Good Article about Autoimmune Diseases

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http://www.btinternet.com/~wegeners.uk/Articles.htm

Autoimmune Disease

1. One of a number of otherwise unrelated disorders caused by

inflammation and destruction of tissues by the body's own antibodies.

These disorders include pernicious anaemia, rheumatic fever,

rheumatoid

arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus and Wegener's

Granulomatosis. It

is not known why the body should lose the ability to distinguish

between

substances that are 'self' and those that are 'non-self'.

2. Article by Dr. H. Renner, M.D.

Your immune system wages constant battle.

Your body is constantly at battle with the world around you. You

live in

a sea of organisms that could infect you and make you sick. Millions

of

them are inside your body at any given time.

So why are you so healthy? Everyone gets occasional colds and

infections, of course, but most people are

able to stay surprisingly well.

Within your body is a complex and highly specialized defense force

that

is ready to fight off viruses, cancer

and other invaders. That defense force is called the immune system.

The immune system is so precise that it can recognize even a single-

cell

invader. Cells from all over the body can be mobilized for action. If

the same kind of organism should invade again, the second response is

even faster and stronger than the first.

As in any defense system, there are many levels built into the immune

system. The first lines of defense, often called the innate immune

system, try to keep invaders from entering the body in the first

place.

The skin is a boundary layer through which organisms can enter only

if

there is a tear or cut. Similarly, the mucous linings in the nose,

mouth

and along the trachea prevent invaders from entering from the inside.

Stomach acids, peristaltic contractions in the intestine and rapid

shedding of intestinal linings can destroy organisms that get that

far.

If an invader should get past these initial defenses, the body's

first

response to injury is inflammation. During the inflammatory process,

the

blood supply to the injured area increases. Several systems interact

to

limit damage to surrounding tissue. Other cells called natural killer

cells can attach to cells that have been infected and destroy them.

The primary actors at this level are the lymphocytes, a type of white

blood cell. They are formed from stem

cells found in the bone marrow and travel to two sites in the body to

become either T-lymphocytes or

B-lymphocytes. T-cells and B-cells are quite different and perform

different functions within the immune

system, but they work together to fight off infection.

T-cells are the major actors in cellular immunity. Cellular immunity

is

responsible for fighting off viruses and certain bacterial infections

and eliminating cancer cells. T-cells have immunoglobulins attached

that

recognize specific foreign invaders. There are many subsets of T-

cells

with slightly different functions.

The major function of B-cells is to produce free immunoglobulins or

antibodies that can recognize and help to destroy specific invaders.

Antibodies recognize specific sites (called antigens) of the

infecting

organism.

There are five types of antibody immunoglobulins, each responding to

different antigens. When B-cells find the invader that they will

respond

to, they can make large amounts of free antibody to fight the

infection.

Besides fighting off invaders from the outside, the immune system can

destroy invaders from the inside - that is, cancer cells. Tumor cells

carry special antigens on their surface that the immune system can

recognize as being foreign, thus triggering an immune response to

destroy it.

Although impressive, the immune system is not perfect. It sometimes

responds to invaders when you wish it would not. This process

happens to

people who have allergies. Sometimes it responds to the body's own

cells. This happens in autoimmune diseases.

Also, if some part of the immune system is suppressed, by age, drugs

or

disease, the risk of infection or

cancer increases. AIDS is one example of an immunosuppressive

disease.

Human immune-deficiency virus

causes one type of T-cell (T-Helper lymphocyte) to become deficient,

and

those infected with HIV can no

longer respond to infecting agents appropriately.

The immune system is an extremely complicated network. Without such

an

integrated system, your body

would be open to a whole range of infections and disease and you

would

not have that degree of wellness that most people enjoy.

Many commercial organizations have built a marketing plan around the

fear of personal loss of the immune

system and are selling all sorts of 'immune boosting' products.

There is

no scientific evidence that any single nutritional product or

combination of nutritional products stimulates the immune system once

basic nutritional needs are met. It just does not happen that way.