Some musings on the immune system...
Nov. 6th, 2010 09:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
angharad_gamBy which you know I mean my immune system.
On Thursday I read something very interesting about colds. Apparently they (you know, they) have done a study which discovered that people who get a lot of colds and people who don't get many colds both have similar levels of cold antibodies (both quantity and variety). This apparently suggests that most of the symptoms of colds are actually immunological responses to the cold, not caused by the virus itself, and that the people who get a lot of colds do not, in fact, get any more than anyone else, it's just that their immune systems go nuttier when they do.
This makes a lot of sense to me. When I was a kid I hardly ever got sick, and when I did it was very mildly. I think I had about four spots when I had chickenpox. Even when I had glandular fever I was hardly very ill at all, compared to some people. This, apparently, is quite typical for people who go on to have auto-immune diseases - the immune system is not well calibrated and tends to over react to things. Even these days there is some evidence for this, recent experience with respiratory tract infections aside. I never get very ill when I have the flu. I have never had food poisoning. I rarely have fevers, and I tend to be pretty resistant to infections.
So the fact that I get a lot of colds has always seemed really strange to me. Until I read this.
Did I mention I have a cold?
BTW. The hand. I took it to the doctor, and the doctor said that although the symptoms were not typical of an infection, the timing and behaviour was, and so prescribed some antibiotics. She also suggested I take some anti-histamines too, in case it really was an allergic reaction. However I went home and took the antibiotics and within about 3 hrs the swelling was noticeably reduced (as in - hey I knew I had bones in this hand), so I figured that was a pretty good sign it was an infection. Have run out of antibiotics now, though the thing has not entirely healed up so I will need to keep a careful eye on it.
Oh, and no promotion.
On Thursday I read something very interesting about colds. Apparently they (you know, they) have done a study which discovered that people who get a lot of colds and people who don't get many colds both have similar levels of cold antibodies (both quantity and variety). This apparently suggests that most of the symptoms of colds are actually immunological responses to the cold, not caused by the virus itself, and that the people who get a lot of colds do not, in fact, get any more than anyone else, it's just that their immune systems go nuttier when they do.
This makes a lot of sense to me. When I was a kid I hardly ever got sick, and when I did it was very mildly. I think I had about four spots when I had chickenpox. Even when I had glandular fever I was hardly very ill at all, compared to some people. This, apparently, is quite typical for people who go on to have auto-immune diseases - the immune system is not well calibrated and tends to over react to things. Even these days there is some evidence for this, recent experience with respiratory tract infections aside. I never get very ill when I have the flu. I have never had food poisoning. I rarely have fevers, and I tend to be pretty resistant to infections.
So the fact that I get a lot of colds has always seemed really strange to me. Until I read this.
Did I mention I have a cold?
BTW. The hand. I took it to the doctor, and the doctor said that although the symptoms were not typical of an infection, the timing and behaviour was, and so prescribed some antibiotics. She also suggested I take some anti-histamines too, in case it really was an allergic reaction. However I went home and took the antibiotics and within about 3 hrs the swelling was noticeably reduced (as in - hey I knew I had bones in this hand), so I figured that was a pretty good sign it was an infection. Have run out of antibiotics now, though the thing has not entirely healed up so I will need to keep a careful eye on it.
Oh, and no promotion.
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no subject
Date: 2010-11-06 04:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-07 07:24 am (UTC)