Your Immune System
Your immune system is a complicated network of biological processes that take place inside organs, tissues, cells and protein substance to defend your body against harmful microorganisms and substances that invade our systems. It is comprised of over 100 trillion cells that are attacked nearly 10,000 times per day.
Your immune system is comprised of two distinct lines of defense: innate and adaptive. The innate immune system, your body's first line of defense, provides immediate and non-specific protection by identifying foreign molecular patterns and removing them from organs, tissues, blood and lymph. Your adaptive immune system is a more specialized network of cells that have the ability to recognize specific structures and develop memory cells to quickly destroy them in future attacks.
A helpful analogy is to think of your innate immune system as the firewall for your computer system, and your adaptive immune system as the anti-virus software. The firewall, your innate immune system, is programmed to block certain specific attacks while the anti-virus software, your adaptive immune system, can learn profiles of new invaders that might get past the firewall.
Your innate and adaptive immune systems rely on the help of:
- NK ("Natural Killer") Cells - a major component of the innate immune system, they kill adverse foreign matter without any direction from other cells
- Th ("Helper T") Cells - crucial to the adaptive immune system by identifying invaders and marking them to be destroyed by other immune cells
- Macrophage Activation - macrophage ("Big Eater") cells are present in both innate and adaptive immune systems, they engulf and digest microorganisms
- Phagocytosis - phagocyte ("Devour") cells are activated by your innate immune system to remove cell debris
| Innate Immune System | Adaptive Immune System | |
| Response Time | Short (seconds to hours) | Slow (days to weeks) |
| Specificity | Recognizes molecular patterns | Recognizes specific structures |
| Development over Time | Same with each encounter | Improves with each encounter |
Challenges To Your Immune System
- Fast-paced lifestyle - stress, unhealthy eating habits, lack of exercise and insufficient sleep
- Globalization - more traveling and increased interactions between people of various cultures
- Toxic pollution - air, water, chemicals
- Potential antigens - medications, pollen, dander
- Diseases - spreading with increasing pace
- Viruses - becoming more aggressive over time
- Overly sterile environments - hygiene hypothesis
Read more about the immune system and the effects of the active ingredients in Immunitize
