Our organism is remarkable. Everything is under control the Central Nervous System, the lungs give us an opportunity to breathe, which keeps us alive, oxygen is transported by the red cells troughout the whole body. The Gastrointestinal System provides all the cells with nutrients, thanks to the muscles we can walk, lift groceries... :D
Lots of things, indeed.
One of the systems in our body is the Immune System, which is our line of defence against microorganisms such as bacteries, viruses, fungus etc. Without it, we would be dead within few hours/days after our birth.
The Immune System is composed of two parts:
*non-specific - all the barieres that protects our ogranism : the skin, the mucouse layers, lysozyme, chloric acid in the gaster, etc. and also special type of cells called monocytes
*specific - 5 types of cells : neutrophils, eosinophils, basophils, limfocytes
(these are very basic information; in reality, the Immune System is much more complex)
In order to defeat the enemy, those two parts of the Immune System must cooperate without any mistakes. When something is broken (for example: there are not as many immune cells as it should be) - the disease appears.
Sometimes, the Immune System is over-reactive. It triggers the response caused by not dangerous "thing" - this type of disease we call: the allergy, and the percentage of people all over the world, that suffers from this disease is approximatelly from 30 to 40.
I am one of them. I am allergic to mites and fur of cats :)
Today I was in the hospital, in the Allergies Department to get my next immunization against mites. I started on December last year and in the next week I will finish my journey with this immunization :)
Week by week, I have been stung with a needle, at one end of which there was my arm, and at the other and there was a syringe with my medicament - dead mites. Week by week - rising volume.
Some of you would be shocked - "What? He is treated with his own poison? How is that possible?"
The explanation is simple - my organism needs to get used to mites. More specific - to the rising volume of it.
Before my first immunization, my organism triggers a whole immune response to harmless mites: I have sneezed, coughed etc. while other members of my family don't. Especially on Saturdays, when we clean up a whole house and dust was floating everywhere.
Sometimes, when patient is really,really allergic to something, he/she can fall into an anaphylactic shock : the airways become blocked due to swollen mucouse layer and the patient falls into cardiac arrest. When this happens, physycians give patient an injection of epinephrine - it will start the heart and reduce edema of the airways. If patient is lucky.
That tragic response of the organism is a result of releasing 3 mediators of anaphylaxis, mostly from basophiles: histamine, serotonin, heparin. Those mediators are released when we suffer from average disease as well, but not in as high volume as it is during anaphylactic shock.
They have synergistic effect:
* relaxation of the smooth muscle cells in the medial wall of blood vessels which results in..
* ... increased blood flow
* ... increased filtration through the endothelial wall
It helps our organism defeat the disease and we see those effects as a erythema, swelling, temperature rising in the place of injection immunization vaccine.
These are very basic information, as I've already said. For more information I encourage you to look for it for yourself :)
Tomorrow I'm going to clinic to start my second day of holiday practise. I hope something worth writting will happen :)
See you later!
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