The immune system and health in general.

[NUR1301]

Thinking out aloud here.

 

What makes a strong immune system and one to be healthy, no physical / chronic health conditions at all?

 

I find it fascination really. Some people can exercise religiously, eat a healthy and balanced diet, not smoke, not drink alcohol and seem to 'catch' anything and everything.

 

Yet there are others who don't look after themselves and never get sick. See, I am one of them. It's very odd, but lucky I guess. I smoke, have done for 7 years, my diet mainly consists of toast, pasta, dry biscuits and coffee - very rarely eat fruit or vegetables, don't eat meat, cheese or eggs.

 

It isn't genetics. My parents are always sick with gastro bugs, colds, seem to get the flu every year. Right now my Dad had pneumonia. I've got family members who have asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 and type 2 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, gallstones and had surgery to remove the gallbladder and finally cancer. There is always something wrong with most people in my family.

 

So what makes some people so healthy, even though environmental and genetic aspects of their lives don't explain it?

 

I've often thought if I had the chance I'd do some kind of clinical trial, find out what makes me so healthy compared to most people. I'd do this to help scientists and doctors make other people healthy like me.

[Realitycheck]

You never know just what combination of genetic traits you get from your parents. Maybe you just lucked out, but I wouldn't keep doing the same thing indefinitely. Sooner or later, it will catch up with you. How old are you? It could be that you have lucked out by somehow avoiding many harmful pathogens.

[Rilx]

my diet mainly consists of toast, pasta, dry biscuits and coffee - very rarely eat fruit or vegetables, don't eat meat, cheese or eggs.

 

You are under 30 years? You have a high risk of obesity, diabetes, ...

[NUR1301]

I'm 24 -

Usually I'll eat 1 piece of toast for breakfast and coffee, lunch lately a sauce sandwich, dinner 2 pieces of toast and diet chicken soup. I eat a snack between breakfast and lunch coffee and 1/2 of a dry biscuit . But ever since I started eating like that I've lost weight. I weigh 43 kilos and I'm 156cm. The only 'healthy' things I do is I don't have butter/margarine on my toast or sandwich I have low joule/diet jam and take no sugar in my coffee

 

Better than what I was once eating in my teen years - pop tarts and coke for breakfast, weight watchers choc chip cookies for mid morning and afternoon snack, peanut butter sandwich for lunch w/butter, dinner whatever my parents had stir fry or veggies and chicken. Freaky b/c even though I ate like that I was never overweight and never have been overweight.

 

It's just all strange, but in a way alright how I can treat my body like crap and get away with it all i.e. stay in perfect health. I think most people if they were to do what I do would be very sick/have a lot of health problems and have very weak immune systems

[Rilx]

I see you are in a carbohydrate diet, losing weight in lack of proteins. It's a joke to take no sugar in coffee while practically everything you eat changes to sugar in your digestion.

 

I'm no doc and though I were I wouldn't advice you over internet. Take care of yourself. Most sick old people have once been healthy youngsters.

[iNow]

I'm 24 -

<...>

It's just all strange, but in a way alright how I can treat my body like crap and get away with it all i.e. stay in perfect health.

Perhaps an analogy will help.

 

If you construct a building using straw and cracked twigs, it will stand. It will provide you shelter, and a place to sleep protected from the outside. For a while. Since the foundation of the structure is relatively weak, each environmental stimulus has a greater impact (it takes a greater amount of damage with each gust of wind, each drop of rain, each day of hot sunlight)... and, eventually, the structure just collapses. You'd have to build a completely new one.

 

If you were instead to construct a building using high quality materials, taking care and effort to engineer how they go together, making each bond a point of strength instead of a weak spot, and doing so with an awareness of what the environment will bring so you can improve your building's ability to survive the elements... that building would last despite what the weather brought... and would last for decades. No need to rebuild.

 

Now, replace "building" with your "body," and replace "poor construction" with "treating your body like crap." You are what you eat, and you're building your body with crappy materials. Also, you'll never have the opportunity to just "build a new one" when you body "collapses."

 

 

Even a cardboard box can be used as shelter, but a chateau is much more enjoyable through the years.

[Genecks]

I think it would be genetic and environmental aspects.

[pioneer]

Factoring out genetics, the immune system learns from experience. As such, giving the immune system schooling by exposure makes it smarter. For example, the little child who eats the food he drops on the ground, i.e., one minute rule before mother catches him, will expose himself to more things than a child who eats only what is sterile. The sterile eater may avoid certain things but he doesn't exercise his immune system. The dirt eater may get short term health conditions from this behavior, but as their immune systems learns, they are less vulnerable in the future. The difference may be between short term and long term benefits.

 

Another example, are the rough and tumble kids who get more cuts and bruises. These cuts are going to expose them to a greater variety of things than if they covered themselves in a suit of armor. But this is also schooling for the immune system. It could cause a problem, but it can also lead to a better immune response during future falls and spills.

 

If you look at the situation of NUR1301, his parents maybe tried to avoid immunity school but now have problems. These problem may have caused NUR1301 to be forced into a rigorous immunity home schooling. Maybe we needed to find a better balance between avoidance and exposure, to school the immune system.

 

If you make a graph with medical advances going up over time, sickness should be falling with time. An analogy is GM building a new model auto. If it has a ten year cycle, if they are improving that model over the ten year cycle, the number of trips to the mechanic should be falling with time. If we plot esculating medical costs and assume that to reflects the state of health, the improving medical state of the art is causing more health problems?

 

For example, I get a cut. I can let nature take its course and have a nasty looking scab for a couple of weeks and maybe a scar when I am done. Or I can go to the doctor who can accelerate healing and avoid the scar. The first scenario may be schooling my immune system better than the second scenario, since the second will add something synthetic to speed the natural process. During the next cycle, the first scenario benefits from a smarter immune system, while the second scenario still has the immune system on vacation, so it needs the pampering again. The second scenario is still quicker, but the first is catching up naturally. The question that arises, is it possible to not only delay immune school but to deprogram the natural immune system by alterring how its responds to situations by including things that have never been on the earth?

 

If one had bionic legs overlayed onto their legs they could run faster and jump higher. Over time, the leg muscles will conform to the bionics. Now the legs are molded differently making normal running much less affective. A person who never had the speed of the bionic may be able to advance to the stride of sprinting easier, than those who legs have been reshaped because of the running bionics. When something new comes down the pike the natural immune system is a little closer due to he schooling, While the synthetic immune system is further away and needs even newer bionics to compensate. The advancing medical is making better and better things to help us overcome and speed up our recovery. But could this also be causing the natural immunity school to becomed delayed or stay on vacation?

[gordman]

I think it's also a strong genetic connection here besides the way of life. You are perfectly right, there are people having the "perfect" life but still get sick and there are careless people that don't have health problems. It's quite an enigma for me...