Is your immune system your friend or your enemy?
The human immune system is very complex because it
involves the whole human body, and not just certain body organs and tissues.
Its main function is to protect your body from viruses and infections by
giving out signs and symptoms of imminent dangers. Unfortunately, you may have
either ignored them or failed to notice them in your body system.
To protect your body, your immune system
"remembers" foreign invaders or antigens that attack your body. The
purpose is to identify similar invaders in future in order to give your body
better protection from disease. This innate built-in disease prevention is
achieved by the white blood cells in the immune system that produce antibodies
(chemicals that attach to and attack specific antigens). In response to an
injury or antigen, these white blood cells can also cause
"inflammation" to prevent an infection from spreading elsewhere. In
other words, the immune system is responsible for producing "chemical
instructions" to nip diseases or infections in the bud. It is akin to
a police department in a city: it recognizes the city's potential crime
scenario, takes strong measures to protect its citizens, trains the local
police force, and regulates the law and order of the city. Likewise, the immune
system serves different functions of identification, activation,
mobilization, and restoration to maintain the body in health and wellness.
Your immune system, however, can be your friend or
your enemy. When it becomes compromised or dysfunctional, your immune system
can cause autoimmunity, in which the immune system attacks its own cells,
mistaking them for foreign invaders. To illustrate, in myasthenia gravis, which is an autoimmune disease, it is an
auto-antibody attack on the receptor responsible for the communication between
the nervous system and voluntary muscles. As a result, there is
miscommunication between them that results in muscle weakness, which is a
hallmark characteristic of myasthenia gravis.
What causes autoimmunity?
Environmental agents can trigger the onset or
deterioration of autoimmunity. Heavy metal, in particular, mercury, is
responsible for a compromised immune system. According to Dr. Ahmet Hoke of John Hopkins
University Medical
Center
Another important factor in the causes of autoimmune
diseases is the genetic factor. Unfortunately, there is little you can do about
your genes inherited from your parents.
Lifestyle and diet may also trigger an attack. For
example, inadequate vitamin D from the sun may be implicated in autoimmune
diseases; however, too much ultraviolet rays from the sun may not be beneficial
to the immune system. A diet with too much gluten, which is a protein, may
cause inflammation in the small intestine, resulting in pain, and thus blocking
the absorption of nutrients. If you are allergic to gluten, it may cause celiac
disease, which is an autoimmune disorder. The iodine in seafood is problematic
to mice, although it has not been proved to affect humans.
All in all, an autoimmune disease may be caused by not
just one factor but a combination of several factors. Given the complexity
of autoimmune diseases, it is important to have a holistic approach to
treating as well as to preventing autoimmune diseases and disorders. Using
medications alone is an inadequate approach to treating autoimmune diseases
because, at best, they can only suppress some of the disease symptoms,
and, at worst, they can further impair the immune system. Using
steroid medications to suppress an "overactive" immune system is
just putting the patient in a catch-22 situation.
Stephen Lau
Copyright © by Stephen Lau
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