Your Intelligent Immune System

YOUR INTELLIGENT IMMUNE SYSTEM

by

Jessica Madge

Published by Jessica Madge at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Jessica Madge. All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Except for short extracts for review purposes, no part of this work may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Disclaimer:

This book is for educational purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for qualified medical advice. Please consult a qualified health care professional for individual health and medical advice. Neither the publisher nor the author shall have any responsibility for any adverse effects arising directly or indirectly as a result of information provided in this book. If you are considering taking up exercise or changing your diet you are advised to consult your doctor.

Every effort has been taken to ensure that the information contained in this book is accurate and balanced. Conclusions reached have been based on the evidence examined by the author who has tried to use reliable resources. Rapid advances in science and medicine may cause information contained here to become outdated, invalid or subject to debate.

Cover design by John Amy

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Summary of Contents

Chapter 1 — Blood, Lymph and Germs: introduction to the immune system

Chapter 2 — Fever, Antibodies and Lymphocytes: how the immune system works

Chapter 3 — Digestion, Diarrhoea, and Friendly Bacteria: the immune system in your gut

Chapter 4 — Transfusions, Transplants and Rejection: why blood group and tissue type matter

Chapter 5 — Smallpox, Vaccines and Scare Stories: how vaccination trains you immune system

Chapter 6 — Tumours, Leukaemias and Lymphomas: cancer and the immune system

Chapter 7 — AIDS, Allergies and Autoimmunity: immune system malfunction

Chapter 8 — Colds, Herpes and Thrush: a look at common complaints

Chapter 9 — Lies, Damn Lies and Science: an introduction to scientific research

Chapter 10 — Famine, Accidents and Chills: what can harm the immune system?

Chapter 11 — Stress, Hormones and Loneliness: how do emotions affect your immune system?

Chapter 12 — Positivity, Promises and Placebos: can positive thinking help your immune system?

Chapter 13 — Herbs, Homeopathy and Naturopathy: can potions help the immune system?

Chapter 14 — Massage, Meridians and Healers: can physical therapies help your immune system?

Chapter 15 — Vitamins, Minerals and Probiotics: what kind of food helps the immune system?

Chapter 16 — Water, Bleach and Antibacterials: does the immune system need help from hygiene?

Chapter 17 — The Future of Your Immune System

Appendix

Glossary of Terms

Sources and Resources

Note on the author

Back to contents

INTRODUCTION

Body: A thing of shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from good and bad ancestors and a misfit from the start.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882)

This book will help you to understand how your immune system works: how it protects you; how it reacts to injuries and diseases and how you can get the best from it.

Everyone knows that the immune system fights bacteria and viruses. It is less well known that it causes most of the symptoms that make you feel ill. It also plays a part in causing allergies, arthritis, diabetes and even heart disease. It may even play a role in the preventing cancer.

Your immune system consists of millions of white blood cells along with organs like the bone marrow, spleen, lymph nodes and thymus. It changes from day to day throughout your lifetime, constantly developing until it eventually gets weaker in old age.

It makes vaccinations possible but limits the potential for blood transfusions and transplants that could otherwise save lives.

Sometimes the immune system can be deficient, damaged or diseased. AIDS can dismantle it. A faulty gene can cause a specific weakness. Cancer can strike at its core in the form of leukaemia or lymphoma. Chemotherapy, surgery and accidents can temporarily disable it and many other things can have a suppressing effect. Fortunately some of these are avoidable and by making choices that protect your immune system you can improve its ability to resist infections.

A new generation of medical treatments is starting to emerge from decades of painstaking research into stem cells, genes and immune cells. Some of these new treatments will cure diseases like cancer and inherited conditions. This book will help you to understand how these treatments will work and why they are proving so hard to deliver.

You want to know how to look after your immune system. So in this book, we’ll look at the impact of stress as well as the products and services that claim to boost the immune system. Can the herbs and elixirs of alternative medicine really help? What about physical therapies like massage or detox? Does it help to consume antioxidant supplements, superfoods or probiotics? Do you really need to spend money on antibacterial cleaning products to protect your family? Is there any evidence that positive thinking helps to keep you well, or cure diseases? In fact, is there any solid evidence to support any of these claims?

This is not a book that promises a simple solution to all your health concerns. It contains no recipes and not a single inspiring anecdote. Neither is it a textbook, although it will provide students with a useful introduction. Above all it is a down- to-earth, factual overview, aimed at any reader who wants a straightforward account of the science behind sickness and health.

Back to contents

SUMMARY OF CONTENTS

If you are one of those readers who likes to dip or skip, rather than reading through chapters in sequence, I recommend that you read the first two chapters of this book before you start dipping or skipping. They will give you an overview of how the immune system works that will help you to enjoy the rest of the book. There are navigation links that will allow you to move around.

Here are some of the questions that will be answered in each chapter.

Chapter 1

Blood, Lymph and Germs: introduction to the immune system

What kind of system is it and what does it do? Why is the immune system frequently compared to an army? Where do bone marrow, white blood cells and lymph nodes fit in? What is the lymphatic system? What about other organs such as the spleen, thymus and tonsils? How does the immune system constantly renew itself? What are the threats that challenge your immune system? How does your body protect its boundaries?

Chapter 2

Fever, Antibodies and Lymphocytes: how the immune system works

How do inflammation, immune cells and fever combine to provide an emergency response? How does the immune system's disease-specific memory work? Why do you run a temperature and should you take steps to reduce it? How does the immune system itself make you feel ill? What are lymphocytes and why are they so important? Why does it sometimes take a week or more to fight off an infection? What are antibodies and how do they work? How are antibodies used in medicine?

Chapter 3

Digestion, Diarrhoea, and Friendly Bacteria: the immune system in your gut

How does the immune system protect the vulnerable lining of your intestines? What enables it to monitor all the things that pass through? Why do food allergies, inflammatory bowel disease and intolerances arise? What causes diarrhoea and constipation? Why are some gut bacteria friendly and how can you help them to thrive? If they are your friends, why do they sometimes cause harm? What is dietary fibre and how does it affect the bacteria? Why doe fibre have a protective affect against colon cancer and other diseases? Why is Clostridium difficile such a problem in hospital patients? What is a transplant of faeces and how does it work?

Chapter 4

Transfusions, Transplants and Rejection: why blood group and tissue type matter

Why can the immune system turn a blood transfusion into a deadly mistake? What is the difference between blood group and tissue type? Why is it sometimes so hard to find a matched organ donor? How does the immune system cause different types of transplant rejection? Why do bone marrow transplants save lives and how do they work? Why are stem cell transplants replacing bone marrow transplants? How might stem cell technology produce perfect replacement body parts and what are the barriers?

Chapter 5

Smallpox, Vaccines and Scare Stories: how vaccination trains you immune system

How does the immune system develop before birth? How is the mother's immune system affected by pregnancy? Why does breast milk protect babies against infections? How has vaccination transformed the lives of children? Why was smallpox the first vaccine? What are the different methods of vaccine production? Why is it so difficult to develop vaccines for AIDS and malaria? How does herd immunity work and who benefits most?

Chapter 6

Tumours, Leukaemias and Lymphomas: cancer and the immune system

Why are leukaemia and lymphoma classed as cancers of the immune system? How do cancers develop and how do genes play their part? Where do cancer genes come from and what do they do? Is it true that the immune system can destroy cancer cells and if so, why do cancers still grow and spread? What is the link between viruses and cancer? Why is AIDS sometimes linked to certain cancers? What is the future of cancer treatment and how will it differ from traditional methods? Why do doctors still say that prevention is better than cure?

Chapter 7

AIDS, Allergies and Auto-immunity: immune system malfunction

Why are some children born with genetic defects of the immune system? How can they be helped in future? How does AIDS disable the immune system? What is a retrovirus and how does it work? Why does the immune system sometimes react to harmless substances and cause allergies? How might intestinal worms cure allergies? Why does the immune system turn on its own body and cause autoimmune conditions like arthritis, diabetes and thyroid problems? Why does too much inflammation cause damage? How does the immune system play a part in causing heart attacks and strokes? Why is it so hard for doctors to control an over-active immune system?

Chapter 8 


Colds, Herpes and Thrush: a look at common complaints

Why do we get so many colds and flu like illnesses? How do the very old and the very young react differently to colds and viruses? Why is pandemic flu such a worry? What are secondary infections? Why do we need annual flu jabs? What causes cold sores and genital herpes? How does the herpes virus evade the immune system and cause repeated attacks? What causes thrush and why does it recur? Is there any value in anti-Candida diets? Why do we get tooth decay, gum disease and mouth ulcers? How is dental hygiene linked to heart disease? What causes pimples?

Chapter 9

Lies, Damn Lies and Science: an introduction to scientific research

How can we make sense of the way science as reported by journalists? Why are our questions not always answered? How are drugs and other new treatments developed? Why are there no quick tests to check how well your immune system is working? Why are mice so popular in research? Why is scientific language so cautious? Why are placebo controlled trials considered the gold standard of evidence? Where are the best places to look for good quality information? How can you spot online health frauds and misleading health websites?

Chapter 10

Famine, Accidents and Chills: what can harm the immune system?

What are the effects of serious malnutrition on the immune system? Why does the immune system cause problems after major injury and surgery? How do radiation and chemotherapy damage the immune system? Why is kidney failure linked to immunity? What are the effects of steroids and female hormones? Do weather and temperature have an effect? Does alcohol impair the immune system? How does smoking affect the immune system? What about passive smoking? Is exercise helpful or harmful? What evidence is there that sleep makes a difference?

Chapter 11

Stress, Hormones and Loneliness: how do emotions affect your immune system?

How does fight and flight affect the immune system? What about the effects of long-term stress? What are the connections between stress hormones, brain and immune system? Why are the effects of stress and health so difficult to study? What is the link between natural stress hormones and corticosteroid drugs? What is the evidence that stress causes a wide range of diseases, from colds to cancers? Does social isolation affect your immune system? What methods and techniques can reduce internal stress and how do they work?

Chapter 12

Positivity, Promises and Placebos: can positive thinking help your immune system?

How do we know that the brain can affect the immune system? What is the placebo effect and how powerful is it? How can scientists train the immune system and is this technique useful? Is there any evidence that positive thinking techniques can affect the outcomes of cancer or other diseases? Can prayer, laughter or sex improve your immune system? What are the dangers of positive thinking?

Chapter 13

Herbs, Homeopathy and Naturopathy: can potions help the immune system?

Why are all things natural and herbal so popular these days? How should we view claims made by herbalists? What are the risks in taking herbal medicines? What evidence is there that Echinacea prevents or relieves colds? How can we evaluate approaches like naturopathy? Does traditional Chinese medicine have anything to offer? Is homeopathy likely to have a beneficial effect on health?

Chapter 14


Massage, meridians and healers: can physical therapies help your immune system?

Can massage or aromatherapy improve your immune system? What about lymphatic drainage massage? Is there evidence that acupuncture helps immune conditions? Does the term detox have a scientific meaning? What benefits could there be from colonic irrigation and what are the risks? What is meant by integrative medicine? What do alternative practitioners mean when they use words like energy and healing?

Chapter 15

Vitamins, Minerals and Probiotics: what kind of food helps the immune system?

What basic nutrients are needed by the immune system? What is all the fuss about antioxidants and superfoods? Does Vitamin C prevent or alleviate colds? Why is there so much new research into Vitamin D? What do we know about the effects of Vitamin D on the immune system? How important are minerals like zinc and selenium? Why are most vitamin supplements a waste of money and what is the exception? Is it a good idea to consult a nutritional therapist and what are the risks? Can probiotic drinks or yoghurt help to keep you healthy or relieve symptoms? What are prebiotics and what use might they be?

Chapter 16


Water, Bleach and Antibacterials: does the immune system need help from hygiene?

What impact does personal hygiene have on disease? And does household hygiene matter? Why do travellers need to take special hygiene precautions? Does hand washing really help prevent diarrhoea, colds and flu? Are antibacterial products helpful? Why is there a rise in hospital-acquired infections like MRSA and what can you do to avoid them? If you have a suppressed immune system what special hygiene precautions are needed? Do parents of babies need to take special hygiene precautions?

Chapter 17 


The Future of Your Immune System

What advances in medicine may be just around the corner? Who will they benefit? What, in summary, are the main things you can do to take care of your immune system?

Back to contents

Chapter 1

Blood, Lymph and Germs: introduction to the immune system

O Rose thou art sick.


The invisible worm,


That flies in the night


In the howling storm:


Has found out thy bed


Of crimson joy:


And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

William Blake (1757—1827)

You owe a lot to your ancestors. They braved all kinds of hardship, war and pestilence, especially pestilence. Cast your mind back 20 generations or so, to 1666, that memorable date of the Great Fire of London. Samuel Pepys was writing his diary and Isaac Newton had just been awarded his degree. The microscope was the latest scientific invention. Britain had a population of around five million people. Some lived on farms or in small villages and some lived in towns and cities.

London, the greatest of these, was a compact, well-governed, vibrant city - with no sewerage system and no plumbing. It had about 300,000 inhabitants. Water came from communal pumps and wells. Urine and liquid waste were tipped directly into the street gutters that ran down into the Thames. Householders stored faeces in their cellars and called in the man with the night soil cart when they ran out of space.

There was no refrigeration and judging from the terrible constipation Pepys complained of, the diet was far from what we would now call healthy. Housing was ramshackle and crowded, with servants sleeping in their employers’ bedrooms. Everyone had fleas and lice and there must have been millions of rats. There were no vaccinations and no effective, safe medical treatments. Around three quarters of children died before the age of five.

Inevitably there were epidemics and outbreaks of disease. The Great Fire arrived on the heels of a particularly terrible plague, spread by rat fleas, which killed a fifth of the population of London between 1665 and 1666.

The unhygienic conditions of Pepys’s London evolved into in the slums of the Industrial Revolution, which persisted into the 1950s. Similar squalor is still found in the cities of impoverished countries today.

Pepys survived an operation for kidney stones and Newton lived into his eighties, both major achievements. It is remarkable that some people survived such environments and passed on the genes that enabled them to avoid diseases or to recover from them. The name we give this genetic endowment is the immune system.

It can sound like a simple concept, something that protects us from catching things, or helps us recover if we do become ill. It’s easy to make it sound simple, like the thermostat that controls the household heating system, but there is nothing simple about it.

The Immune System as an Army

Medical writers and lecturers have traditionally compared the immune system to a country’s army, protecting the body from invading germs. In order to appreciate the complexity of the immune system we should bring this army concept up to date and compare it to the combined security forces of a modern country, with army, navy, air force and secret services all playing different but inter-dependent roles. Like the security forces it has many components that carry out a wide range of roles in a coordinated way.

The first role of the immune system is to prevent dangerous invaders from gaining a foothold. You scratch your finger. The blood clots and seals the wound. Any germs that have entered the wound are destroyed quickly at the point of entry. Your finger heals. The immune system has been successful and the germs have not.

The second role of the immune system is to deal with germs that have managed to get past the first-line defences. The scratch on your finger turns red and a little pus oozes from the wound. The redness and the pus are outward signs that the immune system is activated in the area. You ignore it and a few days later it is fully healed.

If the initial defensive battle is lost, germs multiply and disease starts to take hold. You run a fever and develop symptoms such as a rash, a cough or diarrhoea. Your immune system is hard at work, doing its best to restore you to health.

So far we have a tidy sequence of escalating response aimed at dealing with bigger and bigger threats but there are two more functions carried out by the immune system.

One is to identify the enemy and to do so with a high degree of accuracy. Reacting to body cells, friendly bacteria or food molecules risks friendly fire – causing allergies, autoimmune diseases and other problems.

Finally, there is the way in which the immune system deals with re-invasion by an old enemy. Your immune system builds up a memory bank of all the threats you have encountered since your birth. In fact it goes one step further and builds up an arsenal of tailored weapons, each one ready to deal with a specific invader if it ever attempts a second attack.

When we refer to the immune system we are talking about the sum of these five processes that take place during sickness and health. It is not a single process but a complex web of inter-related processes, distributed throughout the body. Processes that have evolved and become more elaborate over the course of a billion years, since the first microbes invaded the bodies of primitive sea creatures and those creatures started to defend themselves.

What Kind of System?

The word system has a number of similar meanings, each having its own distinct nuances. When we talk of an anatomical system we usually mean a functionally related group of elements. The circulatory system, for instance, consists of the heart, arteries, capillaries and veins, all elegantly linked together. It can be neatly depicted on a single page in a textbook, much like a diagram in a plumber’s manual. Illustrations of the immune system, on the other hand, look like a scattering of unconnected organs. The immune system is not an anatomical system and needs a different definition of the word system if we are to understand it.

The main reason for this is that the units of the immune system are cells, as opposed to large organs, and these cells are not connected by physical structures. If you were to describe the makeup of the immune system in a nutshell it would be: millions of white blood cells, of many different varieties, plus some nodules of lymphatic tissue that help the cells do their work. So instead of a few large organs there are millions of tiny entities and most of them moving around. These cells interact during brief physical contact or via messenger molecules.

It is a system less like the plumbing of a building and more like an ecosystem or the economy of a country. So we need a definition such as: a group of interacting, interrelated or interdependent elements, forming a complex whole.

Such systems have typical features that crop up in all kinds of contexts — the tendency to maintain a steady internal state despite a fluctuating external environment for instance. Such steady states are maintained by feedback mechanisms, which prevent too much change. Systems like this are often part of larger systems and are themselves composed of sub-systems.

The immune system certainly maintains a steady state in the face of a changing environment. This is the reason for its existence – to enable the other processes of the body to carry on, in the face of repeated threats. And it must have feedback mechanisms because without them fever and inflammation, once started, would run out of control. Such feedback loops are found in many systems in the body, making possible self-regulation, or homeostasis. The immune system is part of a larger system (the body) and it has many