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How does the body know which bacteria threaten our health and which are essential for life? Who was the first to discover the immune system? What influence did the starfish have on the development of modern immunology? These and many other fascinating questions are answered by Matt Richtel’s best-selling Invisible Defense.
A walk over the precipice
The first task of the immune system is to tell friend from foe, that is, your own tissues from intruders that must be ‘devoured’ or eliminated. The immune system supports cell division by helping to heal and rebuild tissues. However, by helping to rebuild the body, the immune system is put through a lot of trials. If the cancer is somehow fooled and ignored the signals that it is necessary to stop the process of dividing bad cells, it begins to protect the cancer itself.
Matt Richtel, author of Invisible Defense, compares the path of the immune system to a rope stretched over a precipice where death lurks on the right and left. Survival depends on the ability to distinguish between what is own and what is foreign. The immune system therefore has to deal with three basic challenges. The first is the differentiation and changeability of the enemies that appear on his way. The second – the central circulatory system, which pumps rivers of blood through our body within seconds. The third, and perhaps the greatest, is the need for healing.
But what if at some stage our body makes a mistake?
Hero or killer?
Sometimes the immune system turns out to be invincible. He accomplishes seemingly impossible things. This was the case with Bob – one of the heroes of “Invisible Defense”. Despite being infected with HIV, he managed to keep it in check. In the case of Merredith and Linda, the immune system turned out to be the killer residing in their bodies – it attacked their body as if it were an external threat. Jason was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma – a cancer of the immune system. The disease has found a way to silence defenses while harnessing the power of the immune system for its own purposes.
The immune system is one of the most complex systems in the human body. He is constantly battling pathogens: bacteria, viruses, fungi and toxins. Our health and well-being depends on it. If the immune system fails, we get sick. Although we have freed ourselves from many diseases that plagued humanity in the past, fast life, excess work and stress have replaced old diseases with new ones – autoimmune diseases. We get it when our body, instead of fighting, destroys its own cells and tissues.
The beginnings, that is, the cell eater
The beginning of research on the immune system dates back to 1882. It was then in Sicily that Ilya Mechnikov, a zoologist from Odessa, was staring at something through a microscope. He watched a starfish in its early stages of development. His attention was caught by tiny moving cells. In contemplating the name for “traveling cells,” the zoologist had an epiphany. What would happen, he wondered, if he were to stick a splinter into a starfish? Would these cells somehow collide in groups, as if they wanted to come to the rescue? He decided to check it – he stuck a pair of rose thorns into the starfish larva. The next morning, he excitedly watched the effects of his experiment: a whole lot of “wandering cells” gathered around the splinter. They appeared to engulf undesirable, problematic tissue.
This experiment laid the foundations for the theory of phagocytosis, the most important element of innate immunity. The word “phagocyte” comes from Greek and loosely translated means “cell eater”.
A unique bond
“Invisible Defense” is not a story about cancer. Nor is it a story about heart or respiratory diseases, accidents, strokes, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, flu, pneumonia, kidney disease or HIV. It is not a story about any particular disease or trauma. It is a story about all of them, about the unique bond that unites them, about the glue that determines the health and condition of every human being. This is a story about the immune system.
“Invisible Defense” already in bookstores.