How Your Body's Defenses Work

Your body has many defenses against disease germs. Your skin is an important barrier. Unless your skin is broken by injury, it will not let germs enter. Suppose germs do get inside your body through natural body openings. Many will be trapped and destroyed by the sticky mucus produced by membranes that line these openings. Mucus produced here contains a germ-killing substance. Germs that get into your lungs may be coughed up. Germs that reach your stomach may be killed by the acid stomach juices. Tears destroy and wash away most germs that enter your eyes.

However, despite all these defenses, germs sometimes enter your body and stay there. Inside, the warm, moist conditions help them grow and multiply. Some of them, especially the viruses, cause damage to body cells and tissues. Others give off waste materials that are poisonous. These wastes are called toxins. The disease germs and toxins accumulate in the body. At a certain point, you begin to feel ill.

Your body, however, works to fight off the disease germs. For one thing, it rushes white blood cells to the site of infection. These white cells surround the invading germs and devour them. A white blood cell acts quickly. It can attack and devour a germ in from half a minute to two minutes time.

Your body also forms antibodies. Antibodies are substances that are carried in blood plasma to the site of an infection. There they help the white blood cells fight off the disease germs. Your body makes a special kind of antibody to fight off each type of germ that invades it. There is an antibody for mumps, one for chicken pox, and so on.

After the disease is cured, some of the antibodies remain in the blood. They may remain ten years or more. They provide immunity to the disease as long as they are there.

Having a disease can be a dangerous way to get immunity. That is why doctors use vaccines to provide immunity against certain diseases. A vaccine contains a weakened or killed viruses or bacteria. They stimulate the body to make antibodies. The Sabin polio vaccine contains live, but weakened viruses that cause polio. This vaccine stimulates the body to make polio antibodies. The body does not become ill with polio. It develops resistance to it.

Toxoids are another type of vaccine. They are chemically treated toxins. The chemical treatment makes them harmless. But the toxoids stimulate the body to make antibodies. For example, a special toxoid is used to stimulate the body to make antibodies to fight the disease called tetanus.

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