond, a series of reactions is triggered that destroys the invaders or renders them harmless.

A cell or chemical that triggers an immune reaction is called an antigen, and that reaction can be either innate or adaptive. The innate immune response produces an immediate, nonspecific immune response to disease-causing antigens that enter or appear inside the body. An army of scavenging white blood cells constantly roams around your body on the lookout for bugs; if a white blood cell detects an ‘enemy’, then it is immediately transported to the nearest lymph node, situated in your neck, armpits and groin, and destroyed without mercy. You can feel this process happening every time your glands become swollen because innate immunity also includes the inflammation or swelling process.

While the innate response is working on the front lines, the adaptive response system is quietly working behind the scenes to find a defence specifically tailored to deal with the antigen. Typically, the adaptive response takes about five to seven days to get completely mobilised; if the antigen works faster than that, you’re in trouble.

Although the immune system is capable of diversifying its defence plan to meet a wide variety of invading antigens – and once immunity to a specific antigen has been developed that immunity will protect against future attacks by antigens that produce similar diseases – it’s important to point out that each antigen requires an individual response. So, if you’ve developed immunity to the chickenpox virus, you still need to develop immunity to deal with the measles virus and if you’ve developed immunity to one strain of flu virus you still need to develop immunity to deal with countless other cold and flu viruses.