5 Things that Make You Susceptible to an Infection

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so the question we want to answer today is why are some people very susceptible to getting infections and other people are immune from infections I was flying somewhere this last weekend and I’m sitting in this plane and the person right behind me is just coughing and hacking and the lady next to me has a scarf around her mouth and I’m sitting there trying not to breathe the air in this plane it was disgusting and I had no symptoms at all but you always think that wow I wonder if I’m gonna get sick because I’m all these floating viruses and bacteria in this very small space you never know but let me just define this word susceptible likely or liable to be influenced or harmed by a particular thing and we’re talking about viruses and bacteria and microbes what are the key things that make you liable to be influenced by a microbe well the first thing you need to know is that there’s two main parts of the immune system you have the innate part and you have the adapted part of the immune system now the innate is something you’re born with it’s a rapid response of your immune system it already has a pre-programmed function and I’m talking about neutrophils monocytes and natural killer cells but the Adapted is very different when you’re born you don’t have this system developed yet and it’s composed of t-cells and b-cells this system requires education and training so as soon as you start being exposed to the environment whether it’s a virus or a bacteria your body starts reacting and learning and developing a memory so the next time you’re exposed to it your immune system knows exactly what to do this system is always trying to differentiate between your own cells and not kill your own cells off and only focus on the invader microbes and of course certain people in certain times of their life start having this system broken down where they can’t differentiate and they start getting self attack or autoimmune diseases there are five main things that make you susceptible to getting infections at the top of the list it’s stress there’s some interesting research on bereavement which is the condition that someone’s in grieving over a loss of a loved one and they’ve done Studies on that and they found that your immune system is suppressed neutrophils okay white blood cells are actually suppressed and when your immune system is suppressed it leaves the back door open to have this microbe invade and create damage part of this is controlled by the flight-or-fight sympathetic nervous system the other part is controlled by cortisol cortisol is one of the main stress hormones produced by the adrenal gland cortisol suppresses white blood cells so anytime cortisol is elevated you are susceptible to getting an infection now if you have a chronic stress over a long period of time cortisol tends to go down and now you don’t have the buffer the suppressive force for these hyper immune reactions so you can also have problems with the immune system with low cortisol as in a condition called Addison’s disease which these people are usually always sick with viruses just as much as having high cortisol and there’s a condition called Cushing’s syndrome which involves high cortisol so both can create this susceptibility to this microbe I mean when you think about people getting sick many times it happens after a stress event then we get into low vitamin D levels okay vitamin D is probably one of the most important vitamins to protect your immune system simply because it modulates or controls both the innate and the adaptive part of the immune system so if you are deficient in vitamin D both of these are not going to work and you’re not going to have the defense mechanisms in place and this is really why people get the flu in the fall and they get sick in the winter it’s simply because of the vitamin D it’s not the cold it’s not the rain it’s the low vitamin D this is why I always recommend taking vitamin D through the winter months and their in the summer get more Sun then we get to zinc very important in immune protection if you’re low in zinc your risk for getting strep especially strep in your lungs goes way up also you can’t kill bacteria as well zinc is present in certain white blood cells that help kill bacteria and by the way one billion people on this planet are deficient in zinc all right number four vitamin A very important in the mucous lining of your sinuses of a respiratory area of your throat vitamin A is involved in the protective layer on the inside of the body so if you’re deficient in vitamin A your risk factors go up for getting infections in the lung and by the way I forgot to say this when you’re low in vitamin D you definitely your risk factor for viruses of the lung go way way up but if you’re low in vitamin A you’re phagocytes the cells that kill bacteria and clean up bacteria out of the system are suppressed and it just so happens that there is something that has a nice equal amount of vitamin A and vitamin D and you guessed it it’s cod liver oil something that your grandmother probably recommended growing up okay then we have vitamin C essential for your immune system and to protect you against microbes not having enough vitamin C makes you very susceptible the phagocytes don’t work anymore you get a buildup of bacteria you can’t produce antibodies as well anymore so overall in summary these are the five things involved in susceptibility to getting infections so if you want more knowledge on how to create a healthy body subscribe now and get daily notifications