Jargogled Impressions.

Key Takeaways:

1. While progress on understanding the immune system and the various maladies it afflicts / gets afflicted by has been tremendous, we are still flummoxed by the intricacies and the complex system of immunity that our T-Cells and B-Cells, and NK cells provide for our body
2. The thymus makes T cells. The bone marrow is the origin of B Cells.
3. Survival depends on knowing what is self and what is alien. The immune system must cope with three major challenges: the variability of bad actors, the central circulatory system that sends rivers of blood throughout our body in seconds, and the need to heal
4. Our immune system can run amok and can a) sometimes be co-opted by invasive pathogens (parasites, bacteria, virus) to damage our body, b) segment our healthy tissues as pathogens and start attacking it, and c) can just stop working (e.g., through smoking that tests the system like the harshest teacher) and lose the ability to defend our bodies against external threats
   1. Autoimmunity is immune system in an out-of-control police state
   1. Diabetes is our immune system going to war against the pancreas
   1. Excessive immune system response is a chronic problem for many people
5. Harmful bacteria: E. coli, salmonella, tetanus bacillus, staphylococci, and syphilis spirochetes
6. HIV is a special category of virus – retrovirus
7. Our immune system is adopted to our own special needs and are not as effective as a replacement; co-operation of human tissues with key microbial cells is vital for the role our immune system plays in defending us against external threats and is what makes us “super-organisms”
8. Stress is a key inhibitor for our immune systems; stress tends to increase the inflammations (our immune system’s response to external stimulus) re-directing these cells to respond to external threats versus the daily house-keeping it needs to perform to keep us healthy
9. Sleep, exercise, meditation, and nutrition – the immune system responds to these
10. Elite controllers are those fortunate few who have extraordinary immune systems – an uncommon genetic variant in few humans that trigger a supremely robust immune system response to external agents
11. As understanding of the immune system grew, and with it the systems and molecules (e.g., neutrophils as first responders, interlukin as messaging system), the focus for immunology shifted from attacking the alien agents (like with chemotherapy) to influencing the messaging system to nudge the immune system to behave appropriately
12. Corralling which antibody responds to which pathogen is key to determining if the production of these antibodies could be regulated to modulate response
13. At least half of the cells in our body are bacterial, not human. One hundred trillion bacterial cells, and they are mostly in our gut. In the individual, they are called a microbiota, and the collection of them, and the breadth of their genetic building blocks, is called the microbiome.
14. The hygiene hypothesis stated that our environment has become so clean that it has left our immune system insufficiently trained.

tl;dr

Our immune system is a weird panoply of multiple cellular, hormonal, and enzymatic action and reaction systems. As a friend it is an elegant savior, and as an enemy our most morbid and dangerous murderer. Over eons, we have developed a complex interplay with millions of cellular species – some good, others bad. Avoiding the bad ones isn’t as straightforward as staying away from them. Our body is essentially anti-fragile, and we need to treat it as such – through our diet, our activities, our predilections, and our fears.