Knowing Your Immune
System
Boo Armstrong
Note: The information on this website is
presented for educational purposes and
is not a substitute for the advice of and treatment by a qualified
professional.
This document was provided by
Continuum Magazine
VOL. 4 No. 4
There are two things about the immune system which everyone has had instilled upon them and which we all now accept. Firstly, your immune system is directly related to your genitals which are completely separate to the rest of your body, as witnessed by the birth of genitourinary clinics attached to every hospital. It has also been given to us as a fact that you can tell what state your immune system is in by counting the number of T-cells that you have in any given millilitre of blood and monitoring them closely.
The immune system is in fact an immensely complicated and intricate mixture of many bodily functions ranging from the lymphatics to the large intestine. T-cells certainly count for something but they are not the definitive measure of our state of health, especially when measured in isolation with little thought given to the bone marrow which makes them or the thymus gland which activates them, let alone the nutrients which you need in order to keep these reactions happening.
Reductionist thinking has led us to believe that one part of our body is separate from another and as Alexis Carrel said in Man the Unknown: "Medicine has separated the sick human being into small fragments and each fragment has its specialist. When a specialist, from the beginning of his career, confines himself to a minute part of the body, his knowledge of the rest is so rudimentary that he is incapable of thoroughly understanding even that part in which he specializes." So if we can’t trust the specialist who can we trust? The person who knows us best and is aware of what we really eat and how many cigarettes we did smoke on Friday night is us. Me. You. The person who has walked around inside your body for your whole life. So, armed with the knowledge that your immune system may not be functioning at its best (you have after all been told that you have too many antibodies or some strange bits of protein lurking in your blood), now is the time to learn what your immune system really is and how you can look after it.
Your immune system is what enables you to resist and overcome infection. It is an essential requirement for survival since we are surrounded by little creatures of the parasitic, viral and bacterial kind which are always trying to invade our personal space.
When you are thinking immune system, think lymph, whether that is lymph vessels, lymph nodes or lymphocytes. These are good words to arm yourself with if you don’t know them already. So what is it all about?
As your blood circulates, providing nutrients and oxygen to all parts of your body, it will accumulate toxins, so you need some kind of waste disposal system to cope with them all, which is where your lymph comes in. Unfortunately (for some) lymph does not have a heart to pump it around, however a piece of beautiful design work by mother nature means that you do not need a separate pump for your lymph. Lymphatic vessels are situated intricately alongside blood vessels so you can rely upon your heart to move your lymph around. This is great if you regularly exercise and if you do not, then think about it seriously – it’s great for depression and apathy too, once you have managed to throw yourself into that swimming pool or put on your dancing shoes. So you need your heart to pump in order to move your lymph around your body, or you can move it manually which is where skin-brushing and lymph drainage massage come in.
A skin brush is made from natural (non-animal) bristle which you brush quite firmly in long strokes all over you body – always in the direction of your heart. From your hands, up your arms, up your legs, over your head and don’t forget to concentrate on your lymph nodes – especially under your arms and around your groin. You can look in any anatomy book to find out where your lymph nodes are.
As dirty lymph flows from your tissues through the lymph vessels it will eventually get to a lymph node. These are situated in the best place to deal with toxins as the lymph flows from your tissues. They create an environment in which lymphocytes can accumulate and deal with infections.
Imagine a little undersea world with sturdy seaweed and plant life creating an environment for little fish and plankton to swim about in. This is what it looks like in your lymph nodes. You have reticular fibres, made of protein, which join together and create a delicate meshwork around blood vessels, glands, nerves, etc. Within this environment various important cells can move around and attack any unwanted nasties, these immune cells are free to move all over your body but concentrate themselves in these areas.
Having a swollen gland or lymph node is a sign that your body is working and is responding to a localized infection. Gentle circular massage on any swollen glands will usually encourage the cells to be active and move around, getting rid of toxins.
The cells which do this are macrophages, scavenger cells which remove bacteria and other foreign bodies, and plasma cells. A single plasma cell can synthesize and pump into the blood 2000 antibodies per second. A group of active plasma cells may produce approximately one hundred, million, trillion antibodies per second.
It is interesting then that more antibodies to HIV are found in the lymph nodes than in the blood. Or is it?
Your spleen is an organ of your immune system and is full of plasma cells, macrophages and white blood cells. White blood cells, also known as lymphocytes, enable us to cleanse our internal environment of bacteria, viruses, cell fragments and foreign rubbish of many kinds. They are made in the bone marrow, along with the red cells. B-cells (B for bone) produce antibodies which are used to eliminate living and non-living structures that are foreign to the body.
T-cells are another kind of white blood cell. They are also made in the bone marrow but do not become active until they reach the thymus gland (T for thymus). These cells are primarily responsible for cleaning up inside cells. It is an interesting anomaly that the thymus (according to the Oxford Reference Concise Medical Dictionary) is at its largest during puberty and then gradually shrinks as the functional part gets replaced by fatty tissue. "In infancy the thymus controls the immune response to microbes and foreign proteins (accounting for allergic response, autoimmunity and rejection of organ transplants)."
So if the thymus stops working when we get older what exactly is supposed to activate the T-cells which we produce in our bone marrow? One great method for getting your tired thymus to work again is to talk to it. Not verbally but physically. Put your thumbs in your armpits and stretch your hands across the front of your chest. Where your middle fingers meet should be right above your breast bone, the bit of bone which sticks out the most. Tap that area in a waltzing rhythm for a few minutes, a couple of times a day, in order to restimulate your thymus. Not quite sure why it’s a waltz that the thymus likes, but I do have it on great authority!
In healthy, immune-competent people, B-cells and T-cells are in balance. Under stress B-cell immune responses are intensified and T-cell dependent responses are weakened. This means that under stress the body concentrates on getting rid of foreign materials and not on cleaning up our internal environment. It also means that T-cell numbers decrease under stress.
Stress increases the production of adrenaline and cortisol from the adrenal glands. High levels of cortisol weaken T-cell immune reaction and under chronic stress the thymus gland will shrink in a few days and function poorly (it can also return to normal with the help of zinc, vitamin C and multi Bs – read next issue’s article to find out more).
Anything which overstimulates your adrenal glands will contribute to your immune depletion; such things are smoking, sugar, coffee, drugs (especially steroids), lack of sleep, poor nutrition and emotional stress.
Modern medicine, and some have said modern life, is not kind on the immune system. The amount of immune-depleting factors that we have to deal with will depend on the choices that we make regarding the food we eat, the drugs we take, how we deal with stress and some factors which are beyond our control, such as someone we love dying, where we live, the amount of money we have and whether or not we are accepted in our society because of our lifestyle, sexuality or color.
Surgeons like to cut out parts of your immune system, such as your tonsils and appendix. These are both areas where white cells like to hang out and they are essential in helping your digestive system deal with the influx of bacteria which you take in with your food. Steroids, antibiotics and anti-inflammatory drugs directly suppress the immune system, affecting immunity worse than any other system. Steroids stimulate your adrenals, anti-inflammatories suppress the natural reaction of your immune system in trying to deal with infections, and antibiotics kill, indiscriminately, all of the bacteria in your intestines including the helpful ones. This allows harmful bacteria to grow in their place as well as moulds and fungi, such as candida. When candida takes hold in your intestines it makes the mucous lining very permeable which results in over exposing the immune system to foreign antigens. Vaccinations are also bad for immunity and put your immune system into a state of constant alert which is exhausting for adrenals and very mineral-depleting.
All of this ongoing stress-induced weakening of immunity weakens your defenses against pathogens which will not be properly identified, dealt with and eliminated. Latent infections in the body will no longer be kept under control which results in an increased susceptibility to otherwise harmless opportunistic infections.
Over-working the immune system causes a lot of damage, unnecessary hard work and the unproductive use of nutrients which are often in scant supply anyway. The foods which generate the least toxins and are therefore the easiest to deal with are whole, unrefined foods. That is, food that looks like food – whole grains, vegetables, fruit, pulses, and not the kind of food that has spent the last three months on various production lines having chemicals added and nutrients stripped away. You also need these foods in order to support your immune system, not just for harmminimization.
Read next month’s article to find out which vitamins are specifically good for improving your immune system, and the one after will focus on minerals, but until then a little taster is to eat your greens every day.
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