Do you know that 99% of the illnesses and diseases are caused due to malfunctioning immune system? How well we understand our immune system which is the invisible army in our body?
Let's look inside our immune system which consists of the following immune organs:
1) Bone Marrow (Soldier Factory)
- Create red blood cells and white blood cells. White blood cells are our immune cells
- Every second, about 8 million blood cells die and the same number are regenerated here...
2) Thymus (Training Ground)
- Assign T-Cells (immune cells) their duties in fighting diseases
- Secretes immune-regulating hormones
3) Lymph Nodes (Battlegrounds)
- Little pickets of battlegrounds with billions of white blood cells
- Swollen lymph nodes are a good indication that you have an infection and your immune system is hard at work
- Filter lymph fluid which carries away waste products like viruses and bacteria
4) Spleen (Blood Filter)
- Filter blood by removing dead blood cells and engulfed viruses and bateria
5) Tonsils (Throat Guard)
- Maintain constant vigilance against invaders to the body thru nose and mouth
6) Appendix (Immune Assistant)
- Act like a traffic coordinator, direct white blood cells' movement to other parts of body
- Protect digestive tract
7) Peyer's Patches (Intestinal Guards)
- React invaders in the intestines
The Science of Nutritional Immunology tells us that:
The BEST DOCTOR in the world is our own immune system.
When our immune system is functioning properly, it can help us to carry out 3 very important functions: Defense, Cleansing & Repair
Nutrition plays important role to nourish the immune system so that it can function well
Below are some important immune cells that carry out different functions in our body:
1. B-Cells (doing defense function)
- Fight invaders by producing antibodies specific to those invaders
- Antibodies are our enemy-seeking missiles that track and lock onto assigned invaders such as bacteria and viruses before triggering immne responses to destroy them
- Some B cells can become "memory" cells. If the same invader attacks again, the memory B cells will identify and dispatch specific antibodies to defeat it.
2. Natural Killer (NK) Cells (doing defense function)
- Cancer Cell (in the middle) is surrounded by Natural Killer Cells (the white color snow ball) which are the lethal snipers who shoot holes into invaders.
3. Macrophage (doing Cleansing function)
- This is a macrophage (Enemy Eater) - the garbage man of our body is ingesting foreign particles which have entered our body
- Look, the macrophage is trying to grab a particle using its tentacle
- Now, the macrophage opens its mouth and engulfs E.Coli Bacteria
4. Red Platlet (doing Repair function)
- Our blood platelets which perform repair task in our body.
Some websites which share the info about immune system:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/human-biology/immune-system.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immune_system
Our immune system is an amazing piece of work! At any given second, it calls upon a complex ad concerted effort from countless different immune battalions, working ceaselessly to protect us not only from invaders but also from our own internal cells, which can mutate and become cancerous.
Without immune system, a simple dust in the air would kill us!
