Totorus

Photo credit by The Facey Family

Keeping viruses, bacteria and any other likely invaders at bay is an intricate process involving many essential organs, hormones, organs, and blood cells. The immune system is often likened to an army since it comprises many dissimilar forces that work jointly to defend your body from uninvited germs.

Skin is the most obvious part of your immune system. Supplying the first line of defense, skin offers an essential boundary between microbes and the body. Part of the skin’s task is to act as a protective barrier in much the equal way as you use aluminum foil to cover food. Healthy skin is sturdy and resistant to viruses and bacteria, not only it covers the body’s organs, it has specialized cells that release antibacterial chemicals, like the salt in sweat, to exterminate invaders.

The mouth, nose and eyes are primary entry points for microbes. They too contain germ-fighting substances: nasal mucus, tears and saliva have enzymes that demolish the cells of bacteria. And because the lungs and nasal passageway are coated in mucous secretion, a lot of germs that are not quickly obliterated are caught in the mucus and then exterminated by stomach acid.

If bad germs are able to enter the body, the immune systems needs to handle them to stop them invading the body. It has to find and annihilate the encroachers before they can get comfortable and multiply - which can happen very quickly. If this task is accomplished, then the bacteria or viruses are exterminated before they induce sickness; if the mission is a failure, however, the microbes temporarily overcome the immune system and illness may occur, staying on until the system has annihilated the invaders. The principal protectors of the immune system are leucocytes. They travel inside the lymphatic system and the bloodstream, designed to distinguish troublemakers, so that they may mount an organized counter attack against them.

The lymphatic system is a crucial part of the immune system. It comprises of an internal network of nodes all around the body that are filled with a clear liquid known as lymph, which contains leucocytes and circulates them around the body. The entire body is loaded in lymph, although you seldom see it. Contrary to blood, which is circulated around the physical structure by the heart, lymph depends on muscular activity and exercise in order to spread. Lymph also takes away waste products, which are permeated out by the lymphatic vessels located all over the organic structure. Within the lymphatic vessels, dangerous micro-organisms are immobilized, rounded, and demolished by leucocytes. This is among the body’s most effective defense system. Lymph vessels are storehouse sites for cells - they are the ‘swollen glands’ frequently visible during an infection. The adenoids, tonsils and appendix are all significant parts of the lymphatic system. If any of them is enlarged in size, your body is likely defending against an infection.

One of the extraordinary things regarding the immune system is its capability to recollect and identify past invaders, permitting the body to reply promptly to follow-up attacks. Disease-causing bacteria and viruses attack and multiply quickly in their millions. Once immune cells have been produced to combat a kind of micro-organism, it commonly no longer poses a threat, which is why an onslaught of a disease often forestalls its recurrence later down the road.

This ‘memory’ is the foundation of immunization. Centuries ago, researcher understood that having one sickness not only permitted us to repel that identical disease if we encountered it again, but we also would be resistive to related diseases. 300 years ago, Edward Jenner figured out that dairymaids who had been infected with a mild disease known as cowpox never caught the more dangerous smallpox. He ‘inoculated’ his first subjects by exposing them to stuffs acquired from a cowpox blister - certainly, they, like the milkmaids, became resistant to smallpox.